Giving ‘Moral Hypocrisy Award’ To Amnesty International
Since October 7, Amnesty International’s social media pages have been filled with photos of people of different ethnicities from all over the world. Not one of those photos include any of the approximately 1,200 people in Israel who were brutally murdered on that day by Hamas terrorists. On World Children’s Day, November 20, Amnesty did not mention any of the 38 Israeli children who were killed on October 7 by Hamas terrorists, or the 42 children who were abducted. The only photos Amnesty posted of the 253 people who were abducted by Hamas were of two Thai workers – there are no pictures of any of the Israeli hostages, like Kfir Bibas, who recently turned one years old in captivity.
Amnesty also did not post on World Children’s Day about the 116 Israeli children who became orphans on October 7 and the hundreds more since then. Instead, the organization released an Instagram post that stated, “Israeli forces have demonstrated a chilling indifference to the catastrophic toll on civilians of their ongoing relentless bombardment of the occupied Gaza Strip,” and urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Israel for committing war crimes. Amnesty also drew attention to the plight of Gazan children and demanded a ceasefire.
On January 25, The New York Times published a two-month investigative report, “’Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7,” which uncovered “a pattern of rape, mutilation and extreme brutality against women in the attacks on Israel.” On March 7, Israeli Government spokesperson David Mencer referenced the report of U.N. special representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, after her visit to Israel. Five months after October 7, Mencer stated that the report presented “clear and convincing information that the hostages trapped in the Hamas terror dungeons have been subject to rape, sexualized torture, and cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment.” Yet there is no mention of either report on Amnesty’s social media or website.
To highlight the organization’s hypocrisy, on March 7, the day before International Women’s Day, former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, with his wife Shani and about 40 women and 20 men, convened outside of Amnesty International’s office building in Midtown Manhattan at 11:15 a.m. The protest was not publicized on social media, so no pro-Palestinian protestors showed up.
Hikind, founder of Americans Against Antisemitism (AAA), brought a Moral Hypocrisy award to present to Amnesty, along with a statue of three monkeys depicting the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” maxim by covering their eyes, ears, and mouths.
Expressing her outrage, Shani Hikind told The Jewish Press, “I feel that Amnesty International is a sham of a human rights organization. They don’t even register one ounce of care for Jewish women who were assaulted, brutalized, massacred. They should be ostracized for their silence, ineptitude and lack of decency.”
Like other protestors, Shani held a sign that said “#MeToo unless you’re a Jew!” outside while she gave her speech, in which she explained that the reason her husband was there was because both of his grandmothers were murdered in the Holocaust. She also criticized pro-Palestine actress Susan Sarandon, by stating, “If Susan has such a great heart for women and children in Gaza, let her direct her anger to Hamas because they can put an end, right away, to all the suffering in Gaza.”
When journalist Sara Lehmann spoke, she reiterated Amnesty’s claims that “women’s rights are human rights.” She stated, “When I typed in ‘Hamas rapes in Israel’ on their website’s search bar, all that came up were the words, ‘Sorry we didn’t find any results.’…Apparently, Jewish women’s rights are not human rights, according to Amnesty International.” Lehmann said that, like the definition of “amnesty,” which means to pardon or overlook something, Amnesty is “pardoning terrorists for the brutal murder, rape and hostage-taking of Jews.” She added, “Worse, they are willfully conflating the perpetrators with the victims.”
On October 11, Amnesty referred to the October 7 atrocities for the first time on Instagram by stating, “Without addressing the root causes of this violence, including impunity for war crimes by all sides and Israel’s system of apartheid imposed on Palestinians, civilians will continue to pay the price.”
Hikind said that when he and the rest of the crowd entered the lobby, they saw that the elevators had been shut. More police arrived, until there were around 10 officers, and they told people they would be arrested if they refused to leave. Another woman, Karen Lichbraun, decided to stay with Hikind; both were arrested.
As police were escorting him out of the building, Hikind exclaimed, “Am Yisrael Chai! And Amnesty International, go to hell! Shame on you! Jewish women, girls, mothers, brutalized, raped… – and you are absolutely silent, you hypocrites!” He continued, “We sat down and we said, Who deserves to be recognized for their cowardice, for their hypocrisy, for their double standards, for their dishonesty? And it was an easy choice – Amnesty International!”
Founded in 1961, Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organization that purports to advocate for the rights of women, children, minorities, and refugees, as well as to end human rights abuses such as torture. However, as Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, noted in an August 8, 2022 report, “Amnesty’s moral compass is broken… Over many years, we sounded the alarm as a once mighty organization began to embrace terrorists, racists, homophobes, misogynists, and antisemites.”
Hikind was taken by a police car to the local precinct. He described the police as “amazing,” and explained, “Some of them told us they totally support what we’re doing. They were doing their job, so G-d bless them.”
He said he was taken into a cell alone, “with the smell of urine penetrating my body, but it was all OK.” He kept thinking that he was doing so little compared to the sacrifices being made by people every day in Israel. “We need to do more, all of us; we cannot be asleep. Our enemies are out in the streets every single day… We’re living in a different world now,” Hikind said, adding, “I think Hashem is proud when Jews are willing to stand up for their people, even if it means getting arrested.”
“I’m just very proud of my husband, and I’m proud of all the women [who came],” Shani Hikind said. “These women were committed to doing the right thing. They felt like these were our sisters who were assaulted, brutalized, and murdered, and that we all had to be there for them.”
The next day, on March 8, International Women’s Day, Amnesty put up a series of seven Instagram posts about Gazan women, who it claims “are facing a real risk of genocide.” The last post shows a woman wearing a keffiyeh, holding a sign with a Palestinian flag shaped like a heart next to the message “Gaza is a feminist issue. Free Palestine.”
