BADIL - Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights

Profile

Country/TerritoryPalestinian Authority
Websitewww.badil.org
Founded1998, and registered with the Palestinian Authority
In their own wordsto “defend and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees and IDPs.” BADIL seeks to “advance the individual and collective rights of the Palestinian people” on the basis of “the principles of international law, in particular international human rights law.”

Funding

  • BADIL does not include any financial data, donor information, or sources of funding on its website, reflecting a complete lack of transparency and accountability.
  • Donors have included Ireland, Spain, DanChurchAid, Diakonia, and Trocaire. (See table below for further funding information.)
  • In 2020-2024, BADIL is an implementing partner on an $8.1 million project titled Human Rights Programme – Palestine funded by Sweden via the NGO Development Center (NDC). Neither Sweden nor NDC provides the amounts received by each partnering NGO. (Information on file with NGO Monitor)
  • In 2020-2021, BADIL and the Spanish NGO Paz con Dignidad received €120,000 from the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa for “right to land, right of return.”

Activities

  • Founded to promote a Palestinian “right of return” and is a leader of international BDS campaigns.

Terrorism

Political Advocacy

  • BADIL rhetoric includes accusations of “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” “war crimes,” “colonization,” and “racism,” as well as supporting a Palestinian “right of return.”
  • BADIL submits written and oral statements and hosts numerous side events in condemnation of Israel before the UN Human Rights Council.
  • BADIL supports the Deadly Exchange campaign led by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) that aims to “end police exchange programs between the US and Israel.” JVP claims that American Jewish organizations and programs are to blame for police violence against minorities in America. The campaign also invoked antisemitic tropes.
    • The initial “Deadly Exchange” video labeled AIPAC, ADL, Birthright and other Jewish organizations as being responsible for these exchanges, and urged viewers to “Hold accountable the Jewish institutions who run and fund the deadly exchange.”
  • In October 2021, BADIL issued a press release condemning the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. According to BADIL, “The implicit acquiesce of the International Donor Community manifested in the inclusion of the anti-terrorism clauses and conditions in granting contracts has buttressed this Israeli strategy and paved the way to not only designate those organizations already accused of terrorism, but also every single Palestinian organization. The result and ultimate goal being the de-legitimization and elimination of Palestinian civil society.”
  • In April 2023, BADIL held a photography contest titled “75 years of Ongoing Nakba… 75 years of ongoing Resistance.”  According to BADIL, “Submissions made to the contest must reflect one or more of the aspects and forms of the Ongoing Nakba in terms of violations and policies practiced by the Israeli colonial-apartheid regime.” (See below regarding BADIL’s previous contests.)
  • In April 2023, BADIL and Kairos Palestine published an Easter Alert claiming that “Apartheid on its own, is an insufficient framework to scrutinize the realities Palestinians face, as it is only a manifestation of the colonial agenda followed by Israel since its creation. Indeed, without acknowledging the colonial nature of Zionism and the Israeli regime, we fail to account for the domination of a people, the Palestinians, and their land, through the implantation of a settler community, and the ongoing denial of the internationally recognized right to self-determination of Palestinians on their land. Accordingly, apartheid is just one tool, albeit a significant and central one, of the Zionist settler-colonial project in Mandatory Palestine.”
    • The alert also called for individuals to “Join in the economic, academic, and/or performance of boycotts of Israel” and to “Enjoin someone in conversation, discussing what Israel’s colonial policies and practices have in common with the colonial policies and practices that established the United States and/or are in place in other parts of the world.”
  • In November 2022, BADIL published a statement claiming “75 years after the illegal and illegitimate Partition Plan, the United Nations must admit that it is null and void, like the Balfour Declaration, also devoid of any legal value, instead of organizing such celebrations of solidarity intended to justify the historical crime of Israel’s colonialism. Moreover, the UN must recognize “Israel” as a colonial and apartheid regime that third states must work individually and/or jointly towards dismantling.” 
  • In October 2021, BADIL published a paper on “Palestinian Self-Determination: Land, People, and Practicality” that “draws on the Israeli-Zionist enterprise’s attempts to frame the Palestinian right to self-determination on Mandatory Palestine as an illusory, unrealizable right.” BADIL called for third states to “Recognize Israel as a colonial and apartheid regime and take practical measures for the dismantlement of this regime and its structures that are the origin of the fragmentation of Mandatory Palestine.”
