Sadaka – The Ireland Palestine Alliance

Profile

Country/TerritoryIreland
Websitehttp://www.sadaka.ie/
Founded2009
In their own words“Maximising support in Ireland for the freedom and rights of the Palestinian people”

Funding

Activities

Political Advocacy

  • Sadaka’s rhetoric includes accusations of “apartheid,” ethnic cleansing,” “war crimes,” and “collective punishment,” as well as supporting a Palestinian “right of return.”
  • Sadaka runs a campaign against the “Israeli authorities…protracted war of oppression, brutality and submission on Palestinian children.” In the campaign, Sadaka relies on a highly inaccurate March 2013 UNICEF report that falsely alleged “widespread, systematic and institutionalized” ill-treatment of children within the Israeli military justice system. Copied almost entirely from publications from PFLP-linked NGOs, the UNICEF report contains numerous factual and legal errors. UNICEF was forced to issue a correction in 2015.
  • Sadaka has supported the Kairos Palestine document, which promotes BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions); denies the Jewish historical connections to Israel in theological terms; and rationalizes, justifies, and trivializes terrorism, calling it “legal resistance.”
  • In April 2023, Sadaka 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 November 2022, Sadaka, alongside 17 other Irish NGOs, launched the Irish Anti-Apartheid Campaign, calling on Ireland to “publicly recognise that the State of Israel is committing the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people, and to take concrete measures to end this crime against humanity.”
  • In November 2022, Sadaka was a signatory on a letter to the ICC Prosecutor to “Urgently expedite his investigation into the Situation of Palestine, including the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.” 
  • In August 2022, Sadaka signed a joint statement condemning the decision by Israel to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. The statement called for the international community to “take effective measures to end all other actions that deny Palestinians their inalienable human rights” and to “their support and increase funding to the organizations and engage with financial institutions to ensure the transfer of funds to the organizations.”
  • In May 2022, Sadaka was a signatory to a flagrantly antisemitic report submitted to the UNHRC’s permanent Commission of Inquiry against Israel. The submission presented a blatantly false historical account that denied Israel’s right to exist, categorized Israel’s very existence as illegal, and labeled Zionism as a form of racism, demanding that the Commission “Recognise and Address Zionist Settler Colonialism and Apartheid as the Root Causes of Israel’s Ongoing Violations.”
  • In August 2021, Sadaka partnered with Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P) on a campaign titled “A Different Kind of School Run” to “raise awareness of the violence perpetrated upon Palestinian children as they endure illegal Israeli settlers, checkpoints and other military paraphernalia on the daily trip to school.”
    • Numerous individuals with alleged ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist organization designated as such by the USEUCanada, and Israel, have been employed and appointed as board members at DCI-P.
    • On October 22, 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Defense declared Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P) a “terror organization” because it is part of “a network of organizations” that operates “on behalf of the ‘Popular Front’.” For more information on DCI-P’s PFLP ties, read NGO Monitor’s report “Defense for Children International – Palestine’s Ties to the PFLP Terror Group.”
  • In April 2021, Sadaka welcomed the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to launch a formal investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Israel in the “State of Palestine.” According to Sadaka, “This is a long-awaited and a critically important step towards ensuring the rule of law and ending impunity, while ensuring accountability for Israel’s crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court.”
  • In January 2021, Sadaka published a briefing stating that “Israel’s failure to provide vaccines for everyone between the river and the sea is just another example of a deeply-embedded institutionalised system of racial discrimination and segregation.  In other words, apartheid.” Sadaka falsely claimed that Israel has “legal obligations” to provide vaccines to the Palestinians 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 November 2017, Sadaka hosted a conference titled “50 Years of Occupation: the Roadblocks to Justice for Palestinians” discussing the “critical role of the international community in bringing about an end to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine.” The conference called for Ireland “to compel Israel to cease and reverse its illegal activities rather than merely calling for peace negotiations between both sides to resume.” Speakers included Mustafa Barghouti, Hugh Lovatt, Daniel Levy, and Rima Hunaidi.
    • Mustafa Barghouti, president of Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS), takes part in BDS activitiesstating, “We are now in the early stages of a campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions directed at this Israeli government for its refusal to abide by international law. Such action successfully overturned Jim Crow laws in the American South and apartheid in South Africa, and we are slowly applying it to Israeli occupation and apartheid.”
    • Hugh Lovatt, the European Council on Foreign Relations Programme Coordinator for Israel/Palestine, has proposed a policy of “differentiation,” which masks a BDS agenda under the guise of pursuing a consistent EU policy. The “differentiation” policy also advocates sanctions against individuals.
    • Daniel Levy is the co-founder of EuMEP, a trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fundco-founder of J Street, and former member of the board of directors of Molad-The Center for the Renewal of Democracy and the New Israel Fund (NIF). Levy has referred to BDS as “a legitimate and non-violent form of protest against an illegal and inhumane policy of occupation,” adding that the proposition “that Israel will only respond to disincentives, that the occupation cease to be cost-free” is “worth testing.”
    • Rima Hunaidi, former head of the United Nations’ West Asia commission, resigned from the United Nations in March 2017 following being forced to withdraw a report that accused Israel of being “guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid.”
  • In February 2015, Sadaka launched a billboard campaign calling for the Irish government to “recognise the State of Palestine and to draw attention to the devastating consequences of Israel’s policies of colonisation on Palestine and its people.”
  • During the 2014 Gaza war, Sadaka organized a petition to the Irish government calling to “stop Israel’s slaughter in Gaza.”
  • In 2013, Sadaka and the Curriculum Development Unit ‘Education for Reconciliation’ Initiative launched a curriculum titled “Palestine & Israel – How will there be a Just Peace?” to teach students throughout Ireland about the “Palestinian Israeli situation within the context of Human Rights and International Law.” The curriculum was funded by the European Union.

