Israel Is Widely Criticized for Labeling Palestinian Human Rights Groups "Terrorists"

On Oct. 19, the Israeli Ministry of Defense issued a military order declaring key Palestinian human rights organizations to be “terrorist organizations.” The named groups include: Defense for Children International-Palestine, Al-Haq, Addameer, Bison, the Union of Agricultural Working Committees, and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees. The declaration effectively outlaws these groups.

This action has been widely criticized. The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization that has been working with Israelis and Palestinians since 1948, points out that, “The Israeli government has targeted these organizations for decades because of their human rights activism. They have arrested and detained staff, raided offices and made similar accusations to the organizations’ donors.” Michael Merryman-Lotze, Middle East program director of AFSC said, “This is an outrageous and dangerous escalation of Israel’s attacks on civil society.”

The U.N. Human Rights Office in the Palestinian Territories declared: “Counter- terrorism legislation must not be used to constrain legitimate human rights and humanitarian work. These designations are the latest development in a long stigmatizing campaign against these and other organizations, damaging their ability to deliver on their crucial work.” Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which work with some of the targeted groups, issued a joint statement: “This appalling and unjust decision is an attack by the Israeli government on the international human rights movement. For decades, the Israeli government has systematically sought to muzzle human rights monitoring.”

In Israel, 25 human rights organizations, including B’Tselem, called the “terrorist” designation “a draconian measure that criminalizes critical human rights work. Criminalizing such work is an act of cowardice, characteristic of repressive authoritarian regimes.” In the U.S., a broad coalition of more than 288 social justice, civil rights and human rights groups called on the Biden administration to condemn the Israeli government’s “terrorist” designation. The statement was initiated by, among other groups, Jewish Voice for Peace Action. Among those joining this effort are Amnesty USA, Global Ministries of the Disciples of Christ, the Episcopal Peace Fellowship, the Center for Jewish Non- violence, the Unitarian-Universalist Service Committee and the Armenian-American action Network.

Israel, critics charge, hoped that a classified Shin Bet document would convince European governments to stop funding Palestinian human rights groups. The Israeli magazine +972 (Nov. 4, 2021) got hold of the dossier’s testimonies and found no evidence to justify Israel’s claims. It declared that, “Israel has failed to present any documents directly or indirectly linking the six organizations to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) or to any violent activity… Contrary to the Defense Ministry’s claims, the dossier did not provide a single piece of evidence proving the six organizations diverted their funds to the PFLP or to violent activities.”

European governments also found no evidence to confirm Israel’s charges against the human rights organizations. +972 reports: “Belgium’s Minister of Development Cooperation Meryame Kitir said, ‘Our investigation revealed that there is not a single piece of concrete evidence in the Israeli document that raises suspicions that there was fraud in these organizations…I have determined that there is no reason to freeze funding for these organizations.’ Dutch Foreign Minister Sigrid Kaag said: ‘There is no concrete evidence linking the organizations to the PFLP’… A senior European official we spoke to this week said, ‘The document provided to us by Israel in May was unconvincing, to say the least. We contacted the Israelis again immediately after the announcement to ask for more information, but…we have not received anything.’” John Dugard, former U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and author of the book, “Confronting Apartheid: A Personal History of South Africa, Namibia and Palestine,” notes that, “When I was U.N. Special Rapporteur, I reported that I had no doubt that Israel’s law and practices constituted apartheid, an assessment based on forty years of living under apartheid in South Africa and directing a human rights advocacy body for more than a decade.”

Israel’s outlawing of Palestinian human rights groups, Dugard points out, is even more extreme than South Africa’s response to such groups: “South Africa had legislation resembling the 2016 Israeli law, which allowed it to declare organizations unlawful. In the late 1970s, at the height of apartheid, a number of human rights organizations were established, mainly funded by the U.S. The apartheid regime made it clear it disliked these organizations, but it didn’t outlaw them.” South Africa was, he recalls, concerned with how the world viewed it. “Israel,” in his view, “is not concerned about its image.”

Israeli human rights activist Jeff Halper notes that, “The irony of a state that uses terrorism routinely against a civilian population held under conditions of imprisonment, robbed of their human and civil rights, robbed of their lands and lives, victims of a relentless policy of home demolitions, labeling a legitimate part of a liberation movement ‘terrorist’ is not lost on us.” ***