  • In January 2021, BADIL called for the international community to pressure Israel to “provide and support COVID-19 immunization campaign in the oPt of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” BADIL falsely claimed that Israel has “legal obligations” to provide vaccines to Palestinians, 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 December 2020, BADIL published a working paper titled “Israel’s Apartheid-Colonial Education: Subjugating Palestinian Minds and Rights,” that discussed the “colonial structure at play in Palestinian education.” According to the paper, there are “three apartheid tools – institutional discrimination, alienation and forced assimilation – that guide a myriad of policies and practices aimed at furthering Israel’s domination and subjugation of the Palestinian people…such policies and practices constitute the means to advance and normalize its colonial domination over the Palestinian people and their lands.” The paper calls for Third States to “condemn the Zionist-Israeli narrative on Palestinian education, and therefore to refrain from conditioning their financial support to the Palestinian Authority based on Israeli-guided interpretation of international legal provisions in the field of education.”
  • In August 2019, BADIL released a report on “Israeli Annexation,” accusing Israel of a “process of colonization, forcible population transfer leading to annexation of what remains of Palestinian land, and ultimately apartheid.” The report called for a “refusal to engage with and divestment from any companies and entities involved in the colonial project in the oPt, immediate cessation or reduction in aid to and military cooperation with the Israeli military, and sanctions on Israel.”
  • On May 18, 2019, as a member of the Palestinian Human Rights Organization Council (PHROC), BADIL 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.”
  • On March 20, 2018, BADIL, alongside Al-HaqAddameer, and Society of St. Yves, hosted a side event titled “Ongoing Annexation and Colonization of Jerusalem” that “stressed the need to recognize Israel’s illegal policies and practices as prohibitions of peremptory norms (in cases of annexation) and crimes.”
  • On March 14, 2018, BADIL participated in a side event titled “Demographic Change and the Right to Self-determination” speaking on how “The pillars of the Israel regime are comprised of the forcible transfer of the indigenous Palestinian population out and the colonization of Jewish-Israelis in their place.”
  • On May 12-13, 2018, BADIL, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and the Trade Union Friends of Palestine hosted the “Palestinian Freedom Conference: Overcoming the Ongoing Nakba” discussing 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.”
  • In November 2017, BADIL, as a member of PNGO, was a signatory on a call to support “A World Without Walls,” drawing comparisons between Israel’s apartheid wall on Palestinian land to the US wall of Shame on indigenous land at the border with Mexico.”
  • In June 2017, endorsed Jewish Voice for Peace’s  campaign called “Deadly Exchange” that aims to “end police exchange programs between the US and Israel.” JVP claims that “‘worst practices’ are shared to promote and extend discriminatory and repressive policing in both countries including extrajudicial executions, shoot-to-kill policies, police murders, racial profiling, massive spying and surveillance, deportations and detention, and attacks on human rights defenders.”
  • In June 2017, BADIL was a signatory to a written statement to the United Nations Human Rights Councilnthat accused Israel of maintaining policies that “amount to colonization.” It further claimed that Israeli acts amount “to grave breaches, crimes against humanity, and/or war crimes.”
  • On April 17, 2017, BADIL, 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.”
  • In a March 22, 2017 press release, BADIL lauded the UN ESCWA report on the “Question of Apartheid” and “called upon the ICC Public Prosecutor to open an investigation into Israel’s commission of the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people and to bring those responsible into justice.”
  • In February 2017, BADIL and Jewish Voice for Peace held a webinar titled “Forced Population Transfer and Colonization: Conversations on Palestine,” discussing “Issues such as the 50 year anniversary of the occupation, the 70 year anniversary of the Nakba and the centennial of the Balfour Declaration.”
  • In January 2017, BADIL, alongside Al-HaqSociety of St. YvesAl-Shabaka, and Jerusalem Legal Aid & Human Rights Center (JLAC), released an infographic aimed at “raising awareness of Israel’s apartheid policies in the city, its effects on the Palestinian population, and the gross violations of international humanitarian and human rights law that arise.” The infographic claims that “Since 1967, apartheid prevails” and that Israel has “been enacting discriminatory policies” in Jerusalem.
