In the first semester of the 2022 academic year, five final year International Studies students from the University of Adelaide - two of whom are also studying Law – undertook internships with the Australian Friends of Palestine Association.
Their task was to prepare a five-part report analysing the US-based Human Rights Watch 2021 report entitled “A Threshold Crossed”, in which HRW, for the first time in its history, deemed Israel an “apartheid state”.
Whilst that document was the initial spark for the internship project, in its early days - and before any of the interns had commenced research on their various sections - Amnesty International delivered a similar conclusion, in a report that received wider exposure internationally than the HRW report.
So the project expanded focus, to take in consideration of both the HRW and Amnesty reports, and to include references to other organisations that had reached and reported their conclusion that Israel was an apartheid state. These are the Israeli human rights groups B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. South African archbishop and human rights activist, the late Desmond Tutu, and renowned Jewish American academic Noam Chomsky also had likened Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the former South African apartheid regime, which attracted international condemnation.
So the use of the term “apartheid” in relation to Israeli government policies and laws affecting Palestinians had gained broad international currency. But in Australia the “apartheid” reports were little known outside government, diplomatic and academic circles. Media coverage was slim, which meant most of the population was unaware of the reports.
The five parts of the interns’ consolidated report look at Human Rights Watch as an organisation (Oceah Davis), Australian media coverage of the “apartheid” reports (Cameron Green), international coverage (Alicia Turner), international law (Michail Ivanov) and the use of the term “apartheid” (Georgia Mansell).
The project was devised and overseen by freelance journalist and former senior media executive Terry Plane, who visited occupied Palestine in 2019.
Read the Executive Summary of the project findings, and the students’ final reports.
Israeli Apartheid: Loud Silence - Executive Summary by Terry Plane
Human Rights Watch, Israel and ‘A Threshold Crossed’: an Adversarial Discourse
Israel, Palestine and the Question of Apartheid
Israeli Settlements in the West Bank: a Breach of Public International Law?