Activities

• DCI-P leads the campaign exploiting children to promote demonization of Israel, and is linked to the PFLP terror group. Many of its allegations are false and part of attempts to smear Israel with allegations of “war crimes” and promote BDS.
• Supports BDS (boycotts, divestments and sanctions) campaigns against Israel and is an active participant in lobbying the UN, EU, foreign governments, and other international bodies to promote this agenda.
• Calls for Israel to “accept historical and legal responsibility for the Nakba, and recognise the principle of the right to return that was endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly in its Resolution No. 194 in 1948.”
• In February 2020, Brad Parker, DCI-P Senior Advisor for Policy and Advocacy, was intended to speak at the UN Security Council to discuss“grave violations in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories from 2014 to the end of 2019.” However, following a public information campaign highlighting the terror links of Parker’s employer and diplomatic protests by the Israeli government, Belgium rescinded the invitation.
• In January 2020, Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO), of which DCI-P 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.”
  • In response to requirements in the European Union grant contracts, DCI-P Director Khaled Quzmar announced in September 2020 that “We, as an institution, have refused to deal with any political conditions…[and] has already refused to sign on ‎conditional funding for a project for released child prisoners.” Quzmar added that the inclusion of Palestinian groups on the EU list of terrorist organizations is “the result of a political decision as part of ‎the Israeli pressure on the EU.”

DCI-P Ties to the PFLP

• On October 22, 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Defense declared Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P) a “terror organization” because it is part of “a network of organizations” that operates “on behalf of the ‘Popular Front’.”
• On July 29, 2021, Israeli forces confiscated computers and documents from DCI-P’s Ramallah office as well as from another NGO with links to the PFLP, Bisan. In a statement released just hours later, the PFLP “renewed its demand to confront the continuing Zionist violations against the active Palestinian civil institutions.” According to DCI-P General Director Khaled Quzmar, the Israeli military courts informed the organization that “the Israeli army [raided the offices] because…information that there is materials (sic) which [were] used in a terror attack, or maybe will [be] used, or maybe will [be] used with other terrorist organization.”
• On June 26, 2018, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) announced that after presenting evidence of the close ties between DCI-P and the PFLP to Citibank and Arab Bank PLC, “these banks no longer provide banking services to the terror linked NGO.”
• Numerous individuals with alleged ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist organization designated as such by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel, have been employed and appointed as board members at DCI-P. For more information on DCI-P’s PFLP ties, read NGO Monitor’s report “DCI-P’s Ties to the PFLP Terrorist Organization.”
• In June 2020, DCI-P elected a new board; some of the appointed individuals have celebrated convicted terrorists, posted violent images, and made antisemitic statements on social media. (Read NGO Monitor’s report “DCI-P’s New Board: Celebrating Terrorists”)