  • In December 2016, BADIL released a working paper titled “Forced Population Transfer: The Case of Palestine- Suppression of Resistance,“ discussing how in its “suppression of resistance, Israel has not only made use of excessive force to stop armed struggle but it goes as far as to criminalize and suppress demonstrations or even the development and practice of Palestinian culture,” as well as stating that “throwing stones has been the symbol of Palestinian resistance for decades” (emphasis added).
  • In October 2016, BADIL published a working paper titled “Forced Population Transfer: The Case of the Old City of Hebron,” which accused Israel of implementing “policies of colonization, apartheid, and forced displacement unhindered.”
  • In April 2016, BADIL, together with the Society of St. Yves and Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC), published a report titled “Punitive Residency Revocation: The most recent tool of forcible transfer,” accusing Israel of “colonization,” “silent transfer,” and “blatant violation[s] of International Humanitarian Law.”
  • In March 2016, BADIL partnered with Zochrot for “The Third International Conference on the Return of Palestinian Refugees,” and gave a lecture titled “Practical Return in Palestinian Civil Society: Challenges and Opportunities.” Other lectures included “From Banning the Nakba to Bridging Narrative: Law and Collective Memory of 1948” and “Cracks in Zionism? The Implications of Return for Zionist Ideology and Practice.” The conference was funded by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a US-based Quaker organization that leads anti-Israel BDS campaigns on college campuses and in churches.
  • In March 2015, BADIL, together with Israeli NGO Zochrot went on a speaking tour across the United States to discuss “the ongoing Nakba affecting Palestinians both in Palestine and in the diaspora.” According to the event flyer, “Presentations will aim to provide a historical overview of the Nakba (“Catastrophe” in Arabic) and the Right of Return, the forcible displacement of Palestinian since before 1948 and continuing today, and the practicalities of return for refugees. In turn, American audiences will have focused time to consider their role in supporting the call for the Right of Return and how to integrate the Nakba into U.S.-based activism.”
  • In May 2014, BADIL published an issue of their magazine Right of Return that exploited the Holocaust, explaining that “just as in Germany it is forbidden to recognize a Nazi party, so too Israel should not be recognized as a state for the Jews.” (page 7) Another article from the same issue blames Israel for exploiting the suffering of Jews during the Holocaust, stating that “The Zionist movement … turned this human tragedy that affected the Jews and millions of people in the Nazi era into a media industry and a tool to justify the policies and practices of the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian people, and in this sense, the process of generating sympathy takes place in a humiliating way through the use of the people’s tortures, to justify the killing, attack and occupation of another people.”(page 12).
  • In 2012, Zochrot and BADIL published a manifesto that encouraged a “de-zionized” one-state solution, essentially calling for Israel to be dismantled.
  • In December 2010, BADIL participated in the 10th Annual Meeting of the Global Palestine Right of Return Coalition. The final statement from the meeting explicitly rejects the Roadmap for Peace and the Arab Peace Initiative: “The Rejection of any settlement to the Palestinian/Arab – Zionist conflict…to emphasize that the terms of reference of the current purposed settlements such the Roadmap Plan and the Arab Peace Initiative do not meet the minimum rights of our people but only perpetuate the arrogance of the Zionists.”
  • In spring 2007, Nidal Al-Azza, BADIL’s director, wrote an article titled “Israel: The Racist Ghetto,” elaborating on alleged accusations of Zionism as a racist ideology. This article also includes antisemitic statements, such as:
    • “Racism in the Zionist ideology and later, in the Israel regime, can be identified in… political concepts, ideas and visions inspired by religious thought, provisions of the Talmud, and legends, most importantly, the notions of Jews as “the chosen people of God,” “the pure race” and “the promised land,”… [and] the mentality of segregation, nurtured by life in the ghettos.”
    • “Ghetto life and isolation, whether forced or voluntary, have played a vital role in particular in the formation of the western Jewish “Ashkenazi” mentality that produced Zionism in all those secular and religious streams which shape Israel’s policies until today”
    • “Zionism and Israel, moreover, have successfully invented anti-Semitism for the purpose of justifying, rather then ending, racism. In other words, “anti-Semitism” has become a tool to justify the racism of Zionism and Israeli policies, and many intellectuals, politicians and organizations avoid criticizing Zionism and Israel, in order to avoid accusations.”

