HolyLandJustice.org

The ban is the strongest step an American president has taken to curb abuses in the global market for spyware.

By David E. Sanger, Nicole Perlroth, Ana Swanson and Ronen Bergman| The New York Times | Nov 3, 2021

…the Biden administration warned that the surveillance software was being abused by authoritarian nations.

In a remarkable breach with Israel over one of its most successful technology companies, the Biden administration on Wednesday blacklisted the NSO Group, saying the company knowingly supplied spyware that has been used by foreign governments to “maliciously target” the phones of dissidents, human rights activists, journalists and others.

The firm, and another Israeli company, Candiru, acted “contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States,” the Commerce Department said, a striking accusation against a business that operates under the direct supervision of the Israeli government.

Continue reading “U.S. blacklists Israeli firm NSO Group over spyware”

A Palestinian-owned company is refusing to sign a contract requiring it to pledge to not boycott Israel.

By Middle East Eye | Nov 2, 2021

“It is my right and duty to boycott Israel and any products of Israel…this policy is against my constitutional right and against International Law.”
— Rasmy Hassouna, the company’s executive vice president

A Palestinian-owned engineering firm has filed a lawsuit challenging a Texas law that bars the state from doing business with companies participating in the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

A&R Engineering and Testing Inc said in a complaint filed in a Houston federal court that the law violates its First Amendment right to participate in economic boycotts as a form of protest.

“It is my right and duty to boycott Israel and any products of Israel,” said Rasmy Hassouna, the company’s executive vice president, according to the complaint. “This policy is against my constitutional right and against International Law.”

Continue reading “US: Contractor sues Texas over anti-BDS law”

The aim is to embarrass Europe into defunding Palestinian human rights groups who have been effective at documenting Israeli war crimes, and therefore prevent further scrutiny.

By Jonathan Cook | Middle East Eye | Oct 25, 2021

“Gantz says we are a terror organization, when he himself is a war criminal”.
— Shawan Jabareen, director of al-Haq

Did someone forget to tell Benny Gantz that Donald Trump is no longer the United States president?

It certainly looked that way last Friday as Israel’s defense minister – who has been presented as a force for moderation in an Israeli government led by the settler right – declared six leading Palestinian human rights groups to be “terrorist organizations”.

The move effectively outlaws the most prominent organizations in the Palestinian human rights community.

Continue reading “Israel calls the fight for Palestinian rights ‘terror’ – and so turns reality on its head”

Nearly 300 U.S.-based civil society groups told Secretary of State Antony Blinken threats against the Palestinian human rights movement is a threat against movements for social justice everywhere.

By Kenny Stancil | Common Dreams | Oct 29, 2021

“Smearing the promotion and defense of human rights as ‘terrorist’ activity is a dangerous, well-worn tactic of authoritarian regimes.”

A broad coalition of nearly 300 U.S.-based social justice groups on Friday urged the Biden administration to “immediately and unequivocally” condemn the Israeli government’s recent decision to classify a half-dozen Palestinian human rights groups as “terrorist organizations.”

“These actions by the Israeli government are a clear attack on human rights,” says the coalition in its letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “As such, we urge you to issue a swift rejection of this unprecedented attack on Palestinian human rights organizations and the attempt by the Israeli government to shut down, delegitimize, isolate, and chill a growing human rights movement.”

“These actions by the Israeli government are a clear attack on human rights,” says the coalition in its letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “As such, we urge you to issue a swift rejection of this unprecedented attack on Palestinian human rights organizations and the attempt by the Israeli government to shut down, delegitimize, isolate, and chill a growing human rights movement.”

Continue reading “US coalition calls on Biden to denounce Israel’s crackdown on Palestinian rights groups”

In a widely condemned move, the Israeli government has banned the group I founded. This is how it enforces impunity for its illegal policies of occupation.

By Raja Shehadeh | The New York Review | Oct 27, 2021

Throughout the more than four decades since Al-Haq’s founding, the organization has continued to serve the objectives for which it was established: documenting and resisting through the law Israeli human rights violations, including the mistreatment of prisoners, the economic exploitation of the Occupied Territories’ natural resources, and the illegal settlement building.

In 1978 I returned to Ramallah from my legal studies in London brimming with ideas about the importance of the rule of law and the possibilities for resisting the Israeli occupation using international law. The following year, I and two colleagues, a Yale graduate named Charles Shammas and the American lawyer Jonathan Kuttab, established an organization we called Al-Haq (Arabic for The Right) as an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in Geneva. It was one of the first human rights groups in the Arab world and the first and only one of its kind in the Israeli-occupied territories.

Al-Haq’s first major activity was to document the extensive changes in local laws in the occupied West Bank mandated by Israeli military orders. These, in violation of international law, were designed to enable Israel to carry out illegal acquisitions of land for the building of illegal Israeli settlements. In a study Jonathan and I authored, titled The West Bank and the Rule of Law, published in 1980 jointly by Al-Haq and the ICJ, we pointed out that these orders were withheld from public view. That Israel was thus using secret legislation to break international law was a national embarrassment, though it was denied by the government and initially challenged by a number of Israeli journalists. After investigating the matter, these journalists learned that we had not exaggerated and that these orders indeed had not been published.

Read the full article here →

Petition to stand in solidarity with the six Palestinian human rights and civil society organizations designated by the Israeli Defense Ministry as “terrorist organizations.”

