Profile
Country/Territory | Netherlands |
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Website | https://www.article1collective.org/ |
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Founded | 2015 |
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In their own words | “We work towards a world where all actors respect international law and human rights. We hold violators of international law and human rights to account and combat impunity. We support people to enjoy their rights in an inclusive society without discrimination or oppression. We base our work on c alls from civil society and contribute to joint agendas and strategies.” |
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Funding
- In 2016, total income was €5,416; total expenses were €6,236. (Latest available; accessed April 5, 2022).
- According to its website, “Article 1 Collective raises funds via private and institutional fundraising.”
Activities
- Article 1 Collective is a small fringe group, with only 3 volunteer activists, a minimal budget, and an “Advisory Council” that “provides solicited and unsolicited advice about content and strategy…”
- Article 1 Collective engages in “Lobby[ing] and advocacy at governmental, UN, company and organizational levels, towards equal rights for all.”
- Promotes the Kairos Palestine document, which calls for BDS against Israel; denies the Jewish historical connection to Israel in theological terms; and rationalizes, justifies, and trivializes terrorism, calling it “legal resistance.”
Political Advocacy
- In November 2019, Article 1 Collective signed a letter to Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Fatou Bensouda, calling to open “an official, full-scale investigation” against Israel and the “possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed” as the “absence of an official investigation…has fuelled the already existing culture of impunity.”
- In May 2018, Article 1 Collective signed on a call to the UN Human Rights Council to launch an “independent investigation into violations of international human rights and humanitarian law by Israel” in response to Gaza-border violence. The call accuses Israel of “excessive, indiscriminate and disproportionate use of lethal force… [that] may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity” (emphasis added). The call ignored the violent nature of the protests, which included Molotov cocktails, arson, and attempts to breach the border fence with Israel.
- In September 2017, Article 1 Collective was a signatory on a call to restaurant chefs to “Take Apartheid off the Menu” and cancel their participation in the Tel Aviv “Round Tables Tour” as it “uses the time-honored tradition of sharing culinary experiences as a means for whitewashing widespread violation of Palestinian fundamental rights, including the right to food.”
- In November 2016, Article 1 Collective, alongside Who Profits, Al-Haq, and Badil, held a side event during the 5th annual UN Business and Human Rights Forum titled “Business and Human Rights in Palestine: The Many Facets of the Occupation Industry,” to discuss “corporate complicity in Israel’s colonization of Palestine.”
- In November 2015, during the 4th Annual UN Forum on Business and Human Rights, John Veron, treasurer of Article 1 Collective, was a panelist in a session titled “Business and Human Rights in Occupied Palestine: Corporate Complicity in Israeli Human Rights Abuses,” alleging “corporate complicity in the systematic Israeli violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.” Article 1 Collective presented on “financial institutions policies and obligations to divest and withdraw from companies exploiting conflict in the OPT.”
- Other panelists included members from Al-Haq, Who Profits, Badil, the Boycott National Committee, and the Palestinian Farmers Union.
BDS Activities
- In May 2021, Article 1 Collective Chairman of the Board and Co-founder Mieke Zagt was a signatory on a statement calling for “an end to the support provided by global powers to Israel and its military; especially the United States, which now provides Israel $3.8 billion annually without condition. We ask all people of conscience to exercise their agency to help dismantle the apartheid regime of our time. We ask governments that are enabling this crime against humanity to apply sanctions, to mobilize levers of international accountability, and to cut trade, economic and cultural relations.”
- In November 2020, following the publication of the discriminatory UN database of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line aimed at bolstering BDS campaigns against Israel, Article 1 Collective was a signatory on a letter to UN High Commissioner for Human Right Michelle Bachelet urging the “inclusion of HPE [Hewlett Packard] in the database for its complicity in and profiteering from Israel’s settlement enterprise, which amount to the practice of settler colonialism and apartheid.”
- In September 2020, Article 1 Collective 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 February 2020, Article 1 Collective launched a campaign titled “Save your money,” targeting Israeli banks as “Israeli banks contribute to apartheid by funding the colonization of Palestine.”
- In March 2019, Article 1 Collective shared a call for “Ethical Tourism and Pilgrimage,” due to “Israel’s continuous sabotage and/or theft of Christian, Islamic and even Jewish Palestinian heritage sites and properties in Jerusalem and the occupied Palestinian territory.” The call asked for individuals to “Avoid allproducts [sic] and services provided by Israeli or international companies that are complicit in Israel’s human rights violations…and substitute those with Palestinian or non-complicit providers.”