BDS Activities

  • Sadaka “endorses the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel until such time as Israel complies with international law and ends its illegal occupation of Palestine. One of Sadaka’s key organisational aims is to promote and gain mainstream support throughout all sections of Irish society for the BDS campaign.”
  • Sadaka’s website hosts a database titled “Mapping support for Palestine,” which includes “National and local government sanctions and divestment against Israel and Israeli companies complicit in the Occupation.”
  • In February 2023, Sadaka was a signatory on a statement “welcom[ing] the historic announcement by the Barcelona City Council to suspend all institutional relations with apartheid Israel.” The statement called for “arms embargo against apartheid Israel, stopping trade with Israel’s illegal colonial settlements, and ending projects and agreements that sustain the illegal situation, including the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the EU-Israel Association Council, international agreements for gas pipes through the Gaza coast, and the Euro-Asia Interconnector project receiving electricity from Israel’s colonial settlement enterprise.”
  • In September 2022, Sadaka was a signatory on a letter to the European Union to “review its decision to revive the Association Council Meeting, stop the recently signed gas deal and review its bilateral cooperation programmes.” According to the call, “Instead of allowing Israel to entrench its colonial enterprise and apartheid regime, rewarding it with further economic cooperation and trade of harmful military equipment and technologies, the EU and its Member States have an obligation, and interest, to hold Israel accountable and put an end to impunity.”
  • In September 2022, Sadaka endorsed a report by Al-Haq and Just Peace Advocates calling to “Update the UN database annually” and “Continue to exert the necessary efforts to ensure transparency and promote accountability for business activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, to counter the pervasive impunity stemming from corporate- related violations and grave breaches of international law in such contexts.”
    • The UN BDS “blacklist” of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line selectively targets Israel apart from all other nations, is aimed at economically damaging companies that are owned by Jews or do business with Israel, and is ultimately meant to harm the Jewish State.
  • In March 2022, Sadaka was a signatory on an oral statement at the UN Human Rights Council calling to “adopt effective measures, including sanctions, to end Israeli apartheid.”
  • In February 2022, Sadaka participated in a campaign titled “#StopTradeWithSettlements” calling “for an EU law that will end trade with illegal settlements once and for all.”
  • In September 2020, Sadaka 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 2018, Sadaka “developed” the “Control of Economic Activity (Occupied territories)” bill which would make it illegal for Irish citizens and residents to import or sell “settlement goods” or to provide or attempt to provide “settlement services.” The Old City and Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, are considered “settlements” under the bill.
  • In May 2016, Sadaka published a briefing titled “50 years of Israeli occupation: The roadblock to peace” stating that “Israel’s 50-year project of settling its own citizens in the Occupied Palestinian Territories has involved the commission of war crimes by Israel on a massive scale.” Sadaka called for “serious and sustained sanctions” furthering that “Without sanctions against Israel, today’s Palestinian children will still be living under Israeli occupation when they are grandparents.”
  • Sadaka ran a campaign in advance of the February 2016 elections, lobbying candidates to sign a pledge demanding that “the Irish Government [] use all institutional mechanisms at its disposal… seek an EU ban on trade and investment with Israeli colonies/settlements…[and] to suspend military export licenses to Israel and suspend Department of Defence public procurement from Israeli arms companies.”
    • According to a Call for Proposals from December 2015, “partnership funding” for pre-election lobbying was provided by Trócaire.
  • During the 2014 Gaza war, Sadaka called for people to “Join the Nobel Laureates who are calling for an arms embargo,” “Demand that our government and the EU impose trade sanctions against Israel,” and to “Tell the US to stop providing arms to Israel.”

Board Members

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