Paz con Dignidad (PcD)

Activities

• PcD has several offices around Spain.
• According to its website, “Paz con Dignidad has been present in Palestine since 2000, accompanying local organizations in promoting development processes and humanitarian actions to reduce the vulnerability of the Palestinian population caused by the Israeli occupation and its flagrant violations of international law. With a Human Rights-based approach, Paz con Dignidad works primarily in the protection and health sectors.”
• PcD sponsors a journal, Revista Pueblos, a “quarterly publication of information and debate linked to social movements and with a clear international vocation.” The journal is funded by AACID, AVCD, and the Basque Provincial Deputations of Gipuzkoa and Bizcaya, among others.

Anti-Israel Activities

• In May 2022, PcD was a signatory to a flagrantly antisemitic report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council’s permanent Commission of Inquiry against Israel. The submission presented a blatantly false historical account that denied Israel’s right to exist, categorized Israel’s very existence as illegal, and labeled Zionism as a form of racism, demanding that the Commission “Recognise and Address Zionist Settler Colonialism and Apartheid as the Root Causes of Israel’s Ongoing Violations.”
• In May 2022, PcD was a signatory on a statement referring to the “Nakba” as a “continuous international crime…The continuation of the Nakba reflects the extent of international complicity with the Israeli-Zionist colonial and apartheid regime in Palestine.”
• In October 2021, PcD was a signatory on a joint statement condemning the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. According to the statement, “This unprecedented designation is merely the latest escalation in Israel’s widespread and systematic institutionalized campaign that has aimed to silence and discredit any Palestinian individual or organization that dares seek accountability for Israel’s grave human rights violations, war crimes, and crimes against humanity…the international community, especially the European Union and its member states who are key supporters of and donors to Palestinian civil society, should ensure that banks and financial institutions in their jurisdiction are notified Israel’s designation of Palestinian organizations is unfounded and inapplicable.”
• In April 2021, PcD was a signatory on a statement welcoming the decision of the ICC to launch a formal investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Israel in the “State of Palestine.” According to the statement, “This is a long-awaited and a critically important step towards ensuring the rule of law and ending impunity, while ensuring accountability for Israel’s crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court.”
• In April 2020, PcD signed a letter to Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Fatou Bensouda supporting her decision to open a “full and thorough investigation into international crimes committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.”
• In April 2020, PcD invited people to a webinar titled “Cool Colonialism? Israel’s strategies to cover up its crimes” that discussed the “impact of Israeli apartheid on Palestinian women and their struggles, as well as Israel’s strategies for their facelift, such as Pinkwashing or Purplewashing.”
• In February 2020, PcD issued a press release “echoing the call” of the “Palestinian National Campaign to Reject Conditional Funding,” which rejects new requirements in European Union grant contracts that prohibit grantees from working with and funding organizations and individuals designated on the EU’s terror lists. In the campaign, the NGOs labeled this policy as “conditioned funding” and “so-called anti-terrorism clauses and policies…on preventing terrorism that affect the history and struggle of our people” (emphasis added), justified the use of violence, and claimed that the “Palestinian resistance factions are not terrorist organizations” (see video clip).
• In November 2019, PcD organized the “Colloquium: Palestine. Refugee Women, Identity and Resistance,” which discussed how an “apartheid regime in their own land” allegedly prevents women the “right to free movement, education, work or legal defense among others many things.” The event was part of a “Presentation tour by Addameer-Badil”     throughout Spain organized by PcD.
• In June 2019, PcD signed a statement calling on the Parliament of Catalonia to reject an initiative equating “criticism and opposition to the racist policy of the state of Israel with anti-Semitism” and to impose a policy that “opposes the normalization of the State of Israel and its apartheid, ending its complicity with Israeli apartheid and calling for a military embargo on Israel.”
• In February 2018, PcD petitioned for the release of Salah Hamouri. .” The PFLP has referred to Hamouri as a “comrade.” Hamouri works as a field researcher and lawyer for the Palestinian NGO Addameer, an “affiliate” of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist group. In 2005, Salah Hamouri was arrested and convicted for “attempting to assassinate Ovadia Yosef…and for his involvement with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
• On February 7, 2017, PcD was a signatory on a call to “end the European complicity – marking 100 years of injustice against the Palestinian people.” The call “solemnly reaffirm[ed] that in 2017, after 100 years of spoliation, denial and ethnic cleansing, the rights of the Palestinian people must finally be implemented.”
• In September 2016, Revista Pueblos published an article titled “Against Oblivion. Photographic Memory of Palestine Before the Nakba, 1889-1948,” covering a book of photographs that depict “Photographs showing people living their lives normally, without even imagining how much their life would be wounded and thrown into exile, occupation, diaspora” (NGO Monitor translation).
• In a 2014 interview for Hispan TV, Teresa Aranguren, member of the editorial board at Revista Pueblos, stated: “The problem of the Middle East is not Hamas, but Israel.”
• PcD coordinator and Cordoba Council member Amparo Pernichi spoke in March 2016 at the “Tree of resistance of the Palestinian People in Cordoba [Andalucía],” invoking classical antisemitic themes: “This has been perfectly organized all along, from the 19th Century, with Theodor Herzl being the first one to talk about Zionism. (…) Another important decision, Balfour, in World War I, he asked the Israelis (sic) that lived throughout the world and that had a lot of money, the richest ones, to help settle the people of Zion in that territory. Those two historical events paved the way for the genocide that happened later. (…) This place is emblematic because we used to gather together here in the recent genocidal episode against Gaza, and I say the recent, because they haven’t stopped killing since then” (NGO Monitor translation, emphasis added).
• PcD is listed as an “endorser” of the 2016 Women’s Boat to Gaza, which claims that Israel has “launched countless attacks against the besieged population, turning their life into a nightmare.”
• In its 2015 annual report, PcD referred to the 2015 decision of Israeli authorities close an HWC center in Shuafat as part of a “campaign carried out by the government of Israel in order to expel civil human rights organizations in the city and implement their Judaization policies.”

