Speaking to the Women’s National Democratic Club, Amnesty International USA Director Paul O’Brien reportedly told the audience that Israel “shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state.”

Last Friday, Jewish Insider published a story about the event and reported various quotes attributed to O’Brien. O’Brien contended that there were quotes attributed to him that were not accurate. On Monday Jewish Insider (JI) released the full audio of his lecture and his conversation with a JI reporter at the end of his speech. Some excerpts follow, including this exchange about whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state:

JI: Maybe Israel should exist, but it shouldn’t exist necessarily as a Jewish state, which is what it is.

O’Brien: That’s where I do feel I’m coming from.

JI: So Israel shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state but Israel is a Jewish state.

O’Brien: It shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state. 

Audience member: Then you don’t believe it should exist.

O’Brien: No, I think it should exist.

O’Brien pushed for moving the Overton Window in the U.S. Jewish community, reportedly saying, “I think it needs to start first and foremost with the Jewish community. And it is starting first and foremost with the Jewish community. One in four Jewish Americans believes that there is apartheid in the region. … I think if the right conversations are held, if the right depth of understanding happens, this Overton Window is going to change and it won’t just be by Jewish Americans, but they will be very important. It will also be by those who’ve lived and experienced the wrong side of this system of human rights abuse, and it will be by their allies, and in that sense as a human rights organization dedicated to the law, and the evidence, Amnesty counts itself as an ally.”

“It is not Amnesty’s position, in fact we are opposed to the idea — and this, I think, is an existential part of the debate — that Israel should be preserved as a state for the Jewish people,” O’Brien stated, according to JI.

“I don’t know if you exactly said it that way, but you said something about should there be a state for the Jewish people,” he continued, JI reported. “That is, in essence, the 2018 law, that the State of Israel is preserved for Jews alone, and it should be theirs alone.”

What the 2018 law actually stated was this:

The Land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel was established. … The State of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish People, in which it realizes its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination. The exercise of the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish People.

The State shall strive to ensure the safety of members of the Jewish People and of its citizens, who are in trouble and in captivity, due to their Jewishness or due to their citizenship. The State shall act, in the Diaspora, to preserve the ties between the State and members of the Jewish People. The State shall act to preserve the cultural, historical and religious heritage of the Jewish People among Jews in the Diaspora.

Attorney Daniel Bral noted:

Israel is no stranger to the scorn of the international community. In many respects, Israel is held to a different standard than other nations. In July 2018, that hypothesis was tested when Israel’s Knesset passed The Basic Law: Israel – The Nation State of the Jewish People. Though largely symbolic, the Law declares, inter alia, “[t]he exercise of the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish People.” Critics lambasted the clause for allegedly violating international law by rejecting non-Jews’ right to exercise self-determination in the State of Israel.

This note argues that the clause complies with international law because the Palestinians’ right to national self-determination is linked to a future Palestinian state. The British Mandate, the Partition Plan, and international law have all recognized Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, where Jews exercise their exclusive right to national self-determination. Palestinians and other non-Jews, like minority populations in other nations, may exercise the right to internal, not national, self-determination in the State of Israel.