Activities

• Claims Israel has developed “a complex system of rules and sanctions” to control the “fundamental right of Palestinians to freedom of movement” and violates Palestinian “basic rights… including the right to life, the right to access medical care, the right to education, the right to livelihood, the right to family unity and the right to freedom of religion.”

Political Advocacy

• In September 2025, following US sanctions against PFLP-linked NGOs Al-Haq, Al Mezan, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Gisha was a signatory on a joint statement, “This is yet another move aimed at erasing fundamental norms of protecting human beings, designed to enable Israel to continue harming Palestinians without restraint. We stand in full solidarity with our colleagues and partners working for human rights between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and especially in the face of the genocide that Israel is committing in the Gaza Strip.”
• In July 2025, Gisha was a signatory on a joint NGO letter to the European Commission High Representative/Vice President Kaja Kallas, pressing for a review of the “full spectrum of systematic & escalating violations of human rights and humanitarian law- both in Gaza and in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.” The signatories also demanded “accountability” for Israel.  
• In June 2025, following Israeli and American strikes on Iranian nuclear and military sites and Iran’s targeting of Israeli population centers, Gisha tweeted, “While all eyes are on Israel/Iran, millions of Palestinians in Gaza continue to be subjected to Israel’s widespread attacks, mass displacement & policy of starvation. The war with Iran is no excuse for Israel to deny its obligations to Gaza residents, which it has done for 20 long months and prior to the current crisis. Civilians, wherever they are, in Gaza, Israel, and Iran, must be protected.”
• In May 2025, Gisha was a signatory on a statement alleging, “Israel is deliberately inflicting conditions that make life impossible in Gaza, with the declared goal of carrying out ethnic cleansing.”
• In October 2024, Gisha was a signatory on a statement claiming, “states have an obligation to prevent the crimes of starvation and forcible transfer…All states and relevant international institutions should act now and use all tools at their disposal – legal, diplomatic and economic – to prevent this.”
• In September 2024, Gisha was a signatory on a joint NGO statement alleging that “the IHRA definition has been degraded into a coercive tactic, weaponized by the Israeli government to silence public dissent to its unlawful and harmful policies, including against Jews, human rights organizations, the United Nations and the International Court of Justice.”
  • 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 June 2024, following the ICC Prosecutor announcement to seek arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant, Gisha jointly published a report with other politicized NGOs, claiming, “This is a far-reaching step, but an important and necessary one given the scale and severity of the crimes of which they are suspected. Though we regret the circumstances that led to this dire situation, we welcome the existence of international systems of justice and law and support the steps taken by them to intervene and to stop the occurrence of war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
• In October 2023, Gisha Executive Director Tania Hary tweeted, “Today many asked me a version of the question ‘how much longer do they have?’ in reference to the siege. Do they mean how long until they starve to death? I can’t say. Maybe ask Israeli officials how many people in Gaza have to die before the thirst for vengeance is quenched.”
• In June 2023, Gisha, alongside 16 Israeli NGOs, published a joint report titled “State of the Occupation – Year 56: A Joint Situation Report” affirming that “that after 56 years of occupation, Israel’s actions in the West Bank today meet the criteria of apartheid.” According to the report, “The current government’s steps, motivated by its stated Jewish supremacy ideology, will also deepen the apartheid regime governing nearly all aspects of oPt Palestinians’ lives.”
• In May 2023, Gisha was a signatory on a statement blaming Israel for the death of Khader Adnan following his 86-day-long hunger strike and refusal to receive medical treatment from the Israeli Prisons Service. According to the statement, “Israel’s unjust system of arrests and detention are part and parcel of the policies used by Israel to maintain its occupation and apartheid regime.”
  • The statement ignored that Adnan was a senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad member arrested in February 2023 and was indicted for membership in a terror group, supporting a terrorist organization, and incitement.
• In April 2023, Gisha 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, Gisha was a signatory on a statement condemning the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations.  According to the statement, “We stand in solidarity with our fellow human rights defenders in Palestinian society. We repudiate these baseless declarations and call on the international community to pressure Israel to revoke its decision.”
  • In October 2021, Gisha was a signatory on a statement referring to the designations as a “draconian measure that criminalizes critical human rights work.”
• In February 2021, Gisha welcomed the announcement of the International Criminal Court (ICC) that it has the jurisdiction to open an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Israel in the “State of Palestine.” According to Gisha, “it is unsurprising that the ICC prosecutor found sufficient basis for conducting an investigation into the situation in the region. Grave violations of basic rights and of international law, which take place daily as a matter of routine, must be stopped immediately, and justice ensured for victims.”
• In January 2021, Gisha, 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 August 2020, Gisha published a blog post referring to Gaza as a “penal colony.”
• In April 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gisha Director of International Relations Beth Oppenheim published an article in Arab News entitled “Israel must take responsibility for Gaza,” delegitimizing Israel’s security policies and ignoring the fact that Hamas is a violent and internationally designated terrorist organization.  Oppenheim denied Hamas and other Palestinian actors agency for diverting resources to weapons, tunnels, and terror, instead of public infrastructure, and pivoted from her organization’s previous preemptive blaming of Israel for the potential spread of the pandemic in Gaza to a premature blaming of Israel for the “economic reverberations” that will be felt following the pandemic.
• In January 2020, Gisha released a statement comparing the Trump peace plan to apartheid South Africa, likening proposed Palestinian enclaves to “Bantustans” and referring to the plan as a “plan for ongoing conflict.”
• In July 2019, Gisha signed on a letter to the German parliament claiming that BDS is not antisemitic, saying that it was “a disservice to the true fight against antisemitism to equate it with BDS.”
• In April 2018, Gisha, together with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), Yesh Din, and Hamoked, petitioned the High Court of Justice demanding that the “Court order the cancellation of open-fire regulations allowing IDF soldiers to fire live ammunition at demonstrators who do not endanger the lives of soldiers on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip.” The petition ignores the violent nature of the protests, which included Molotov cocktails, arson, and attempts to breach the border fence with Israel.The Court rejected the petition, stating that the NGOs misrepresented the situation along the border and the applicable international legal framework. The court also found that following the NGOs’ recommended steps would result in more Palestinian casualties.
• On June 30, 2017, Executive Director Tania Hary, Gisha’s executive director, spoke at the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) “Forum to Mark Fifty Years of Occupation” discussing a “policy of hubris and cruelty. I think that what’s happening in the Gaza Strip and what’s been happening now for at least the last 10 years is one of the biggest experimentation projects on the planet. The idea is how do you test the breaking point of 2 million people?”
• In June 2017, to mark 50 years of occupation, Gisha launched “50 shades of control” showing an “exhaustive list of aspects of the lives of residents of Gaza still controlled by Israel” including “employ[ing] collective punishment” and “harm[ing] the economy.”
• On February 15, 2017, Gisha participated in a Knesset conference on 50 Years of Occupation with the message that “Israel must choose between peace with the Palestinians, and the road to apartheid or war.”
• In January 2017, Gisha released a report titled “Hand on the Switch” on the lack of infrastructure in Gaza, claiming that “One fact stands out above all… Israel has maintained 50 years of continuous control over Gaza.”
• In 2010, released a video game, titled “Safe Passage,” which aims “to inform about the legal and military measures that Israel uses to implement its policy of separation between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank” and urges users to “assist in the building of a prosperous Palestinian society.”
• In 2010, then executive director Sari Bashi accused the IDF of enacting policies in order “to empty the West Bank of Palestinians” and alleged that the “policy appear[s] to be political rather than security-oriented.”
• In 2007, Gisha partnered with Yesh Din, Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, HaMoked, Machsom Watch, Physicians for Human Rights and Bimkom, to petition the Israeli High Court of Justice to demand “the abolishment of the order which forbids Palestinians from traveling in Israeli cars driven by Israelis or foreigners.” The preface of the appeal alleged that “[o]ut of all the red lines [Israel has] crossed… the order on ‘traffic and transportation’ carries within it grave seeds of evil.”