BDS Activities

• PcD regularly promotes BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns.
• In February 2022, PcD participated in a campaign titled “#StopTradeWithSettlements,” calling “for an EU law that will end trade with illegal settlements once and for all.”
• In August 2021, PcD signed a letter to the States Parties to the Arms Trade Treaty calling to “put an end to Israel’s notorious use of arms and military equipment…by immediately imposing a comprehensive two-way arms embargo on Israel.” According to the letter, “This systematic brutality, perpetrated throughout the past seven decades of Israel’s colonialism, apartheid, pro-longed illegal belligerent occupation, persecution, and closure, is only possible because of the complicity of some governments and corporations around the world.”
• In June 2020, PcD participated in a campaign calling on the European Union to “demand an end to a drones deal between the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) and Israel’s largest military company Elbit Systems” and “#SpreadSolidarity with those that already take the brunt of injustice – from besieged and occupied Palestine to the overcrowded migrant camps.”
• In May 2020, PcD endorsed the call made by Palestinian society for “Immediate targeted sanctions to stop Israel’s annexation and apartheid.” The statement further called for “A ban on arms trade and military-security cooperation with Israel,” “Suspension of trade and cooperation agreements with Israel,” and “Investigation and prosecution of individuals and corporate actors responsible for war crimes/crimes against humanity in the context of Israel’s regime of illegal occupation and apartheid.”
• In February 2020, PcD was a signatory on a call to the Basque railway company to CAF to “comply with international law, withdraw from the Jerusalem Tram project and thus cease to be an accessory to the occupation of Palestine.”
• In July 2019, together with BDS Madrid, Mundubat, and Grassroots Jerusalem, PcD participated in an event titled “On your visit to Jerusalem, do not contribute to the occupation!” According to the event description, the NGOs “propose to visitors a form of “responsible tourism” that does not contract their trip with agencies, tour operators, hotels, shops or companies in the sector that collaborate with the occupation and profit from apartheid policies.” According to PcD, “Tourism in East Jerusalem is no stranger to this process of Judaization, since it is used by the State of Israel as part of its propaganda and expulsion strategy, for which it creates a fictional historical account of the city that justifies its presence in the ‘Historical sites of Judaism.’.”
• In July 2017, PcD was a signatory on a call urging the Mexican company Cemex to “end complicity in Israeli crimes.” PcD signed a letter to Cemex asking the company to “withdraw its participation in the process of colonization, apartheid and occupation that Israel has carried out for 69 years against the Palestinian people.”
• As a Cordoba Council Member, Amparo Pernichi tried to promote a boycott resolution against Israel on behalf of the municipality of Cordoba. As part of this initiative, Pernichi also called to “rethink” events organized by the city council that had nothing to do with Israel solely because of their Jewishness, such as the festival for Sephardic music.
• In January 2017, PcD invited Omar Barghouti, Manal Tamimi, and Munther Amira to the Casa Árabe (Arab House) for a discussion on “Nonviolent resistance and boycott of Israel (BDS) for Human Rights.” The Arab House decided to cancel the scheduled lecture.
  • Omar Barghouti is the co-founder of Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and a leader in BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanction) campaigns against Israel. He supports a “right to resist,” including armed resistance, uses Nazi rhetoric, and supports a one-state solution.
  • Manal Tamimi is a board member of the “Popular Struggle Coordination Committee” (PSCC), a non-governmental organization (NGO) that organizes protests that have turned violent. Tamimi has promoted terrorism, violence, and virulent antisemitism, as well as using Nazi and Holocaust rhetoric on her Twitter account.
  • Munther Amira is the general director of PSCC. In response to a violent demonstration in Bethlehem in December 2016, Amira told Israeli media outlet Ynet: “we are here to protest and to say that the occupation and terror are two sides of the same coin. We want to tell the world that Palestinians deal with organized terror. We will continue to cope in order to struggle against the Nazi occupation.”
• In September 2016, PcD 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.”