British Prime Minister David Cameron has long professed himself a ‘passionate friend of Israel’. He is also a passionate supporter of the Conservative Friends of Israel, whose meetings he has repeatedly addressed and whose long-time director, Stuart Polak, he awarded with a peerage. Cameron is reputed to be an intimate friend and ally of Israel’s... Read More

When Benny Morris was a historian (the “old� Morris), he documented that, if Palestinians opposed Zionism, it was because the Zionist movement intended to dispossess the indigenous population. But when he transmogrified into a Court Historian (the “new� Morris), Morris reversed cause and effect: he depicted the indigenous Palestinian population as jihadi anti-Semites and the... Read More

When Benny Morris was still an historian (the “old� Morris), he documented how the Zionist objective of creating a Jewish state in Palestine by ethnically cleansing it engendered Palestinian resistance. But after he metamorphosed into a State propagandist (the “new� Morris), Morris reversed cause and effect: he purported that Palestinian jihad-ism engendered Zionist intolerance. Coming... Read More

When Benny Morris was still a historian (the “old� Morris), he anchored the resistance of Palestine’s indigenous population in its rational fear that Zionist settlers intended to “transfer�—i.e., ethnically cleanse—it (see Part 2). The “new� Morris, however, has a very different story to tell. He drastically reduces the salience of transfer in Zionism; locates the... Read More

The conclusion of Righteous Victims, Benny Morris’s sweeping “history of the Zionist-Arab conflict,� opened with a quote from Zionist leader (and Israel’s future first prime minister) David Ben-Gurion. The “conflict�with the Arabs, Ben-Gurion said in 1938, “is in its essence a political one. And politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves.� Morris then... Read More

Israeli historian Benny Morris played a pivotal role in molding the current scholarly consensus on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Until his generation of scholars came along (the so-called new historians), the dominant depiction of the conflict, even in academia, amounted to little more than a footnoted version of Leon Uris’s potboiler, Exodus. The current consensus casts... Read More

The historical record shows that Israel’s rights have not been prejudiced but in fact privileged by the international community. It has been not the victim but the beneficiary of a global double standard. Therefore, the thesis that a primal hatred of Jews accounts for its current pariah status cannot be sustained. Still, hasn’t Israel been... Read More

When the Palestine struggle reemerged after the 1967 war, the international community paid special deference to Israeli rights. Whereas the UN rejected South Africa’s bid to create a majority White state beside Black homelands (Bantustans), it upheld a Palestinian state only in the West Bank and Gaza beside, not in lieu of, Israel, thereby affirming... Read More

Far from singling Israel out for criticism, the international community has repeatedly turned a blind eye to its breaches of international law. The superficially most compelling case for a lurking new anti-Semitism is the comparative one. It is said that the world is replete with worse cases of oppression and repression; if the international community... Read More

Although it’s often alleged that anti-Semitism lurks behind criticism of Israel, the evidence adduced to support this claim is unpersuasive. The main act of the New Anti-Semitism roadshow homes in on Israel’s critics. It is alleged that Jew-hatred lurks behind much of the denunciation. One influential definition[1] points up these examples of anti-Semitism masquerading as... Read More

The allegations of a new “new anti-Semitism� have not only been directed at Europe. American college campuses are also said to be awash in anti-Semitism. The New York Times reported a “surge of hostile sentiment directed against Jews at many campuses in the country.�[1] As if in corroboration, a recent survey of Jewish college students... Read More

Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami denies a causal nexus between spikes in Israeli violence against Palestinians and upticks in anti-Semitic violence. But that’s what all the data collected over many years demonstrates.[1] Each time Israel launches another of its murderous assaults, anti-Semitic incidents peak in Europe, often perpetrated by disaffected, angry Muslim youths. (Far-rightists/neo-Nazis... Read More

Among other anti-Semitic manifestations, the Tel Aviv University report ticks off “Russia still does not recognize the uniqueness of the Holocaust�; the leader of a right-wing party in the Ukraine “claimed that the Jews automatically dismiss anyone they do not like as an antisemite�; a Brazilian caricaturist “published a series of cartoons claiming that antisemitism... Read More

