Activities

• Al Quds Association rhetoric includes accusations of “apartheid,” “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “collective punishment,” as well as supporting a Palestinian “right of return.”
• In May 2021, Al Quds Association published a highly offensive article on the “incompatibility of the roots, traditions and values ​​of Jewish culture with the massacres perpetrated by the Israeli army.” According to the article, “It is inadmissible to validate this savagery or to imitate the indifference exhibited by much of Israeli society. After several decades of indoctrination and militarization, they have naturalized dehumanization. Even the killing of children does not elicit compassionate reactions. The Zionist ideology, the educational system and the long military service have accustomed a significant part of the population of that country to live with cruelty, revenge and collective punishment of the Palestinians.”
• In February 2021, Al Quds Association published an article stating that Israel must provide vaccines to Palestinians. Al Quds Association falsely claimed that Israel has “legal obligations” to “ensure that quality vaccines be provided to Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and control,” 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 May 2020, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Al Quds released a statement alleging that “there is a people that has suffered for more than a century an epidemic of a virus that is spreading without pause throughout all of historic Palestine, an epidemic whose objective is to eliminate it from the face of its earth. This virus is called Zionism, and like other viruses it first prevents the normal development of life and finally exterminates. Like all viruses it knows no borders, it is not limited to one part or another. Its vocation is to spread and it is incompatible with life. At the core of the Zionist project lives racism, discrimination and ultimately the genocidal vocation.”
• In December 2019, Al Quds won a lawsuit against the Jaén City Council for the “violation of fundamental rights by prohibiting the use” of a space for a conference deemed a “political act.” According to Al Quds, “Jaén had become the main access route of Zionism in Andalusia, offering all kinds of privileges to Israel, from prizes to strengthening ties, trips to apartheid included, all in exchange for being a censor arm of solidarity with Palestine.” Furthermore, Al Quds Association justified their actions stating that “When we say that Israel is a global threat, we see this case as a clear example. Zionism interference is a threat to local sovereignty and local democracy, exporting its model of hatred and censorship to the whole world.”
• In November 2019, Al Quds Association held a workshop with BADIL on the “Right of Return.”
  • BADIL is the main Palestinian “right of return” NGO, and a leader of BDS campaigns and political warfare against Israel. This NGO publishes antisemitic cartoons on its website, as well as imagery calling for the destruction of Israel (also a form of antisemitism) and denying Israel’s right to exist. Cartoon published by BADIL include classic antisemitic tropes, featuring a Jewish man, garbed in traditional Hasidic attire, with a hooked nose and side locks. He stands above a dead child and skulls, holding a pitchfork dripping with blood. Additional graphics deny the legitimacy of Israel in any form, and oppose peace agreements.
• In October 2019, Al Quds Association published a press release “concerned” about the arrest of Walid Hanatsheh and Samer Arbid.
  • In October 2019, Waleed Hanatsheh – a member of PNGO’s board of directors and the Financial and Administrative director for Health Work Committees, was arrested for participating in a terrorist attack in which a 17-year old was murdered.  According to the indictment against him, Hanatsheh bankrolled the bombing. Following his arrest, the PFLP labeled Hanatsheh a “leader in the Popular Front.”
  • Samer Arbid, Union of Agricultural Works Committee’s accountant from 2016 until his arrest in 2019, was indicted on 21 counts in Israeli military court. Arbid is on trial for commanding a PFLP terror cell that carried out a bombing, murdering an Israeli civilian, and injuring her father and brother. According to the indictment against him (on file), Arbid prepared and detonated the explosive device. On August 30, 2020, the PFLP referred to Arbid as a “prisoner and commander,” and “one of the heroes of the Bubeen operation” — referring to the August 2019 bombing.
• In 2018, Al Quds Association and AIC produced, with support from the Malaga Provincial Council, a documentary titled “to exist is to resist” that features “Stories of resistance on both sides, with a focus on the joint struggle of Israelis and Palestinians against a system of colonization that seeks to normalize the dystopia of Israeli apartheid in the world” (emphasis in original). The documentary further claims that “from the ethnic cleansing of 1948 (Nakba) to the present day, the Palestinian population continues to resist the coup of Zionism with stoic heroism.”
• In June 2018, Al Quds Association published a report titled “The Impossible City: Hebron,” alleging that “discriminatory policies have transformed the city center, where 55,000 Palestinians live, into a veritable ghetto governed by an apartheid system that benefits Israeli settlers.”
• On February 7, 2017, Al Quds Association was a signatory on a call to “end the European complicity – marking 100 years of injustice against the Palestinian people” (i.e. since the Balfour Declaration). The call “solemnly reaffirm[ed] that in 2017, after 100 years of dispossession, denial and ethnic cleansing, the rights of the Palestinian people must, at last, be respected.”
• On May 12, 2016, Al Quds Association held an event together with Amnesty International, featuring Ahmad Jaradat and Sergio Yahni of the Alternative Information Center (AIC), to mark the 68th anniversary of the “Nakba.” As reported on the Association’s website, Sergio Yahni spoke at the event of the “origins of the Zionist regime of the State of Israel,” claiming that a Zionist militia of Jews, “heavily armed, trained and made up of people from Europe” clashed with a Palestinian militia in 1948 that was its inferior “in number, armament and preparation” because Zionists had “killed or imprisoned all of their leaders.” According to Yahni “The colonization process began in 1948, but the Zionist policy of annexation of territories and ethnic cleansing continues ever since… They want to achieve a Great Israel, the dream of the Zionists, and the Palestinians are a stumbling block to be wiped off the map” (NGO Monitor translation, emphasis added).
• Al Quds Association is listed as an “endorser” of the 2016 Women’s Boat to Gaza, a coalition that claims that Israel has “launched countless attacks against the besieged population, turning their life into a nightmare.”
• In October 2015, Al Quds Association was a signatory on a call to restaurant chefs to “Take Apartheid off the Menu” and cancel their participation in the Tel Aviv “Round Tables Tour” as Tel Aviv is “the center of Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid and deeply complicit in whitewashing Israeli violations of Human Rights and International Law.”

