Addameer is one of six Palestinian NGOs designated by Israel as a terror organization. The prisoners rights group says the accusations against them are unfounded, and could have potentially devastating consequences for the Palestinian human rights movement.
Salah Hammouri is a Palestinian-French lawyer and human rights advocate from Jerusalem who works with the prisoner’s rights organziation Addameer, which was designated as a ‘terrorist organization’ by Israel. Here, Hammouri describes the arrests and imprisonments he has experiences since he was a teenager, and Israel’s motives in the attacks today against him and other human rights defenders. “The state harassment against Palestinian organizations, my fellow human rights defenders and myself is only the continuation of policies by a regime that seeks to quash our people’s will for freedom at all costs, as well as any resistance to the colonial apartheid regime put in place since 1948, which has pushed colonization relentlessly ever since.” Hammouri writes.
The Israel lobby group J Street initially joined an international chorus condemning Israel’s designation of Palestinian human rights orgs as “terrorist.” Then in November, the group took a delegation of six Members of Congress to Israel and Palestine and met with several Palestinian civil society and human rights groups– but none of the six designated groups– and on that trip, the delegation was briefed by Israeli government officials about the “secret evidence” in support of the terrorist designation, a source who was not on the trip tells me. Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s disclosure statement from the trip supports that assertion: She says the delegation received “briefings on Israel security” from “senior” government officials.
The U.S. Prison, Labor and Academic Delegation to Palestine (2016) joins with organizations and individuals around the world to express its strongest solidarity with the six Palestinian human rights organizations that were falsely designated “terrorist institutions” by the Israeli government.
Liberal Zionist organizations could provide Joe Biden with the political capital inside the Jewish community and Democratic Party to confront Israel on its recent designation of six Palestinian human rights organizations as “terrorist organizations.” But so far they have have done little to take on the designation and even offered a platform to the Israeli government to defend the charge. It’s little wonder the Biden administration is keeping its mouth shut.
Over 100 celebrities have signed an open letter criticizing the Israeli government for designating six human rights groups as terrorist organizations. “The vital work of these six organizations to protect and empower Palestinians and hold Israel accountable for its gross human rights violations and apartheid regime of institutionalized racial discrimination is precisely the work that Israel is trying to end,” reads the letter.
Recent headlines have only confirmed people’s fears: Israel is monitoring and censoring everything about Palestinian life — both online and in the digital sphere. Mondoweiss speaks with 7amleh’s Nadim Nashif about the launch of the first open source online platform to monitor, document, and follow up on the digital rights violations of Palestinians.
More than 100 global foundations and donors, most of them U.S.-based, have signed on to an open letter expressing solidarity with Palestinian civil society after six leading human rights organizations were designated as so-called “terrorist organizations” by the Israeli military: “”As global funders of human rights and democracy, this attempt to ‘chill’ our funding and solidarity will not work. We stand with Palestinian civil society organizations and human rights defenders.”
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz is trying to ban leading Palestinian human rights groups as alleged “terrorist” groups and has bragged of bombing Gaza to “the stone age.” So why are Democrats Chris Coons and Steve Cohen meeting with him and standing for photo opps? They don’t want to be on the wrong side of the Israel lobby.
Even the apartheid regime in South Africa never outlawed human rights defenders in the manner that Israel just did when it declared six Palestinian organizations to be “terrorist organizations.” South Africa sought to maintain a reputation that it respected the Rule of Law. Israel knows that it need not worry about its image because the West will not take action against it for any wrongdoing — in the name of Israeli exceptionalism.