Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)

PFLP calls upon Amnesty International to end false equation of occupier and occupied

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine addressed the new report of Amnesty International on February 23, 2009, stating that human rights organizations must stop their equation of the victim with the executioner, and instead pressure the occupier to halt its attacks against our occupied Palestinian people.

The Amnesty International report called for an end to all “foreign-supplied” weapons in Palestine, calling upon the U.S. and other regimes to stop arming the Israeli occupier, but also denounced the Palestinian resistance, failing to acknowledge its international legitimacy as an occupied people struggling for national liberation and the achievement of its rights, in contradiction with international law, which recognizes the right of occupied people to resist occupation to win freedom and independence.

Rather than upholding the rights of the Palestinian people against an occupier engaged in brutal aggression, the AI report instead equated Palestinian resistance factions with the occupation army, ignoring their respective positions as occupied people and occupation force. The PFLP stated that Amnesty's call for a total ban on arms to Israel and the Palestinian resistance factions is an abhorrent fallacy presenting a false equation. Instead, the statement said, Amnesty should focus on the occupier's aggression against our people and its use of internationally prohibited weapons against civilians in the recent aggression on Gaza, including white phosphorus and depleted uranium.

The statement said that by making the false equation, Amnesty rewards the occupation for its crimes against our people. It called upon international organizations and human rights bodies to be accurate, fair and precise in their reports and to recognize the clear and obvious distinction between an occupying force oppressing indigenous people and an occupied people struggling for its freedom, and to exercise their role to pressure the aggressor to stop its attacks and respect international law.

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