Addameer

Introduction

 

Addameer is a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) “affiliate.” The PFLP is a terrorist organization designated as such by the USEUCanada, and Israel. For more information on Addameer’s PFLP ties, read NGO Monitor’s report “Addameer’s Ties to the PFLP Terrorist Group.”

Profile

Country/TerritoryPalestinian Authority
Websitehttp://www.addameer.org/
Founded1992
In their own words“Offers free legal aid to political prisoners, advocates their rights at the national and international level, and works to end torture and other violations of prisoners' rights through monitoring, legal procedures and solidarity campaigns.”

Funding

  • Addameer has not published its annual income or funding amounts since 2014, reflecting a lack of transparency and accountability.
  • Addameer’s donors have included Ireland, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, and the Heinrich Boll Foundation (Germany). (See table below for further funding information.)
  • According to Addameer’s 2019 annual report, “Addameer remains subject to the financial instability due to the shrinking funding space to Palestinian human rights civil society organisations that mostly affect the core fund. The majority of donor funds provide financial grants to specific projects. This limits Addameer flexibility in responding to urgent events pertinent to Palestinian political prisoners such as hunger strikes or other issues that require immediate planning and response to legal monitoring and protection as well as advocacy.”
  • In 2021-2023, the Municipality of San Sebastián is providing Addameer and the Spanish NGO SODePazwith €49,740 for a project, “Defense of the rights of Palestinian political prisoners with a global approach to human rights.” 
  • In 2019-2021, Addameer was an implementing partner on a €799,362 project funded by the Basque Agency for Development Cooperation (AVCD).
    • Other implementing partners included Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P) and Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees (UPWC), both of which, like Addameer, have ties to the  Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – a designated terrorist organization by the EUUSCanada, and Israel.
  • In 2016-2020, Addameer was an implementing partner on a €670,203 project funded by the Navarre Autonomous Community titled “Protection of the rights of the Palestinian population detained in Israeli prisons.”
  • In 2020, Addameer received CHF 135,763 from Switzerland.

Activities

  • Addameer is a leader of campaigns in support of Palestinians prisoners convicted of security offenses, referring to them as “political prisoners” and altogether omitting the context of violence and terror.
  • Addameer conducts a youth program called Al-Da’maer which “empowers the youth’s role in strengthening and protecting human rights.” According to Addameer, “Participants are trained in international humanitarian law, international human rights law, establishing advocating campaigns and managing small projects. [The] Al-Da’maer program has initiated activities in support of the prisoners’ cause on prisoner’s day…” (Click here to read more on this program.)
    • On April 3, 2016, Addameer posted an article about an Al-Da’maer training course, conducted by “released prisoner” Ismat Mansour and his associate Hasan Karajah, as well as Addameer staff. Mansour was sentenced to 22 years in prison for assisting in the kidnapping and murder of the Israeli civilian Haim Mizrahi in 1993. In an interview to Israeli TV upon his release, Mansour said, “I have no regrets…I was part of the struggle of my people, I don’t reconsider my contribution.” On November 18, 2020, Massar News reported that Mansour was a leader in the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). The DFLP is a terrorist organization designated as such by Israel.
  • In January 2020, Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO), of which Addameer is a member, vehemently opposed a new clause in European Union grant contracts with Palestinian NGOs that prohibits grantees from working with and funding organizations and individuals designated on the EU’s terror lists. According to media reports, PNGO claimed that Palestinian terrorist organizations are “political parties.”

