{"id":105382,"date":"2023-06-23T17:00:11","date_gmt":"2023-06-23T15:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=105382"},"modified":"2023-06-23T07:04:33","modified_gmt":"2023-06-23T05:04:33","slug":"01-00-78","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=105382","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Disgusted\u2019: Congressional Human Rights Chair Announces Boycott of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch Over Israel Treatment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>\u2018Disgusted\u2019: Congressional Human Rights Chair Announces Boycott of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch Over Israel Treatment<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

Andrew Bernard<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) speaking at the House Foreign Affairs Committee\u2019s subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations, 22 June 2023 (Photo: Screenshot)<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The chairman of the Congressional subcommittee responsible for human rights announced on Thursday that he would boycott representatives from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch from testifying before his committee because of their position that Israel is an \u201capartheid\u201d state.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking at a hearing on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias in the UN, the Palestinian Authority and NGOs, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee\u2019s subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations, said he was \u201cdisgusted\u201d by the two human rights organizations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt used to be that Amnesty International was all about political prisoners, and they had a very sterling reputation,\u201d Smith said. \u201cThey have reneged on all of that\u2026Apartheid is an abomination\u2026 To sit there and take that type of language and smear Israel with it is appalling and Human Rights Watch is doing the exact same thing\u2026I\u2019ve had representatives of those groups come and testify on other issues. But you know, it just occurred to me, I\u2019m gonna boycott them. Any hearing I have on human rights, Amnesty is not invited, nor is Human Rights Watch, because of their smear, their horrible smear.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch did not immediately respond to The Algemeiner\u2019s<\/i> request for comment.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a 2021 report titled \u201cA Threshold Crossed\u201d, Human Rights Watch declared that Israel was now an apartheid state<\/a>. Amnesty International released a similar report in 2022<\/a>. Those findings have been widely condemned by Israel, US elected officials and Jewish groups, but have been increasingly normalized among international human rights organizations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s hearing also heard extensive testimony from expert witnesses that track antisemitism and anti-Israel bias in international fora.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAntisemitism is the elephant in the room that the international community has ignored, looking for all sorts of other reasons to blame the conflict on.\u201d said Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch. \u201cIt\u2019s now embedded in Palestinian Authority worldview and is being echoed at CUNY University and around the world.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Noted refusenik and former head of the Jewish Agency Natan Sharansky in his testimony urged the Biden administration to focus on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism following the administration\u2019s release of a strategy to combat antisemitism<\/a> that also recognized alternative definitions.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI call on the American administration, which has done such a wonderful job in building a comprehensive plan, to stick to this definition of antisemitism,\u201d Sharansky said. \u201cWe will not be able to win if people of the left will be attacking antisemitism on the right, and people on the right will be attacking antisemitism on the left. There should be no left and right. Demonization of Jewish people, demonization of the State of Israel, the double standard on Jews, the double standard towards Israel, the delegitimization of Jews and Israel is one and the same phenomenon.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Rep. Smith<\/strong> said he intends to hold further hearings on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias, including within the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2018Disgusted\u2019: Congressional Human Rights Chair Announces Boycott of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch Over Israel Treatment Andrew Bernard Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) speaking at the House Foreign Affairs Committee\u2019s subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations, 22 June 2023 (Photo: Screenshot) The chairman of the Congressional subcommittee responsible for human rights announced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105382"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=105382"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105405,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105382\/revisions\/105405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=105382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=105382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=105382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}