Antisemitic Cartoons

  • An antisemitic cartoon won a monetary award for 2nd prize in BADIL’s 2010 Al-Awda Nakba caricature competition.  The cartoon is a blatant representation of classic antisemitic tropes, including 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. The antisemitic caricature was removed from BADIL’s website after NGO Monitor approached BADIL partner DanChurchAid on the issue.
  • In 2017, the first prize of BADIL’s Nakba poster contest portrays a man tearing apart the Balfour Declaration.
  • In 2015, BADIL published a cartoon depicting a tsunami of keys rising up and washing over what is supposed to be the “negotiation table” and two people, one of whom is wearing a kippah with a Jewish star on it.
  • Another 2015 cartoon shows a clenched fist rising up through a map of the State of Israel with the caption reading “Return is our Right and our Destiny.” (See below for selected images.)

Lawfare

  • Involved in lawfare attempts to prosecute Israeli military officials in international and European courts, and has published in 2009 a report titled “Litigating Palestine,” in which BADIL notes the different venues that can be used to file claims against Israel and the “progress” made in recent years.
  • In November 2022, BADIL was a signatory on a letter to the ICC Prosecutor to “Urgently expedite his investigation into the Situation of Palestine, including the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”
  • In November 2019, BADIL signed a letter to Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Fatou Bensouda, calling to open “an official, full-scale investigation into the ‘situation in Palestine’” and the “possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed” as the “absence of an official investigation…has fuelled the already existing culture of impunity.”