Addameer’s Ties to the PFLP

Addameer Staff Ties to the PFLP

  • Abdul-Latif Ghaith
    • Ghaith, Addameer’s founder and former chairperson, was banned in 2017 and 2019 from traveling due to his alleged membership in the PFLP. According to Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, Ghaith is “an activist in the Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine] organization and a person who has connections to the organization’s activists abroad, [and] will utilize his travel abroad for the organizational purposes of the Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine].”
    • Ghaith was also banned from entering the West Bank in 2011-2015.
  • Khalida Jarrar
    • Jarrar served as Addameer’s vice-chairperson until 2017 and is a senior PFLP official.1
    • Jarrar was arrested on October 31, 2019 on suspicions of “involvement in terror activity.” On December 18, 2019, it was revealed that Jarrar has “emerged as the head of the PFLP in the West Bank and responsible for all the organization’s activities” (emphasis added). In September 2021, Jarrar was released from prison.
    • Jarrar was administratively detained on April 1, 2015 by Israeli security forces. On April 15, 2015, she was indicted for various offenses including active membership in a terrorist organization (the PFLP) and inciting violence through a call to kidnap Israeli soldiers to be used as “bargaining chips for the release of Palestinian prisoners.” Jarrar accepted a plea bargain and was reportedly convicted on “one count of belonging to an illegal organization and another of incitement” receiving a 15- month prison sentence with an additional 10-month suspended sentence. According to an article in Haaretz, “The court noted that Jarrar was not being tried for being a member of the Palestinian parliament but rather for her activity in the PFLP.”
    • According to Addameer, Jarrar was re-arrested in July 2017 and placed in administrative detention.  According to Addameer, her detention was extended multiple times until she was released on February 28, 2019.
    • In May 2019, Khalida Jarrar attended a memorial event organized by the PFLP. It centered on PFLP political bureau member Rabah Muhanna, who, according to information posted by the PFLP, “contributed to the establishment” of several PFLP-affiliated NGOs. The hall was decorated with PFLP paraphernalia.
  • Salah Hamouri
  • Mahmoud Jiddah
    • Jiddah, a member of Addameer’s Board of Directors, was imprisoned by Israel for 17 years for carrying out grenade attacks against Israeli civilians in Jerusalem in 1968. He was released in 1985 in a prisoner swap.
    • Mahmoud Jiddah also served as a Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P) board member from at least 2012 through 2016. A May 13, 2017 picture taken at a meeting of the DCI-P General Assembly shows Jiddah standing next to DCI-P General Assembly President Nassar Ibrahim. (In addition to Jiddah, DCI-P also has numerous other staff and board members connected to the PFLP.)
  • Bashir Al-Khairi
  • Samer Arbid
  • Ayman Nasser
    • Nasser, coordinator of Addameer’s legal unit, was arrested on September 9, 2018. On September 16, 2018, Nasser received a 6-month administrative detention order.
    • On July 29, 2019, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled on Nasser’s administrative detention.  It found that he had engaged in “organizational activity in the context of the Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine], “which was “significant and dangerous, along with additional Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine] members.” [On file with NGO Monitor]
    • Nasser was arrested on October 15, 2012 for links to the PFLP. An indictment was filed attributing a number of offenses relating to membership in the PFLP and activities on behalf of the organization.
    • On June 3, 2013 the Judea Military Court convicted Nasser, who admitted to being a member of an unlawful organization, the PFLP, and for providing services to the organization.
  • Sahar Francis
  • Sumoud Sa’adat
    • On October 7, 2023, in the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attack, Addammer Documentation Officer (and daughter of PFLP Secretary-General Ahmad Sa’adat) Sumoud Sa’adat wrote on Facebook, “Freedom is inevitable. May you have a good morning.”
    • On October 12, 2023, Sa’adat shared a picture of PFLP central committee member and the head of the prisoners department [of the PFLP] Awad al-Sultan, and wrote, “Glory to the martyrs and mercy on their spirits.”
    • On October 5, 2016, the PFLP’s official website published an article by Sa’adat and referred to her as a “comrade.”
    • On February 23, 2021, Sa’adat shared on Facebook a picture of her father, Ahmed Sa’adat, and wrote, “…Good morning Abu Ghassan [Sa’adat’s alias], good morning our stubborn and firm bright flame…you are 68 years old and still capable of giving and sacrificing the long years of your life in prison for your people and for human liberty which you believe in. May you be free despite the shackles and the prison guards. May you be the lighthouse which guides us. We love you so much our role model…”
    • On November 10, 2020, Sa’adat shared on Facebook a picture of Kamal Abu Waer and hailed him, “…The martyr prisoner Kamal Abu Waer, may you have glory.”
      • Kamal Abu Waer served multiple life sentences for his role in several terror attacks against Israeli civilians during the Second Intifada, as a member of the Tanzim, an armed branch of the Palestinian Fatah movement.
    • On October 17, 2016, Al-Quds News published an article by Sa’adat titled “October 17, a unique symbol in the resistance’s history,” in which Sa’adat glorifies the PFLP’s assassination of Israel’s Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi that took place on October 17, 2001. In the article, Sa’adat calls the assassination “a heroic operation” and says that “before all else, we must send our proud and loyal congratulations to the minds and forearms of the knights that carried out the judgment of the Palestinian people.”

