It’s been more than five months since Israel designated six Palestinian civil society organizations as terrorist groups, and the groups are demanding that “concrete action” be taken to reverse the decision.
In a joint statement the groups called on third party states, including the US, EU, and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) to “take concrete action against the Israeli occupation authorities’ continued harassment and criminalization of Palestinian human rights defenders and civil society organizations; by calling for full revocation of the designation.”
The groups also called on states to “immediately end complicity and silence to the Israeli apartheid regime,” and for individual citizens across the world to call on their state officials and policymakers to meet with the six Palestinian organizations.
In October 2021, Israel imposed the designation on six organizations: human rights group Al-Haq, prisoners rights group Addameer, Defense for Children International Palestine (DCIP), the Bisan Center for Research and Development, the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC).
Since then, the groups have filed a number of legal objections to the state, but to no avail. Since the designation was announced, the state has failed to provide concrete proof of its claims that the groups funded Palestinian political factions, and has maintained its claims that it holds “secret evidence” to back up its decision.
According to the statement from the organizations, in response to a letter demanding that Israeli authorities “reveal the entirety of the evidence forming the basis of the designations”, Israel’s Military Attorney said that “the core of the declarations is based on classified…information that cannot be disclosed.”
Subsequently after the October decision, the Israeli military subsequently adopted the designation, deeming the organizations as “unlawful, effectively outlawing their work in the West Bank, where they are based and the majority of their staff works.
In their statement, the groups said that the “consequential negative impact of these designations has been acutely felt by our organizations,” and have “hampered the critical services we provide to those most marginalized and at-risk in Palestinian communities including women, children, agricultural workers, and political prisoners.”
The groups also criticized the “weak responses” of state parties and IGOs, which they say “only exacerbate the acute damaging consequences.”
Among the impacts of the designation, the groups noted, are the Dutch government’s January decision to end its funding for the UAWC; the European Commission’s extended and arbitrary funding suspension of one of Al-Haq’s and one of UAWC’s projects funded by the EU; and the imprisonment of Khitam Sa’afin, the President of the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, who was sentenced by an Israeli military court to 16 months imprisonment after nearly 15 months of arbitrary detention.
“The Israeli occupation’s criminalization of the six Palestinian organizations is explicitly intended to have secondary and tertiary consequences for the capacity of the human rights and civil society organizations to continue their vital work, especially their work in holding Israel accountable for its crimes and international law violations committed against the Palestinian people,” the group’s statement said.
Carter Center pledges continued support for NGOs
PRESS CONFERENCE WITH CARTER CENTER CEO PAIGE ALEXANDER, ADDAMEER GENERAL DIRECTOR SAHAR FRANCIS, AND AL-HAQ GENERAL DIRECTOR SHAWAN JABARIN.
In a welcome move last week, the Carter Center confirmed that it would continue to support the six NGOs, saying that the center recognized “that these designations seek to delegitimize human rights organizations.”
Carter Center CEO Paige Alexander held a press conference in Ramallah, denouncing Israel’s move, which she said “appears to be part of a broader strategy by the Israeli government to silence voices calling for accountability for the Israeli occupation authorities”.
“This is a troubling trend that can be noticed in many governments, using counter-terror laws as a guise for shrinking the space available to human rights defenders and civil society.”
It is unfortunate that the US, Uk, the EU, and others, have to be formally asked to reverse this absurdity, and that these human rights groups have been punished by the brutal occupier, for reasons not acceptable by the rest of the world, and are facing the consequences. It is Israel who has record of behaving like a terrorist nation and known to use excessive violence and deadly weapons.
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Amnesty apartheid report: The walls protecting Israel are finally crumbling | Middle East Eye
“Amnesty apartheid report: The walls protecting Israel are finally crumbling” by Jonathan Cook, Middle East Eye, Feb. 2/2022EXCERPT:
“With the publication of Amnesty International’s new apartheid report, Israel’s supporters have just one tactic left: to accuse critics of antisemitism.”
“The walls protecting Israel are quickly crumbling. A year ago, it was Israel’s most celebrated human rights group, B’Tselem. Months later, it was the New York-based Human Rights Watch, whose senior staff have often enjoyed a revolving door with the US State Department.
“Now, the one speaking up is Amnesty International – an organization widely viewed as the most authoritative arbiter of what constitutes human rights violations. Over the past year, all have reached the same conclusion: Israel is an apartheid state. According to Amnesty’s new report published on Tuesday: ‘Israel’s system of institutionalized segregation and discrimination against Palestinians, as a racial group, in all areas under its control amounts to a system of apartheid.’
“This is not just a criticism of Israel’s occupation. All three groups have been pointing out for decades Israel’s flagrant disregard of international law, and its likely commission of war crimes, in the occupied territories.
“But Israel was little concerned, so long as public debate was confined to the occupation. Its advocates quickly learned that they could always deflect to matters of Israel’s security, by presenting any Palestinian resistance as terrorism.
“Now, the consensus is shifting to entirely new terrain – a discursive battlefield where Israel has less effective weapons with which to defend itself. The biggest human rights watchdogs are agreed that everything about Israel’s rule over Palestinians is connected, from its military oppression of those under occupation, to the civil legal system inside Israel that systematically confers inferior rights on the country’s large minority of nominal Palestinian ‘citizens’. (cont’d)
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“In other words, Israel’s apartheid structures cannot be disentangled, separating out the occupied territories from ‘Israel proper’. It is all part of the same, single system of rule by one ethnic-national group, Jews, designed to oppress and marginalize another ethnic-national group, Palestinians.
“Late in the day, the champions of human rights have fully understood that the divisions between Israel and the occupied territories are simply cosmetic. They have served a public relations purpose, hiding Israel’s true intent: to dispossess Palestinians wherever they find themselves under Israeli rule.
“Crucially, all the major human rights groups have now jettisoned the key artificial distinction insisted upon by Israel. Israel’s premise was that its 1.8 million Palestinian “citizens” – a fifth of the population inside Israel – faced informal and unconscious discrimination, similar to that suffered by minorities in western democracies, such as the US and UK.
“The message was intended to reassure: Israel’s treatment of its Palestinian citizens was not perfect, but it was no worse than other liberal democratic states. That allowed it to rationalize its brutal, repressive treatment of Palestinians under occupation. The military occupation was supposedly an anomaly, forced on Israel by the need to protect its citizens and democratic structures from constant, unprovoked Palestinian violence and terrorism.
“Now, the one speaking up is Amnesty International – an organization widely viewed as the most authoritative arbiter of what constitutes human rights violations. Over the past year, all have reached the same conclusion: Israel is an apartheid state. According to Amnesty’s new report published on Tuesday: ‘Israel’s system of institutionalized segregation and discrimination against Palestinians, as a racial group, in all areas under its control amounts to a system of apartheid.'”
Israel responds to nonviolence with violence. It treats civil society as terrorism. If nonviolence is futile, civil society is useless, and law is illegal, what do the Israelis think the Palestinians will do?
Just look at the situation on the ground in PALESTINE, then you will quickly amend this list to only “ONE ENTITY” that fits the list.