- In November 2018, Article 1 Collective participated in the international campaign to boycott the Eurovision Song Contest for “artwashing apartheid.”
- In April 2018, Article 1 Collective signed a statement calling for the Dutch government and the EU to “break all relations with Elbit and all other Israeli arms manufacturers.”
- In March 2018, Article 1 Collective shared a letter from Palestinian organizations to Andre Rieu, a Dutch violinist, calling for him to cancel his concert in Tel Aviv as he should not “associate [his] good name and [his] art with the occupation and apartheid of the Israeli government.”
- In February 2018, Article 1 Collective signed a statement supporting the discriminatory UN database of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line aimed at bolstering BDS campaigns against Israel. According to the statement, “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 February 2016, John Veron wrote a section for Facing Finance’s Dirty Profits Report accusing Israeli banks of “settlement construction” and “dirty profits,” and calling for “all institutional and private investors …should accordingly divest from Israeli banks.”
- In December 2015, Article 1 Collective designed stamps stating, “G4S is Watching You,” accusing the security company of assisting “the Israeli regime in securing the occupation of Palestine.”
- In November 2015, Article 1 Collective created labels for the European Union that “clearly explains the origin and illegality of Israeli settlement produce,” as “Israeli settlement produce originates from stolen land and should thus be banned.”
- In October 2015, wrote a joint letter with Al-Haq calling on the Dutch government to “ensure that Dutch corporations involved in or suspected of being involved in violations of international law in the OPT withdraw its activities.”
- In June 2015, Article 1 Collective congratulated KLP, Norway’s largest pension fund, for divesting from HeidelbergCement and Cemex because of their alleged “exploitation of natural resources in the occupied Palestinian West Bank,” and called on “other investors [to] follow suit.”
- In May 2015, Mieke Zagt, chair of Article 1 Collective, interviewed Omar Barghouti about BDS and how “BDS is not enough. BDS is just one part of the strategy of resisting Israel’s entrenched regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.”
Employees
- Mieke Zagt
- Founder of Article 1 Collective, Zagt is the former Middle East Program Officer for Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation (ICCO) and former Iran Country Coordinator for Amnesty International.
- Zagt is on the Board of the Tadamun Foundation, an organization that works with Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P) in the Netherlands for “a safe and equivalent future for Palestinian children.”
- Several DCI-P current and former officials, employees, and board members have close ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP is a terrorist organization designated as such by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel.
- Hashem Abu Maria, coordinator of DCI-P’s community mobilization unit, was hailed by the PFLP as a “leader” after his death in 2014. On September 23, 2014, DCI-P uploaded a video of a memorial service for Abu Maria, featuring a speech by DCI-P General Director, Rifat Odeh Kassis. The courtyard where the memorial service took place was decorated with PFLP flags, posters, and pictures of prominent PFLP figures, such as founder George Habash and former leader Ahmed Sa’adat. Nearly all of the audience are dressed in PFLP apparel.
- Zagt has written numerous op-eds for the Electronic Intifada claiming that Booking.com and Trip Advisor are “abetting war crimes” by offering “hotel rooms in Israel’s illegal settlements” and “people who stay in this hotel are giving financial assistance to war crimes.”
- Participated in a 2009 conference titled “United In Struggle Against Israeli Colonialism, Occupation, and Racism” in a session titled, “Palestinian advocacy challenges and international experiences.”
- Rifat Odeh Kassis
- General Director of Defense for Children International- Palestine, former International Coordinator and project manager for World Council of Churches, and former member of an advisory group for DanChurchAid.
- Coordinator and spokesman of Kairos Palestine, a document that calls for BDS against Israel; denies the Jewish historical connection to Israel in theological terms; and rationalizes, justifies, and trivializes terrorism, calling it “legal resistance.”
- Kassis wrote the introduction for the 2016 Kairos “Christmas Alert,” accusing Israel of “extrajudicial executions” and of denying basic rights to Palestinian children arrested under charges of “usually, stone throwing” (which can be lethal).
- In a 2011 op-ed, Rifat Odeh Kassis promoted the canard that Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal has dual loyalties, rendering him “so blind, so brazen, so hypocritical and so unjust,” and claiming that he “makes his own country a partner” in “Israel’s injustices.”
- John Veron
- Former Middle East Programme Officer for ICCO.
- Mouin Rabbani
- Merav Amir
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