Political Advocacy

  • Refers to the Israeli army as the “Israeli Occupying Forces,” and accuses Israel of “collective punishment,” “war crimes,” and a “policy of using Palestinian prisoners as pawns to achieve political and military gains.”
  • Accuses Israel of “committing nothing short of a modern-day ethnic cleansing before our eyes; in the continuing quest for full annexation of Palestinian land and the expansion of Israel’s colonial frontier. The time is more urgent than ever for the international community to hold Israel accountable for its recurring and blatant war crimes against Palestinians.”
  • Addameer endorses the Deadly Exchange campaign led by Jewish Voice for Peace that aims to “end police exchange programs between the US and Israel.” JVP claims that American Jewish organizations and programs are to blame for police violence against minorities in America. The campaign also invoked antisemitic tropes.
    • The initial “Deadly Exchange” video labeled AIPAC, ADL, Birthright and other Jewish organizations as being responsible for these exchanges, and urged viewers to “Hold accountable the Jewish institutions who run and fund the deadly exchange.”
  • In November 2023, Addameer was a signatory on a letter to Third States calling to “Recognise Israel’s colonial settlement enterprise as one policy designed to maintain an institutionalised regime of racial domination and oppression over the Palestinian people as a whole, and  address the root causes of Palestinian dispossession and domination, and the undermining of the individual and collective rights of the Palestinian people, inherent in Zionist settler colonialism,” and to “Recognise Israel’s judicial system as part and parcel of Israel’s apartheid regime, and provide full cooperation to the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC and the UN ongoing Commission of Inquiry, to ensure justice and accountability.”
  • In October 2023, in the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attack, Addameer was a signatory on a statement calling to “emphasize that the root causes of these events is the illegal occupation of Palestine by Israel.” According to the statement, “We consider the flagrant unconditional support the U.S and European officials are offering Israel occupation while ignoring the plight of the Palestinian people as complicity in Israeli human rights violations and crimes against humanity, including the crime of apartheid. It is the international community’s failure to hold the Israel occupation accountable for its crimes that have led to the current situation.”
  • In October 2023, Addameer was a signatory on a statement demanding that the “EU leadership must put an end to its double standards and complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.” According to the statement, “For violence to end, European leaders must address and eradicate the root causes of the ongoing violence, namely, Israel’s seven-decade long settler-colonial enterprise and oppression of the Palestinian people…The EU must intervene to ensure that Israel dismantles its discriminatory apartheid regime, including by rescinding all discriminatory laws and facilitating the right of return and to self-determination of the Palestinian people…The resounding silence of the EU leadership on Israeli atrocities committed in Gaza and their blind support for Israel signals that the EU is green-lighting, enabling and encouraging Israel’s military actions, which already may amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and incitement to commit genocide.”
  • In May 2023, following comments by the EU Commission President celebrating Israel’s Independence Day, Addameer was a signatory on a statement accusing the president of “using racist anti-Palestinian tropes and denying Palestinian history and the atrocities of the Nakba.”
  • In May 2023, Addameer was a signatory on a statement “condemn[ing] the calculated and cold-blooded slow-killing of 45-year-old Khader Adnan—father, husband, Palestinian activist, and former prisoner—by the Israeli occupying authorities in the early hours of Tuesday, May 2, 2023. Khader was a reputed, revered, and resilient resistance actor within the Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement”(emphases added).
  • In April 2023, Addameer was a signatory on a letter to the United Nations Secretary-General urging the UN to reject the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. According to the letter, the IHRA definition “opens the door to labeling as antisemitic… findings of major Israeli, Palestinian and global human rights organizations that Israeli authorities are committing the crime against humanity of apartheid against Palestinians.”
    • The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, adopted by nearly 30 countries and counting, represents the international consensus definition of antisemitism, as well as how to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism. An example of the latter includes denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
  • In August 2022, following criticism against the UN HRC’s permanent Commission of Inquiry’s use of antisemitic rhetoric, Adadmeer signed a joint statement “extend[ing] their full support and pledg[ing] their ongoing cooperation with the UN Commission of Inquiry on Palestine.” The statement affirmed that “the present Commission is a crucial step toward the recognition and remedy of Israel’s settler-colonial and apartheid regime as the root cause of Israel’s perpetual violations of international law in Palestine.”
    • In July 2022, Commissioner Miloon Kothari made antisemitic comments on a podcast, claiming that the “Jewish lobby” controls social media and questioned whether Israel should have UN membership. In a letter to UNHRC President Federico Villegas, Commissioner Navi Pillay refused to condemn Kothari’s remarks, stating his comments “have deliberately been taken out of context…[and] deliberately misquoted.” Dozens of countries, UN Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed, and HRC President Federico Villegas condemned these remarks.
  • In May 2022, Addameer was a signatory on a flagrantly antisemitic report submitted to the UNHRC’s Commission of Inquiry against Israel. The submission called to “Recognise and Address Zionist Settler Colonialism and Apartheid as the Root Causes of Israel’s Ongoing Violations.” The submission presented a blatantly false historical account that denied Israel’s right to exist, categorized Israel’s very existence as illegal, and labeled Zionism as a form of racism.
  • In May 2022, Addameer was a signatory on a petition titled “The Return Appeal” calling on the United Nations to “take all necessary steps and measures for immediately holding the occupation’s state accountable for all the crimes, the latter has so far committed against the Palestinian people, within strict legal means that would not allow the occupation’s criminals to evade interrogation or possible trials.”
