Irish Network for Middle Eastern and North African Studies

  "Apartheid-Free Space" mural in the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Source: Wikicommons. by Claudia Saba Amnesty International (AI) has followed Human Rights Watch (HRW) in issuing a warning that Israel's treatment of the Palestinians amounts to a crime against humanity, specifically, the crime of apartheid as defined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Both reports, that by HRW and that by AI , found Israel to be also practicing persecution, another crime against humanity, defined in the Rome Statute as intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights against a group or collectivity by reason of their identity.   For Palestinians, HRW's and AI's reports are welcome but also very late. Why has it taken this long for organizations specialized in the identification and condemnation of human rights violations to call out one of the most flagrant human rights violators in the world? It is also curious that HRW and AI produced their