Activities

• Addameer is a leader of campaigns in support of Palestinians prisoners convicted of security offenses, referring to them as “political prisoners” and altogether omitting the context of violence and terror.
• In January 2020, Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO), of which Addameer is a member, vehemently opposed a new clause in European Union grant contracts with Palestinian NGOs that prohibits grantees from working with and funding organizations and individuals designated on the EU’s terror lists. According to media reports, PNGO claimed that Palestinian terrorist organizations are “political parties.”

Addameer’s Ties to the PFLP

• Addameer is an “affiliate” of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist organization designated as such by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel. For more information on Addameer’s PFLP ties, read NGO Monitor’s report “Addameer’s Ties to the PFLP Terrorist Group.”
• On January 31, 2012, Addameer’s application to obtain ECOSOC consultative status was deferred after the US representative to the Committee on NGOs asked it “to clarify its affiliation with the Popular Front for the Organization of Palestine (sic).” The Committee on NGOs further deferred Addameer’s request, pending its response to the question, in February 2012, June 2012, and February 2013. In June 2013, Addameer’s request for ECOSOC status was closed after its failure to respond.

Addameer Staff Ties to the PFLP

• Abdul-Latif Ghaith
  • Ghaith, Addameer’s founder and former chairperson, was banned in 2017 and 2019 from traveling due to his alleged membership in the PFLP. According to Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, Ghaith is “an activist in the Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine] organization and a person who has connections to the organization’s activists abroad, [and] will utilize his travel abroad for the organizational purposes of the Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine].”
  • Ghaith was also banned from entering the West Bank in 2011-2015.
• Khalida Jarrar
  • Jarrar served as Addameer’s vice-chairperson until 2017 and is a senior PFLP official.¹
  • Jarrar was arrested on October 31, 2019 on suspicions of “involvement in terror activity.” On December 18, 2019, it was revealed that Jarrar has “emerged as the head of the PFLP in the West Bank and responsible for all the organization’s activities” (emphasis added).
  • Jarrar was administratively detained on April 1, 2015 by Israeli security forces. On April 15, 2015, she was indicted for various offenses including active membership in a terrorist organization (the PFLP) and inciting violence through a call to kidnap Israeli soldiers to be used as “bargaining chips for the release of Palestinian prisoners.” Jarrar accepted a plea bargain and was reportedly convicted on “one count of belonging to an illegal organization and another of incitement” receiving a 15- month prison sentence with an additional 10-month suspended sentence. According to an article in Haaretz, “The court noted that Jarrar was not being tried for being a member of the Palestinian parliament but rather for her activity in the PFLP.”
  • According to Addameer, Jarrar was re-arrested in July 2017 and placed in administrative detention.  According to Addameer, her detention was extended multiple times until she was released on February 28, 2019.
• Salah Hamouri
  • Until October 2019, Addameer’s Arabic website listed Salah Hamouri as a field researcher. In a September 11, 2019 interview with the French “Pourquoipas,” the interviewer refers to Hamouri as a “lawyer at Addameer,” to which Hamouri responds “yes, I am a lawyer” and adds that he is one of six lawyers at the organization.
  • In 2005, Salah Hamouri, Addameer field researcher, was arrested and convicted for “attempting to assassinate Ovadia Yosef…and for his involvement with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.”
  • In an October 2011 statement, the PFLP referred to Hamouri as a “comrade.”
