(February 1, 2022 / JNS) A 211-page report issued by Amnesty International in the United Kingdom is pouring a deeper foundation on top of an already dangerous and insidious path to delegitimize Israel. The report charges Israel “with oppression and domination of Palestinians, through cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion,” in what it further describes as crimes against humanity.

Disturbingly, this report joins a malicious piling on against the world’s only Jewish state.

​Last April, the organization Human Rights Watch issued a 213-page report charging Israel with inflicting on the Palestinians “deprivations so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”

The apartheid charge has been a staple of the BDS movement for years. Human Rights Watch has long been in the forefront of those seeking to undermine Israel’s legitimacy, aided by its cachet among those who are like-minded or who look past its selective use of the term “human rights.”

Then, in May of last year, the U.N. Human Rights Council—long a hotbed of bias against Israel—established a Commission of Inquiry (COI) “to investigate violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in East Jerusalem and in Israel.” For decades, the annually funded, so-called “Palestinian committees” in the United Nations, and the dozens of anti-Israel resolutions adopted each year in the General Assembly and in its various agencies, focused largely on the West Bank and Gaza.

​What separates this COI from all that preceded it inside the world body is its investigation into practices in Israel proper—and its open-ended mandate. In other words, a permanent star chamber has been set in place to flog Israel at will now and on into the future. Indeed, the three members of the commission—led by its chair, Navi Pillay, a former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights—are known for their incessant, blind bias against the Jewish state. Based on the pronouncements and writing of its members, the fix is in: Don’t expect the COI, which is expected to issue its first report in June, to deliver anything other than a lengthy, one-sided rant, which will only further demonize and incite against Israel.

Amnesty UK also includes Israel proper in its report and says that an Israeli system of “legal segregation” treats Palestinians as an “inferior racial group.” The report also freely uses the “apartheid” charge throughout against Israel.

The group’s secretary general, Agnès Callamard, calls Israeli policies “prolonged oppression of millions of people.” For decades now, Amnesty International, running on the same fuel as Human Rights Watch, has had a Jewish problem. The two organizations are two sides of the same coin with frequent, obsessive criticism of Israel becoming a staple of press releases and annual reports.

The Amnesty UK report, though, telegraphs its objectives in several places. It calls for a “right of return” of Palestinian refugees, a transparent, demographic prescription for the demise of Israel as a Jewish state. It charges Israel with pursuing, since 1948, “a policy of establishing and then maintaining control over land and resources to benefit Jewish Israelis.” It further charges Israel with “Judaizing” not only areas of the West Bank, but in Israel itself. And it calls on the U.N. Security Council “to impose a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel,” covering “all weapons and munitions as well as law-enforcement equipment.” Additionally, it recommends that the Security Council impose “targeted sanctions, such as asset freezes, against Israel officials … .”

The report also calls on the International Criminal Court, which already has charges of crimes against humanity against Israel on its docket, to consider “the crime of apartheid in its current investigation into the occupied Palestinian territories” and even calls for the application of the concept of universal jurisdiction to bring those “perpetrators (Israelis) of apartheid crimes to justice.”

The upshot of the report? A call for a “major reassessment” of the UK’s policy position on Israel. The government of Boris Johnson has generally enjoyed good bilateral relations with Israel. Amnesty calls for a change in that relationship in order “to confront and begin to tackle the scale and systematic nature of Israel’s apartheid crimes.”

Tucked somewhere deep in the report is a bogus throw-away line about Amnesty recognizing Israel’s “desire to be a home for Jews,” suggesting that Israel has no right to an independent existence. Someone in the organization’s office in London must have cynically suggested, after placing Israel on the rack, tossing in a few words to cover charges of not being “even-handed.”