  • Yaser Amouri, appointed treasurer, has posted in support of terrorists who attacked Israeli civilians and police officers, as well as glorified leaders of other terrorist organizations.
  • Adla Nazer, appointed secretary, has used Facebook to honor terrorists and promote violent rhetoric.
• Hashem Abu Maria “served as the coordinator of DCI-P’s community mobilization unit.” In July 2014, Abu Maria was killed during a violent confrontation in Beit Ummar. Following his death, he was hailed by the PFLP as a “leader,” which issued an official mourning announcement. The PFLP announcement praised his work for DCI-P, stating “he was in the ranks of the national liberation struggle and the PFLP from an early age.”
  • On September 23, 2014, DCI-P uploaded a video of a memorial service for Abu Maria (see Appendix I) featuring a speech by DCI-P General Director, Rifat Odeh Kassis. The courtyard where the memorial service took place was decorated with PFLP flags, posters, and pictures of prominent PFLP figures, such as founder George Habash and former leader Ahmed Sa’adat. Nearly all of the audience were dressed in PFLP apparel. (On file with NGO Monitor).
• Riyad Arrar, Director of DCI-P’s Child Protection Program, addressed a December 2014 PFLP memorial event for a group member who was killed “while engaging in a demonstration confronting the occupation forces with stones and Molotov cocktails.” The event featured PFLP paraphernalia and individuals clad in military garb – some of whom appear to be children (video on file with NGO Monitor).
• Nassar Ibrahim, President of DCI-P’s General Assembly until at least 2017, is the former editor of El Hadaf– the PFLP’s weekly publication. In May 2014, the PFLP unveiled a mural “developed by writer and journalist Nassar Ibrahim,” honoring PFLP founder George Habash. Several PFLP members attended and spoke at the event.
• Mahmoud Jiddah, DCI-P board member from at least 2012 through 2016, was imprisoned by Israel for 17 years for carrying out “grenade attacks” against Israeli civilians in Jerusalem in 1968.
• Hassan Abed Jawad, DCI-P board member from 2012-2018, has spoken on behalf of the PFLP at an event commemorating a PFLP member who was killed “while engaging in a demonstration confronting the occupation forces with stones and Molotov cocktails.”
• Mary Rock, DCI-P board member from 2014-2018, was a PFLP candidate for the Palestinian Legislative Council in the 2006 elections. Rock also attended a 2012 PFLP event honoring former Bethlehem mayor Victor Batarseh.
• In 2012, Samer Ajaj, DCI-P Coordinator of Community Empowerment, appears to have run for elected office in Nabulus as a member of a list jointly controlled by the PFLP and another Palestinian organization.
• From 2005–2009, Shawan Jabarin, director of Al-Haq, was a member of DCI-P’s Board of Directors. According to a 1995 Israeli submission to the UN, Jabarin was convicted in 1985 for recruiting and arranging training for members for the PFLP. A 1994 Israeli statement to the UN notes that he “had not discontinued his terrorist involvement and maintains his position in the leadership of the PFLP.” Jabarin has been denied exit visas by Israel and Jordan on several occasions due to alleged ties to the PFLP terrorist group. A June 2007 decision by the Israeli Supreme Court called Jabarin a “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,” a human rights campaigner by day and a terrorist by night.
• Fatima Daana, an attorney and board member in 2012-2018, is the widow of Raed Nazzal, the former commander of the PFLP’s armed wing (the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades) in Qalqilya. Nazzal was responsible for several terrorist attacks and was killed in 2002 in a shootout with IDF forces.

