Ubai Aboudi, the Executive Director of Bisan Center for Research & Development, was detained by Israeli forces while attempting to enter Jordan. Aboudi was on his way to attend the World Social Forum in Mexico.

I work for one of the leading Palestinian human rights organizations, Al-Haq, which was recently declared a “terrorist organization” by the Israeli regime along with five prominent civil society organizations in Palestine. Friends and acquaintances keep asking me how it feels to be a member of a “terrorist organization”. I always respond by saying: it seems like we’re doing something right.

Israel’s designation of 6 Palestinian civil society organizations as terrorist was an “act of tyranny” aimed at the “backbone” of Palestinian society, but the designation is “completely shattered at the moment, completely in shatters” due to widespread repudiation of the so-called evidence against the groups, says Israeli human rights attorney Michael Sfard. And the U.S. has the power to make Israel back down. But the State Department has said it’s studying the evidence.

Six Palestinian human rights activists were targeted by spyware from the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group, a new report revealed on Monday, in the first reported instance of Palestinian activists being targeted by the surveillance company. The six activists are all members of the six Palestinian civil society organizations recently branded “terrorist organizations” by Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz.

“This is state terrorism at its finest hour,” Ubai Al-Aboudi, head of one of the Palestinian human rights organizations Israel has labeled terrorist groups, tells a Washington, DC, webinar convened by leading American thinktanks to push back against the secret dossiers Israel has circulated. He and other Palestinian execs say they crossed Israel’s red line when they assisted the ICC investigation of Israeli war crimes and assisted Rep. McCollum’s bill to cut off U.S. funds for Israeli mistreatment of Palestinian children.

For much of this year, Israel’s defenders have waged a successful battle to keep the word “apartheid” from entering the mainstream discourse. Israel just set that process back by smearing Palestinian human rights groups as terrorist organizations.

In Israel’s latest attack on Palestinian civil society organizations, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz announced a list of six Palestinian human rights organizations which he claimed have links to militant “terror” groups. On the list were prominent institutions like Addameer, Al-Haq, and Defense for Children International – Palestine.

A new field report from Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq released this week details the numerous human rights violations that occurred throughout Palestine, particularly in the occupied West Bank, during 2020 — violations that the group said were exacerbated by, and spurred on, by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.