Activities

• Hanan Ashrawi, founder and Chair of the MIFTAH Board of Directors, addressed the virulent 2001 UN Durban Conference, claiming to represent the Palestinian people, which she called a “nation in captivity held hostage to an ongoing Nakba, as the most intricate and pervasive expression of persistent colonialism, apartheid, racism, and victimization.”
• Regularly lobbies the United Nations to “end the Israeli occupation and uphold accountability through international mechanisms.” It called for the removal of the separation wall, referring to it as an “Apartheid Wall” that creates “ghettos.”
• Hanan Ashrawi, founder and Chair of the MIFTAH Board of Directors, and Leila Fadi, MIFTAH Executive Director, signed a document asserting that Palestinian negotiators involved in 2013-2014 talks with Israelis should reject any agreement that “includes recognition of Israel as a Jewish state in any form.”
• In January 2020, Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO), of which MIFTAH 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.”

Political Advocacy

• Miftah’s publications use highly politicized language, accusing Israel of “massacres,” “apartheid,” “summary executions” of Palestinian youth, and “Judaizing” Jerusalem.
• In November 2022, MIFTAH endorsed Palestinian NGO Al-Haq’s report “Israeli Apartheid: Tool of Zionist Settler Colonialism.” The report called on Member States of the UN General Assembly to “adopt a resolution to reconstitute the UN Special Committee against Apartheid and the UN Centre against Apartheid to address Israeli authorities’ commission of the crime against humanity of apartheid against the Palestinian people as a whole, and empower these bodies to proactively pursue the dismantlement of Israel’s settler colonial apartheid regime.”
• In August 2022, following criticism against the UN Commission of Inquiry’s use of antisemitic rhetoric, MIFTAH 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, MIFTAH 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 February 2022, as part of a project funded by the European Union (see above), MIFTAH held a training session on “monitoring and documenting Israeli human rights violations.” According to MIFTAH, the training helps women “update their skills and knowledge on documenting these violations, which could be used as evidence in international advocacy.”
• In October 2021, Miftah held a meeting of civil society organizations to “strategize against the recent Israeli government decision to label six Palestinian NGOs as ‘terrorist organizations’.” In November 2021, MIFTAH was a signatory on a statement condemning the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. According to the statement, “The main task of our institutions and of Palestinian human rights defenders is to work towards an end to the occupation, the dismantling of the apartheid regime and towards the realization of our collective human rights to self-determination and the right of return…We further call on diplomatic missions, parliamentary representatives, and international organizations to reject and condemn the unlawful designation of the six Palestinian CSOs, to pressure the United States to condemn Israel’s designation and call for its rescission.”
• In February 2021, Miftah was a signatory on a joint statement to the United Nations alleging that “Israel has imposed and proactively maintains an apartheid regime over the Palestinian people.” The statement falsely claimed that Israel has a legal obligation to provide vaccines to the Palestinians, 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 December 2019, MIFTAH interviewed Director of Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (ARIJ) Jad Ishaaq, discussing how “we must pursue Israeli officials as war criminals.”
• In July 2019, as part of a UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) conference on “Preserving the Cultural and Religious Character of Jerusalem,” MIFTAH Project Manager Tamara Tamimi submitted a report titled “Israeli Appropriation of Palestinian Cultural Heritage in Jerusalem,” calling to “Support and lobby the International Criminal Court to open an investigation into Israeli crimes in Jerusalem.” The submission further called for an “imposition of a ban on the import of settlement products…[and] cease[] its policies and practices in Jerusalem. This should include trade and arms agreements.”
• In August 2019, MIFTAH sponsored a trip to Israel and the West Bank for Members of Congress Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN). The trip was cancelled when Israel barred their entry over their support for BDS.
• In Fall 2017, Hanan Ashrawi was on the Board of Advisors for the North American Nakba Tour sponsored by Al-Awda and the Northern California International Solidarity Movement. The Nakba Tour called for individuals to “Keep up the pressure on Congress.Tell your representatives to stop U.S. aid to Israel now” as well as to “Build the boycott of Israel – including academic, cultural, economic and military boycotts. The Israeli state doesn’t accomplish its ongoing Nakba alone; the support of complicit governments and corporations is critical. By joining boycott campaigns, people of conscience can provide a material boost to Palestinians’ struggle for return and liberation.”
• In July 2017, Miftah published a factsheet titled “International Humanitarian Law: The Siege on the Gaza Strip,” which discussed how Israel is “collectively punishing the Palestinians to ensure political gain” and is “in complete violation of international humanitarian law.”
• In 2016, MIFTAH sponsored a trip for five US Congressmen to visit east Jerusalem and Ramallah. According to the trip’s itinerary, the Congressmen met with Shawan Jabarin, who has alleged ties to the PFLP terrorist organization and as such has been denied exit visas by Israel and Jordan.
  • Following the trip, one of the congressmen, Hank Johnson, made comparisons between Israeli settlers and termites. After significant criticism, Johnson apologized for his “poor choice of words.”