Political Advocacy

• DCI-P is active in a campaign, using false charges of abuse of Palestinian children, to include the IDF on the list of “grave violators” of child’s rights, published annually by the UN Secretary-General. According to a November 2019 interview with DCI-P Accountability Program Director Eyad Abu-Eqtaish, DCI-P “seeks to put the occupation on the ‘list of shame’ which the UN publishes annually via the reports it submits to international organizations on the challenges Palestinian children face….He clarified that reports have been submitted to many parties in the human rights council, specifically after the return marches, which included all the killing actions of Palestinian children, in addition to a file presented to the ICC concerning prisoner children which face torture.” (Translated by NGO Monitor) (Read NGO Monitor’s Report “UNICEF and its NGO Working Group: Failing Children.)
• While at DCI-P, former director Rifat Odeh Kassis “coordinate[d] Kairos Palestine and oversaw the drafting of its founding statement.” The Kairos Palestine document advocates BDS targeting Israel, noting that “These advocacy campaigns must be carried out with courage, openly sincerely proclaiming that their object is not revenge but rather to put an end to the existing evil.”  In addition, it denies the Jewish historical connection to Israel in theological terms; and rationalizes, justifies and trivializes terrorism, calling it “legal resistance.”
• DCI-P, together with the Spanish NGO Mundubat, runs the platform “The other Jerusalem,” which “questions the illegal Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, as well as the false notion of a ‘unified Jerusalem’.” One of their “action points” offers visitors to sign a petition calling “on the European Union, United Nations Secretariat, and members of the UN Security Council to take urgent action that ends and holds Israeli authorities accountable for systemic and deliberate discrimination toward Palestinians in Jerusalem.”
• In April 2023, DCI-P was a signatory on a letter to the United Nations Secretary-General urging the UN to reject the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. According to the letter, the IHRA definition “opens the door to labeling as antisemitic… findings of major Israeli, Palestinian and global human rights organizations that Israeli authorities are committing the crime against humanity of apartheid against Palestinians.”
  • The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, adopted by nearly 30 countries and counting, represents the international consensus definition of antisemitism, as well as how to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism. An example of the latter includes denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
• In September 2022, DCI-P was a signatory on a joint statement urging the US government to condemn the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs, including DCI-P, as terrorist organizations. According to the letter, “Our organizations do vital human rights and humanitarian work that is necessary due to Israel’s decades-long belligerent occupation of Palestinian land that is actively and robustly supported by your administration.” The letter also called for the US to “End complicity and financial and diplomatic support to the Israeli apartheid regime.”
• In August 2022, following criticism against the UN Commission of Inquiry’s use of antisemitic rhetoric, DCI-P signed a joint statement “extend[ing] their full support and pledg[ing] their ongoing cooperation with the UN Commission of Inquiry on Palestine.” The statement affirmed that “the present Commission is a crucial step toward the recognition and remedy of Israel’s settler-colonial and apartheid regime as the root cause of Israel’s perpetual violations of international law in Palestine.”
  • In July 2022, Commissioner Miloon Kothari made antisemitic comments on a podcast, claiming that the “Jewish lobby” controls social media and questioned whether Israel should have UN membership. In a letter to UNHRC President Federico Villegas, Commissioner Navi Pillay refused to condemn Kothari’s remarks, stating his comments “have deliberately been taken out of context…[and] deliberately misquoted.” Dozens of countries, as well as UN Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed, and HRC President Federico Villegas condemned these remarks.
• In February 2021, DCI-P published a policy paper titled “United States Policy on Palestine: 2021 and Beyond” calling for the “US to reevaluate its past blanket support of Israel” and “end the decades long environment of impunity that it has enabled for Israel to entrench its settler colonization and apartheid in the Palestinian territory.” The policy calls to “ban the import of all Israeli settlement products and services” and “End all military aid to Israel.”
• In January 2021, DCI-P, alongside a number of Palestinian organizations, issued a declaration that the “Vaccine Roll-Out Exposes Israel’s Inhumane Acts of Apartheid.” DCI-P falsely claimed that Israel has “legal obligations” to “ensure that quality vaccines be provided to Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and control.” The NGOs altogether ignore 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 July 2020, DCI-P was a signatory on an urgent appeal to the United Nations referring to Israel’s alleged “shoot-to-kill policy” as “contributing to the maintenance of Israel’s apartheid regime of systematic racial oppression and domination over the Palestinian people as a whole, which, embedded in a system of impunity, prevents Palestinians from effectively challenging Israel’s apartheid policies and practices.”
• On May 18, 2019, Palestinian Human Rights Organization Council (PHROC), of which DCI-P is a member, 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 January 2019, during the violence on the Gaza border, DCI-P, alongside CUNY School of Law Human Rights and Gender Justice Law Clinic, filed a submission to the UN replete with egregiously false statements, gross distortions of the law and the facts, and the whitewashing of terror groups including Hamas. (See here for NGO Monitor’s letter to CUNYLaw.)
• Since December 2013, DCI-P has been partnering with Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights (LPHR) for an ongoing campaign titled “Know Your Rights,” seeking to “inform Palestinian children who are arrested, detained, interrogated and tried through the Israeli Military Court system of their legal rights throughout the entire process.” The campaign relies on an inaccurate March 2013 UNICEF report that alleged “widespread, systematic and institutionalized” ill-treatment of children within the system. DCI-P and LPHR omit that Israel established a military juvenile tribunal, which entitles minors to significantly better conditions than adults. The group also disregards the circumstances that may have led to such arrests, such as terror activity and violence.
• In the summer of 2018, DCI-P partnered with Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) for a spurious campaign titled “Demand Child Justice: Document Detention in the occupied Palestinian territories,” which purports to document “cases of mistreatment experienced by Palestinian youth.” In this campaign, DCI-P makes numerous false and misleading claims about the IDF and Israeli Military Courts. (Read NGO Monitor’s report “No Way to Represent a Child: Defense for Children International Palestine’s Distortions of the Israeli Justice System.”)

