Screenshot of Amnesty video promoting boycott. (Twitter)
The war of words continues between Amnesty International and Israeli officials.
By David Jablinowitz, World Israel News
After Amnesty International issued a report, calling on the Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, and TripAdvisor digital booking sites to refrain from conducting business in areas captured by Israel in the 1967 war, Israel’s Public Security and Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan responded with a tweet charging that “Amnesty has become a leader in the anti-Semitic BDS campaign. The report…on Israel is an outrageous attempt to distort facts, deny Jewish heritage, and delegitimize Israel.”
Erdan on Wednesday threatened to ban the organization from Israel.
Amnesty has fired back, accusing Israeli ministers, including Erdan, of “blatant incitement based on lies, deceptions, and distortions that are easy to refute and are intended to divert the discussion from the subject at hand, which is, war crimes and human rights violations against Palestinians in the occupied territories.”
The organization says that it is “opposed all forms of discrimination, racism and hate crimes based on religion, nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and identity and other characteristics, including discrimination and anti-Semitism against Jews.”
Amnesty launched a Twitter campaign against TripAdvisor, with a post and video which mocks the company’s operations in Judea and Samaria.”Hey, TripAdvisor, we’ve made a more suitable promo video to advertise your properties, activities, attractions in illegal Israeli settlements. Check it out.”
The video contrasts scenes of beautiful homes and resorts in Israeli areas of Judea and Samaria with a Palestinian side of facing demolition and clashes with Israeli security forces. The narrator of the Amnesty video says that he is a Palestinian, and sarcastically tells tourists “Do not miss out! As a bonus, you get to normalize discrimination.”
The video opens with a scene of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem’s Old City but makes no reference to the Temple Mount, on which the dome is located, which is Judaism’s holiest shrine.
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt responded to Amnesty, saying that “boycotting and demonizing Israel does nothing to advance any efforts toward peace. We urge Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, and TripAdvisor to not give in to this biased, anti-Israel campaign.”
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