Activities

• Publishes an online “Discriminatory Laws Database” that claims to collect “text, analyses, and legal action for present and proposed discriminatory laws in Israel and the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories].” This deceptive list does not distinguish between laws and legislative proposals and refers to Zionism pejoratively. Furthermore, laws regarding the historic Jewish connection to Israel are labeled as discriminatory, including the use of symbols and the Hebrew calendar.
• Adalah 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, then Director of Adalah’s Justice Project, as a co-author. MBL subsequently removed Youssef’s name, instead listing Adalah as an “organization currently working on policy.” (See Appendix for screenshots of the original and edited document.)
• 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.”
• In April 2024, Adalah sent a letter to Israel’s State Attorney, Attorney General, Commissioner of Police, and Minister of Justice demanding an “immediate investigation into potential incidents of incitement to genocide perpetrated by various public figures since the start of the war on October 7th.” According to Adalah’s legal director Suhad Bishara, “The rhetoric endorsed by public officials, as well as by the broader public, reflects decades-long precedents of dehumanizing hatred and incitement directed against Palestinians. Statements made by members of the cabinet reflect a state policy of intentional targeting of Palestinian civilians and send a clear message to military personnel that they are to act accordingly.”
• In December 2023, FIDH, on behalf of its members including Adalah, published a resolution accusing Israel of the “ unfolding crime of genocide and other crimes in Gaza and against the Palestinian People.” (Read NGO Monitor’s analysis, “FIDH Declares Total Political War Against Israel.”)
• In October 2023, in the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attack on October 7, Adalah posted a statement claiming, “The extremist, racist Israeli government is using the attacks by Palestinian militants as a pretext to launch illegal attacks and commit war crimes toward ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people in Gaza.”
• In October 2023, after Israel introduced new regulations on gun ownership following the October 7 Hamas atrocities, Adalah published a statement claiming that “The tactic of arming civilians is imported from Israeli settlers in the West Bank, as a means of exercising control through terror…The Israeli government is now capitalizing on the rage and anxiety of Israelis, amid the fog of war, to entrench its system of apartheid in policing, as part of its supremacist policy.”
• In April 2023, Adalah 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 February 2022, Adalah signed a statement defending a report published by Amnesty International accusing Israel of apartheid. According to the statement, “The debate around the crime of apartheid of which Israel is accused, and its geographical scope, is not only legitimate, but absolutely necessary. We wholeheartedly reject the idea that Amnesty International’s report is baseless, singles out Israel or displays antisemitic animus.”
• In October 2021, Adalah condemned the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. According to Adalah, “The Israeli decision to designate six human rights and civil society organizations as terrorist organizations is an unprecedented attack on human rights defenders who are exposing and resisting the Israeli occupation and its apartheid policies…Adalah is determined to resist these decisions by all legal means available.”
  • In October 2022, Adalah was a signatory on a statement affirming that “We will continue to cooperate with our Palestinian partner organizations to defend Palestinian rights” and called on the international community to “Continu[e] to support and fund these organizations, and engage with financial institutions to ensure the transfer of funds to the six organizations.”
• In July 2021, after the Israeli Supreme Court upheld the Jewish Nation-State Basic Law, Adalah published a press release labelling “the Israeli regime, as a colonial one, with distinct characteristics of apartheid” (emphasis added).  In February 2022, during the periodic review of Israel for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) at the UN Human Rights Committee, Adalah published a submission that “The Jewish Nation-State Law, this law – which has distinct characteristics of apartheid –guarantees the ethnic-religious character of Israel as exclusively Jewish and entrenches the privileges enjoyed by Jewish citizens” (emphasis added).
• In December 2020, Adalah, alongside a number of Israeli, Palestinian, and international organizations, issued a declaration headlined “Israel must provide necessary vaccines to Palestinian health care systems.” The NGOs falsely claim that Israel has “legal obligations” to “ensure that quality vaccines be provided to Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and control,” while altogether ignoring 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 2020,  Director of Adalah’s Land and Planning Rights Unit Suhad Bishara wrote an article for +972 Magazine about the “colonial heritage of Israel’s police,” alleging that “Like South Africa and the United States, Israel’s police were explicitly designed to enforce racial supremacy with violence and impunity.”
• In August 2019, Abdel Razeq Farraj was invited by Adalah to participate in its “Summer Camp” and meet with Arab-Israeli youth. The event was held in collaboration with Addameer, a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) “affiliate.”
  • Farraj, Union of Agricultural Works Committee’s Finance and Administration Director, was arrested on October 23, 2019 and indicted on 4 counts in Israeli military court. His alleged crimes include holding a position in an illegal and aiding an attempt to cause death in connection to an August 2019 bombing. Farraj spent six years, from 1985-1991, in “an Israeli prison after being convicted of affiliation with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.”
• On July 21 2018, the website Arab48 published an interview with Adalah’s General Director Hassan Jabareen on the “Jewish Nation State Law” (a translation of excerpts by Adalah appeared on Palestine Square). In the interview Jabareen said, “As Adalah wrote in its position paper, the law clearly shows how the Israeli regime is a colonial system of apartheid, in violation of the Apartheid Convention, which considers apartheid a crime against humanity” (emphasis added). In addition, he said that “We must state before the international community that the Israeli regime within and outside of the Green Line is a colonial system that is so obviously in contravention of international law that a serious question mark hangs over its very legitimacy. A deficient democratic regime is still a legitimate regime, while a colonial regime, under international law, lacks legitimacy” (emphasis added).
• In August 2017, Adalah launched a project titled “Freedom, Bound” drawing comparisons between the “shared struggle for collective liberation” of the “Ferguson Uprising and the resurgence of Black-Palestinian solidarity.” Part of the project was for “Advocates and activists in Israel/Palestine and the US [to] use and exchange strategies of resistance to transform the systems of oppression that have been designed to exclude, marginalize, and even criminalize the presence and existence of both Palestinians and Black Americans.”
• In April 2002, following Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield, Adalah filed a petition falsely alleging that the Israeli army “was collecting dead bodies on the outskirts of the Jenin refugee camp, apparently with the intention of burying them in mass, anonymous or numbered graves.” While the claims were later found to be baseless, the allegations continue to be exploited by anti-Israel organizations in an effort to demonize the state of Israel.

