Anti-Israel event to promote invented legal concept and “war crimes” allegations

JERUSALEM- In advance of the Amnesty-UK event on Tuesday, which will include Itay Epshtain, co-director of the NGO the “Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)”, Jerusalem-based research institute NGO Monitor issued the following statement:

“Amnesty UK and ICAHD share a history of exploiting human rights principles for discrimination and political warfare against Israel, as part of the infamous Durban strategy. Deviating far from its claimed human rights agenda, Amnesty-UK has often hosted events and given platforms to supporters of BDS (boycotts, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns, as well as ‘one-state’ advocates, including ICAHD officials, who deny the legitimacy of Jewish self-determination,” said Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor.

ICAHD repeatedly demonizes Israel by employing rhetoric such as ‘ethnic cleansing’, ‘apartheid’, ‘collective punishment’, and ‘genocide’.  In addition ICAHD is a supporter of the Free Gaza movement, whose co-founder recently posted a link to a video accusing Zionists of being complacent in the Holocaust, and in 2008 its co-director Jeff Halper took part in a flotilla to Gaza.

The event to be hosted by Amnesty-UK, has Epshtain’s topic listed as “Discrimination, Displacement and Despair: The impact of Israel’s prolonged occupation”. In its campaign of vilification, which erases the history and the context of wars and mass terror, ICAHD has lobbied for the invention of a new international crime, “prolonged occupation”. In September, an ICAHD official spoke at the UN General Assembly, demanding “a Resolution calling for an International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion that establishes a new normative paradigm of prolonged occupation… and depicts the scope and magnitude of Israel’s illegal policies and practices.”

“ICAHD’s latest campaign is an immoral charade. The reality is this is an attempt to single Israel out for selective condemnation and to generate lawfare cases surrounding an imaginary legal concept,” continued Steinberg. “Its activities are funded primarily by the European Union, under the façade of promoting human rights and democracy.”

For detailed information, see NGO Monitor’s detailed analysis of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)