  • In August 2017, Addameer petitioned the President of France for the release of Hamouri, who was ordered to six months in administrative detention on August 2017 for being a “security threat.” He was released on September 29, 2018.
  • According to Addameer, Hamouri was banned from entering the West Bank until September 2016, following his release in a prisoner exchange deal in 2011. (Hamouri was released in December 2011 as part of a swap of over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit).
  • Upon his release in 2011, according to the PFLP, Hamouri stated that “there is no option for the Palestinian people except resistance because it is the only way for us to achieve our people’s rights, our freedom, and our self- determination.”
• Mahmoud Jiddah
  • Jiddah, a member of Addameer’s Board of Directors, was imprisoned by Israel for 17 years for carrying out grenade attacks against Israeli civilians in Jerusalem in 1968. He was released in 1985 in a prisoner swap.
  • Mahmoud Jiddah also served as a Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P) board member from at least 2012 through 2016. A May 13, 2017 picture taken at a meeting of the DCI-P General Assembly shows Jiddah standing next to DCI-P General Assembly President Nassar Ibrahim. (In addition to Jiddah, DCI-P also has numerous other staff and board members connected to the PFLP.)
• Bashir Al-Khairi
  • Al-Khairi, a member of Addameer’s Board of Directors, was arrested in 2010 by the IDF along with other PFLP members. An Arab media news article refers to Al-Khairi as being a member of the PFLP’s National Council.
  • In statements in 2012 and 2014, the PFLP referred to Al-Khairi as an “historic leader,” a “comrade,” and a “leader.”
  • According to a 2013 AusAID document, Bashir al Khairi was “convicted of terrorist offences in 1969 and gaoled for 15 years.”
  • An August 27, 2002 CNN article identifies Khairi as “head of the PFLP political bureau.”
  • Al-Khairi is also the former president of the board of Union of Agricultural Workers Committees (UAWC), identified by Fatah as a PFLP “affiliate,” and by a USAID-engaged audit as the “agricultural arm” of the PFLP. According to academic scholar Glenn E. Robinson, UAWC was founded in 1986 by “agronomists loosely affiliated with the PFLP.”
• Samer Arbid
  • According to Israeli security officials, on August 23, 2019, Samer Arbid, Addameer’s accountant until at least December 2015, commanded a PFLP terror cell that carried out a bombing against Israeli civilians, murdering 17-year old Rina Shnerb, and injuring her father and brother. According to the Israel Security Agency (Shabak), Arbid prepared and detonated the explosive device.
  • In an Addameer-produced video from April 2013, Arbid describes his numerous arrests. He states that he was arrested at the beginning of 2003 and sentenced to two and a half years in prison, and served an additional year in administrative detention.
  • Arbid appears to have worked for another NGO with ties to the PFLP, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC). According to Arabic language media, Arbid served as the financial director of UAWC at the time of his 2019 arrest.
• Ayman Nasser
  • Nasser, coordinator of Addameer’s legal unit, was arrested on September 9, 2018. On September 16, 2018, Nasser received a 6-month administrative detention order.
  • On July 29, 2019, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled on Nasser’s administrative detention.  It found that he had engaged in “organizational activity in the context of the Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine], “which was “significant and dangerous, along with additional Popular Front [for the Liberation of Palestine] members.” [On file with NGO Monitor]
  • Nasser was arrested on October 15, 2012 for links to the PFLP. An indictment was filed attributing a number of offenses relating to membership in the PFLP and activities on behalf of the organization.
  • On June 3, 2013 the Judea Military Court convicted Nasser, who admitted to being a member of an unlawful organization, the PFLP, and for providing services to the organization.