Lawfare

• In July 2024, following the International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion on the “legal consequences arising from Israel’s Policies and Practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” Adalah claimed, “The ICJ’s landmark opinion from the world’s highest court has determined that Israel’s occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, the longest occupation in modern history from 1967 until today, is illegal and must come to an end.…In light of Israel’s blatant denial of the Palestinians’ right to self- determination, and its position that the Jewish people have exclusive rights on all the areas of historic Palestine, it is imperative that the UN and third states take immediate action to bring effect to the Court’s conclusions.”
• In January 2023, Adalah published a position paper arguing the “clear criminal intent” of the Israeli government “to commit crimes under the Rome Statute, including crimes against humanity (namely, the crime of Apartheid) and war crimes. It is therefore necessary for international bodies, including by the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, to urgently intervene and for the international community to take action.” 
• In December 2022, Adalah was a signatory on a joint letter to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court stating that “We are all committed to assisting your office in advancing the ongoing investigation of the Situation in Palestine.”
• In October 2022, Adalah published a press release welcoming the findings of the permanent UN Commission of Inquiry against Israel and writing that “We hope that the report will be adopted by the UN General Assembly and that it will lead to a swift response by the International Court of Justice and by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.”
• In May 2021 during the 2021 Gaza conflict, Adalah published a press release stating that “The recent killing of Palestinian civilians – including 30 children – in their homes in Gaza, has now been added to the list of war crimes that must be investigated by the International Criminal Court. Netanyahu has insisted…that he most certainly must be one of the ICC’s primary suspects.”
• In December 2019, Adalah applauded the decision of ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to launch an investigation against Israel stating that “the ICC prosecutor has made the right decision given the facts. No other decision could have been possible. We welcome her position, and we believe that the ICC has full jurisdiction to decide on the concerned criminal cases.”
  • Hassan Jabareen stated, “It is ironic to see the Attorney General of Israel use the prolonged occupation of the Palestinian territories as an argument against Palestine’s rights of sovereignty and a shield against the Court’s jurisdiction,” and called for “all States Parties and relevant stakeholders to cooperate with and support the Court.”

Allegations of “war crimes”

