The NGO (non-governmental organization) “Human Rights Watch” (HRW) released a list of their most-read reports for the year 2021 – a list topped by a story about “Israel’s apartheid and persecution against millions of Palestinians.”
The report outlined what was described as Israel’s persecution and discrimination against Palestinian nationals in the West Bank and Gaza, which HRW says are "illegally occupied" by the state of Israel. Unlike the other reports listed in the article, the Israel report was not a current event – written rather as an overview on the greater Israel-Palestine conflict.
HRW’s report on Israel’s conduct ranked higher than reports on topics including sexual violence against women in India, extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, restrictions on women’s rights in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, digital sex crimes in South Korea and others.
“Laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy. In pursuit of this goal, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity,” the report reads. “These deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”
