Amnesty International’s crisis response manager for Syria Kristyan Benedict just can’t help himself. In 2012 after Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defence against Hamas Benedict tweeted:
“Louise Ellman, Robert Halfon and Luciana Berger walk into a bar…each orders a round of B52s … #Gaza”.
Ellman, Halfon and Berger all happen to be Jewish.
Amnesty’s subsequent disciplinary investigation found that tweet “ill-advised and had the potential to be offensive and inflammatory but was not racist or antisemitic”. Benedict was merely made to apologise.
A year earlier Amnesty made Benedict apologise for physically threatening me after I questioned Benedict’s guest presenter Abu Dheer who produced to an Amnesty audience the following very possibly fake photo of a young Palestinian boy with a Star of David allegedly carved into his arm by an Israeli soldier using broken glass.
Benedict called me a “war crimes denier” for questioning the photo and then threatened me physically.
As you can see, the Star of David is too perfect to have been made by broken glass on a screaming boy’s arm and the plaster doesn’t cover the supposed wound properly.
Now Benedict has compared Israel to Islamic State, also known as ISIL (Islamic State in the Levant), with this tweet:
#JSIL means “Jewish State in the Levant”, a sickening comparison to the murderous ISIL.
Obviously, not on any level can Israel be compared to Islamic State but in the prevailing febrile anti-Israel atmosphere Israel is now regularly being compared so alongside the usual comparisons to Nazism and apartheid South Afria.
So this latest tweet by Benedict, sadly, comes as no surprise. Maybe Amnesty will carry out yet another investigation and make him apologise a third time. Who knows.
But Amnesty does itself a disservice by continuing to employ Benedict. When considering his “JSIL” tweet, his B52 “joke” and his theatening behaviour in response to the questioning of that fake photo why would anyone seeking objectivity take seriously any report that Amnesty produces on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
(For your information here is a debunking of that latest Amnesty report accusing Israel of war crimes during this summer’s Operation Protective Edge)
RichardMillett's Blog 
Israel should just keep out these comedians as: undesirable aliens, likely to disturb the peace…. and all the Oxfam, Amnesty staff etc. Given modern communications they can do their mischief from abroad – as they do – the House of Israel does not have to receive them.
Amnesty, Christian Aid and Save the Children have always been hostile and biased towards Israel, so am not surprised. I was pleased to tell a Save the Children supporter, collecting from houses, what I thought of her anti-semitic organization.
War on Want too, and of course Human Rights Watch.
I do the same when they come round. I also tell ‘Green’ party drones what I think of their despicable party.
It is more effective psychologically to ask awkward questions about the record of the Arabs compared to Israel. Trees, desalination, water grid etc etc
Maybe, but that could be regarded as whataboutery.
I prefer to expose the underlying antisemitism.
Such a shame that our elected and self-appointed communal leaders and those high-minded liberals who seem to permeate ‘progressive’ Judaism don’t see it the same way.
Benedict is an Islamist. He and Amnesty have zero credibility on Israel.
I just wish Israeli consulates would refuse visas on demand to all staff and board members of Amnesty, Oxfam, /Christian Aid, Save the Children etc etc Just to rub in the point that Israel the flower in bloom / She is mistress of the room…so keep the brats and prats waiting a bit.
An antisemite, not an Islamist.
Both
Amnesty, unfortunately, seems to be dominated more and more by leftwing ideologues, anti-Semites and Islamophiles.
In fact, Benedict is a serial-antisemite.
Amnesty International is just another organizations, originally humanitarian, that has been infiltrated by Jew-haters. That is why I never donate to them and if I see people in the street collecting for them I tell them why. Ditto the British Red Cross that has done everything it can to prevent the Magen David Adom from being officially recognized internationally, while the Red Crescent continues to allow its ambulances to harbour terrorists.
I think it was a mistake for Israel’s Magen Dovid Odam to acquiesce replacing the Star of David with a 4 sided diamond as their symbol to join the politicized “international red cross” – which accepts the islamist Crescent and Star for the Islamic version of the International Red Cross.
I think it was the IRC rather than BRC, but I also refuse to give a penny to all these antisemitic organisations.