International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL)

Activities

• The IADL is an international umbrella organization whose members “have protested racism, colonialism, and economic and political injustice wherever they interfere with legal and human rights, often at the cost of these jurists personal safety and economic well being.”
• The IADL has been recognized as a communist front for the Soviet Union by the CIA, and was described in a 1978 CIA study as “one of the most useful communist front organizations at the service of the Soviet Communist Party.” According to Professor Alan Dershowitz, the IADL “is anti-democratic to its core and supportive of terrorism and repression.”
• In 1982, the IADL established the “Permanent Commission of Lawyers on Palestine and Peace in the Middle East under the coordination of the Association of Palestinian Lawyers.” Raji Sourani, who is also the founder and director of the PCHR, served as president. Sourani was “prohibited from leaving Palestine (sic) from 1977 to 1990.” In an interview, Sourani admitted that he served “a three-year sentence [1979-1982] imposed by an Israeli court which convicted him of membership in the illegal Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine…”

Political Advocacy

• In December 2022, IADL petitioned for the release of Salah Hamouri.
  • Until his arrest on August 23, 2017, Hamouri worked as a field researcher for the Palestinian NGO Addameer, an “affiliate” of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist group. Hamouri was previously arrested in 2005 for “attempting to assassinate Ovadia Yosef…and for his involvement with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.” The PFLP has referred to Hamouri as a “comrade.”
• In November 2022, IADL 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 August 2022, following criticism of antisemitism on the part of the UNHRC’s permanent Commission of Inquiry against Israel, IADL 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, UN Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed, and HRC President Federico Villegas condemned these remarks.
• In May 2022, IADL was a signatory to a flagrantly antisemitic report submitted to the UNHRC’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 October 2021, IADL “expresse[d] outrage” at the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. According to IADL, “All of these organizations have long histories of defending and promoting human rights and are recognized throughout the world as leaders in their fields. The designations are a blatant attempt to criminalize Palestinian civil society overall.”
• In October 2020, IADL called on France to release Georges Ibrahim Abdallah from prison. Abdallah was convicted and sentenced by a French court to life in prison for “complicity in the assassinations” of Charles R. Ray in 1982, a US military attaché serving in Paris, and Yacov Bar-Simantov, a second counsellor at the Israeli embassy in Paris.
• In March 2020, IADL 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, IADL called for the release of Khalida Jarrar and Samer Arbid from prison.
  • Jarrar is a senior official of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine(PFLP) terrorist organization, who was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison following “her own confession, of the offense of holding office in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine from 2016 until her arrest in 2019.”
  • 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 March 2017, IADL lauded the UN ESCWA report on the “Question of Apartheid,” stating that the report provides “evidence [that] establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid.” IADL called for the UN Human Rights Council to “make more authoritative the report’s finding that Israel maintains a racist regime of apartheid in its exercise of control over the Palestinian people,” as well as “support boycott, divestment and sanctions [BDS] activities.”
• In 2014, signed a letter, along with representatives from National Lawyers Guild, Center for Constitutional Rights, American Association of Jurists, and the Arab Lawyers Union, urging the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Fatou Bensouda to initiate “an investigation into crimes committed and ongoing during and immediately before” the 2014 Gaza War. The letter claims that, “By transferring financial assistance, weapons and other military aid to Israel, members of U.S. Congress, President Barak Obama, and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel have aided and abetted the commission of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity by Israeli officials and commanders in Gaza.” The letter further accuses “Israeli political figures” of “ongoing incitement to genocide.”
• Submitted a written statement to the UN Human Rights Council in July 2014 condemning Israeli actions during the 2014 Gaza War. The statement denies Israel’s right to protect its civilians from rocket attacks from Gaza, claiming that “Israel cannot claims to act in ‘self-defense’ because, as also recognized ten years ago by the International Court of Justice…the Palestinians constitute a people under Israeli occupation and are therefore not a ‘foreign’ threat” (sic).
• During the 2012 Gaza War, the IADL condemned “illegal Israeli aggression in the strongest possible terms.” It published a statement released by PCHR and demanded “the urgent convening of a Special Session of the Human Rights Council.”
• In 2012, IADL held “its bureau meeting in Gaza, occupied Palestine” where it met with politicized NGOs and networks, including the Palestinian Bar Association and the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO).
  • Following this trip, released a statement accusing Israel of “war crimes and crimes against humanity,” carrying out “targeted killings of civilians,” and “illegal collective punishment” that is a “precursor to genocide.”

BDS Activities

• Supports BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns against Israel, and calls on states “to immediately put an end to any commercial transaction regarding weapons and military technology to and from Israel.” Calls upon its member organization “to engage in promoting an economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel.”
• In December 2022, IADL called for the “end of the E.U-Israel Association Agreement and other free trade agreements with the Israeli state that serve to support and legitimize torture, occupation and colonization,” as well as an end to “U.S. aid to Israel, which encompasses $3.8 billion in direct military aid to perpetuate the ongoing occupation of Palestinian and Arab land, including the occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights.”
• In September 2022, IADL 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.”
  • The UN BDS “blacklist” of businesses operating across the 1949 Armistice line selectively targets Israel apart from all other nations, is aimed at economically damaging companies that are owned by Jews or do business with Israel, and is ultimately meant to harm the Jewish State.
• In May 2021, “in solidarity with the people of Palestine in their struggle against the settler colonial state of Israel,” IADL published a statement calling on the “United States and European Union end their financial, military and political support of Israel and holding political leaders accountable for their defense of Israeli crimes.”
• In July 2020, IADL sent letters to all the embassies of the United Nations member states in New York alleging that Israel is “already responsible for the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people.” IADL called for states to take “countermeasures” including “refusing to deal in arms with the Israeli state…refusing to purchase arms that have been tested through ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people…[and] cancel or end trade agreements that are nominally conditioned on human rights principles.”
• In October 2019, IADL called to “Intensify our work to support the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign as an international popular mechanism of accountability for the Israeli occupation and to achieve and implement Palestinian rights to self-determination, liberation, equality and return as affirmed by multiple United Nations resolutions.”