Ir Amim

Profile

Country/TerritoryIsrael
Websitehttp://www.ir-amim.org.il/
Founded2000, and became active as a non-profit organization in 2004
In their own wordsFocuses on “Jerusalem within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” and “seeks to render Jerusalem a more equitable and sustainable city for the Israelis and Palestinians who share it.”

Funding

Activities

  • Activities include “Monitoring” and “exposing” Israeli government actions in Jerusalem, “policy and legal advocacy,” and running highly politicized tours of Jerusalem and the security barrier.
  • Although it has been described as “work[ing] toward coexistence in Jerusalem,” an Ir Amim official was quoted as saying that the group was “seeking to advance a political agenda, and was not an organization geared to promote coexistence.”
  • Ir Amim frequently accuses Israel of attempting to “Judaize” Jerusalem and promotes the Palestinian narrative on the city, including claims that “government powers are being handed over to the settler organizations” and archeological digs have become an important “tool in the fight for control” over Jerusalem.
  • Maintains that the security barrier “extracts neighborhoods from the city with the goal of reducing the portion of Palestinians” and that the “barrier’s demographic rationale therefore outweighs its security rationale.” It further maintains, “Erecting the barrier within this framework is one more tool for Israel’s ‘divide and rule’ policy, as a result of which Palestinian Jerusalem has been shattered to pieces.” These allegations omit the context of Palestinian terror attacks and Israeli national security concerns.
  • In March 2022, Ir Amim Director of International Relations and Advocacy Amy Cohen participated in a conference held by the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) on the “Impact of Forced Displacement on Palestinian Women.”
  • In January 2022, Ir Amim was a signatory on a statement condemning the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. The statement called on the donors of the designated NGOs to “maintain and even increase their funding…Defunding the designated NGOs based on unsubstantiated allegations and designations will cause irreparable damage to Palestinian civil society at large and would undermine decades of humanitarian and human rights work.”
  • In May 2021, Ir Amim shared on its website an article published in the Irish Journal titled “Jerusalem expulsions are a microcosm of Israel’s apartheid – justice requires action,” which called for the Irish government to “study” Human Rights Watch’s report accusing Israel of apartheid and “act upon its recommendations.”
  • In November 2019, following the decision to erect a cable car in and around the Old City of Jerusalem, Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher with Ir Amim, stated that the “project has political layers aimed at giving legitimacy to settlers in the area… The project is a way to whitewash Israel’s taking of areas in Silwan to use for archaeological and touristic reasons.”
  • In January 2019, following then Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan celebrating an increase of Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount, Ir Amim posted on Facebook, “Really, Erdan? In this you are proud, in the strengthening of the movements of the temple? In political support on the most sleepy fringes of the far right? Those who want to blow up the Dome of the Rock, build a third temple, return to the Judaism of sacrificial offerings and re-establish the Sanhedrin? Have you made the police a tool of these delusional movements and for that you are proud?” (emphasis added).
  • In May 2018, in response to the announcement that the United States would be moving its embassy to Jerusalem, Ir Amim Director of Policy Advocacy Oshrat Maimon called it a “predatory, forceful and unilateral step.”
  • In February 2017, Ir Amim and Bimkom wrote a report titled “Deliberately Planned: A Policy to Thwart Planning in the Palestinian Neighborhoods of Jerusalem,” placing sole responsibility on Israel for the conflict and accusing the Israeli authorities of “deliberately suppress[ing] the growth and development of the Palestinian community.”
  • In an interview (published September 15, 2013) with the highly politicized +972 Magazine, Yudith Oppenheimer, executive director of Ir Amim, claimed that “the construction of national parks that impose a very strict, nationalist Jewish narrative” is “imposing an Israeli presence and narrative on the Old City and its surroundings and trying to eliminate the Palestinian presence” in Jerusalem.
  • In May 2010, David Horovitz, then editor of the Jerusalem Post, wrote that the Jerusalem Moments film series, produced by Ir Amim, “contained just about every imaginable one-sided, context-deficient, unbalanced misrepresentation of Israel rolled into one nasty package…a relentless Palestinian Israel-bashing, interspersed with near-relentless Israeli Israel-bashing.”
  • An Ir Amim blog entry in the Huffington Post (April 27, 2010), appeals to the United States government to, “Threaten [Israel] with severing diplomatic ties. Threaten us with cutting back on, or even cutting off, the annual support package. Bludgeon us over the head and force us to wise up.”

Partners

  • Member of the “Displacement Work Group,” an initiative of Badil and OCHA to “monitor human rights violations (evictions, home demolitions, land confiscations) resulting in the displacement of people from their lands and communities,” along with: Addameer, Al-Haq, Al-Mezan, Defense for Children international – Palestine (DCI-P)AIC, ARIJ, Badil, BIMKOM, B’Tselem, CARE Intnl., Diakonia, EAPPI, ICAHD, Medical Aid for Palestinians, Oxfam UK, Oxfam Solidarite – Belgium, PA Govt. Spokesperson, PCHR, RHR, Society of St. Yves, Save the Children UK, Shatil, UNFPA, Stop the Wall, ACRI, UNFPA, Yesh Din, and World Vision.

Foreign donations based on reports to Israeli Registrar of Non-Profits (amounts in NIS)

2019-2022 amounts based on quarterly financial reports submitted to the Israeli Registrar of Non-Profits.

Donor2022202120202019
Bread for the World (Germany)311,794433,606465,379
European Union346,1181,115,138400,210
France200,000
Germany45,330274,541
Heinrich Boll22,500
Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)175,409173,949
Ireland142,74440,056
Norway913,0731,345,057
Sweden 443,760261,786
Konrad Adenauer Foundation279,61040,430
Switzerland46,697294,896243,163
United States60,37562,202

All Articles about Ir Amim

Further Reading