BDS Activities

• The Al Quds Association promotes BDS (boycotts, divestment, and sanctions) as a way to “end the apartheid system.”
• In May 2021, Al Quds Association called for the European Union to break its “Framework Partnership linking all aid and trade agreements with Israel” as “We cannot continue to contribute to the maintenance of a system of oppression, apartheid and genocide, not in our name.”
• In October 2020, Al Quds sent a letter to the Spanish Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism demanding that the government not award grant contracts to the Basque railway company CAF “or to any company listed in the UN database…while it builds Israeli apartheid” and “steal[s] occupied Palestinian land.”
• In September 2019, Al Quds endorsed the “message launched a few weeks ago by the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement demanding an end to the use of fossil fuels, climate justice for all and government action at the UN Climate Summit.” Furthermore, Al Quds Association argued that “Multinational corporations invest in fossil fuels and the oppression of the Palestinian people by Israel, the plundering of Palestinian natural resources and the exploitation of Palestinian land” and called for the “British bank HSBC to stop financing Israeli repression and the fossil fuel industry” and for the “French insurance giant AXA to part with Israel’s colonial regime and the fossil fuels that destroy the planet.”
• In March 2020, Al Quds launched a campaign against HP calling to “NOT BUY HP PRODUCTS. There are many brands of reliable computer products on the market that do not contribute to the violation of the Human Rights of the Palestinian people.”
• In February 2020, following the announcement of President Trump’s “Peace Plan,” Al Quds called for the European Union to “Agree on the application of sanctions and divestments to Israel.” Al Quds further called on Spain to “Ban the entry of Israeli products from Israeli settlements and colonies into the West Bank and Jerusalem” and “Prevent the participation of Spanish companies and / or institutions in business projects and initiatives related to the colonization and occupation of Palestine.”
• In September 2016, Al Quds Association was a signatory on a letter to German performers Blixa Bergeld and Teho Teardo titled “Don’t play in Apartheid Israel!” The letter accused Israel of committing “numerous violations of international law in occupied Palestinian territories” and stated that it “would be extremely disappointing if artists of your stature chose to break this call for solidarity with the Palestinian people, particularly at a time when Israel is escalating its daily attacks on them.”
• In September 2015 sent a joint letter to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urging the UN to divest from the British security company G4S as a result of its servicing detention centers known for “widespread torture and mistreatment of Palestinian political prisoners, including children.”
• In November 2014, the Al Quds Association held a BDS event “against Israeli apartheid” together with AACID, featuring Raji Sourani of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Sergio Yahni of Alternative Information Center, and Spanish politician Teresa Rodriguez.
  • Teresa Rodriguez is a far-left anti-Israel politician who has called on the EU to suspend its Association Agreement with Israel, accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” in the 2014 Gaza war, and compared Gaza to “the Warsaw Ghetto.”
• In November 2014, Al Quds Association was a signatory on a call to the European Union to “suspend its Association Agreement with Israel until it complies with international law” as the EU is “contributing to the climate of impunity and lack of accountability… the EU is providing material support to Israel’s violations of international law and failing to uphold its own commitments under international law.”