  • In May 2022, Addameer was a signatory to a flagrantly antisemitic report submitted to the UN HRC’s permanent Commission of Inquiry against Israel. The submission presented a blatantly false historical account that denied Israel’s right to exist, categorized Israel’s very existence as illegal, and labeled Zionism as a form of racism, demanding that the Commission “Recognise and Address Zionist Settler Colonialism and Apartheid as the Root Causes of Israel’s Ongoing Violations.”
  • In April 2022, Addameer held a webinar titled “Palestinian prisoners of apartheid demand justice” discussing how “Israel’s system of arrest and detention is central to its occupation and apartheid regime.”
  • In January 2022, Addameer, alongside Al Mezan, Al-Haq, JLAC, and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), submitted a joint report to the UN Human Rights Committee referring to Gaza as an “open-air prison,” and alleging that “to realize the objective of creating a Jewish state in Palestine, the Zionist movement pursued settler colonialism—with its inherently racist ideology—and the transfer of the Palestinian population as foundational prerequisites. These policies have become the driving force behind Israel’s apartheid regime.”
  • In April 2021, Addameer was a signatory on a joint submission to the UN Secretary-General on Intimidation and Reprisals for Cooperation with the UN, stating that “Since its establishment, Israel has created and maintained an institutionalised regime of racial domination and oppression, amounting to apartheid, over the Palestinian people as a whole…Israel has sought to fundamentally undermine key human rights and accountability work and thereby further entrenched impunity for its apartheid regime over Palestinians.”
  • In April 2021, Addameer endorsed US Congresswoman McCollum’s proposed legislation that would “prohibit Israel from using U.S. taxpayer dollars on the military detention, abuse, or ill-treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention.” The entirety of the proposed bill is premised on factually inaccurate claims from anti-Israel advocacy NGOs, including direct quotes from DCIP’s “No Way to Treat a Child” 2016 report and website.
  • In February 2021, Addameer was a signatory on a policy paper titled “United States Policy on Palestine: 2021 and Beyond” calling for the “US to reevaluate its past blanket support of Israel” and “end the decades long environment of impunity that it has enabled for Israel to entrench its settler colonization and apartheid in the Palestinian territory.” The policy calls to “ban the import of all Israeli settlement products and services” and “End all military aid to Israel.”
  • In January 2021, Addameer, alongside a number of Palestinian organizations, issued a declaration that the “Vaccine Roll-Out Exposes Israel’s Inhumane Acts of Apartheid.” Addameer falsely claimed that Israel has “legal obligations” to “ensure that quality vaccines be provided to Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and control.” The NGOs altogether ignore that Palestinians residing in Jerusalem are part of the Israeli health care system; that under the Oslo Accords the PA is responsible for health care of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza; and that the PA has adopted its own vaccine policy for its population.
  • In October 2019, Addameer General Director Sahar Francis spoke at an event in Berlin about the “institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by Israelis over Palestinians, committed with the intention of maintaining that regime in line with the definition of apartheid by the International Criminal Court.”
  • On May 18, 2019, as a member of the Palestinian Human Rights Organization Council (PHROC), Addameer was a signatory on a statement referring to all of Jerusalem as “occupied,” and called for the UN to “take a firm stand against…unlawful unilateral measures to be taken by the U.S. in favor of an unveiled attempt at legitimizing Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise, occupation and colonization.” The statement further called to “Ban Israeli settlement products” and “Impose individual sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, on individuals that are identified as responsible for or complicit in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
  • In May 2018, Sahar Francis participated in the “Palestinian Freedom Conference: Overcoming the Ongoing Nakba,” which discussed how “In late 1947, colonial Zionist paramilitary forces began the process of ethnically cleansing more than 750,000 Palestinians…70 years later…in Palestine a process of ongoing ethnic cleansing via occupation, colonisation, apartheid, and cruel siege continues apace, with no intervention from the international community.”
  • In May 2018, during the violence on the Gaza border, Addameer published a statement accusing Israel of “excessive, lethal force… These practices attest to the continued domination and subjugation of the Palestinian people. The marches and Israel’s excessive use of force and unlawful killings demonstrate the urgent need to ensure protection for the Palestinian people and to hold Israel to account in accordance with international law.” Addameer ignored the violent nature of the protests, which have consisted of an organized armed attack on the Israeli border and IDF positions, attempts to destroy and breach the border fence, and sustained arson, rocket, and mortar attacks on Israeli civilian communities.
  • On September 26, 2017, General Director Sahar Francis spoke at the European Parliament in Brussels at an event titled “The Role of Women in the Palestinian Popular Struggle.” The event featured Leila Khaled whose affiliation was listed as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and was organized by Unadikum, an NGO that participated in a gala to raise funds for the Union of Health Workers Committee (UHWC), a PFLP-affiliated group in Gaza.
  • On February 8, 2017, Addameer released a report accusing Israel of economically exploiting Palestinian “political prisoners,” claiming that this comes as “part of Israel’s sophisticated system of control put in place in order to break apart Palestinian resistance.” The statement further claims that “the integration of the PA into the Israeli prison system” has “made Palestinian society responsible for facilitating the imprisonment of those who resist the occupation and colonization of Palestinian land.” The report alleges that Israel attempts “to neutralize prisoners identified as political threats by forcing them to dedicate their energies to struggling for basic material needs, rather than to the kind of struggles for which they were originally imprisoned” (emphases added).
  • On February 22, 2016, during Apartheid Week events in London, Addameer General Director Sahar Francis stated that while it was “not certain or proved…she shared with the audience the increasing suspicions that Israel was harvesting organs from Palestinian corpses before returning them” (emphasis added).

