When Amnesty International was founded in 1961, it was a genuine force for good. For decades it campaigned on behalf of prisoners of conscience across the world, with much success and a proud heritage. In more recent decades, however, it has mutated into one of the most ideologically driven NGOs on the planet, with a fixation on Israel that borders on the deranged.

It employs staff who make antisemitic jokes, and then promotes them. Instead of working towards peace in the Middle East, it fuels hatred, publishing supposed research that libels the Middle East’s only democracy as an “apartheid state”. (Ludicrously, Amnesty has claimed that it has not made this accusation; it says it has accused Israel, rather, of practising apartheid, a would-be distinction without a difference).

In this context, it is entirely unsurprising that Amnesty’s secretary general, Agnès Callamard, has made the same accusation that is now commonplace among the more poisonous actors in this sphere, describing those who fight anti-Jewish hatred as seeking to “weaponise antisemitism”, in an attempt to portray them as the real villains.

This is the road down which Amnesty now travels – a road which leads a supposed human rights organisation to target campaigners against prejudice. Amnesty is now an organisation which stands with racists against the victims of racism. It is contemptible.