Activities

• In 2014, Adalah created the “Adalah Justice Project” (AJP), based in Boston, with the goal of transforming “American perception, policy and practice in Palestine/Israel into a human rights approach that guarantees historical justice and equality for all.”
• AJP “began as the US Program of Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, and the two organizations cooperate closely to advance a shared vision of full human rights for all people living in historic Palestine, the end of the occupation, and historical justice for all Palestinians.”

Political Advocacy

• In October 2023, in response to an explosion outside the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, AJP tweeted, “Over 500 Palestinians have been tragically killed in an Israeli strike on a hospital in Gaza. As Israel’s devastating assault continues, @POTUS plans to attend an Israeli war cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. We cannot stand idle by.” AJP ignored the videos, images, and intelligence materials demonstrating that an Islamic Jihad rocket had “misfired” (i.e. detonated in Gaza instead of Israel) and hit the hospital parking lot.
• In social media posts since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, Adalah Justice Project expressed its “full solidarity with students who are setting up encampments across the country until their Universities fully divest from the Israel-US genocide machine” and “firm solidarity with Students for Justice in Palestine chapters…as they hold their complicit universities accountable for aiding and abetting Israeli genocide.”
• On October 7, 2023, in the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attack, AJP tweeted a picture of terrorists breaking through the border fence, writing, “No cage goes unchallenged.”
• In October 2023, AJP and American Muslims for Palestine published a statement calling on the Biden Administration to “facilitate an immediate ceasefire and address the root cause of violence, that is, Israel’s Apartheid regime, and specifically in Gaza, Israel’s brutal siege and blockade.” According to the NGOs, “While ignoring the plight of Palestinians, this unwavering support undercuts the moral ground that the U.S. claims to hold in promoting ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ worldwide. The U.S. is implicated and responsible for the continued escalations in this case.”
• In January 2023, AJP was a signatory on a letter to the American Bar Association stating that “the clear objective behind the promotion of the IHRA definition is the suppression of non-violent protest, activism, and criticism of Israel and/or Zionism…in practice the IHRA definition has been used consistently (and nearly exclusively) not to fight antisemitism, but rather to defend Israel and harm Palestinians – at the cost of undermining and dangerously chilling fundamental rights of free speech, freedom of assembly and protest, and academic freedom.”
  • 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 October 2021, AJP condemned the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. According to AJP, “Some of the leading Palestinian human rights organizations, groups we wholeheartedly work with, have been designated by Israel as ‘terrorist organizations.’ We fear for the safety of our comrades We fear for the safety of our comrades…What is Israel trying to hide here? Amplify the work of these organizations and send a clear message to apartheid Israel that we won’t stop bringing to light their crimes and abuses.”
• In June 2020, in the context of the Black Lives Matter protests, the AJP linked “white supremacy” and “Zionism,” accusing them of being “underpinned by anti-Blackness.” According to AJP, “we recognize the connections between the Palestinian and Black struggles…All our knowledge, critique, and resistance to Israeli state violence can help us grab at the root of structural racism in the United States to weed it out permanently.”
  • In June 2020, AJP also signed a letter to congress calling to “divest from militarism and policing, from the US to Palestine.” According to the letter, “Just as we join in the demand for our tax dollars to be divested from brutal police violence and a repressive military response to protesters asserting that #BlackLivesMatter, we call for an end to U.S.-funded violence abroad.”
  • In December 2019, AJP and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) launched a project titled “Justice for All” that “aims to end U.S. military funding to Israel and uphold progressive policies rooted in historical justice.” According to Yousef Munayyer, Executive Director of USCPR, “The Movement for Black Lives’ principle of invest-divest frames the overarching demand – that we must demand our government divest from Israel’s human rights abuses against the Palestinian people and instead invest those resources in community needs at home, so everyone can live with safety, dignity, and justice.”
• In December 2019, AJP and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) launched a “2020 vision platform” calling on the United States to “immediately end all military funding to Israel and other forms of military, economic, and diplomatic support until Israel upholds the rights of the Palestinian people and our vision of justice.”
  • According to the project’s website, “Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people is driven by Zionism, a political ideology that called for the building of a Jewish state in Palestine. To build this state, armed Zionist groups initiated their settler colonial project in our homeland and destroyed hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages, massacred our people, and drove us from our land.”
  • The project further demands for the “fulfillment of the right of all Palestinians to return to their homeland.”
• On May 15, 2018, AJP and other Palestinian and American NGOs sent a letter to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, demanding the US government “Investigate Israel’s Use of Lethal Force in Gaza.” The NGOs accused Israel of using American weapons against Palestinian demonstrators and called to “halt any further assistance to all Israeli military units involved in these shootings.” AJP ignored the violent nature of the protests, which included Molotov cocktails, arson, and attempts to breach the border fence with Israel.
• In November 2017, then AJP Director Nadia Ben-Youssef spoke at a conference titled “Balfour’s Legacy: Confronting the Consequences” discussing the “legacy of the colonial declaration.” At the event, Ben-Youssef explained that “Adalah, 3 years ago said, ‘Go to the US, map the movement, see where we should intervene. What does it look like to build a mass movement for Palestinian rights, and to shift American discourse, and ultimately policy’” (emphasis added).

