DanWatch

Activities

• DanWatch promotes BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanction) under the guise of “business ethics.”
• DanWatch targets Israeli and European corporations as part of its BDS campaign against Israel. Firms include Ahava, G4S, ISS, Israeli agricultural producers, and tour operators.
• In contrast to DanWatch’s “ethical guidelines” claiming to be “independent of political and economic interests,” it bases its analysis on unreliable, biased, and politicized NGOs including Who Profits, Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (ICAHD), and Al-Haq. These NGOs are leaders in promoting anti-peace campaigns and BDS against Israel.
• DanWatch publications regarding Israel are frequently commissioned by organizations with a history of anti-Israel activities (i.e. DanChurchAid – see below).
• In January 2021, DanWatch falsely claimed that Israel has legal obligations to supply vaccines to the Palestinians. DanWatch ignored that Israel has already provided vaccines to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza; Palestinians residing in Jerusalem are part of the Israeli health care system and have the same access to vaccines as all Israeli citizens; that under the Oslo Accords the PA is responsible for health care of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza; that the PA has adopted its own vaccine policy for its population including participation in the WHO COVAX system; and has only asked for minimal help from Israel in providing and distributing vaccines.
  • The article also featured an interview with Daoud Ghoul, who, in 2016, was convicted of membership in the PFLP terrorist organization.

Examples of DanWatch’s involvement in BDS

• In May 2021, DanWatch published a study on eight pension companies that “finance Alstom’s business on occupied land.” Through the lobbying of DanWatch, the “vast majority of the companies have therefore initiated a dialogue with Alstom with the aim of getting the company to withdraw – especially from the light rail project in Jerusalem, which connects illegal Jewish settlements with Jerusalem.”
• In December 2020, DanWatch welcomed the publication of the discriminatory UN database of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line, aimed at bolstering BDS campaigns against Israel, however lamented that the database was “not exhaustive” and a “number of companies with clear connections to settlements are not to be found.”
• In June 2018, as part of its role in a broader BDS campaign to damage Israel’s economy through the financial sector, DanWatch released a set of articles on pensions and banks that allegedly operate in the West Bank. The articles repeated the factually inaccurate and misleading claims of Human Rights Watch’s report targeting Israeli banks, which makes false accusations and invents international law.
• In 2017, DanWatch initiated the project “Business on Forbidden Land,” focusing on Danish companies allegedly conducting business in Israeli settlements and opposing the marketing of Israeli goods produced in the West Bank.
  • On January 16, 2017, DanWatch released the latest in the series, relying on information from European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, and Richard Falk.  The document was funded, in part, by DanChurchAid.
• In October 2017, DanWatch claimed that a “DanWatch-investigation” led to Danish pension fund, Sampension, to divest from four publicly traded Israeli companies.
• On January 29, 2015, DanWatch posted a publication as part of its “Tourism on Stolen Land” project, funded by DanChurchAid, which targets seven Danish travel agencies for allegedly “systematically advertis[ing] occupied territories as Israeli” and violating the Danish Marketing Practices Act.
  • This publication was accompanied by a campaign accusing the firms of failing to inform “the tourists that they will find themselves in an illegal settlement…beyond Israel’s internationally recognised borders.” This is a political, and not a legal or ethical activity.
  • DanWatch claims that were are “ethical” problems in the advertisements, and it feared that the tours may help Israel reframe the conflict. Instead, DanWatch sought to create a litmus test for Danish travel agencies, forcing agents to accept the Palestinian narrative.
• On September 26, 2014, DanWatch released a statement, “Danish trade with cosmetics from settlements: AHAVA,” falsely implying that the Israeli cosmetic company AHAVA illegally extracts natural resources from the Dead Sea. This publication was reportedly a major catalyst that led several Danish retails stores to remove Ahava products from their displays.

Methodological Failures and Reliance on Biased Political Advocacy NGOs

• DanWatch bases its research on some of the most unreliable, biased, and radical NGOs including Who Profits, Israel Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), and Al-Haq. These groups are all leaders in promoting anti-Israel BDS campaigns and political warfare based on double standards and false allegations.
• DanWatch quotes frequently from Who Profits, a project initiated “in response to the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel,” and as “a key asset to the global movement of economic activism and BDS.”
• In its November 2012 report, “The Israeli Settlements and International Law,” DanWatch cites Al-Haq, a leader in anti-Israel “lawfare” campaigns and BDS activities. The NGO’s General Director Shawan Jabarin is linked to the PFLP. Al-Haq proposed sabotaging the Israeli court system by “flooding the [Israeli Supreme] Court with petitions in the hope of obstructing its functioning and resources.”
• In a July 2014 article on the actions of the ISS private security group in Israel, DanWatch quoted the Israel Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).
  • ICAHD supports BDS as an “instrument of Palestinian liberation” and “ending Israel’s occupation and colonization of all Arab lands.”
  • Explicitly advocates for the end of the state of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, stating that “the only option for resolving the conflict [is] a one-state solution.”
• In July 2014, DanWatch targeted Ahava and other cosmetics firms, quoting United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) repeatedly, which often in turn cites to the same political advocacy NGOs.