Summary
Funded by the New Israel Fund, the Ford Foundation, and a number of European governments, Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel claims to be an "independent" organization that promotes "civil and political rights" for the Arab minority in Israel. However NGO Monitor’s detailed analysis shows that Adalah is active in promoting the Durban strategy of demonizing Israel using the rhetoric of human rights, "apartheid" and "war crimes”. Adalah’s campaign for a “Democratic Constitution” is based on “a one-state solution”, meaning the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state.

Contents

Overview

  • Mandate
  • Key Staff
  • Funding
  • Partner Organizations and joint activities

Activities inconsistent with Adalah’s stated mandate

  • Active Participation in the Durban 2001 Conference
  • Anti-Israel Campaigning at the UN
  • Activity in the politicized NGO campaign against Israel’s policy toward Gaza
  • Conflation of Palestinian issues with Status of Israeli-Arab citizens

Further examples of Adalah’s demonization of Israel as “racist,” “fascist,” and an “apartheid” regime

  • Marking Israel’s 60th Anniversary as "60 years of Al Nakba"
  • Adalah’s response to the October 2000 riots in Northern Israel
  • Erasing the context of terror: Adalah’s petition against Israel’s ‘Nationality and Entry into Israel Law’

Adalah’s “Democratic Constitution”

Conclusion

Overview

  • Mandate
Adalah ("Justice" in Arabic), established in 1966 and an Israeli-registered NGO with UN ECOSOC (Economic and Social Council) Special Consultative Status, defines itself as “an independent human rights organization,” claiming to promote “equal individual and collective rights for the Arab minority in Israel in different fields including land rights; civil and political rights; cultural, social, and economic rights; religious rights; women’s rights; and prisoners’ rights.” Adalah’s website also claims that the organization advocates for the “human rights of Palestinians [sic] citizens of Israel and Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).”    
  • Key Staff
Hassan Jabareen, the Founder and General Director of Adalah, previously worked for the Association of Civil Rights-Israel (ACRI) as a lawyer and was one of Azmi Bishara’s legal representatives in his trial over inflammatory remarks made during a visit to Syria. Bishara was later indicted for spying for Hizbullah during the 2006 Lebanon war and fled Israel. Rina Rosenberg, a Co-Founder and International Advocacy Director, previously worked with the Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA), a major participant in the 2001 Durban Conference. Orna Kahn, a senior attorney at Adalah, and Fatmeh El-Ajou, an advocate, both previously worked for ACRI.
  • Funding
According to Adalah’s annual report for 2006, its main donors include the Ford Foundation; NOVIB (Oxfam – Netherlands); The Open Society Institute Development Foundation (Switzerland/US); The New Israel Fund (US/UK/Canada); EED (Germany); The European Community (Belgium); Foundation for Middle East Peace (US); Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Switzerland; Naomi and Nehemiah Cohen Foundation (US); The Welfare Association (Jordan/Switzerland); and Christian Aid. Adalah states that it obtained grants totaling $1,004,766 in 2006.

Some of this funding was for specific projects (although the 2006 annual report does not give a breakdown of funding by project). According to reports by funding organizations, in 2005 Adalah received  EUR 513,684 for 36 months through the European Commission’s EIDHR, for a project ostensibly designed to address “Promoting Access to the Israeli Legal System for Arab Citizens of Israel.” [1]  Adalah also received a 3-year grant in 2005 for $180,000 from the Welfare Association – Open Society for a study of land and planning rights in the Negev, and an EC/NOVIB grant of EUR 519,000 for the project “Promoting Access to the Israeli Legal System for Arab Citizens of Israel.”

In addition to providing significant amounts of funding, NIF facilitates Adalah receiving tax-deductible contributions from the United States, Canada, and England.

  • Partner Organizations and joint activities
Adalah partners with many international NGO networks active in anti-Israel campaigning.  These organizations are particularly influential in lobbying at the UN Human Rights Council and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).  Adalah is a member of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN), International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and Habitat International Coalition.  It has also worked closely with Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, petitioning the High Court of Justice in 2003 and 2007 protesting the ‘Family Unification Ban.’ (This petition is further discussed below). In 2006, Adalah “undertook advocacy tours to Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Brussels, together with Israeli and Palestinian NGO partner members of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN).”
 
The organization’s reports were cited extensively in HRW’s March 2008, "Off the Map: Land and Housing Rights Violations in Israel’s Unrecognized Bedouin Villages." In one section, Adalah is referenced and quoted in more than 15 citations. NGO Monitor’s May 2008 detailed analysis shows that this report is a one-sided, simplified characterization of issues surrounding the Bedouin in the Middle East, which employs human rights terminology deceptively and omits or distorts facts that do not promote a specific political agenda.

