The U.S. State Department this week released its annual human rights report. The watchdog group NGO Monitor unpacked the report, noting the contrast between investigators’ descriptions of Israeli and Palestinian judicial systems.

Palestinian Authority and Hamas security forces conduct “arbitrary arrest and associated torture and abuse” in a judicial climate marked by “impunity.” In contrast “there were no credible reports of impunity involving the [Israeli] security forces.”

The report that examines Gaza and the West Bank condemns Hamas and the Palestinian Authority for “arbitrary arrest and associated torture and abuse, often with impunity, by multiple actors in the region; restrictions on civil liberties; and the inability of residents of the Gaza Strip under Hamas to choose their own government or hold it accountable.” The State Department also reports that “at times the PA allowed anti-Semitic expression. Hamas frequently promoted anti-Semitism.” Broadcasts, cartoons, and “rhetoric by several Palestinian groups included expressions of anti-Semitism, as did sermons by some Muslim religious leaders.”

The claim that Israeli officials violate the rule of law with “impunity” has become a marked feature of NGO criticism against the Jewish state. It forms the basis of so-called lawfare campaigns against Israel, in which anti-Israel activists and lawyers seek to internationalize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by demanding that Israelis be tried in front of foreign or international courts. The State Department report on Israel, which is based on first-hand observations, will problematize those efforts.

[Photo: Adiel lo / Wiki Commons]