Ms Jackie Goodall:

I thank the committee for inviting the Ireland Israel Alliance, IIA, to counter Amnesty International’s report that charges Israel with apartheid against Palestinians. By employing this very distinct term, a term that elicits powerful emotions in peoples and states, we believe the report to be a tactical step as part of a much broader strategy of delegitimisation to deny Israel the right to defend itself and to terminate its existence as the nation state of the Jewish people.

I am joined by two fellow members of the alliance, the former Minister for Justice and Equality and Defence, and voluntary chair of Magen David Adom Ireland, Alan Shatter, and Audrey Griffin, the author of Hey Ireland! Israel’s On The Line: Are We Prepared For A Potential Holocaust?I am also joined remotely from New York by Yoseph Haddad, a private Arab-Israeli citizen of Israel and CEO of Together - Vouch for Us, an Israeli NGO that seeks to create better understanding and co-operation between Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews.

I remind the committee that the Ireland Israel Alliance, an entirely voluntarily run, non-profit organisation, was established in 2018 because a growing number of Irish citizens from across the political spectrum and from all religious backgrounds and none were, and continue to be, of the opinion that the pervasive narrative circulating in the Irish public arena regarding Israel was, and still is, disproportionately focused against Israel. Our objective remains to bring more balance to that narrative and to make a constructive contribution to the debate.

On that note, I thank the Taoiseach and the Government for refusing to adopt Amnesty’s outrageous apartheid depiction, which is one that is entirely divorced from the reality on the ground, is a gross distortion of truth and is employed to demonise and delegitimise the Israeli state. Ireland is not alone in taking this stand, as the US, Germany, the United Kingdom, Austria, the Czech Republic, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and France also reject Amnesty’s charge, as have organisations and individuals across the world, including Mansour Abbas, leader of the Arab Muslim nationalist party that forms part of Israel’s governing coalition. I will defer shortly to Yoseph Haddad, himself an Israeli Arab, who will speak about this reality.

The Amnesty report has essentially repackaged the ideologically-inspired claims of the Human Rights Watch, HRW, and B’Tselem reports that preceded it; these are baseless, ideologically-motivated claims that are, in reality, an impediment to peace between Arabs and Jews in the region. It is worth noting that the founder of Human Rights Watch, Robert Bernstein, who for several decades was president of Random House, one of the most prestigious publishers in the United States, published an article in The New York Timesin 2009 strongly criticising the organisation he founded for ignoring serious human rights violations in closed societies, for its anti-Israel bias and for "issuing reports [...] that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state".

That B’Tselem’s similar report comes from an Israeli NGO serves to illustrate that far from being the oppressive, apartheid state B’Tselem claims it to be, Israel continues to "ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; [guaranteeing] freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture", as outlined in Israel’s declaration of independence of May 1948. I encourage anyone here who may not have already read the declaration, to do so. It appealed for peace and extended a hand of friendship to all Israel’s neighbouring Arab states, which was rejected by all of them in 1948, and led to Israel being forced to fight the first of many defensive wars.

Most disturbingly of all are Amnesty’s recommendations, beginning on page 272 of the 280-page report. To say that it is effectively calling for the dismantling of the State of Israel may not be immediately obvious to some, but let us take a closer look. Amnesty advocates for the "right of return" of some 5.7 million "Palestinian refugees" to Israel, a country slightly smaller than the province of Munster, and which if implemented, would effectively mean the elimination of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. In Amnesty’s distorted view, every descendent of the original 750,000 Palestinians who fled Israel during the war in 1948 should be granted a "right of return", a demand not supported by international law. Amnesty also calls for a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel, including "security equipment". This sounds very much like a call for Israel to be denied the capacity to defend itself when attacked, as well as an objection to Israel maintaining its Iron Dome air defence system. This system intercepted up to 90% of the more than 4,300 Hamas rockets fired indiscriminately into Israeli cities over an 11-day period in May 2021 and saved the lives of countless Jews, Arabs and other minorities in Israel.

At a time when many Arab countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, UAE, Bahrain and Morocco, are developing closer commercial and defence ties with Israel, and relations between Arabs and Jews are flourishing in many parts of the Middle East, it is tragic that Amnesty, on the heels of two similarly ideologically-motivated NGOs, would produce a report that foments distrust and inflames existing tensions within Israel and the disputed territories, ignores Palestinian rejectionism and whitewashes its violence, and, via the misuse of the emotionally-charged apartheid label, advocates for the dismantling of the State of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. My colleague, Mr. Haddad, would like to comment next.