Adalah regularly submits petitions to the Israeli Supreme Court, District Magistrate and labor courts. Adalah petitioned the High Court on April 15, 2007, along with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and the radical Palestinian NGO Al-Haq, demanding that the state investigate the Israeli government for “war crimes” allegedly perpetrated in the Gaza Strip since the outbreak of the terrorist campaign against Israel in 2001. There is a frequent overlap on issues between Adalah and these other NGOs: for example, concerning Israeli’s alleged use of human shields, Adalah submitted a petition on behalf of LAW, ACRI, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, B’Tselem, The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and HaMoked. Adalah’s 2006 "Law and Human Rights Conference for Arab Law Students," financed by the European Union, included representatives of Al-Dameer, ACRI and HaMoked.

Examples of activities that are inconsistent with Adalah’s stated mandate [2]

  • Active Participation in the Durban 2001 Conference
Adalah Director Hassan Jabareen and several colleagues played an active part in the NGO Forum of the UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR) held in Durban in 2001. The Adalah representatives “organized two panels ("Race, Politics, and Constitutionalism" and "Political Participation of Minority, Native and Indigenous Peoples") and participated in a third panel organized by Amnesty International." Adalah also distributed copies of their report, ‘Institutionalized Discrimination Against Palestinian Citizens of Israel,’ to the conference. As many participants and observers have recognized, this NGO Forum was used to promote demonization of Israel and anti-Semitism, and served as the foundation for the campaign of boycotts, demonization, and sanctions (BDS).

 

  • Anti-Israel Campaigning at the UN
Adalah’s February 2007 submission to the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) claimed that the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, enacted in 2003, is “a racist, discriminatory law that denies a person’s basic human rights on the basis of his or her national belonging.” This law was adopted in response to terror attacks carried out by Palestinians “who were granted legal status in Israel based on their marriage to an Israeli citizen, and took advantage of their Israeli ID to pass checkpoints and carry into Israel either suicide bombers or explosives.” (According to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, twenty-three terrorist attacks between 2000 and 2005 were facilitated by individuals who were granted legal status in Israel based on marriages to Israeli citizens.) However, Adalah strips this context from its analysis, misbranding Israel as “racist.”

In July 2006, Adalah submitted a letter to the United Nations along with Al Mezan, Al-Haq and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in order to update them  “on Israel’s continued construction of the Wall in contravention of international law.”

According to Adalah’s 2005 Annual Report, Adalah Attorney Marwan Dalal held discussions with Stop the Wall Campaign (which uses apartheid language in political campaigning against Israel’s security barrier) during a conference in Germany. Adalah sent a letter to Kofi Annan in May 2005, along with other organizations including the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), demanding “that you implement the recommendations via a binding resolution by the Security Council to stop the continued construction of the Separation Wall, to take down the parts that have been built on Palestinian land.”
  • Activity in the NGO campaign condemning Israel’s responses to attacks toward Gaza
In January 2008, following rocket barrages aimed at Sderot, Ashkelon, and other cities, Israel reduced fuel supplies to Gaza. (Between June and December 2007, 475 missiles and 631 mortar bombs were launched; in January 2008 these attacks intensified.)  While the Israeli measures were limited and designed to force an end to the attacks without resorting to a full-scale military operation, the Hamas leadership sought to create an image of widespread suffering and “collective punishment.” A number of international NGOs have joined in this campaign, including Amnesty International, Oxfam, and World Vision. They are joined by Israeli NGOs (many funded by the European Union and the New Israel Fund), including Adalah, in press statements, suits before the Israeli courts (designed for publicity, as they are generally rejected on substantive grounds), and submissions to the UN.  [3]

Further examples of Adalah’s demonization of Israel as “racist” and an “apartheid” regime

  • Marking Israel’s 60th Anniversary as "60 years of Al Nakba"
In May 2008, consistent with its political goal of eliminating Israel’s Jewish character, Adalah commemorated the anniversary of Israel’s independence with "60 Years of Al Nakba." Nakba the Arabic word for "catastrophe," refers in this context to the very existence of the state of Israel.  This campaign is accompanied by inflammatory images, including the logo for “60 Years of Al Nakba” and a slide show entitled, “The March for the Right of Return.”

