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By

Jonathan Hoffman

Opinion

How does Shamnesty's Kate Allen Keep A Straight Face?

May 18, 2012 09:29
1 min read

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/66896/amnesty-chief-stands-its-work-is...

Eighteen years living with Ken Livingstone has clearly had an impact on Kate Allen’s definition of “truth”.

Her denial (JC 26 April ) that Amnesty displays anti-Israel bias surely must rank alongside Bill Clinton’s denial in re Monica Lewinsky for the title of "Most Disingenuous and Egregious Falsehood in History." There is hardly an Israel traducer to whom Amnesty has not given a London platform: Jeff Halper, Ben White, the Christisons, Greg Philo, Tim Lllewellyn and Gideon Levy are just a few examples. Yet when I negotiated long and hard with Amnesty’s Campaigns Director Kristyan Benedict for Ruvi Ziegler to speak there I got precisely nowhere (Ziegler is an Israeli Doctoral Law student at Oxford who is an expert on the law of the Security Fence and a superb speaker).

Add to this (i) that Amnesty played host to the Russell Tribunal which is a Kangaroo Court designed solely to vilify Israel (ii) Amnesty never called for the release of Gilad Shalit and (iii) Amnesty published a report about water resources in Gaza which was mostly fiction, then you can appreciate why - after reading the piece about Allen - I had to check whether the date on the JC was close to Purim.