Apartheid Rhetoric

  • Addameer is part of a network of NGOs that promote artificial and manufactured definitions of apartheid to extend the ongoing campaigns that seek to delegitimize and demonize Israel. (Read NGO Monitor’s Policy Paper “False Knowledge as Power: Deconstructing Definitions of Apartheid that Delegitimise the Jewish State.”)
  • In February 2023, Addameer, alongside Al-Haq and Al Mezan, published a submission to the UN Human Rights Council’s permanent “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel” (COI) accusing Israel of “Policies to Maintain and Entrench its Settler-Colonial Apartheid Regime: Violent Suppression of Demonstrations and Ensuing Wilful Killing and Injuries, Arbitrary Detention, Torture, and Smear and Delegitimisation Campaigns against Human Rights Defenders and Organisations.” In their submission, in addition to the false accusations regarding Israel, the NGOs whitewash acts of violence by Palestinians, omitting core evidence linking Palestinians to terrorist organizations.  
  • In November 2022, Addameer endorsed Palestinian NGO Al-Haq’s report “Israeli Apartheid: Tool of Zionist Settler Colonialism.” The report called on Member States of the UN General Assembly to “adopt a resolution to reconstitute the UN Special Committee against Apartheid and the UN Centre against Apartheid to address Israeli authorities’ commission of the crime against humanity of apartheid against the Palestinian people as a whole, and empower these bodies to proactively pursue the dismantlement of Israel’s settler colonial apartheid regime.”
  • In September 2022, Addameer was a signatory on a call to the UN General Assembly to “Take Immediate and Effective Action to End Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians.”   According to the call, “Dismantling Israel’s system of apartheid against Palestinians must be central to the UN’s commitment to end racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance worldwide.”
  • In September 2022, Addameer endorsed a campaign titled “Investigate and Dismantle Apartheid.” The campaign is a “global Palestinian-led anti-apartheid effort…directed towards activating UN mechanisms to investigate and dismantle Israel’s apartheid regime by mobilizing grassroot efforts.”
  • In January 2022, Addameer, alongside Habitat International Coalition and Al-Haq, submitted a joint report to then UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk claiming that “since its inception, the centrality of the racial dimension of Zionism has formed the foundation of Israel’s ever-lasting institutionalised racial discrimination and apartheid regime.” The NGOs called for the international community and the United Nations to “Recognize and condemn Israeli apartheid against the Palestinian people; discharge their duty of nonrecognition and take effective measures, including stopping arms trade.”