Apartheid Rhetoric

• Gisha 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 December 2022, Gisha was a signatory on a statement claiming that the “occupation and apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories have made Jewish supremacy the de facto law of the land and the new government seeks to adopt this into their official policy.”
• In February 2022, Gisha signed a joint statement welcoming the 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 February 2023, Gisha signed a second joint statement condemning EU High Representative Josep Borrell  for rejecting Amnesty’s report as antisemitic. The NGOs claimed to be “deeply concerned about the escalating instrumentalization of allegations of antisemitism…The European Commission should refrain from validating and fueling such instrumentalization in any way.”
  • In May 2021, Gisha participated in a conference in the Israeli Knesset titled “After 54 years: Between occupation and apartheid.”
• In January 2021, Gisha published an article titled “Naming the reality,” writing that “word apartheid evokes revulsion, as it should. There are undoubtedly differences between the apartheid regime in South Africa and Israel, but the thread that connects them is undeniable.”

Staff

• Sari Bashi, founder of Gisha and board member, became the Israel and Palestine country director at Human Rights Watch in April 2014.
  • In January 2017, Bashi wrote an op-ed (“Fifa must take strong stance against Israeli settlement clubs”) stating that “FIFA should heed the UN Security Council’s reaffirmation that the West Bank is not part of Israel, and that settlements are illegal. The only logical conclusion is for FIFA to instruct the Israel Football Association to stop holding matches in West Bank settlements.”
  • On November 21, 2016, Bashi sent a letter to the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein praising the latest efforts to establish a UN boycott of Israel and offer up three specific companies to be included.
• Noam Rabinovich, Gisha Director of International Relations, was formerly the Fundraising Manager at the New Israel Fund and an International Relations Associate at B’Tselem.

Funding to Gisha Based on Quarterly Reports to the Israeli Registrar of Non-Profits (amounts in NIS)

Comprehensive funding data for 2024-2025 is not yet available. The information for funding in those years comes from data taken from Gisha’s quarterly reports to the Israeli Registrar of Non-Profits 

Donor	2025	2024
Oxfam		74,255
Oxfam Novib (Netherlands)	185,625
Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)	105,501
UNDP	1,548,493	643,455
Broederlijk Delen (Belgium)	174,745	175,748
Irish Aid (Ireland)	395,305	515,823
Finland	39,026	58,663
Switzerland		572,478
European Union	101,920	162,318
Norway	412,973	407,559
NGO Development Center (Ramallah)	292,411	1,224,810
Bread for the World	337,405	357,124
Misereor	256,662

Funding to Gisha Based on Annual Reports to the Israeli Registrar of Non-Profits (amounts in NIS)