Political Advocacy

• Refers to the Israeli army as the “Israeli Occupying Forces,” and accuses Israel of “collective punishment,” “war crimes,” and a “policy of using Palestinian prisoners as pawns to achieve political and military gains.”
• Accuses Israel of “committing nothing short of a modern-day ethnic cleansing before our eyes; in the continuing quest for full annexation of Palestinian land and the expansion of Israel’s colonial frontier. The time is more urgent than ever for the international community to hold Israel accountable for its recurring and blatant war crimes against Palestinians.”
• In October 2019, Addameer General Director Sahar Francis spoke at an event in Berlin about the “institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by Israelis over Palestinians, committed with the intention of maintaining that regime in line with the definition of apartheid by the International Criminal Court.”
• On May 18, 2019, as a member of the Palestinian Human Rights Organization Council (PHROC), Addameer was a signatory on a statement referring to all of Jerusalem as “occupied,” and called for the UN to “take a firm stand against…unlawful unilateral measures to be taken by the U.S. in favor of an unveiled attempt at legitimizing Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise, occupation and colonization.” The statement further called to “Ban Israeli settlement products” and “Impose individual sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, on individuals that are identified as responsible for or complicit in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
• In May 2018, Sahar Francis participated in the “Palestinian Freedom Conference: Overcoming the Ongoing Nakba,” which discussed how “In late 1947, colonial Zionist paramilitary forces began the process of ethnically cleansing more than 750,000 Palestinians…70 years later…in Palestine a process of ongoing ethnic cleansing via occupation, colonisation, apartheid, and cruel siege continues apace, with no intervention from the international community.”
  • The conference also featured Lubnah Shomali (BADIL), Eitan Bronstein Aparicio (founder of Zochrot), Jamal Juma (Stop the Wall), Omar Barghouti, Mona El-Farra (Middle East Children’s Alliance), and Ali Abunimah (Electronic Intifada).
• In May 2018, during the violence on the Gaza border, Addameer published a statement accusing Israel of “excessive, lethal force… These practices attest to the continued domination and subjugation of the Palestinian people. The marches and Israel’s excessive use of force and unlawful killings demonstrate the urgent need to ensure protection for the Palestinian people and to hold Israel to account in accordance with international law.” Addameer ignored the violent nature of the protests, which have consisted of an organized armed attack on the Israeli border and IDF positions, attempts to destroy and breach the border fence, and sustained arson, rocket, and mortar attacks on Israeli civilian communities.
• On September 26, 2017, General Director Sahar Francis spoke at the European Parliament in Brussels at an event titled “The Role of Women in the Palestinian Popular Struggle.” The event featured Leila Khaled whose affiliation was listed as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and was organized by Unadikum, an NGO that participated in a gala to raise funds for the Union of Health Workers Committee (UHWC), a PFLP-affiliated group in Gaza.
• On April 17, 2017, Addameer, as a member of the Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council (PHROC), released a statement on Palestinian Prisoners’ Day stating that “This year marks 50 years of torture of Palestinian political prisoners through a military system which has historically been endemic and various forms of physical and psychological torture and ill-treatment,” and calling on the International Criminal Court to “open an investigation into the case of Palestinian prisoners and detainees, and bring those who have tortured, extrajudicially executed, forcibly transferred, and arbitrary (sic) detained Palestinians to be held to accountable.”
• On February 8, 2017, Addameer released a report accusing Israel of economically exploiting Palestinian “political prisoners,” claiming that this comes as “part of Israel’s sophisticated system of control put in place in order to break apart Palestinian resistance.” The statement further claims that “the integration of the PA into the Israeli prison system” has “made Palestinian society responsible for facilitating the imprisonment of those who resist the occupation and colonization of Palestinian land.” The report alleges that Israel attempts “to neutralize prisoners identified as political threats by forcing them to dedicate their energies to struggling for basic material needs, rather than to the kind of struggles for which they were originally imprisoned” (emphases added).
• Between 2013-2015, Addameer participated in the campaign “Love Under Apartheid,” which alleges that the “Israeli apartheid system affects individuals by restricting a deeply personal right: their right to love.”