ICC Activities

BDS Activities

  • In November 2023, Addameer was a signatory on a statement urging states to issue a “Two-Way Arms Embargo on Israel,” demanding that “The US, the UK, Germany, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands and other States that authorise the continued transfer of arms, and other forms of military support to Israel to immediately bring an end to such transfers…and immediately halt the provision of any materiel, equipment or other commodity that may foreseeably be used in the commission of serious international law violations including international crimes.” 
  • In September 2022, Addameer was a signatory on a letter to the European Union to “review its decision to revive the Association Council Meeting, stop the recently signed gas deal and review its bilateral cooperation programmes.” According to the call, “Instead of allowing Israel to entrench its colonial enterprise and apartheid regime, rewarding it with further economic cooperation and trade of harmful military equipment and technologies, the EU and its Member States have an obligation, and interest, to hold Israel accountable and put an end to impunity.”
  • In February 2022, Addameer participated in a campaign titled “#StopTradeWithSettlements,” calling “for an EU law that will end trade with illegal settlements once and for all.”
  • In August 2021, Addameer signed a letter to the States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty calling to “put an end to Israel’s notorious use of arms and military equipment…by immediately imposing a comprehensive two-way arms embargo on Israel.” According to the letter, “This systematic brutality, perpetrated throughout the past seven decades of Israel’s colonialism, apartheid, pro-longed illegal belligerent occupation, persecution, and closure, is only possible because of the complicity of some governments and corporations around the world.”
  • In March 2021, Addameer, together with the pro-BDS NGO War on Want, published a report on “Israel’s military court system in the occupied West Bank.” The report calls to “increase support for Palestinian human rights defenders,” as well as “implement a two-way arms embargo on Israel.”
  •  In September 2020, Addameer called for the UN General Assembly to “Launch international investigations into Israel’s apartheid regime over the Palestinian people as a whole, as well as associated State and individual criminal responsibility,” to “Ban arms trade and military-security cooperation with Israel,” and “Prohibit all trade with illegal Israeli settlements and ensure that companies refrain from and terminate business activities with Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise.”
  • In July 2020, in response to the “Report of the Special Rapporteur addressing Israel’s Collective Punishment Policy,” Addameer called on “Third States to adopt effective measures to put an end to Israel’s illegal and inhumane policies of collective punishment, including sanctions and countermeasures, to bring the illegal situation to an end” (emphasis added).
  • In May 2020, Addameer was a signatory on a statement calling for “Immediate targeted sanctions to stop Israel’s annexation and apartheid.” The statement further called for “A ban on arms trade and military-security cooperation with Israel,” “Suspension of trade and cooperation agreements with Israel,” and “Investigation and prosecution of individuals and corporate actors responsible for war crimes/crimes against humanity in the context of Israel’s regime of illegal occupation and apartheid.”
  • In 2018-2019, Addameer lobbied intensively in support of the discriminatory UN database of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line, aimed at bolstering BDS campaigns against Israel. Addameer has signed multiple letters to the UN calling for the database to be implemented without further delay. According to Addameer, “the Database should be a mechanism that assists states in meeting their obligations under international law, including the obligation not to recognize as lawful – even implicitly – the illegal situation created by Israeli settlements and not to contribute to maintaining this illegal situation.”
    • In September 2022, Addameer endorsed a report by Al-Haq and Just Peace Advocates calling to “Update the UN database annually” and “Continue to exert the necessary efforts to ensure transparency and promote accountability for business activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, to counter the pervasive impunity stemming from corporate- related violations and grave breaches of international law in such contexts.”
    • In March 2020, Addameer was a signatory on a letter to OHCHR High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet praising the High Commissioner for publishing the list and stating that it “look[s] forward to continuing to work with the OHCHR, with a view toward ending corporate impunity for profiting from grave breaches of international law.”
  • In May 2019, Addameer was a signatory on a statement calling on the German Bundestag to revoke its joint resolution defining BDS campaigns against Israel as antisemitic
  • In April 2017, on Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, Addameer urged “supporters of justice around the world to take action to support the Palestinian prisoners whose bodies and lives are on the line for freedom and dignity” by “join[ing a] BDS Campaign” and “Organiz[ing] an action at HP office in your city to highlight the role of corporations involved in – and profiting from – the political imprisonment of Palestinians by the Israeli occupation.”

