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MLA Boycott Resolution and NGO "Documentation"
Background
Right to Enter
- Right to Enter (RTE) is “a grassroots campaign defending the rights of access, movement and residency in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory. We are a volunteer group of individuals and families affected by the current Israeli occupation authorities policy that denies entry to foreign passport holders to the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) via the Israeli unilaterally controlled international border crossings to the oPt.” The organization makes no mention of the Egyptian border with Gaza.
- RTE’s funding and other details are entirely non-transparent. Names of leading officials or volunteers are not posted, and no funding information is available on the organization’s website.
- The organization includes links to other “organizing groups” including radical NGOs such as BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, Bil’in Popular Resistance Committee, Holy Land Trust, International Solidarity Movement, Palestine Solidarity Project. RTE Meetings are held weekly at the Al-Haq offices in Ramallah. Al Haq is a leader of anti-Israel lawfare and demonization campaigns, and its General Director, Shawan Jabarin, has been denied exit visas by Israel and Jordan on account of his alleged ties to the PFLP.
- The supporting material provided by RTE to the authors of the MLA resolution makes no mention of terrorism, security, or other legitimate justifications for denials of entry into those territories.
- Under international law, Israel is under no obligation to allow entry from its territory to Gaza.
Electronic Intifada
- Electronic Intifada (EI) is an online media framework that promotes a Palestinian agenda through anti-Israel political warfare.
- The EI documentation linked to the MLA draft resolution presents accounts from two academics denied entry into the West Bank. Similar to the material provided by Right to Enter, the context of terror and security is entirely omitted and responses from Israeli authorities are not provided.
- EI funding sources are not transparent. NGO Monitor research revealed one institutional funder — ICCO, a Dutch church-based organization that receives close to 90% of its annual budget from the Dutch government.
- Ali Abunimah, co-founder and executive director of EI, is a leading advocate of a “one-state” framework. To actualize this, he says “coercion is necessary,” and dismisses Jewish concerns of living under an Arab majority as “irrational, racist fears.”
- Abinimah also claims Zionism “is one of the worst forms of anti-Semitism in existence today,” claiming that it “dehumanizes its victims, denies their history, and has a cult-like worship of ethnoracial purity” (Twitter; October 26, 2010). He also wrote “That is something Zionism shares with anti-Semitism, a disdain for actual Jewish culture and life as it existed.”
- Holocaust references appear frequently in his comments. He calls Gaza a “ghetto for surplus non-Jews,” and claims “Supporting Zionism is not atonement for the Holocaust, but its continuation in spirit.”
- EI submissions use apartheid rhetoric, and accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing, Judaizing Jerusalem, and genocide.
B’Tselem
- The excepts from the 2007 B’tselem report included in the MLA materials makes dozens of broad claims without providing sources or specific figures for independent verification. Many of the claims are simply anecdotal, and conditions on the ground have changed significantly in the past 6 years.
- In general, B’tselem’s reports have been shown to reflect methodological flaws, misrepresentations of international law, inaccurate research, and skewed statistics. B’tselem draws legal conclusions that are based on false factual claims or incorrect restatement of the applicable law.
- B’tselem ascribes political motives to IDF policies and discounts the security concerns without actual knowledge.