Apartheid Rhetoric

• DCI-P is part of a network of NGOs that promote artificial and manufactured definitions of apartheid to extend the ongoing campaigns that seek to delegitimize and demonize Israel. (Read NGO Monitor’s Policy Paper “False Knowledge as Power: Deconstructing Definitions of Apartheid that Delegitimise the Jewish State.”)
• In September 2022, DCI-P was a signatory on a call to the UN General Assembly to “Take Immediate and Effective Action to End Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians.”   According to the call, “Dismantling Israel’s system of apartheid against Palestinians must be central to the UN’s commitment to end racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance worldwide.”
• In September 2022, DCI-P endorsed a campaign titled “Investigate and Dismantle Apartheid.” The campaign is a “global Palestinian-led anti-apartheid effort…directed towards activating UN mechanisms to investigate and dismantle Israel’s apartheid regime by mobilizing grassroot efforts.”
• In April 2021, DCI-P was a signatory on a joint submission to the UN Secretary-General on Intimidation and Reprisals for Cooperation with the UN, stating that “Since its establishment, Israel has created and maintained an institutionalised regime of racial domination and oppression, amounting to apartheid, over the Palestinian people as a whole…Israel has sought to fundamentally undermine key human rights and accountability work and thereby further entrenched impunity for its apartheid regime over Palestinians.”

Lawfare

• In February 2023, DCI-P was a signatory on a letter to the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor to “Urgently expedite your investigation into the Situation in Palestine, including the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”
• In December 2022, DCI-P was a signatory on a statement “staunchly support[ing] the UN General Assembly Request for an International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on the Consequences of Israel’s Prolonged Occupation of Palestine.” The statement urged the ICJ to “use this advisory opinion to support the Palestinian people as a whole, who remain under the domination of Israel’s discriminatory laws, policies and practices.”
• In November 2022, DCI-P 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 March 2020, DCI-P submitted an amicus brief to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in support of ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s decision to investigate Israel for alleged war crimes.
• In November 2019, DCI-P 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.”
• In September 2018, DCI-P was a signatory on a letter to ICC Prosecutor Bensouda calling to open an investigation as the “situation in Palestine is rapidly deteriorating and war crimes and crimes against humanity are allegedly frequently committed to entrench Israeli control over Palestinian territory and the Palestinian people” and there is a need to “prosecute and convict perpetrators, including high-level officials of war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

