Amnesty report plays into the hands of street thugs
Antisemitism has always been Hydra-headed, with the same root generating different forms. In Tsarist Russia, the pogroms were both violence against Jews for its own sake and the physical manifestation of an intellectual hatred. Similarly, in Nazi Germany attacks by street thugs were motivated both by the violent urge to attack Jews and an expression of ideology. This week has seen a similar pattern with two varying forms of antisemitism. On social media CCTV footage of a vicious assault on two Jewish men in Stamford Hill went viral, followed days later by reports of a bus traveling through the area blaring ‘Yidos Go Home’. Such attacks on Jews are common — figures show they make up 22 per cent of all religious hate crime, despite Jews being one of the smallest faith groups.
Amnesty is just another NGO that has been captured by obsessively anti-Israel ideologues
Tuesday saw a further attack, this time of the supposedly intellectual form. Tuesday saw a different form of attack, this time verbal. Amnesty was once a worthwhile and important organisation which worked on behalf of prisoners of conscience. The modern Amnesty, however, is simply another NGO which has been captured by obsessively anti-Israel ideologues. Its latest report is intellectually worthless and is said by many to fall foul of the IHRA definition of antisemitism. The word apartheid has a specific meaning which Amnesty simply ignores in its search for buzz-words with which to attack Israel — but that is not the point. The real interest of Amnesty’s report in this newspaper’s view is that it is yet another demonstration of this other form of antisemitism — claiming to be the result of intellectual inquiry, but in reality driven by nothing more than hatred.