 

  • Adalah’s response to the October 2000 riots in Northern Israel
Following the deaths of 12 Israeli Arabs and 1 Palestinian Arab during protests in Northern Israel in October 2000, Adalah accused Israel of carrying out a “policy of revenge against Arab citizens.” As NGO Monitor reported in November 2006, Adalah was sharply criticized by Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz for statements concerning the police investigation of riots. Mazuz remarked, “you [Adalah] chose to hand over your own report in which you presented sharp and absolute facts and conclusions, … you held a press conference in which [speakers] made – in addition to legitimate criticism – harsh and unacceptable statements,” referring to comments reportedly made by the head of a bereaved families group at an Adalah press conference declaring the Israeli government a “junta which proves each day that it is the most fascist and racist in history.”

 

  • Ignoring the context of terror: Adalah’s petition against Israel’s ‘Nationality and Entry into Israel Law’
Following a series of terror attacks involving Palestinians who gained Israeli citizenship by marrying Israeli Arabs, the Knesset adopted the Nationality and Entry into Israel Law (2003) which limited the granting of automatic citizenship in such cases. In August 2003, Adalah submitted a petition against this law to the Supreme Court alleging that the “new law violates the constitutionally-protected rights of equality, liberty and privacy, as it limits the ability of Israeli citizens’, namely Palestinian citizens of Israel, to exercise these rights based on the ethnicity of their spouses.” Adalah falsely attributed “racist motives to Israeli policies that are necessitated by the security situation.”

In its campaigns, Adalah completely distorted the impetus for the law, and the instances in which suicide bombers and explosives were smuggled through checkpoints into Israel by people granted legal status in Israel based on their marriage to an Israeli citizen (a severe security concern as noted by the Israeli Foreign Ministry). Adalah also failed to note that the situation in many other democratic nations, including America, France and Britain, whereby marriage to a citizen does not automatically guarantee residency or citizenship.

Adalah issued a news update on 14 May 2006, commenting on the Supreme Court’s approval of the Family Unification Law, comparing Israel’s policies with those of apartheid South Africa:

 

“In 1980, during Apartheid, a Court in South Africa refused to approve orders similar to the Nationality and Entry into Israel Law, because they contradicted the right to a family…Supreme Court has instituted three tracks of citizenship on the basis of ethnic background: a direct track for Jews under the Law of Return; a middle track for foreigners according to the graduated procedure; and the harshest track, for Arab citizens.”

Adalah’s “Democratic Constitution”

In March 2007, Adalah published a “Democratic Constitution,” which called for the end of Israel as a democratic society with a Jewish character. If the Constitution were to be adopted, immigration of Jews would not be permitted unless for “humanitarian reasons” (page 8). In addition, the Jewish cultural framework would be replaced by a “democratic, bilingual and multicultural” state where “Hebrew and Arabic are the official languages of the State of Israel and enjoy equal status in all of the functions and activities of the legislative and executive branches”.

In its December 2007 newsletter, Adalah articulated explicit support for the “single-state approach,” portrayed as a “supra-national” framework.  This proposal is “geared toward the international community” and meant “in large part to ensure that the Palestinian refugees can fulfill their right of return”.  Adalah labeled criticism of its plan as “hysteria” and claimed that “[s] uch reactions were characteristic of colonial regimes, which viewed any challenge to their constitutional structure, based on repression, as a strategic threat.”

Conclusion

Although some of Adalah’s activities accord with the mandate it publicly espouses, many others, particularly political and legal campaigning in Israel and internationally (including at the UN) demonstrate its clear political agenda. Adalah rejects the legitimacy of the State of Israel as a Jewish State and argues that Israel is a “racist” state similar to apartheid South Africa.

In its campaigning against Israeli government policies, including legal petitions concerning Israeli citizenship laws and Israel’s border policies with Gaza, Adalah consistently mutes the context of terrorism and Israel’s legitimate security concerns. Given these activities, continued funding by the EU, the Swiss government, New Israel Fund and Ford Foundation warrants reevaluation. 

To read NGO Monitor’s correspondence with NIF on Adalah funding, click here.

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[1] Gerald M. Steinberg, Europe’s Hidden Hand: EU Funding for Political NGOs in the Arab-Israeli Conflict, NGO Monitor Monograph Series, 2008

[2] Some of Adalah’s activities do in fact seek to promote equality for members of the Arab minority in Israel in areas such as education and other services.  However, this aspect of Adalah’s agenda does not “balance” or justify the emphasis on campaigning to isolate Israel in the UN, or the effort to delegitimize Israel as a Jewish state.

[3] See, for example, NGO Monitor, Israeli Supreme Court rules (Jan. 30, 2008) policy towards Gaza, fuel cuts, are legal; Gisha and Adalah reject ruling, January 31, 2008