BDS Activities

• In 2018-2019, Addameer lobbied intensively in support of the discriminatory UN database of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line, aimed at bolstering BDS campaigns against Israel. Addameer has signed multiple letters to the UN calling for the database to be implemented without further delay. According to Addameer, “the Database should be a mechanism that assists states in meeting their obligations under international law, including the obligation not to recognize as lawful – even implicitly – the illegal situation created by Israeli settlements and not to contribute to maintaining this illegal situation.”
• In May 2019, Addameer was a signatory on a statement calling on the German Bundestag to revoke its joint resolution defining BDS campaigns against Israel as antisemitic
• In April 2017, on Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, Addameer urged “supporters of justice around the world to take action to support the Palestinian prisoners whose bodies and lives are on the line for freedom and dignity” by “join[ing a] BDS Campaign” and “Organiz[ing] an action at HP office in your city to highlight the role of corporations involved in – and profiting from – the political imprisonment of Palestinians by the Israeli occupation.”
• In February 2017, as a member of the Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council (PHROC), released a statement calling upon “the international community to abide by their international obligations” and “act immediately by imposing sanctions against Israel,” as a result of the passing of the “Regularization Law,” which is “another brazen tool for Israel to confiscate privately held and registered Palestinian property for its illegal settlement enterprise.”
• In August 2016, submitted a joint complaint to the UN Special Rapporteur concerning review of the residency status of Omar Barghouti, a prominent proponent of BDS. The statement falsely describes BDS as “peacefully pursu[ing] a human rights agenda based on an international law framework”; in fact, BDS are tactics of political warfare, based on the exploitation of human rights double standards, comparisons to apartheid South Africa, and false accusations of “war crimes.”
• In February 2016, issued a joint statement that “For decades, Israel has failed to uphold its duties as Occupying Power and has instead deepened its occupation and regime of colonialism and apartheid” and “affirm[ed] the right of all individuals to participate in and advocate for boycott, divestment, and sanction actions, and calls on states and businesses to uphold their related legal responsibilities” and stated that the EU November 2015 labeling move against Israeli settlement products is “insufficient,” calling for a complete ban (emphasis added).
• In April 2015 sent a joint letter to the UN Secretary General 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.” An accompanying report alleged that G4S’s activities “represent a clear facilitation and continuation of war crimes against Palestinian prisoners.” According to General Director Sahar Francis, “At a time when Israel is stepping up its campaign of mass incarceration as a way of repressing Palestinian society, G4S should immediately end its role in the notorious Israeli prison system, as well as its involvement in securing Israeli checkpoints and illegal settlements.”

UN Activities

• Lobbies the UN “to ask them to intervene to hold Israel accountable and pressure it to change its policies and practices.”
• In 2018-2019, Addameer lobbied intensively in support of the discriminatory UN database of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line, aimed at bolstering BDS campaigns against Israel (see further information above.)
• On March 17, 2017, Addameer, BADIL, Al-Haq, and Society of St. Yves held a side event at the 34th session of the UN Human Rights Council on “Collective Punishment in Jerusalem” discussing “Israel’s collective punishment measures targeting the protected Palestinian population in Occupied East Jerusalem.”
• In November 2016, Addameer co-authored a submission to Michael Lynk, UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the Palestinian Territories, on “Human Rights Defenders in the OPT…highlight[ing] the repressive environment within which human rights defenders (HRDs) work in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” The submission referred to Manal Tamimi, a fieldworker for the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC) as a “human rights defender.”
  • Tamimi frequently utilizes antisemitic and violent rhetoric and imagery on social media. In August 2015, Tamimi tweeted, “I do hate Israel, i (sic) wish a thrid Intefada (sic) coming soon and people rais (sic) up and kills all these zionist settlers everywhere.”
• In February 2015, Addameer sent a joint letter to the UN Secretary General urging him to “list Israel’s armed forced in the annex” of the “Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict for committing grave violations against children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” (emphasis added).
• General Director Sahar Francis lobbied a roundtable meeting of the “Committee on the Exercise of the Unalienable Rights of the Palestinian People” in Geneva on April 24, 2014. The roundtable focused on “UN procedures and mechanisms to address the issue of political prisoners” and “International courts and options for the case of Palestinian prisoners and detainees.”
• In 2009, provided testimony before the Goldstone commission, alleging Israeli “violations of international law” and “racist Israeli policies” and falsely accusing Israel of using Palestinian detainees as “human shields.”