Why Amnesty International Suspended Its Israel Branch

Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) are colossal. In the world of human rights organizations, which are often small and poorly funded, these two giants dominate access to funding and to media, as I discussed in this blog here and here. In 2021, Human Rights Watch had $256 million in assets and revenue of $130 million. It employs more than 500 staff members in 105 locations globally and has an annual budget of $97 million. Amnesty International is even larger, raising $436 million in 2020 and spending $376 million.

Compare that to charities like the International Committee for Tibet, which spent less than $8 million in 2023. 

Working on Venezuela in the first Trump term, I found the reporting of both HRW and AI to be fair. They had no axe to grind, and came to the discussion of human rights in Venezuela without bias.

But both these colossi have one great prejudice: they seem to hate Israel. Both of the them do report after report condemning the Jewish State, dedicating disproportionate resources (given that they cover the globe) to a country with a population under ten million. HRW’s was for decades headed by Kenneth Roth, who was famous for his hostility to Israel, and its Middle East work was led by Sarah Leah Whitson, whose attitude was the same. Both are, happily, gone now, but if anyone has noticed more balance in HRW publications on Israel, I have not.

On December 5, 2024, Amnesty accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, a move that should have surprised no one familiar with its work. AI’s chief, Agnes Callamard, has also accused Israel of practicing apartheid. AI issued a 2022 report entitled “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity.”

Amnesty’s Israel branch rejected its December accusation of genocide. How did AI react? It kicked them out. The Jerusalem Post reported that “The International Board of Amnesty has suspended Amnesty International Israel’s (AI) membership with the non-governmental organization's network for two years in response to the Israeli branch's criticism of the international body's recent reports on Israel….”

It was not bad enough to suspend Amnesty Israel for disagreeing with the organization’s prejudice against Israel, so AI added “allegations that the Israel branch systematically excluded Palestinians, according to leaked internal memorandums issued on Monday.” The Jerusalem Post quoted Amnesty International interim chair Tiumalu Lauvale Peter Fa’afiu saying “We take this action in response to evidence of endemic anti-Palestinian racism within AI Israel, which violates core human rights principles and Amnesty values, and evidence of AI Israel’s misalignment with and hostility to Amnesty positions.”

But that was a side smear, meant to tell you that Amnesty’s Israeli branch was a bad place, full of racists. Fa’afiu then got down to the basics:

“AI Israel has sought to publicly discredit Amnesty’s human rights research and positions. Its efforts to publicly undermine the findings and recommendations of Amnesty’s 2022 report on Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians and, more recently, Amnesty’s 2024 report on Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, have been deeply prejudicial to Amnesty’s human rights mission, threatening our credibility, integrity and operational coherence."

In English, this means that no one is permitted to contradict those biased reports emerging from AI’s headquarters in London. Israelis, in fact Israelis who are part of Amnesty’s network, who live there and might be thought to have greater insight than some nameless staff researcher in London (with God knows what background and biases) should simply shut up—or as we have seen, they are shut down. AI is saying to Israelis that they must accept AI’s version of reality and its biases against Israel, or accept being kicked out of Amnesty.

What Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have very much in common, beyond huge size, lots of money, and a deep-seated hostility to Israel, is immunity. 

In 2022 I wrote a short paper done for the Council on Foreign Relations’ Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy entitled Human Rights NGOs: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" It can be found here. Who guards the guardians? Who governs these giant organizations? What standards apply? As I wrote then,

when two such NGOs dominate the field, questions may arise as to their own internal “democratic gap.” Such large and rich organizations report to no one, nor of course are they democratically run internally. Their top officials theoretically report to boards of trustees, but the boards are themselves self-perpetuating and independent from any oversight. The very independence of NGOs, one of their greatest strengths, can become an issue when two organizations so dominate the field.  

The ancient question Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? arises here—and the answer is No one. Not within those organizations, for fear of being expelled. And not in other human rights organizations, because staffers will be reluctant to criticize such powerful players—in part because anyone in the field may think he or she might one day seek employment as part of their large (and at the top very well-paid) staffs, and in part because they do not wish to tangle with organizations having such influence.

Gratitude is owed to Amnesty’s Israel branch (or as it is now, Amnesty’s former Israel branch) for speaking out and rejecting biased and unfair reporting. But the fundamental problems remain: the world’s two largest “human rights” organizations by any measure are both deeply hostile to Israel, seem to be beyond effective criticism, and show their hostility repeatedly in a never-ending series of unbalanced and unfair attacks on the Jewish State.