One will never see in these lengthy screeds anything at all about Israel being the only democracy in the Middle East. About its widely respected independent judiciary, about the fact that Israeli Arabs now sit in the current government coalition—that an Israeli Arab sits on Israel’s Supreme Court, that thousands of Israeli Arab students attend Israeli universities or that Arabic is an official language of Israel. The sponsors and writers of these reports—or should we say indictments—have no interest whatsoever in seeing beyond their interest in soiling Israel in the court of public opinion.

The similarity of language in the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty UK reports, and the stated goals of the COI are not coincidental. It’s the vernacular of the BDS campaign, of the strident accusers of Israel within the United Nations and its agencies, of the Palestinian leadership itself, of some leading media outlets, and now, disturbingly, by some members of the U.S. Congress and other global parliamentary bodies.

The length of this report is matched only by the vehemence of its hatred towards Israel, and by extension, those who support it. It will resonate among those who share its warped view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, who disregard the series of wars since 1948 to destroy Israel, the Palestinian terrorists whose families are rewarded with lifelong stipends, the showers of Hamas rockets from Gaza on Israeli cities and the nihilistic zero-sum policies of the Palestinian Authority.

Amnesty UK’s report is nothing more than another bald-faced attempt to exile, demean, marginalize and, yes, to ultimately eliminate the world’s only sovereign Jewish state. It is addressed to the government of the United Kingdom, but it is clearly meant for international consumption. It deserves to be thoroughly discredited as the work of utterly prejudiced operatives. No person who seriously cares about seeing a Middle East at peace ought to read beyond page one.

Read Mariaschin's expert analysis in JNS.

Once the local radio stations begin playing Perry Como’s “Home for the Holidays”, just before Thanksgiving, nostalgia for my New England childhood goes into high gear.

Como’s hit song, which continues to be played right through the Christmas season, is in a category which is properly secular, and could easily be enjoyed by Jewish families without the uneasiness about other holiday music that tends to the religious side of the spectrum. But more on the music later.

We lived in a real Currier and Ives setting, in southwestern New Hampshire. Snow would often come early, in November, and the pond in front of our house would usually freeze over, and be safe enough to ice skate on, by mid-December.

There were only 25 Jewish families living within a 25-mile radius of where we lived, and only four in my hometown, Swanzey. My parents owned a small women’s clothing store on Keene’s Central Square. My father was in charge of decorating the display windows. A very artistic fellow, he painted, on specially-sized paper, a floor to ceiling winter backdrop mural that imagined looking out a window onto a winter scene, complete with icicles and snow drifts.
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Some years, we would take a slight detour when driving home from the store to drive around Keene’s Edgewood neighborhood to look at the Christmas lights and decorations that we thought were the city’s best.

​Christmas can be a difficult time for Jewish children raised in an environment where almost everyone else, including my schoolmates, was not Jewish. That said, I was pretty well-grounded by my parents in our traditions, and the build-up to Hanukkah was a time I enjoyed, as well. For us, it was much less about the gift giving than it was about the story of the Maccabees, the excitement of lighting the menorah, my mother’s truly outstanding latkes, and for me, receiving those gold-wrapped chocolate coins in those little mesh bags.

When it came to school, though, it was a different story. In the younger grades, especially, the weeks leading up to Christmas were dominated by talk amongst my schoolmates of long lists of Christmas presents that had been requested, and the uneasiness of wondering whether or not their wishes, and their entreaties to Santa (or their parents), would be granted.

I understood that this kind of gift-giving did not apply to me, but I admit to speculating about what I might ask for, if I could. We always had a big Sears, Roebuck holiday catalog in the house that had a large section on toys. I always had my eye on a toy gas station, complete with pumps and service bays, and especially, a Tonka Toys road construction set, which came with a dump truck, bulldozer and a tiny “Men at Work” sign.

Alas, my parents’ idea of gifts for Hanukkah were more in the vein of books and clothing.