• In May 2021, Adalah “welcome[d]” the decision of the United Nations’ Human Rights Council to open an “ongoing commission of inquiry (COI) that will examine, in-depth, the human rights violations committed by the State of Israel against Palestinianson both sides of the Green Line. The mass killing of a civilian population in Gaza” (emphasis added). Adalah further added that “Palestinian citizens of Israel have no choice but to appeal to the nations of the world to obligate Israel to provide them with protection, to put an end to and to investigate the war crimes that Israel is committing in Gaza.”
• In August 2017, Adalah, alongside Al Mezan and Visualizing Palestine, created a series of images that claimed to highlight “war crimes committed during the 2014 attack on Gaza and Israeli impunity for these violations of international law.” The visuals allege that Israel conducted an “indiscriminate bombing campaign” and “brutal ground invasion.”
• On July 29, 2015, Adalah’s then USA Representative Nadia Ben Youssef spoke at a Congressional briefing to “examine Israel’s misuse of U.S.-supplied weapons in Gaza and call on lawmakers to hold Israel accountable for its violations of U.S. and international law.” Ben Youssef accused Israel of “indiscriminate war crimes,” and “systemic impunity” for Israeli soldiers in the Israeli legal system.
  • This event was sponsored by the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (formerly known as US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation), American Friends Service Committee, American Muslims for Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Middle East Children’s Alliance.
• Adalah was among the NGOs that provided the basis for the UN Committee of Inquiry (the Schabas/Davis Commission) into the events of the 2014 Gaza War. This COI repeated unverifiable and unreliable NGO claims regarding alleged Israeli “war crimes.”
• During the 2014 Gaza War, Adalah submitted a July 22 joint written statement to the UNHRC, “condemn[ing] Israel’s unlawful targeting of civilians,” which may “constitute grave violations of international humanitarian law and international criminal law and may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.” The statement calls on the UNHRC to “[c]ondemn the deliberate, systematic and widespread targeting of Palestinian civilians” and “[e]stablish an independent, international commission of inquiry with the mandate to identify and investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law committed within the context of Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip.”
• Adalah officials, in conjunction with radical Palestinian NGO Al-Haq, wrote and edited large portions of a May 2009 pseudo-academic study that refers to “a colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid.” The report delegitimizes Israeli self-defense measures as “inhumane act[s] of apartheid…perpetrated in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another.”

Anti-Israeli Legal Activities

• Adalah Director Hassan Jabareen and several colleagues played an active role in the NGO Forum of the UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR) held in Durban in 2001, which was organized in an effort to promote the demonization and delegitimization of Israel, and served as the foundation for the boycotts, divestments, and sanctions (BDS) movement.
• In May 2016, the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) held its periodic review of Israel. During this session, numerous NGOs, including Adalah, presented unverified testimony and invented new standards of torture to further their political goal of demonizing and marginalizing Israel.
• Adalah director Hassan Jabareen spoke at a May 2013 conference titled “Law and Politics: Options and Strategies of International Law for the Palestinian People” with a stated aim “to examine alternative legal frameworks which are more appropriate for the analysis of Israel’s oppressive regime.” Other speakers included anti-Israel ideologues Richard Falk and John Dugard.
• According to a press statement from Adalah, a July 2012 European Parliament “call on Israel to withdraw the government-approved Prawer Plan [regarding Israel’s policy in the Negev]” was “the result of months of intensive advocacy by Adalah and the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) in Brussels, including a briefing by Adalah Attorney Suhad Bishara before the EP’s Working Group on the Middle East in June 2012 in Strasbourg.”
• Participated in a May 2009 NGO “town hall meeting” in Geneva that helped shape the course of the UN’s Goldstone Mission. Adalah was subsequently cited 38 times in the Goldstone report.
• In its lobbying in support of the Goldstone report and its recommendations, Adalah issued a 2009 press release urging governments to “re-evaluate their relationship with Israel.”
• Submitted a legal opinion to a Spanish court in support of Palestinian Center for Human Rights’’s 2008 lawfare case against Israeli officials.
• Drafted a 2007 “Democratic Constitution,” which calls for replacing the Jewish foundation of the state with a “democratic, bilingual and multicultural” framework. Jewish immigration would be permitted for “humanitarian reasons.”

Bedouin

• One of the most politically active NGOs in opposing Israeli policy regarding the Bedouin in the Negev.
• Adalah was the leading NGO in the campaign for Umm Al-Hiran, a Bedouin village that was the scene of violence to prevent demolitions approved by the Israeli High Court of Justice.
  • In 2016, Adalah requested $30,000 for a project titled “Adalah’s Emergency Project to #Save_UmalHiran.” In the grant proposal, Adalah requested funding for one month in order “to litigate, advocate, campaign and mobilize the public so that no home is demolished and no Umm al‐Hiran resident is evicted.”
  • In the proposal, Adalah defines the Bedouins as “Palestinians,” warns of an imminent “Nakba,” and describes Israel as a “racist” state.
  • Adalah concludes its grant proposal by stating that “Although our fundraising campaign will run for 1 month, our efforts in the courts and on the ground will continue until we ensure that all homes in Umm al‐Hiran remain standing, and that all residents remain on the land!” (emphasis in original)
• On May 30, 2013 Adalah and the Negev Coexistence Forum (NCF) published a one-sided and factually inaccurate position paper (funded by the EU), reviewing the “Prawer-Begin Bill and the Forced Displacement of the Bedouin” and accusing Israel of “forcible displacement,” “dispossession,” and attempting to implement “the complete and final severance of the Bedouin’s historical ties to their land.”