meemsaf

The official Israeli response to the Amnesty report charging Israeli authorities with the crime of apartheid was, predictably, accusing Amnesty of antisemitism. This accusation was, again predictably, echoed by Zionists worldwide.

It's a serious accusation, but I find it close to impossible to take it at face value. The idea that multiple massive international human rights organizations could be completely fabricating their assessment of Israeli policy out of antisemitic animus is just blatantly conspiracist thinking.

Let us just think this through. Dozens, maybe hundreds of people who dedicate their lives to protecting the oppressed worked for months, even years on each of these reports. Does anyone seriously believe, in today's world, that none of them thought to check and double check the details because of the possibility of bias, misinterpretation or misuse?

How should we imagine this process going through without widespread dissent? Certainly some of the staff at Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, or any other organization might be antisemitic to some degree – but all of them? Or nearly all of them? To such a degree that any dissent would be extinguished? And if that’s the case, why don’t we see dissenting insiders calling it out, whistleblowing?

It’s really hard to even make sense of this narrative. It’s deeply paranoid and divorced from any realistic idea of how human rights organizations operate.

I do get the anxiety among Jewish people that antisemitism could run so deep, so widely. I share it, too! But this conspiracy theory is beyond reason.

But there seems to be little reason to actually take it at face value. The accusations aren't intended to lead to a serious inquiry into the workings of these supposedly corrupt international NGOs. They're intended to lead to a wholesale rejection of their output, to lead to theoretical questions of what is sayable or unsayable — anything, really, except for people seriously reading the reports and grappling with their content and conclusions.

It is important, then, not to fall for this diversion, important to focus on the actual findings and recommendations rather than vague conspiracy theories and broad accusations. But it is also important to note, and reject, this kind of conspiracist thinking, so potent and dangerous in today's world — not least to Jews, in particular.