Posted by: John Phoenix
Jewish Currents
jewishcurrents@gmail.com
On November 7th, the Israeli legal group Shurat HaDin announced via email that it sent a letter to the Rockefeller Foundation calling on the fund to “cease and desist” its donations to two Palestinian groups: Al-Haq, which is the most well-known Palestinian human rights organization in the West Bank, and Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-Palestine), which advocates for Palestinian children ensnared in Israeli’s military court system. In October, Israel declared these groups, and four others, to be “terrorist” organizations and “fronts” for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
According to Shurat HaDin’s email, the group sent the letter on behalf of the relatives of Israelis killed in attacks attributed to the PFLP. The organization, which has close ties to the Israeli government, warned that continuing to fund the civil society groups would constitute “aiding and abetting terrorism,” and that any assistance to the group “exposes the benefactor to huge claims of damages.” Israel has offered no concrete evidence to substantiate its claim that the Palestinian civil society groups are fronts for the PFLP.
Shurat HaDin’s announcement got some basic facts wrong. The Rockefeller Foundation does not fund any groups in Palestine, according to its grant website. Instead, Shurat HaDin appears to have been referring to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), which does fund nonprofits that defend Palestinian human rights. RBF has, in fact, given $190,000 to DCI-Palestine over the past four years, but hasn’t donated to Al-Haq, according to a spokesperson for the fund. (Shurat HaDin’s founder did not return a request for comment.)
Shurat HaDin’s announcement is notable for other reasons beyond the group’s sloppiness. The missive marked the first known instance of an Israeli organization capitalizing on Israel’s October announcement that six leading Palestinian civil society groups were blacklisted as “terrorist” organizations by the Israeli Defense Ministry.
In announcing the letter to the Rockefeller Foundation, Shurat HaDin previewed how it and other groups could use Israel’s “terror” designation targeting Palestinian civil society groups to attempt to tie international funders of those groups up in court, thereby discouraging such support. The strategy relies on the overbroad nature of US counterterrorism laws, which civil rights groups have long warned are used to chill speech and association. The strategy has been honed and tried repeatedly by a global network of Israel advocacy organizations in recent years, with limited success. But now, this network has the weight of an Israeli government declaration to buoy their effort to defund Palestinian civil society.
So far, lawsuits using similar logic have failed in US courts. In 2019, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) filed a civil lawsuit against the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), accusing the organization of violating the US Anti-Terrorism Act by assisting Palestinian firebomb attacks on JNF land near the barrier separating Gaza from Israel. The JNF claimed that because USCPR was a fiscal sponsor of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, and because the committee has ties to a group called the Palestinian National and Islamic Forces (a coalition of Palestinian political parties including Fatah, the Palestinian People’s Party, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad) that the JNF alleged was ultimately responsible for the firebomb attacks, USCPR was liable for damage made to the land. In March, a federal judge granted USCPR’s motion to dismiss the suit, ruling that the plaintiffs had not proved that USCPR aided the attacks.
But the point of such campaigns may not be to win these lawsuits outright, as much as Israel advocacy groups might want that. Instead, human rights advocates say the point is to divert the Palestinian rights movement’s attention to combating legal threats, and to try to stigmatize organizations by labeling them supporters of “terrorism.”
“It doesn’t matter if there’s no likelihood of success on the merits. The whole purpose is to up the costs of supporting Palestinian human rights defenders,” said Diala Shamas, staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Any foundation, any financial institution, is going to think twice about continuing to engage with Palestinian human rights advocates if they know they’re going to be hit with these kinds of lawsuits.”
The other threat to Palestinian civil society comes from the international banking system. Palestinian rights advocates fear that some banks may not want to take on the risk of facilitating transfers of money to organizations that Israel has designated as “terrorist” organizations. This strategy has already been pursued: In June 2019, Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs claimed that it had helped shut down the US and European financial accounts of 30 organizations involved in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement after informing financial institutions of the groups’ alleged ties to Palestinian political factions deeemed “terrorist” organizations.
“Most of the attention is focused on governments’ [response to Israel’s designation], but in reality, if Citibank and all these big financial services institutions decide that there’s too much risk, and start to take action on the private side, it doesn’t matter what governments do or think,” said Brad Parker, Senior Adviser on Policy and Advocacy for DCI-Palestine.
There’s also the risk of individual donors getting scared enough to take it upon themselves to stop funding Palestinian civil society groups. Earlier this month, Felm, a Finnish Christian group that funded DCI-Palestine, announced it would be cutting off funds because of Israel’s “terror” designation. Even though Felm said it saw no evidence of misuse of funds, the group’s executive director told Reuters that continuing to fund DCI-Palestine “could have impacted the work we do in 30 countries through banking services for example.”
At the same time, many funders of Palestinian civil society organizations are pushing back against the Israeli crackdown. On November 16th, over 100 foundations and donors, including funders of Palestinian groups and some that don’t work in Palestine, issued an open letter of solidarity with the Palestinian groups targeted, warning Israel that “this attempt to ‘chill’ our funding and solidarity will not work.”
“Our role is not just to provide money, but to stand in solidarity with organizations facing backlash to their work,” said Veronica Vidal Degiorgis, a program director at the Global Fund for Women, which funds the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, one of the blacklisted groups. “This targeted assault is a blatant attack to silence and criminalize dissent.”
But she also said that there’s uncertainty about how foundations can continue to donate to the blacklisted groups.
“That’s the question: how are we going to make sure these organizations can receive funding?” said Degiorgis.
