Melanie Phillips: The "human rights" terror laundry
One of the things that has fried the western brain over the last few decades is the hijack of language to present evil as good and to reverse oppressor and oppressed, victimiser and victim.
One of the principal mechanisms of this moral inversion has been the culture of so-called “human rights,” which has been used to extinguish actual human rights in support of certain agendas. To be more precise, the agenda to destroy the State of Israel. To that end, “human rights” has become in effect a laundromat for terrorism.
In the Middle East, the vehicles for this agenda have been certain “human rights” NGOs. These conduct systematic campaigns of defamation and delegitimisation against Israel — the only upholder of human rights in the Middle East — while downplaying, sanitising or ignoring the real human rights abuses by tyrannical regimes. These include Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which perpetrate or support war crimes and terrorist outrages against Israel as well as committing human rights abuses and /or war crimes against their own people.
Now, the Israeli government has identified six Palestinian “human rights” NGOs that it says go further and work for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which has been declared a terrorist organisation by the United States, Israel, Canada, and the European Union.
Ben-Dror Yemini: Israel's peace activists must back terror tags for Palestinian rights groups
The Union of Agricultural Work Committees - which is one of the six groups with a terror label on it - sounds like a name of an organization delightfully innocent and pedestrian.
Two of the activists working for this organization - Summer Arabid and Abd a-Razak Farage - not only happen to be members of the PFLP, but were also accused of being involved in the murder of 17-year-old Rina Shnerb in August 2019, who was killed by a roadside bomb while hiking with her father near Dani's Spring.
The former head of the prisoners' rights group "Addameer," another outlawed organization, Khalida Jarrar, is also a PFLP member.
The list of members of these EU-funded rights groups who are connected to terror organizations goes on and on.
Nevertheless, shortly after Gantz’s declaration, Meretz MK Gaby Lasky posted a tweet in which she stated that “human rights organizations are not terrorist organizations. The defense minister must reverse his decision.”
Meretz head and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz, meanwhile, demanded proof before labeling the six organizations illegal, same as Labor MK Naama Lazimi.
Their demands are weird, to say the least, considering detailed proof has been published not only in the 2019 report , but also, repeatedly, by the NGO Monitor organization - which promotes accountability on the reports and activities of humanitarian NGOs in the regards to the Arab–Israeli conflict.
Serious peace and rights organization should have built a wall between them and the organizations and bodies that celebrate terrorism and work to delegitimize Israel, but the opposite is true.
And when politicians and "rights organizations" in Israel stand up to defend these bodies, they are basically killing what was supposed to be Israel’s "peace bloc.”
For over a decade the media has sympathetically portrayed this elderly Palestinian as a victim…
— Israel Advocacy Movement (@israel_advocacy) October 25, 2021
Neglecting their duty to tell you he's a convicted terrorist. pic.twitter.com/1z7lIWzmLW
NGO Monitor: 13 NGOs, 70 Staff and Board Members Linked to Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
Al-Haq: Shawan Jabarin, Al-Haq's General Director, was convicted in 1985 for recruiting and arranging training for PFLP members. In 2008, he was referred to by Israel's Supreme Court as a "senior activist" in the PFLP.
Addameer: Abdul-Latif Ghaith, Addameer's Founder and former Chairperson, has been identified as a PFLP "activist." Khalida Jarrar is Addameer's former Vice-chairperson. In March 2021 she was sentenced to 2 years in prison for membership in the PFLP. Bashir Al-Khairi, a member of Addameer's Board of Directors, is a member of the PFLP's National Council.
Defense for Children International - Palestine (DCI-P): Hashem Abu Maria was coordinator of DCI-P's community mobilization unit and was hailed by the PFLP as a "leader." Nassar Ibrahim, former President of DCI-P's General Assembly, was former editor of El Hadaf - the PFLP's weekly publication. Mary Rock was a DCI-P board member and PFLP candidate for the Palestinian Legislative Council.
Bisan Center for Research and Development: Ubai Aboudi, Bisan's Executive Director, was sentenced in 2020 to 12 months for membership in the PFLP. Itiraf Hajaj (Rimawi), Bisan's previous Executive Director, was responsible for clandestine PFLP operations. In 2020, he was sentenced to 42 months. An Israeli High Court of Justice decision referred to Rimawi as a "PFLP member" who "posed a security threat."
Union of Palestinian Women's Committees (UPWC): Suhair Khader, UPWC's Vice President, is a member of the PFLP Central Committee. Board member Samira Abdel-Alim, UPWC head in the Rafah area, is a member of PFLP Central Committee. Ismat Shakhshir, head of UPWC operations in the Nablus district, ran for the Palestinian Legislative Council representing the PFLP.
Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC): The group was identified by USAID as the "agricultural arm" of the PFLP. Abdul Razeq Farraj was UAWC Finance and Administration Director at the time of his arrest in 2019 for recruiting members of the PFLP. Samer Arbid, UAWC's accountant, was arrested for commanding a PFLP terror cell that carried out a bombing that murdered an Israeli civilian. (NGO Monitor)
The PFLP - a terror group designated in the US and Europe - organized and coordinated a network of institutions in order to raise funds and funnel them to its terrorist activity. pic.twitter.com/7zRUPTc2dN
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) October 24, 2021