Israeli troops detain a Palestinian man after Jewish settlers blocked Palestinian children from entering a school in the village of al-Lubban al-Sharqiya, near the West Bank city of Nablus, Sunday, Nov. 28, 2021. Settlers accused Palestinian kids of throwing stones at cars, and blocked their access to the school, prompting Palestinians to stage a counter-protest. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

The Zionist State of Israel was called out in a new Amnesty International Report that accused the nation of violating international laws and enforcing policies amounting to apartheid and crimes against humanity. The 280-page report titled “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System Of Domination And Crime Against Humanity” was released on February 1.

Using “straight words” the document castigated the Jewish state as an “institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination” of Palestinians. Amnesty is the latest rights organization to charge Israel with apartheid. Last year the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B’Tselem), an Israeli rights group and Human Rights Watch issued similar reports.

“Our report reveals the true extent of Israel’s apartheid regime,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general. “Palestinians are treated as an inferior racial group and systematically deprived of their rights,” she said.

The report said since its inception in 1948, Israel has pursued an explicit policy of establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony and maximizing its control over land to benefit Jewish Israelis. In response, Israel rejected the report and lambasted Amnesty International as anti-Semitic and dubious, which the group denies.

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Amnesty spent four years on the ground investigating, interviewing victims, and conducting legal analysis with apartheid experts.

The report describes a situation of usurped Palestinian land and property, unlawful killings, forcible transfer, restriction of free movement, and denying nationality and citizenship to Palestinians. All are components of an illegal apartheid system under international law according to the Rome Statute and Apartheid Convention.

Amnesty wants the International Criminal Court (ICC) to include the crime of apartheid in a current investigation of Israel. It is asking ICC states to exert universal jurisdiction to bring perpetrators of apartheid crimes to justice.

The U.S. stood by Israel in its pushback against Amnesty International, which was not surprising. Mauri Saalakhan of the Aafia Siddique Foundation explained that America is just as guilty for Israel’s crimes against humanity because America supports the Zionist country. Rights violations in tow, the U.S. delivers nearly $4 billion annually to Israel, without fail. He described the relationship as a “Satanic entanglement.” 

“It’s the entanglement the United States has with the State of Israel that has basically compromised the values that this country is supposed to theoretically stand on,” he said. 

A joint statement of major Jewish organizations in America echoed the accusation of anti-Semitism and responded to the report with negative attacks. However, 13 Israeli non-governmental organizations signed a counter response rejecting the Israeli government and U.S. “echo-chamber” notion that the report is “baseless,” “singles out Israel” or “displays anti-Semitic animus.”  

“It’s absurd the Israeli authorities would try to name Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and their own internal human rights organization as antisemitic,” said Ajamu Baraka, national organizer with Black Alliance for Peace. 

However, labeling people or entities critical of Israel with antisemitism has been the modus operandi of the Jewish community. It was the “cancel culture” before the common use of cancelling out people.

Whether its Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the entire Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, uncompromising change agents and critical thinkers about the Zionist State, they are targeted, and cancelled. 

Anyone who criticizes, raises questions, exposes Jewish contradictions, or calls for a balanced policy in Israel is automatically stamped anti-Semitic. They are publicly “reprimanded” replete with pressure to retract and apologize.

Ajamu Baraka of The Black Alliance For Peace sees the pressure placed on such critics as a form of “political assassination” and “social death.”

“This is a dangerous phenomenon,” he said, “primarily pushed by White liberals,” whom he said, has normalized censorship.

Some high-profile figures who dare to raise questions about Israel or point out White Jewish misconduct, argue that Blacks are the true Jews / Hebrews or Semitic people, are made to publicly grovel, say they were misinformed, ignorant of the “truth” and attend enlightenment sessions with a rabbi to become better informed as was the case of entertainer Nick Cannon.

There is a lengthy list of people Jewish leaders branded anti-Semitic and at worse anti-Jewish. Some caved into the stigma, while others stood on truth and God, and kept the principled position, such as the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. 

On the same day Amnesty International’s scathing report hit publicly, comedian and talk show host Whoopi Goldberg remarked that the Holocaust wasn’t about race, but “man’s inhumanity to man.” She was suspended for two-weeks from her moderator’s chair on the popular ABC morning show, “The View.”    

Ms. Goldberg joins the ranks of those who caught the ire of Jewish leadership. Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Minister Farrakhan were all mischaracterized and falsely branded as anti-Semitic over truthful statements.

Analyzing the power of the Jewish community, can be understood in their unity, said Demetric Muhammad, student minister and member of the Nation of Islam Research Department.

The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Min. Farrakhan have encouraged the Black community to unite, to harness the strength of unity, he said. 

“The Jewish community, in many ways represent the benefits of unity,” said Student Minister Muhammad. “If you are talking about the current controversy with Whoopi Goldberg being forced to apologize, you see how a people who are united have power to both reward and punish those who take specific positions with respect to their people,” he explained.

Demetric Muhammad reasoned that without such unity Black folks don’t have such power of accountability against our adversaries. Whether it’s Nick Cannon or Whoopi Goldberg, the Jews stick together and utilize the power they have amassed to punish their critics.

“This has become a form of extraordinary censorship that creates something of an identity crisis for the Jewish community,” explained Student Minister Muhammad.

They cannot simultaneously be both bully and victim, he continued. “They say that they are victims of rising anti-Semitism and have to be hypervigilant with respect to criticism of Israel and the Jewish people, but at the same time they have this extraordinary power to cancel people,” said Demetric Muhammad.       

He explained that before people were cancelled for things like making sexist statements or sexual misconduct, people were cancelled whenever they were labeled as anti-Semitic.

In cases where the person publicly retracts and even apologized for statements dubbed to be anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish, such as in Ms. Goldberg’s and Mr. Cannon’s cases, the response was not reciprocal.

“They have historically been indignant and unforgiving when it comes to members of the Black community,” noted Student Min. Muhammad.  

Considering all these dynamics concerning the Jewish community and the Zionist state, Mr. Baraka told The Final Call the Israeli apartheid issue should be important to Black people of America.

“There is a certain kind of solidarity that we feel with Palestinians subjected to a colonial relationship to the Israeli state … similar to what we have in the U.S.,” Mr. Baraka said. 

It must be remembered U.S. police were trained in Israel. Globally, Israel was a major supporter of the South African apartheid regime. The Jewish state is also involved in arms sales and training of repressive governments in Latin America and Africa.

“So, as Black folks as part of collective humanity, we have an affinity for all people who are oppressed, and Palestinians in particular,” said Mr. Baraka.     A copy of the report, “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity,” can be downloaded at www.amnestyusa.org.