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Amnesty International employee gleeful after ratting out peace activist to Hamas

Amnesty International employee denounced for getting Gaza peace activist arrested by Hamas for virtual meeting with Israelis.

By Benjamin Kerstein, Algemeiner

An employee of Amnesty International has been denounced for getting a Gaza peace activist arrested by Hamas authorities for holding a virtual meeting with Israeli counterparts.

Journalist Rami Aman of the Gaza Youth Committee held the conference with the Israelis via the Zoom app, which has become popular as a means of maintaining social ties during the coronavirus pandemic.

Hind Khoudary, who at the time of the incident identified herself on social media as an international research consultant for Amnesty, denounced Aman in a Facebook post – now inaccessible – and tagged three Hamas officials. Aman was arrested on Thursday and has not been heard from since.

In response, Human Rights Watch official Peter Bouckaert, who is himself often hostile to Israel, told Khoudary, “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“It is disgusting that a so-called ‘journalist’ got an activist for dialogue arrested by Hamas,” he later said. “Conflicts are resolved through dialogue and understanding, not hatred.”

Khoudary replied to Bouckaert in a tweet, asking, “Being ashamed of myself for fighting normalization with Israel?”

Hillel Neuer of the watchdog group UN Watch, which fights anti-Israel bias in the international forum and NGO community, commented on the affair, “A human rights group cannot employ an accomplice to Hamas terror, someone who causes peace activists to be jailed and probably tortured, all because they engaged in dialogue. Amnesty should explain why they hired her in the first place, and why before that they had cited her as a supposed journalist.”

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“It’s clear from her social media posts that Khoudary has been a long-time and open supporter of both Hamas and Hezbollah acts of terrorism against Israelis,” he added. “Amnesty must conduct an independent inquiry into who at the organization knew of Khoudary’s support for terrorist violence.”

In a tweet, Neuer said to Julie Verhaar, Amnesty’s Acting Secretary General, I am calling on your organization to fire [Khoudary] immediately & to launch an independent inquiry into why she was hired in the first place.”

Hind Khoudary used her Facebook account listing Amnesty International as her employer to incite 3 Hamas officials to arrest peace activist Rami Aman for holding a Zoom call with Israeli activists. He’s now disappeared. Why are you silent?