When it comes to the Middle East, Amnesty International appears not only to be promoting freedom from subjugation but from rationality as well.
Leading the group’s charge toward a brave, new, logic-free future (and possible self-inflicted irrelevance) is Ann Harrison, Amnesty’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, who was quoted yesterday on the group’s website: “The UN Security Council should meet urgently to impose an international arms embargo on Israel, Hamas, and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza.”
Absent from this simplistic demand is any recognition of the fact that arms smugglers and state sponsors of terror, like Iran, pay little heed to UN Security Council resolutions, let alone to pronouncements from human rights orgs like Amnesty — unless they’re directed against Israel, of course.
The proposal would be somewhat less ludicrous if Israel faced a threat only from Gaza, but militant groups (most of which aspire to the complete erasure of the Jewish state) are active in every country bordering Israel and receive open or covert support from sympathetic sources worldwide.
Perhaps Ms. Harrison and her colleagues are unfamiliar with this famous quote from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “If Israel were to put down its arms there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms there would be no more war.”
When it comes to serious statements, elegant simplicity trumps simplistic superficiality every time.
For a nuanced view of the potential for peace in the Middle East, see the document A Peace of Jerusalem, an evolving, collaborative proposal that we have been proud to host here since 2009.
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