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Report: Amnesty International [Type here] Ashira Prem Rachana who worked as a human rights researcher for Amnesty International telling non-Jewish citizens of Israel not to vote in an election: Sahar Mandour Amnesty International's researcher on Lebanon: Nadine Moawad, ‘MENA Communications Manager for Amnesty International’, refers to Israel as the ‘Zionist entity’ and calls for a ‘full disbanding’ of the Israeli state: David Collier, December 2019 report - Amnesty Hind Khoudary Amnesty Consultant, refers to two Islamic Jihad terrorists as ‘heroes’: Saleh Hijazi Amnesty Deputy Director MENA, previous profile picture, Leila Khaled, a PFLP terrorist and airline hijacker: David Collier, December 2019 report - Amnesty INDEX Executive Summary 4 Introduction 6 Section One – The People From human rights activists to empty propagandists 10 Case study: Hind Khoudary 18 Case study: Saleh Hijazi 26 Case Study: Maghda Mughrabi, Amnesty MENA 34 Case Study: Mohammed-Ali Abunajela 36 Case Study: Sahar Mandour 40 Case study Laith Abu Zeyad 43 Case Study: Mark Dummett, Amnesty CSR 49 Case Study: Raed Jarrar 52 Case Study: Rasha Abdul Rahim 54 Case Study: Kristyan Benedict 58 Case Study: Samah Hadid 63 Case Study: Adhfaq Khalfan 69 Case Study: Dana Ingleton 72 Case Study: Sara Hashash 74 Case Study: Nadine Moawad 76 Case Study: Paul Dawson 78 Case Study: Laura Carter 81 Case Study: Shenilla Mohamed 82 Case Study: Philip Luther, Amnesty MENA 85 Case Study: Omar Waraich, Amnesty South Asia 88 Case Study: Randa Habib 95 Section two – Operations Global conflict – the data 101 Amnesty focus 108 Case Study: An Amnesty campaign 121 Anti-Israel campaigns 132 Case Study: Amnesty and the Christians 139 Partners in crime 147 Recruitment 152 Hanging out with anti-Semites 170 Events 181 Which occupation? 187 Schools and more 189 Case Study: Littleover School 190 Section three – Concluding comments Conclusion 195 Section four - Appendix Appendix A 200 pg. 3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Key findings: • The research found extreme bias in the output of many Amnesty employees. • Amnesty has employed people with open pro-terrorist sympathies, crucially relying on them to provide information upstream that shapes opinion. One Amnesty consultant was found tweeting support for a terrorist group and sharing advice about hiding the truth to protect the ‘resistance’. Another was found giving advice to ‘factions’ asking not to publicly identify ‘martyrs’ as belonging to terrorist groups. • When the existence of this research became public knowledge, some Amnesty staff deleted public social media accounts in what appears to have been an attempt to hide evidence. • Amnesty International has recruited ‘one-cause’ activists despite their obvious unsuitability for any organisation seeking to demonstrate impartiality. • ‘Silence’ and ‘noise’ define Amnesty activity. There is silence in some areas and obsessive noise in others. Amnesty employees choose on whom they wish to focus on and whom they don’t. • In areas of sectarian violence, by dressing up hostile activists as ‘human rights defenders’, Amnesty International endangers the lives of genuine human rights activists. • Israel is not the only issue negatively affected by bias. India is another target of unnatural Amnesty hostility. • Persecuted Christians across the globe do not receive the coverage that their suffering warrants. • Amnesty are a large NGO with a global reach. In order to grow, Amnesty International lowered their guard to issues of bias and this has destroyed parts of the organisation from within. • As Amnesty grew, politicised employees became more able to use it for their own causes. • Amnesty International’s energy rests largely on the bias and motivations of its employees. • Some of Amnesty’s staff have little interest in human rights beyond their hatred of Israel. It is logical to assume the same level of bias could be directed at other targets by staff with different obsessions. • Amnesty’s enthusiasm level surges on anti-Israel campaigns. There are more of them, they are visibly better funded, and they are more widely spread. • Amnesty’s arsenal is turned towards Israel. All of its departments appear to allocate disproportionate resources to attack Israel. The cumulative effect results in what can only be termed as a never-ending obsession. • Amnesty pursues a policy that aligns with full BDS (Boycott, Divestment & Sanction), producing material in such a coordinated manner that one inevitably concludes that the strategy is deliberate. David Collier, December 2019 report - Amnesty • As Amnesty displays a symbiotic relationship with BDS, it is fair to conclude that elements within Amnesty International actively seek to promote the destruction of the Jewish state. • Because there is a religious aspect to some of