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Why Amnesty International Whispers About Hamas Yet Shouts About Israel
Illustration with the logo of Amnesty International on the vest of an observer of a demonstration in Paris, France, Paris, on Dec. 11, 2021. Photo: Xose Bouzas / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
More than two years after Hamas perpetrated its massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, Amnesty International finally released a report documenting those crimes. But they’ve made it quite hard to locate.
Amnesty’s home page currently has links to articles titled “Stand with the woman accused of witchcraft in Ghana” and “Demand accountability in Tanzania,” but the Hamas report is nowhere to be found.
If you navigate to their page about Israel, you can only get there if you know where to click.
This is the title of the report’s release: “Sustainable peace requires international justice for all victims of all crimes in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
The first subheading is: “Israel’s ongoing genocide, apartheid and unlawful occupation.” It goes on for 11 paragraphs detailing those accusations, but the link to the report about Hamas is also somewhere in there.
Amnesty claims that the long delay is nothing unusual, as it is difficult to accurately document evidence in a war zone. But this did not stop them from issuing a nearly 300 page report accusing Israel of genocide over a year ago. Or a report last month titled, “Post-ceasefire: Israel’s genocide in the occupied Gaza Strip continues.”
When it comes to condemning Israel, Amnesty runs and shouts. With regard to condemning Hamas, they go at a snail’s pace and then whisper.
It turns out, according to reporting from The Free Press, that there was significant pushback within Amnesty against releasing the Hamas report at all. Some Amnesty officials complained that “the situation in Gaza is getting worse,” and “the report could be used by Israel to justify its actions.” If it was released in the Fall, they were concerned it also might interfere with recognition of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.
But doesn’t failure to condemn the Hamas attack give the impression that it was somehow justified, and make Hamas more likely to do it again? And doesn’t Amnesty’s constant vilification of Israel risk inciting violence against Jews and Israelis, as we have unfortunately seen so much of, including just recently at Bondi Beach in Australia?
Amnesty claims the universality and indivisibility of human rights as core values, along with impartiality and independence. What we see in its long-delayed and downplayed condemnation of Hamas atrocities, however, is its betrayal of its own principles in favor of advocacy for a popular political cause.
Human rights were created to establish norms of behavior that protect all people, regardless of politics, history, or culture. It’s well known that many perceive Palestinians as battling Israeli oppression and domination in a fight for freedom. Others think Palestinians have time and again rejected actual offers of statehood or independence, and are using these claims as mere cover for what is really a fight for Israel’s destruction. These two narratives are deeply conflicting and, for many, irreconcilable.
The proper role of human rights is to step in and say that even though we cannot agree on even the basic historical narrative of what’s happening, there are universal norms of behavior that bind us. No matter how much Palestinians believe they are oppressed and their cause is righteous, they cannot fire rockets at Israeli cities, attack Israeli civilians, or hold Israelis hostage. And no matter how certain Israel feels that Palestinians are aiming for its destruction, it may not use indiscriminate force, deny civilians aid, or engage in collective punishment.
This is what Amnesty should campaign for, without taking sides as to who has the moral high ground. But unfortunately, Amnesty has completely adopted the Palestinian narrative of victimhood, and then distorted human rights to advocate for the Palestinian cause. It emphasizes Israeli violations in ways that generate political pressure and outrage, while minimizing and contextualizing Hamas atrocities to avoid political fallout.
This turns human rights from universal standards into political weapons. It means Amnesty loses credibility with all who do not accept its political slant, and that it has no more moral authority than anyone else with an opinion.
When we are upset by the conduct of organizations such as Amnesty, we have to remember that human rights themselves are not the problem. In fact, human rights have never been more needed than now. The problem is so-called human rights groups that throw away their mission in order to take sides in political issues and campaign for causes.
When human rights organizations abandon universality for advocacy, they do not advance justice — they undermine the very idea of human rights itself.
Shlomo Levin is the author of the Human Rights Haggadah, and he uses short fiction and questions to explore human rights at https://shalzed.com/
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200+ Bnei Menashe immigrate to Israel from Israel, the first to make the journey in years
(JTA) — On Thursday, 240 members of India’s Bnei Menashe community arrived in Israel, marking the latest convoy of immigrants brought as part of a government-backed effort to relocate the entire community.
The flight, which landed at Ben Gurion Airport, was welcomed by a delegation including Israel’s aliyah minister and the chairman of The Jewish Agency for Israel. It was the first of three flights expected over the next two weeks that will bring roughly 600 members of the Bnei Menashe community.
Under the operation, titled “Wings of Dawn,” the government expects to bring 1,200 members currently living in the northeastern Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur to Israel by the end of 2026, and 4,800 more — the rest of the community — by 2030.
“Members of the Bnei Menashe community bring with them unconditional love for the State of Israel, and through family reunification, the heart of Israeli society as a whole is expanded,” Doron Almog, the chairman of The Jewish Agency, said in a statement. “Our responsibility is not only to receive, but to accompany, embrace, and create for them a foundation of opportunity, belonging, and future.”
