On episode 46, we speak to representatives of two of six major Palestinian rights groups Israel has recently designated as “terrorist” organizations. And a human rights activist in Burlington, Vermont, talks about working to encourage the city council to pass a resolution in explicit support of the Palestinian-let boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. Human rights defenders and top UN experts have denounced Israel’s defense minister Benny Gantz’s attack on the six groups. The groups are Al-Haq, Defense for Children International Palestine, Addameer, the Union of Palestinian Women Committees, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees and the Bisan Center for Research and Development. Some of their staff have cooperated closely with the International Criminal Court in its war crimes probe in the West Bank and Gaza. UN special rapporteurs have warned that the Israeli designation would effectively ban the work of the human rights groups. It provides a pretext for Israel to arrest their staff, close their offices and seize their property. As The Electronic Intifada reported, Israel has long sought to defame and sabotage the work of Palestinian human rights groups seeking an end to Israeli impunity. Senior Israeli figures and lobby groups baselessly accuse these groups of “weaponizing” the ICC against the US and Israel. Aseel AlBajeh, legal researcher and advocacy officer at Al-Haq, tells The Electronic Intifada Podcast that this designation is part of a coordinated and decades-long campaign of repression against the Palestinian people. Al-Haq, one of the oldest Arab human rights organizations, monitors Israel’s human rights violations. According to AlBajeh, the designation “represents an escalated attack.” “How we respond to that is that our struggle as the Palestinian people will not stop with these failed attempts to silence our voices … we do need the international community and the global human rights movement to stand with us,” AlBajeh explains, adding that she and her colleagues at Al-Haq know they face threats of arrest, residency revocation and confiscation of assets. Milena Ansari, international advocacy officer at Addameer, a group that advocates for the rights of Palestinian prisoners, tells The Electronic Intifada Podcast that as long as powerful governments and institutions stay silent regarding Israel’s human rights abuses, Israel will continue to try and stamp out civil society groups. “When Israel feels that the work of human rights organizations is really taking action, and maybe is asking [for] accountability in a strong voice, they start attacking in bizarre and arbitrary measures – such as designating our legitimate human rights work as ‘terrorist,’” Ansari says. “We do also have to let the international community know that now is the time to actually stand up with the six … and it’s not only these six organizations, we’re saying the Palestinian people as a whole,” she adds. Meanwhile, in Burlington, Vermont, more than two dozen left-wing groups have been working to push their city council to pass a resolution in support of Palestinian rights and the Palestinian-led BDS campaign. Israel lobby groups used heavy smear tactics to derail the campaign in September, including attempts to brand the BDS movement and the resolution itself as “anti-Semitic.” Under that pressure, the city council ultimately withdrew the resolution – but it was not defeated outright. Wafic Faour of Vermonters for Justice in Palestine tells The Electronic Intifada Podcast that while the campaign continues, he has pertinent advice to other activists working on similar resolutions around the US. “Don’t ever lose hope,” Faour says. “At the end, we’re going to win. If we want to talk about justice and human rights, history is on our side.” The action of bringing this debate to the city, he says, “is a victory. Because even the local newspapers and the local TV covered this occasion completely differently from what our opponents wished. We had the space, for the first time, to say what we believe and how the future will look like to build a peaceful community here and back in Palestine.” FULL TRANSCRIPT: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/... ๐๐ก๐ ๐๐ฅ๐๐๐ญ๐ซ๐จ๐ง๐ข๐ ๐๐ง๐ญ๐ข๐๐๐๐ Visit our website for more reporting: http://electronicintifada.net Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/electronicin... Twitter: https://twitter.com/intifada Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/electronici... Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/intifada Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7g2IMlN... Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
