Dr Muriel Asseburg is a senior fellow in the Africa and Middle East Research Division at Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), German Institute for International and Security Affairs. This contribution was first published as “Amnesty International and the Apartheid Claim Against Israel. Political and Legal Relevance,” SWP, 1.3.2022, available at: https://www.swp-berlin.org/en/publication/amnesty-international-and-the-apartheid-claim-againstisrael.
While there are reasons to view Amnesty’s report critically, it is a serious wake-up
call to no longer accept grave human rights violations as normal and to not regard the
ongoing occupation as a state of affairs that exists detached from a “democratic Israel.”
The attitude towards the BDS movement should not be guided by a “rhetoric of
suspicion”, and there needs to be space for a constructive debate which takes into
account the right of self-determination of both the Israeli and the Palestinian people