BDS Activities

  • Advocates for anti-Israel BDS (boycott, divestment and sanction).
  • In October 2022, BADIL called on the United Nations Human Rights Council and UN Member States to “Take all measures available within international law, including sanctions, to hold Israel accountable for its policies and practices of colonization and apartheid.”
  • In July-August 2020, BADIL and Jewish Voice for Peace – Boston held a series of webinars aimed at “raising awareness in the USA…on the current obstacles and challenges facing the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation.” During one of the webinars, BADIL’s Head of Administration & Financial Affairs Unit Lubnah Shomali stated that the international community is obligated by international law to stand up to annexation by “cutting diplomatic ties, establishing arms embargo[s], ending trade relations, [and] prosecution of individuals or entities that implemented the annexation.” She further stated that BDS is a “legitimate form of nonarmed resistance sanctioned under international law…to pressure to adhere to international law. We’ve seen it in other instances of colonialism and apartheid.”
  • In 2018-2019, BADIL lobbied intensively in support of the discriminatory UN database of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line, aimed at bolstering BDS campaigns against Israel. BADIL has signed multiple letters to the UN calling for the database to be implemented without further delay.
  • In November 2019, PHROC, of which BADIL is a member, signed a statement calling for the “international community to immediately impose sanctions on the State of Israel and illegal Israeli settlements” and “implement domestic legislation to prohibit and criminalize the import of illegal settlement goods and services into their territory.”
  • In May 2019, BADIL was a signatory on a statement calling on the German Bundestag to revoke its joint resolution defining BDS campaigns against Israel as antisemitic.
  • In March 2019, Rania Madi, BADIL’s United Nations Legal Advocacy Representative, gave a lecture at Israeli Apartheid Week in France titled “Stop Arming Colonialism.”
  • In February 2019, BADIL was a signatory on a letter to the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund calling to refrain from investing money in “Israel’s unlawful settlement enterprise.” According to the letter, “corporations may be complicit in aiding and abetting the destruction of property and forcible displacement of the Palestinian population, amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
  • In November 2018, BADIL supported the Irish “Control of Economic Activity (Occupied territories)” bill which would make it illegal for Irish citizens and residents to import or sell “settlement goods” or to provide or attempt to provide “settlement services.” The language of the bill reflects a broader goal of isolating Israel and implementing a discriminatory BDS agenda.
  • At a June 2017 CEIRPP conference, “United Nations Forum to Mark Fifty Years of Occupation,” BADIL’s US-based Legal Advocacy Consultant Noura Erakat remarked, “The fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip in 2009 was shelved and seems to be irrelevant but within it are still recommendations that any state can pursue, including applying sanctions for arms to Israel. There is no reason not to apply those sanctions which have been recommended.” (emphasis added)
  • In October 2016, hosted a panel at the European Parliament with Al Mezan on “ensuring accountability for violations of international law in the occupied Palestinian Territories and on the UN database of businesses operating in Israeli settlements.” According to Al Mezan, the “panel was held in the context of nearly 50 years of Israeli occupation of Palestine, a situation of international armed conflict, where violations of the applicable international humanitarian law and international human rights law are met with impunity by Israel, the Occupying Power.”
  • In November 2016, held a side event in partnership with Who Profits at the United Nation’s Forum on Business and Human Rights discussing “the development of a data base of corporations complicit in human rights violations in the oPt.”
  • In October 2016, hosted a panel at the European Parliament on “ensuring accountability for violations of international law in the occupied Palestinian Territories and on the UN database of businesses operating in Israeli settlements.” According to BADIL, the “panel was held in the context of nearly 50 years of Israeli occupation of Palestine, a situation of international armed conflict, where violations of the applicable international humanitarian law and international human rights law are met with impunity by Israel, the Occupying Power.”
  • On May 2016, BADIL engaged in a multi-city speaking tour of Ireland, hosted and sponsored by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC). According to BADIL the tour was an opportunity to highlight the “legitimacy and legality of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) as one of the effective methods of resistance.”
  • BADIL participated in the annual meetings of the International Labor Organization that took place in Geneva in May 2016. According to BADIL’s website, “BADIL’s participation was vital in supporting and lobbying for the call for boycotting the General Organization or Workers in Israel (Histadrut).”
  • Together with other NGOs, BADIL signed on a “Joint Call to Action: July 2014 – Month against the Apartheid Wall,” stating: “….it is time for a ‘legal intifada’, an intensified popular struggle and more boycotts, divestment and sanctions. It is time for accountability…. to overcome Israeli apartheid, colonialism and occupation. We ask you to expand and deepen the global BDS movement for justice…”
  • In 2010, BADIL legal counselor Yasmine Gado authored a paper titled “Principles and Mechanisms to Hold Business Accountable for Human Rights Abuses: Potential Avenues to Challenge Corporate Involvement in Israel’s Oppression of the Palestinian People.” The paper “was prepared by BADIL as a resource for the Palestinian civil society-led Campaign for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel.”

Staff

Other images

 

Partners

2014-2024 Funding to BADIL

DonorAmountYear(s)
Sweden via the NGO Development Center$8.1 million alongside Al Mezan, Al-Haq, Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P), B’Tselem, Gisha, Breaking the Silence, and Yesh Din2020-2024
Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa (Spain)€120,000 with Spanish NGO Paz con Dignidad2020-2021
DanChurchAid (Denmark)DKK 300,0002019-2022
Civil Peace Service (Germany)N/A alongside Adalah, Al-Haq, Defense for Children International - Palestine (DCI-P)2021-2024
Irish Aid€4,0002017
Secretariat$546,7002014-2017
AECID (Spain)€268,6272018
Diakonia (Sweden)N/A2015-2017
Trocaire (Ireland)N/A2016-2023

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