"The BDS movement will enjoy wider legitimacy and freedom of action" after Amnesty International's report that Israel is an apartheid state
Excerpt of a column by Bassem Barhoum, regular columnist for the official PA daily
Headline: “Amnesty [International’s] report and Israel’s terrorist response”
“Today [Feb. 2, 2022], following the publication of Amnesty [International’s] report, Israel is the only apartheid state in the world (sic., see note below regarding apartheid claims). This report takes down the fig leaf with which Israel covered its shame – not only as an apartheid state, but also as an ethnic cleansing state, a fascist state that only understands the logic of force.
After Amnesty’s report Israel will not be as it was before it, as today it is an apartheid state in the eyes of world opinion, just as the world related to South Africa in the past…
Therefore, Israel’s violent and hysteric response was unsurprising. It immediately used the traditional weapon of intellectual terror, accused those responsible for the report of being ‘antisemitic,’ and said that the report is full of lies.
Until now the weapon of intellectual terror has been effective against all of Israel’s critics, but following Amnesty’s report, Israel’s critics now have a sharper weapon. The BDS movement also will enjoy wider legitimacy and freedom of action, and its demands will be heard. From now on, Israel will not be able to limit it.”
Red Cross rebuts Palestinian claims that Israel commits “executions” and is an “apartheid state” – Jacques De Maio, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegation to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, rejected claims that Israel carries out “extrajudicial killings” or is an "apartheid state" in an interview with the Israeli news site Ynet on April 26, 2017. De Maio said: “We came to the unequivocal conclusion that there are no shoot to kill orders of suspects by IDF (i.e., the Israeli army), as some political elements tried to convince us. Rules of engagement have not changed, and became even stricter.” Regarding claims of apartheid, De Maio said: “No, there is no apartheid here, no regime of superiority of race, of denial of basic human rights to a group of people because of their alleged racial inferiority.”
The statements by the head of the ICRC delegation to Israel and the PA disprove the PA's repeated claim that Israel is committing "summary executions of Palestinians in cold blood" - a claim that PMW has documented numerous times: http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=779