By Defense for Children International – Palestine |  Oct 29, 2021

We call upon the international community to strongly and swiftly condemn the Israeli government’s actions and urge Israeli authorities to reverse this decision immediately and cease attempts to criminalize lawful human rights and civil society work.
— DCI Palestine Petition

On October 19, the Israeli Ministry of Defense declared six prominent Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations to be “terrorist organizations.” The six organizations are Al-Haq, Addameer, Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children International – Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, and the Union of Palestinian Women Committees.

These organizations advocate for Palestinian human rights at the local and international levels, provide services and support to women, children, farmers, and prisoners, and collectively support thousands of Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

Continue reading “Action Item: Petition Israel is trying to isolate Palestinian civil society from the global community”

Palestinian students are forced to leave the mixed Israeli city of Nof Hagalil to attend school in nearby Nazareth because local schools refuse to accommodate Arab students.

By Dr. Reem Khamis-Dakwar | Mondoweiss | October 27, 2021

For over 20 years now, Arab residents of Nof Hagalil have demanded the establishment of a local Arab school.

Nazareth Illit (literally translating to “upper Nazareth”) is the former name of a city built upon the hills overlooking my hometown. Like the very establishment of the Israeli state nine years prior, Nazareth Illit was founded in 1956 upon land confiscated from Palestinians in an effort to “Judaize the Galilee.” In 2019, the city was renamed Nof Hagalil in order to further disconnect it from Nazareth, the largest Arab city in the ‘48 territories. The intention of this performative gesture was clear; Nof Hagalil, formerly Nazareth Illit, is a Jewish city regardless of how many Arab citizens may now live there. After all, the city became one of few promising sites for Arab couples to relocate given the structural racism affecting the growth of Arab towns which Human Rights Watch has reported “stifles the community’s growth and undermines its well-being while promoting the development of a Jewish majority city next to it.”

Continue reading “The long and winding road for Palestinian educational equity in Israeli schools”

U.S. officials have emphasized that they oppose further expansion of Jewish settlements on occupied land the Palestinians want for a future state.

By Simon Lewis and Humeyra Pamuk | Reuters | Oct 26, 2021

“We strongly oppose the expansion of settlements, which is completely inconsistent with efforts to lower tensions and to ensure calm, and it damages the prospects for a two-state solution,”
— Ned Price, U.S. State Department spokesperson 

WASHINGTON, Oct 26 (Reuters) – The United States on Tuesday said it strongly opposed Israel’s plans for Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank as damaging for peace prospects between Israelis and Palestinians, in the Biden administration’s harshest public criticism of Israeli settlement policy to date.

“We are deeply concerned about the Israeli government’s plan to advance thousands of settlement units tomorrow, Wednesday, many of them deep in the West Bank,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price told a briefing.

Continue reading “Biden administration issues sharpest rebuke yet to Israel over settlements”

FOSNA Executive Director and Al-Haq Cofounder responds to Israel’s accusations.

By Jonathan Kuttab | Friends of Sabeel-North America | Oct 23, 2021

This is a far cry from the polemical, false accusations thrown at us occasionally by Israeli propagandists like the NGO Monitor. It carries practical consequences, such as the seizure of assets, arrest of personnel, and the criminalization of anyone who donates to or cooperates with us in any way.

About 40 years ago, Raja Shehadeh, Charles Shammas, and I created Al-Haq, the first Palestinian human rights organization. After our first publication, “The West Bank and the Rule of Law,” an Israeli ambassador contemptuously dismissed us as “a mouthpiece for the PLO” and for “making a mountain out of a molehill.” We argued back through the International Commission of Jurists, which was our sponsor, that we are totally independent and meticulous about our facts and documentation. We challenged him to prove his claims or to show that ANY of our publications contained any materially incorrect facts. He never replied.

In fact, we were viewed with some suspicion within the Palestinian community because we were strictly independent and spoke the language of human rights and international law, rather than political polemics. This was new for most Palestinians. We persisted, however, and other organizations followed in our footsteps. We managed to have a positive impact on Palestinian society as a serious human rights organization. Al-Haq is now one of several world-renowned and respected human rights organizations. I am proud to say that over the years Al-Haq has meticulously maintained its high standards and, after the Oslo process, was courageous enough to apply the same standards of objectivity, independence, and defense of human rights not just to the Israeli occupation, but also to the behaviour of the Palestinian Authority, and also of Hamas.

Continue reading “FOSNA Statement on Israel’s Labeling of Top Palestinian Human Rights Agencies as “Terrorist Organizations””

Human rights work and dissent in Israel facing continued intimidation.

By Amy Cheng | The Washington Post | Oct 22, 2021

The terrorism designation effectively bans the groups by allowing authorities to freeze their funds, raid their offices and prohibit fundraising and public expressions of support for the organizations, according to international monitors.

Israel designated six leading Palestinian rights organizations as terrorist groups on Friday, in the latest blow to activists who say space for dissent in the occupied territories has steadily shrunk amid intimidation by Israeli and Palestinian authorities alike.

The announcement was swiftly condemned by watchdogs in Israel and internationally, who say the designations are unsubstantiated and are attempts to muzzle prominent critics of the Israeli government.

The terrorism designation effectively bans the groups by allowing authorities to freeze their funds, raid their offices and prohibit fundraising and public expressions of support for the organizations, according to international monitors.

Continue reading “Israel moves to ban six Palestinian rights groups it accuses of terrorism, prompting international outrage”