Amnesty’s obsession, we conclude that the cumulative effect of the organisation’s unnatural hostility towards Israel is antisemitic. • Amnesty International allows the obsessions of its employees to drive its activity at the cost of the lives of people caught up in more worthwhile causes, which are left unpublicised and under-supported. • Amnesty International is political in nature, distributes some toxic ideology and displays unnatural, blatant hostility towards certain nationalities. There are places, such as schools, that currently grant it access. The logic behind granting these permissions should be revisited. • Amnesty should commission an external and completely independent investigation into the issues highlighted by this research. • Until these internal issues are addressed, Amnesty should roll-back campaigns that have been launched in areas where its objectivity has been clearly compromised. • Amnesty should consider rotating staff and volunteers who work on areas of sectarian conflict and set about searching for an effective replacement to the ‘Work On Own Country’ rule. Its current processes are clearly flawed. pg. 5 INTRODUCTION Amnesty International is a London-based NGO that was founded in 1961. Today it claims to be a global movement ‘of over 7 million people’.1 This makes Amnesty International the world's largest grassroots human rights organisation. Amnesty was created to avoid the ‘revolutionist’ stigma that was often attached to the type of causes it wished to tackle. Amnesty’s founders realised that human rights struggles often stumbled blindly in the political extremes. They sought to form an apolitical group that maximised its impact by crossing party lines. Amnesty managed to do this successfully. As its leadership deliberately avoided being tainted with the Marxist brush, the unions and the Labour Party did not feel threatened and so Amnesty was able to gather mainstream support.2 Today Amnesty has many critics. Amnesty would argue that these are from nation states that simply want their ‘abuses’ to go unreported.3 4 Amnesty has core principles outlined in its statute.5 Impartiality is stressed constantly: As Amnesty grew, it needed to address the changing environment. It wanted wider reach, more members and to enter more nations. It faced growing competition. Amnesty left behind the simple world of the 1970s and entered far more complex political struggles.6 It weakened some mechanisms that protected its impartiality in order to do so. Amnesty had a rule (WOOC) that meant nobody could work on their own country.7 In part it was set in place to avoid conflict of interest. It was scrapped in 2002 and never adequately replaced. The problem isn’t all about Israel. In 2010 the Head of Amnesty’s Gender unit was suspended having accused the organisation of ‘losing its moral compass’. Amnesty’s relationship with known Islamist extremists had made her uncomfortable. But she also commented on a ‘atmosphere of terror’ in the organisation – one that suppresses debate.8 1 https://www.amnesty.org/en/who-we-are/ 2 Buchanan, Tom. "The truth will set you free': The making of Amnesty International." Journal of Contemporary History 37.4 (2002): 575-597 3 Dr Phelps, Peter, Amnesty Infomercial, Review, (Institute of Public Affairs), September 1999 4 This Wiki article provides only a short list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amnesty_International 5 https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/POL2072982017ENGLISH.PDF 6 General outlines drawn from parts of ‘Keepers of the Flame: Understanding Amnesty International’ by Stephen Hopgood, ‘the Truth will set you free’ by Tom Buchanan and by reading through decades of Amnesty annual reports that are available online. 7 https://www.ngo- monitor.org/reports/breaking_its_own_rules_amnesty_s_gov_t_funding_and_researcher_bias/ 8 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/25/gita-sahgal-amnesty-international David Collier, December 2019 report - Amnesty This workplace atmosphere problem has recently resurfaced, with suicides, resignations and several public criticisms.9 In 2019 a Kurdish group tried a ‘sit in’ at Amnesty offices in London to raise awareness for its cause and force Amnesty to ‘speak out’ on its issue.10 Amnesty’s patience with the sit-in lasted about 24 hours. Then the police were called and Amnesty had the protestors arrested.11 Putting aside Amnesty’s hypocrisy, this raises questions. Why do the Kurds feel that Amnesty International is not addressing their cause? Amnesty does not seem to have a country coordinator for ‘Kurdistan’ yet they appear to have more than one coordinator for the Palestinian areas.12 At Amnesty, people are key. Amnesty International stress the volunteer element of the organisation. People at Amnesty – certainly those in the field (and
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