Is Amnesty facing a leadership crisis? Perhaps the focus on Israel is due to an inability to change direction and focus on sudden changes on the human rights scene? Perhaps there is no one left at Amnesty with the authority to reallocate resources? Or perhaps Amnesty is simply playing for the pocket books of European donors and anti-Israel attitudes and human rights have nothing to do with their agenda?

Amnesty, like most influential actors in the "international community," are guilty of applying a flabbergasting double-standard to conflicts to which Israel is a party as compared to other conflicts. The problem is not that Amnesty may not or should criticise Israel (so long as they avoid irresponsible untruths in doing so); rather, what should concern all those who give a fig about international security and human rights is that authoritarian Russia is allowed to kill Georgian civilians by the thousands while the world grows blue in the face and shouts itself hoarse over limited and necessary anti-terror operations by democratic Israel.

This piece is very well written and touches upon the very basic problem that lies at the core of most NGO dealing with the region - dedication to a single-frame of mind and biasness.

You should have the courage to denounce and to fight the real fanatics, to defend the real victims of cruelty, perversion and abuse of power as shown at ; http://xrl.us/biz87

Anyone who genuinely cares about human rights knows the moral corruption that infests Amnesty. Israel has become the politically correct target of opprobrium, so it costs Amnesty nothing to join the pile on. They and many like them have lost all credibility in my book.

is bankrolled by the Tehran regime. They helped the bearded Shiite crooks to take control of their country by staging a campaign against the former Shah, and now they are rewarded by the terrorist regime of the Shiite entity. Their teams are recieved as state guest once ayear in Tehran, and of course they are always very mild to condemn the uncountable human rights violations, let w e say teh crimes against mankind, comitted by the Mullah's gang. So far for Amnesy international, a gang of leftists without any credibility.

There must be a big business in making Israel look evil, sitting inside a luxury hotel in Jerusalem and ignoring Arab dictatorships must be easier.

Israel and Switzertland (no joke, you can check that) are the favourite Amnesty's targets for the past few years no matter what goes on in the whole world (not a small place). Any ideas WHY??? Apart from Amnesty being leftist imbeciles of course ...

we live in an unfair world, and the more people write about it, the better

sounds like blind and unjust hatred.

You do not measure a crime relative to other crimes. If this were the case, we could all consider ourselves angels by comparision with Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc. If I steal an apple, I will not try to deflect my guilt by pointing out that Johnny stole the whole basket ot them. And the Georgian conflict, depending on who you listen to, was provoked by either Russians or Goergians/Americans so it is really hard to know for sure whom to blame.

I just wanted to say that the authors hit the nail on the coffin. Excellent article! It seems like Amnesty International left the field of human rights and entered the field of propaganda a long time ago. The sooner that people realize this, the better.

Amnesty has proven many times that it is not a reliable source on the matter of Israeli-Palestinian issues. The word used in the article 'obsession', hits the nail on the head. Amnesty has long deserted its claimed mission to protect human rights, and has become a political mean for attacking Israel. As Israel is already experienced in responding (or ignoring) political attacks of the like, it is Amnesty's prestige and merit that are going to waste. Instead of ramming Israel, it should be concerned with the question of protecting the rights of people that are being violated in nearly every location on the globe.

Nice article. It's strange that working for Amnesty is considered by some such a prestigious job, considering the poor sense of judgment displayed by its employees.

Amnesty largely ignored the murder, ethnic cleansing, attacks on civilians, and other gross violations of human rights taking place during the Russo-Georgia war, preferring to manufacture "news" condemning Israel by reissuing old stuff with minor modifications. During that time, Israel did not kill any Palestinians (not even terrorists). In contrast, during the Israel-Hizballah war, Amnesty issued daily condemnations of Israel. What kind of human rights organization is that?

is like comparing a serial killer with a jaywalker but the Jewish reality is harsh. The enemies and it would also include the Amnesty International will always focus on the Jews regardless how bad the other guys are.

What a great discovery they made? Little do they know that the Jews taught their common folk the moral values when the British kings and queens were still illiterate.

Only by standing up against bigoted remarks will the truth be known. AI focuses on Israel excluding the genocide,poverty ie going on in other countries..(sigh)

The international comunity never placed sanctions on Israel despite Israel's defiance of UN resolution and having developed & introduced nukes to mideast.

AI is just another lefty organization in harmony with UN and Arab league. They are looking for easy targets i.e. democracies. Just try search by country in their website and you will be amazed (or not) that North Korea will give you 270 returns, Darfur - 568, Zimbabwe - 612, Russia - 813,Saudi Arabia - 823, Egypt - 925, USA and Israel - MORE than 1000 each. With this they have English, Spanish, French, Arabic versions of the website and not Hebrew: http://www.amnesty.org

Unfortunately, for the truly down trodden in the world that the founders of this once-noble organisation strove to expose the injustices subjected upon them by their governments, Amnesty has quite clearly been hijacked for purely political purposes, which they attempt to camouflage as genuine intent. Their agenda and bias is so blatantly obvious that its simply impossible to consider them as impartial or fair minded in any way. Consequently, no reasonable person - interested in the work they are supposed to be doing - listens any more. They only attract the ratbag fringe who cannot be sated even if you actually gave them what they wanted.

This article once again confirms my opinion on NGOs. They are led, and often misled, by their members whose profile tend to be suspiciosly similar. It seems NGOs attract a certain group of people who do feel they are not heard elsewhere and thus have the need to express their, hardly impartial, feelings through the channels of an organization. Among these, Amnesty calls itself a worldwide movement of people. It is sad and rather unfortunate, that the organization necessarily becomes a mean to promote the interests of a certain group of people, rather than concentrating on its original goals. However, Amnesty certainly is very smart and uses the media in the democratic part of the world to its best interest. It is no doubt that thanks to these practices as well, there are so many young people in the west so positively oriented towards the leftist, and even communist, ideals, yet themselves never having experienced the darkness of the communism.

Amazing article highlighting the unjust slant of Amnesty's reporting.. also interesting that they do not focus on the huge and ongoing suffering happening right here in South Africa, and prefer to focus on "old" news that is no longer relevant at all!

It's sad to see so much funding wasted on such a potentially worthy organization. Amensty is making human rights violations hefker (amnesty) by turning a blind eye to anything not involving the Jewish state.

A really good article, with a lot of insight. I propose that Amnesty be exposed by showing its bias to the world. Look into who the organisation's office holders are and who they employ to cover Israel, and you will probably find a majority of Muslim activists with a vested interest in hijacking any issue of human rights and focussing on Israel. These people probably don't even truly believe in human rights, but exploit the West's interest and concern in this issue as a vehicle to wage their Jihad against Israel in the media war. In all other matters of human rights, they probably could care less.

great article - please publish more like this one!