The Bnei Menashe, based in India, identify as descendants of the “lost tribe” of Menasseh, a claim that has earned backing in Israel but has been disputed by researchers. They began immigrating to Israel in the late 1980s with the help of an Israeli rabbi, undergoing formal conversions to Judaism upon arrival. A different organization took over their immigration process two decades ago but drew criticism from both the right — because the Bnei Menashe’s status as Jews was uncertain — and the left, who accused the government of bringing the them to stoke settlement in the West Bank.
A total of 4,000 members of the community have immigrated to Israel under previous government plans, with the most recent arrivals arriving in 2020.
Among those on the first flight in the new wave were young families, who will be brought to absorption centers in Nof HaGalil, a city in northern Israel, and reunited with family members who previously moved to the country.
Many of those family members join the Israeli army and work in fields where the country has a labor shortage. The reinvigoration of the immigration effort comes as labor shortages have been exacerbated by post-Oct. 7 limits on Palestinian labor, increasing Israel’s reliance on imported workers.
Back in India, the region where the Bnei Menashe live, Mizoram, experienced spasms of ethnic violence in recent years, causing some members of the group to become displaced and its synagogues damaged. But until relatively recently, many harbored little expectation that Israel would hasten to open its doors.
Then, in November, the Israeli government approved a proposal from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring all remaining Bnei Menashe community members in India to Israel by 2030. Lawmakers said they aimed to reunite families and repopulate Israel’s north, which had been devastated by years of rocket fire from Lebanon.
The latest operation was supported by a host of Jewish and Christian Zionist groups, including the World Zionist Organization, The Jewish Federations of North America, Christians for Israel and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
“We are making history as we bring the entire Bnei Menashe community to Israel,” Ofir Sofer, the Israeli minister of aliyah and integration, said in a statement. “Today we welcomed the first flight of olim from northern India with great joy and excitement. I thank Prime Minister Netanyahu and Finance Minister Smotrich, who embraced the initiative I led — an initiative that will unite the entire community in the State of Israel.”
The post 200+ Bnei Menashe immigrate to Israel from Israel, the first to make the journey in years appeared first on The Forward.
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Ukraine, Russia Swap 193 Prisoners of War Each in US, UAE-Facilitated Exchange
Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) react after a swap, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, at an unknown location in Ukraine, April 24, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Anatolii Stepanov
Ukraine and Russia conducted a prisoner of war swap on Friday, sending back 193 captured personnel each in an exchange both sides said was facilitated by the United States and the United Arab Emirates.
“It is important that there are exchanges and that our people are returning home,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a post on Telegram.
His chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov, and Russia‘s defence ministry said the US and the UAE had assisted with the exchange.
Russia and Ukraine have conducted many prisoner swaps over four years of war, exchanging thousands of captives in total.
Zelenskiy said some of the returned captives, who included soldiers, border guards, and police, had injuries, while others had faced criminal charges in Russia.
In Ukraine, returning captives streamed off buses, many draped in their country’s flag and overwhelmed with emotion.
“It still hasn’t sunk in that I’m home, I was in captivity for three years … our Ukrainian sky, our trees — this is happiness,” said Serhiy, a soldier, who gave only his first name.
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Main Suspect in Syria’s Tadamon Massacre Arrested, Ministry Says
Residents gather in a street after Friday prayers to celebrate the arrest of Amjad Yousef, a key suspect in the 2013 Tadamon massacre, in Tadamon, Syria, April 24, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Syria’s Interior Ministry said on Friday it had arrested the main suspect in the 2013 Tadamon massacre, one of the worst acts of violence attributed to the former government of Bashar al-Assad, in which 288 civilians were killed.
The ministry released footage of Amjad Yousef’s arrest in the Al-Ghab Plain area of Hama province in western Syria, near his hometown. Yousef had been hiding there since the overthrow of Assad at the end of 2024, a security source told Reuters.
US Special Envoy for Syria Tom Barrack welcomed the arrest in a post on X, calling it an important step towards accountability for atrocities committed during Syria’s war.
DOCUMENTING THE MASSACRE
Yousef, 40, a former member of military intelligence under Assad, was thrust into the spotlight in April 2022 when the UK’s Guardian newspaper published videos provided by two academics that they said showed him forcing blindfolded civilians to run towards a pit in the Tadamon neighborhood of southern Damascus before shooting them.
Annsar Shahoud, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam Holocaust and Genocide Center and one of the academics, spent four years documenting the massacre.
Posing as an online fangirl, Shahoud gained Yousef’s trust and ultimately obtained his confessions both on video and audio recording.
Reuters was unable to reach Yousef for comment as he has been taken into custody.
The massacre is one of the most egregious documented incidents of violence attributed to the Assad government during the 14-year bloody war that began in 2011.
After Assad’s fall at the end of 2024, civilians, media outlets and international organizations went to the site of the massacre to inspect it and interview witnesses. Locals refer to the site as “Amjad Yousef’s Pit.” It has been marked on Google Maps as “The Site of the Tadamon Massacre.”
Ahmed Adra, a Tadamon resident and a member of the neighborhood committee, said victims’ families had been celebrating in the streets since morning.
“We will take white roses and plant them at the site of the massacre and tell the victims that their memory is alive and that justice is being served,” he told Reuters.
Shahoud said she now felt safe with Yousef in custody, but added the path to justice in Syria was unclear and did not include all perpetrators.
“I feel safe now, despite the distance, because I always felt for years that this person was after me,” she told Reuters.