When I was a third-grader, I was the only Jewish student, and only one of three Jews, in the entire school. So when my teacher, Mrs. Phippard, approached me to come to class the next day and tell the story of Hannukah – to use the Yiddish word – I nearly “plotzed.” At that age, and with that holiday, I didn’t want to appear different. But well-prepped by my parents, I summoned up the courage, and told the story (a fight for religious freedom is a tough concept for eight-year-olds) as best I could.

About 10 days before we broke for Christmas vacation, we would draw names in class for gift-giving. Each student would give a gift, and receive one, which was an equitable way to make sure no one went away empty-handed. In the seventh grade, I received something extra: My teacher, Mr. Main, knowing I was by then a sports fanatic, gave me a college basketball media guide for the 1961-1962 season. It was one of the best gifts I have ever received, for any occasion.

IN GRADE SCHOOL, I sang in a boys choir. Our music teacher, Mrs. Howard, was a perfectionist, and drew the best out of those untrained voices. There was always a well-attended annual Christmas concert, and the program included the usual carols and seasonal songs. It usually concluded with, O Holy Night, with its sweeping, powerful build-up, so well-suited for a choral presentation. Mindful of exactly what I was singing about, I was always careful to lip-sync or simply avoid some of the Christological references in the song’s lyrics.

For sure, no one noticed.

In my senior year in high school, my social studies class hosted a group of Head Start kids for a Christmas party. I was asked if I’d be Santa Claus and gladly agreed. Though, they found a costume for me, which fit fine, it was the scratchy fake beard that I recall being unusually irritating. Someone took a photo, which wound up in our yearbook, with the caption: “It was the night before Hanukkah.”

Some years later, when I worked as a disc jockey at one of our local radio stations, Christmas music – unlike today – began being played after Thanksgiving, and even then, on an escalating schedule leading up to Christmas Day. In the winter, I worked weekends and holidays, and on December 25th, I probably was on the air for 8 hours or so.

There were no commercial announcements on Christmas Day, but local businesses could sponsor, PBS-style, albums of holiday music. So I would introduce a segment with something like: “And now, more music of the season, with “Merry Christmas” with Andy Williams brought to you with warm holiday wishes by the Cheshire Tire Company.”
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Since, at the time, I was usually studying for final exams at the University of New Hampshire, I would often bring my course notebooks with me to the radio station and use the time to study, with the holiday music in the background. An early exercise in multi-tasking!

The holiday season was pervasive; it was everywhere: in the music, the decorations, the chimes in the church belfry at the head of Central Square – about a block away from our store – pealing carols every evening, and especially, in the weather. Indeed, meteorology was very much a part of the moment. The cold, brisk air, snowflakes occasionally drifting down, and sometimes snowstorms – only added to the winter-like setting that most folks, even in warmer climes, associate with the holidays.

Growing up, most folks didn’t realize Jews celebrated a holiday this time of year; they just knew that we didn’t celebrate Christmas. Today, because of greetings to us on TV (we’ve all heard the anchor at the end of the newscast say “... and to our Jewish friends, a Happy Hanukkah!”) and through the internet, many more non-Jews know about Hanukkah – if not the story of the Maccabean uprising, then that it, and the Christmas season, usually coincide.

Looking back, I recall what it was that we as children really enjoyed: the snow, the ice skating, the hot chocolate and “the time of the season.” We shared that excitement with our non-Jewish friends.

But I knew exactly who I was, and today, as then, I stand in awe of the Maccabees and the miracle of the oil burning for 8 days. Still, I was happy for my friends, enjoyed seeing the trees lit up in their living rooms, hearing carols on the radio and learning that being different, and respecting those differences, in fact drew us closer to our classmates and neighbors. The overlap of the holidays on the calendar was an unintended catalyst that nudged us to a more understanding place.

Indeed, Perry Como sang it best: 

“Oh, there’s no place like home for the holidays,
“Cause no matter how far away you roam,
“If you want to be happy in a million ways,
“For the holidays,
“You can’t beat home, sweet home.”

Only in America.

Read the essay in The Jerusalem Post.