A vast complex of Jewish and philo-Jewish organizations (often affiliated with Israel) purports to document an explosion of anti-Semitic incidents. Consider the annual report issued by Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center, Antisemitism Worldwide. It recorded 25 anti-Semitic incidents involving a weapon in 2013 among a global population of seven billion. In this writer’s living memory... Read More

The available polling data does not reveal resurgent anti-Semitism. On the contrary, it suggests that anti-Semitism is a marginal, benign phenomenon in the West. The other evidence Shlomo Ben-Ami adduces is equally problematic. He gestures to a recent poll that allegedly found pervasive anti-Semitism among the British population.[1] But does this frequently cited poll prove... Read More

Whenever Israel commits another atrocity, its propagandists stage a revival of the “New Anti-Semitism� extravaganza to deflect or squelch global condemnation.[2] Under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s megalomaniacal leadership, climaxing in Operation Protective Edge during summer 2014,[3] Israel has come to rank among the most hated countries on Earth. A 2015 survey of British public opinion... Read More

In an 11-part series exclusive to Byline, Norman Finkelstein subjected Amnesty International’s reports on Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s summer 2014 assault on the Gaza Strip, to a forensic critique. But why is it important to keep organizations like Amnesty honest? Jamie Stern-Weiner, who is co-authoring a forthcoming book, HOW TO SOLVE THE ISRAEL-PALESTINE CONFLICT, with... Read More

CONCLUSION It cannot be seriously disputed that Amnesty International’s reports on Operation Protective Edge lacked objectivity and professionalism. They betrayed a systematic anti-Palestinian bias amounting to apologetics on Israel’s behalf. They also marked a steep regression from the high standard Amnesty set in its reports on the Israel-Palestine conflict during the past two decades. Amnesty... Read More

Failure to Take All Feasible Precautions International humanitarian law obliges all parties to a conflict to take “all feasible� precautions/precautions “to the maximum feasible extent� in order “to protect civilians and civilian objects under their control against the dangers resulting from military operations.� One example is to “avoid locating military objectives within or near densely... Read More

The criminal dimensions of OPE can be gleaned from the Breaking the Silence testimonies (see Table 5). TABLE 5 How Israel Fought OPE: A Selection of IDF Testimonies 18* When we left after the operation, it was just a barren stretch of desert…. We spoke about it a lot amongst ourselves, the guys from the... Read More

Beyond indicting Hamas for the commission of war crimes because it used indiscriminate weapons, Amnesty also, and as a discrete line in its ledger, indicts Hamas for the commission of war crimes because it used these indiscriminate weapons to launch “indiscriminate attacks� and “attacks targeting civilians.� Article 51 of the Additional Protocols to the Geneva... Read More

The allegation that not just Israel but Hamas as well committed massive war crimes underpins Amnesty’s “balanced� indictment of both sides. Amnesty’s accusations that Hamas was guilty of “flagrant violations of international law�—that is, war crimes—fall under two heads: (1) its use of inherently indiscriminate weapons, and (2) its indiscriminate or deliberate targeting of Israeli... Read More

The ghastly truth of what unfolded in Gaza is captured, not in Amnesty’s effective whitewash but, instead, in the Breaking the Silence collection of testimonies of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers who served in Gaza during OPE (see Table 4).[1] TABLE 4 Property/Home Destruction in Gaza during OPE: A Selection of IDF Testimonies 1* [Did... Read More

Amnesty’s biased evidentiary approach is also manifest in Families under the Rubble, which examines targeted Israeli attacks on inhabited civilian homes. It does find that the eight attacks on which it focused were on various grounds unlawful and possibly war crimes.[1] However, although it asserts that “the onus is on Israel to provide information concerning... Read More

Hospitals (cont.) Shuhada al-Aqsa. Israel shelled Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital, killing at least four people and wounding dozens. Noting that Israel alleged it had targeted a cache of antitank missiles stored “in the immediate vicinity of the hospital,� Amnesty states that it “has not been able to confirm this� incident and calls for it to be... Read More