By
Jonathan Hoffman
Amnesty International has put out a Press Notice "urging the Israeli authorities to end their harassment of Palestinian human rights activists" "after a veteran Palestinian campaigner was jailed for nine years earlier today and given an additional one-year suspended sentence. Ameer Makhoul, a longstanding Palestinian activist, was convicted on various counts of having contact with enemies of Israel and espionage after a plea bargain agreement at his trial. He was originally charged with an even more serious offense, "assisting an enemy in war", which could have carried a life sentence, but that was dropped by the prosecution when he agreed to a plea bargain."
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"Ameer Makhoul is well known for his human rights activism on behalf of Palestinians in Israel and those living under Israeli occupation. We fear that this may be the underlying reason for his imprisonment."
The truth is here: "On October 27, 2010 Haaretz reported that Ameer Makhoul, the director of Israeli-Arab NGO Ittijah, “confess[ed] to charges of spying, contact with a foreign agent and giving information to the enemy.” Makhoul, as head of Ittijah, has a background of anti-Israel activities characterized by demonisation and hate rhetoric. For example, an Ittijah email during the Gaza war claimed, “the IDF is turning Gaza into kind of an extermination camp, in the full sense of the word and with the full historical relativity.”
Amnesty International in London has had a succession of Israel-bashing speakers such as Ben White. I have offered them Ruvi Ziegler - an Israeli lawyer studying in Oxford who is an expert on the security fence - but they have stonewalled.
Shame on Amnesty International for its Israel-bashing biased agenda
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