BDS

• In January 2023, AJP was a joint signatory on a call to Congress to “take immediate policy action towards accountability: Stop arming Israel’s massacres against the Palestinian people by ending U.S. military funding to Israel.”
• In March 2022, AJP drew false equivalencies between Russia/Ukraine and Israel, stating that “Palestinians wrote the playbook on how to stop an authoritarian occupation; it’s called BDS. Seeing that playbook applied against Russia is surely something to behold while Israel faces no consequences.”
• In 2021, AJP launched the “Gaza is Palestine” campaign aimed at halting US military assistance to Israel. According to the campaign, “The inseparable bond between Israeli apartheid and the U.S. war machine that powers it has never been more vulnerable and it will take all of us — and every tool at our disposal — to dismantle it. “
• In September 2021, AJP lobbied against American security assistance to Israel, including the Iron Dome, tweeting, “If today’s vote to give apartheid Israel another $1 billion enrages you, channel that anger by boycotting and divesting from every company that makes this racist system possible.”
• In May 2021, Adalah Justice Project demanded that the United States impose an arms embargo on Israel and halt military assistance stating that “The latest arms deal for Israel is a direct commercial sale of bombs made by Boeing, the same bombs that are killing us in Gaza. ##BlockTheBombs to Israel & then #SanctionIsraeliApartheid.”
• At a November 2017 Cambridge University gathering, Ben-Youssef articulated Adalah’s approach to the BDS campaign stating that “Adalah as a Palestinian organization based in Israel – because of this law has a prohibition on it with regard to the call for BDS. The law says that if you call for boycott- it had creating a new civil wrong, you can be sued in court if you call for a boycott of Israel. So Adalah has pivoted its argument about BDS, for the right to boycott… Adalah support the right to boycott…we believe in the pillars of the BDS movement” (emphasis added).

Staff

• Sandra Tamari
  • AJP Executive Director Tamari served as co-chair of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, a national coalition of hundreds of highly biased US-based groups and a leader and mobilizer of anti-Israel BDS campaigns.
  • In 2012, Tamari was barred from entering Israel for being suspected of “pro-Palestinian activism” and “taking part in campaigns calling for boycotts and divestment from Israel.”
  • In November 2014, Tamari posted a picture of Rasmea Odeh to the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Campaign Facebook group, with the caption: “Free Our Beloved Rasmea Now!.”
    • Rasmea Odeh, a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) operative was convicted for immigration fraud after concealing her role in two terrorist bombings in Israel. The PFLP is designated as a terrorist organization by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel.
• Nadia Ben Youssef
  • AJP Advisory Board Member Ben Youssef also serves as the Advocacy Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights. CCR is active in lawfare suits against Israel and Israeli officials; promotes BDS campaigns; urges the U.S. government to stop providing military aid to Israel; and repeatedly accuses Israel of  “war crimes,” “crimes against humanity,” and other such allegations.
  • Ben Youssef is also a contributor to Columbia University’s anti-Israel project, the “Nakba Files,” one of Adalah’s early US-based activities: Since 2013, Adalah and the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University have jointly run an online platform that refers to Israel’s establishment as a “catastrophe,” criticizes Israel’s policy towards the country’s Negev Bedouin population, and “explores and thinks through the Nakba as an event, a structure, and a process through a critical lens on the law.” Similarly, it describes Israel as colonialist and promotes a “Palestinian right of return.”
  • Ben-Youssef was involved in creating a “platform” released by the Movement for Black Lives (MBL) that supports ‪BDS and calls Israel “an apartheid state committing genocide.” The document originally listed Nadia Ben-Youssef, as a co-author. MBL subsequently removed Youssef’s name, instead listing Adalah as an “organization currently working on policy.”
  • On October 21, 2017, Ben-Youssef spoke at an anti-Israel event at Minnesota University titled “Parallel liberation Struggles: Lessons in Resistance.” The event’s purpose was to “commemorate the 100-year Palestinian resistance to Israel’s settler-colonial project and to explore the similarities in violence used against Palestinians, African Americans, and Native Americans and their methods of resistance.”
  • On June 8, 2017, Nadia Ben-Youssef spoke at a hearing in Congress on “how persistent human rights violations, systematic impunity, discrimination and a hyper-militarized environment affect the lives of the Palestinian children growing up under a military occupation with no end in sight.” The event was sponsored by Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P) and American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) as part of their “No Way to Treat a Child” campaign.
    • At the event, Ben-Youssef claimed that “since the Israeli legal system—as the state—was founded on Jewish supremacy, the lives of Palestinians are not valued.” She falsely claimed that “There’s no right to equality in Israel—it’s not enshrined in law because [Israel] cannot protect equality and protect [Jewish] privilege.” Ben-Youssef added, “Nakba. Remember that name, say that name. It means catastrophe in Arabic, and it refers to the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.”