No Way to Treat a Child

• In 2015, DCI-P and American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) initiated a campaign, “No Way to Treat a Child,” to “challenge Israel’s prolonged military occupation of Palestinians by exposing widespread and systematic ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system.” The groups call upon the United States government to pressure Israel to end “abuse of Palestinian children,” and encourage supporters to write members of congress on behalf of their cause. The campaign claims that a letter addressed to President Obama calling for the establishment of a Special Envoy for Palestinian Children, initiated by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) and signed by 20 US congressmen, was a “direct response” to demands made by its supporters.
  • “National campaign partners” include: “American Muslims for Palestine, Amnesty International-USA, Christian Peacemaker Teams, Friends of Sabeel North America, Jewish Voice for Peace, Mennonite Central Committee US, and US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.
  • The campaign sponsors events across the United States, with partner organizations including Kairos Puget Sound Coalition and Jewish Voice for Peace.
• In August 2017, DCI-P launched its No Way to Treat a Child campaign in Canada.
• In 2017, 2019,2021, and 2023, DCI-P spearheaded US Congresswoman McCollum’s proposed legislation “to prevent United States tax dollars from supporting the Israeli military’s ongoing detention and mistreatment of Palestinian children.” The entirety of the proposed bill is premised on factually inaccurate claims from anti-Israel advocacy NGOs, including direct quotes from DCI-P’s “No Way to Treat a Child” 2016 report and website.
  • In May 2019, McCollum introduced a new bill largely based on lobbying efforts and accusations of DCI-P. The new legislation, which would result in $19 million US taxpayer funding to be allocated to DCI-P and its NGO allies, includes several inaccurate factual claims and distortions of international law, and applies standards to Israel that are not applied in the US. According to Brad Parker, DCI-P Senior Adviser for Policy and Advocacy, the bill “is sending a clear message to Israeli authorities that the systemic impunity enjoyed for so long concerning widespread ill-treatment of Palestinian child detainees must end.”
  • In April 2021, DCI-P worked with McCollum to introduce a third bill, again presenting distorted and manipulated claims regarding the treatment of Palestinian minors to harm US support for Israel.
• In June 2017, DCI-P and AFSC organized a congressional briefing about “how persistent human rights violations, systematic impunity, discrimination and a hyper-militarized environment affect the lives of the Palestinian children growing up under a military occupation with no end in sight.” Speakers included Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch and Nadia Ben-Youssef of Adalah.
  • At the event, Ben-Youssef claimed that “since the Israeli legal system—as the state—was founded on Jewish supremacy, the lives of Palestinians are not valued.” She falsely claimed that “There’s no right to equality in Israel—it’s not enshrined in law because [Israel] cannot protect equality and protect [Jewish] privilege.” Ben-Youssef added, “Nakba. Remember that name, say that name. It means catastrophe in Arabic, and it refers to the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.”

BDS Activities

• In August 2021, DCI-P 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 2021, DCI-P launched the petition “No More Weapons for Israel,” calling for President Biden to “immediately halt weapons sales to Israel.”
• In May 2021, DCI-P was a signatory on a statement calling to “Ban arms trade and military-security cooperation with Israel,” “Suspend free-trade agreements with Israel,” and “Ensure that individuals and corporate actors responsible for war crimes/crimes against humanity in the context of Israel’s regime of illegal occupation and apartheid are brought to justice.”
• In September 2020, DCI-P called for the UN General Assembly to “Launch international investigations into Israel’s apartheid regime over the Palestinian people as a whole, as well as associated State and individual criminal responsibility,” to “Ban arms trade and military-security cooperation with Israel,” and “Prohibit all trade with illegal Israeli settlements and ensure that companies refrain from and terminate business activities with Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise.”
• In July 2020, in response to the “Report of the Special Rapporteur addressing Israel’s Collective Punishment Policy,” DCI-P called on “Third States to adopt effective measures to put an end to Israel’s illegal and inhumane policies of collective punishment, including sanctions and countermeasures, to bring the illegal situation to an end” (emphasis added).
• In May 2020, DCI-P was a signatory on a statement calling 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 2018-2019, DCI-P lobbied intensively in support of the discriminatory UN database of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line, aimed at bolstering BDS campaigns against Israel. DCI-P has signed multiple letters to the UN calling for the database to be implemented without further delay.
  • In September 2022, DCI-P endorsed a report by Al-Haq and Just Peace Advocates calling to “Update the UN database annually” and “Continue to exert the necessary efforts to ensure transparency and promote accountability for business activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, to counter the pervasive impunity stemming from corporate- related violations and grave breaches of international law in such contexts.”
• In September 2019, DCI-P US Advocacy Officer Shaina Low spoke at an American Friends Service Committee event in Washington DC that focused on “Palestinian children’s rights,” ending the blockade in Gaza, and “our rights to support BDS.”
• In May 2019, DCI-P was a signatory on a statement calling on the German Bundestag to revoke its joint resolution defining BDS campaigns against Israel as antisemitic.
• On May 15, 2018, DCI-P signed a joint letter to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, calling for sanctions against Israel. The letter demanded that the State Department “Investigate Israel’s Use of Lethal Force in Gaza” and “halt any further assistance to all Israeli military units involved in these shootings” of Palestinians participating in the violent protests along the Israel-Gaza border.
• DCI-P is a signatory to the 2005 “Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS.”