UN Activities

  • Lobbies the UN “to ask them to intervene to hold Israel accountable and pressure it to change its policies and practices.”
  • In February 2022, Addameer and the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School published a joint submission to the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry, alleging “apartheid” in the West Bank. (Read NGO Monitor and Barrister Josh Kern’s “Submission to the 2022 UN Commission of Inquiry.”)
  • In 2018-2019, Addameer lobbied intensively in support of the discriminatory UN database of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line, aimed at bolstering BDS campaigns against Israel (see further information above.)
  • On March 17, 2017, Addameer, BADILAl-Haq, and Society of St. Yves held a side event at the 34th session of the UN Human Rights Council on “Collective Punishment in Jerusalem” discussing “Israel’s collective punishment measures targeting the protected Palestinian population in Occupied East Jerusalem.”
  • In November 2016, Addameer co-authored a submission to Michael Lynk, UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the Palestinian Territories, on “Human Rights Defenders in the OPT…highlight[ing] the repressive environment within which human rights defenders (HRDs) work in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” The submission referred to Manal Tamimi, a fieldworker for the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC) as a “human rights defender.”
    • Tamimi frequently utilizes antisemitic and violent rhetoric and imagery on social media. In August 2015, Tamimi tweeted, “I do hate Israel, i (sic) wish a thrid Intefada (sic) coming soon and people rais (sic) up and kills all these zionist settlers everywhere.”
  • In February 2015, Addameer sent a joint letter to the UN Secretary General urging him to “list Israel’s armed forced in the annex” of the “Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict for committing grave violations against children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” (emphasis added).
  • General Director Sahar Francis lobbied a roundtable meeting of the “Committee on the Exercise of the Unalienable Rights of the Palestinian People” in Geneva on April 24, 2014. The roundtable focused on “UN procedures and mechanisms to address the issue of political prisoners” and “International courts and options for the case of Palestinian prisoners and detainees.”
  • In 2009, provided testimony before the Goldstone commission, alleging Israeli “violations of international law” and “racist Israeli policies” and falsely accusing Israel of using Palestinian detainees as “human shields.”

Partners

2014-2022 Funding to Addameer

GovernmentFunderYear(s)Total
IrelandIrishAid2020€81,000
2019€80,625
2018€75,000
SwitzerlandSwiss Agency for Development and Cooperation 2020CHF 135,763
2019CHF 139,347
2018CHF 118,280
NorwayNorwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs2016-2015NOK 1,800,000
SpainBasque Government2019-2021€799,362
2017-2019€180,000
2015-2019€199,988
SODePAZ via Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa2016-2018€81,248
Municipality of Barcelone2017€162,712
2016€57,436
Autonomous community of Navarre2020€120,000
2019€158,486
2018€153,486
2017€153,486
Municipality of Vitoria-Gasteiz2016-2017€68,332
Municipality of Rivas-Vaciamadrid2016€22,630
Municipality of San Sebastián2020-2022€48,477
2019-2021€50,000
2016-2018€66,489
2015-2017€69,429

Footnotes

  1. NGO Monitor has on file documented statements from the PFLP’s West Bank and Gaza branch, as well as from its branch in  in Syria, that refer to Jarrar as a member of the organization’s political bureau in at least 20122019.

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