BDS

• Publishes articles that advocate for BDS (boycotts, divestment, and sanctions) against Israel, alleging that “the BDS campaign calls for justice first, framing the conflict in terms of colonization, oppression and denial of the basic human rights of the Palestinian people.”
• Published a list of Israeli products and companies, located both in Israel and abroad, for individuals to boycott in order “to force foreign governments, corporations, and individuals to abandon their support of Israel vis-a-vis threats to the economic interests.” The document compares Israel to Apartheid South Africa.
• In February 2023, MIFTAH was a signatory on a statement “welcom[ing] the historic announcement by the Barcelona City Council to suspend all institutional relations with apartheid Israel.” The statement called for “arms embargo against apartheid Israel, stopping trade with Israel’s illegal colonial settlements, and ending projects and agreements that sustain the illegal situation, including the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the EU-Israel Association Council, international agreements for gas pipes through the Gaza coast, and the Euro-Asia Interconnector project receiving electricity from Israel’s colonial settlement enterprise.”
• In September 2022, MIFTAH was a signatory on a letter to the European Union to “review its decision to revive the Association Council Meeting, stop the recently signed gas deal and review its bilateral cooperation programmes.” According to the call, “Instead of allowing Israel to entrench its colonial enterprise and apartheid regime, rewarding it with further economic cooperation and trade of harmful military equipment and technologies, the EU and its Member States have an obligation, and interest, to hold Israel accountable and put an end to impunity.”
• In September 2022, MIFTAH 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 March 2022, MIFTAH was a signatory on an oral statement at the UN Human Rights Council calling to “adopt effective measures, including sanctions, to end Israeli apartheid.”
• In February 2022, MIFTAH 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, MIFTAH 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 August 2020, Hanan Ashrawi signed a statement calling for a “broad range of effective sanctions” against Israel. According to the statement, the signatories “fully support the right of the Palestinians to utilize all forms of legitimate resistance to this plan and to the dispossession, occupation, oppression and systematic discrimination to which Israel subjects them, including their right to campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.”
• In December 2019, MIFTAH published an interview with Undersecretary of the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Amal Jadou, applauding the decision by the European Court of Justice to apply a discriminatory labelling regime on products originating in the Israeli settlements. According to the interview, “The decision by the European Court of Justice to label Israeli settlement products is binding; we hope it will evolve into a ban on import…We hope this decision will be followed by European recognition of a Palestinian state on Palestinian land occupied in 1967.”
• In November 2019, as a member of PNGO, MIFTAH 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, as a member of PNGO, MIFTAH was a signatory on a statement calling on the German Bundestag to revoke a joint resolution defining BDS campaigns against Israel as antisemitic.
• Shared an article about the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (formerly the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation), in which Israel is compared to the Ku Klux Klan and which calls for an end to Israel’s “colonial/apartheid policy.”

Lawfare

• Accuses Israel of being in “continuous violation of international law and international humanitarian law.” Has said that Israel has “no regard whatsoever for…any relevant international law.” Has lobbied the United Nations for foreign government interference in Israel’s actions.
• Published an article by Al-Haq, calling for the prosecution of Israeli officials who allegedly “planned, ordered and executed” attacks “against a civilian population.”

Antisemitism

• In March 2013, published an article written by Nawaf al-Zaru that repeated the antisemitic blood libel that Jews use Christian blood to bake Passover matzah.  After significant public criticism, MIFTAH removed the article, but attacked the blogger who exposed the article for “smearing” the organization and downplayed the centrality of the blood libel in the article.
• On January 22, 2011, MIFTAH published an article by journalist Jonathan Power calling for Jews to abandon Israel as a homeland and posing the question “Were not under-populated Birobidzhan, Uganda or Argentina better opportunities to build an Israel?”
• On February 1, 2010, MIFTAH published an article by Bouthaina Shaaban, Presidential Political and Media Adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in which she claimed that Israel kills children to steal their organs:
  • “After the Swedish journalist Donald Bostrom wrote about the Israeli army killing Palestinian youth in order to harvest their organs, there were other media reports about Israelis stealing Ukrainian children in order to harvest their organs. Once again there are documented reports from Haiti that organs are being stolen by Israelis without international justice intervening to put an end to such criminal practices against innocent vulnerable people.”
• On September 8, 2007, MIFTAH published an article by conspiracy theorist Elias Akleh¹ that claimed that Israeli rabbis instructed their followers “to steal and burn Palestinian crops, to kill their farm animals, and to poison their water wells.”

Terrorism

• In a January 2017 interview for Deutsche Welle, founder and chair of the Miftah board of directors Hanan Ashrawi claimed that Palestinian “attacks and their perpetrators” (as described by the interviewer, Tim Sebastian) “are seen by the people as resistance. And you cannot somehow adopt the language of either the international community or the occupier by describing anybody who resists as terrorist (sic)” (3:20).
• MIFTAH has hosted and cooperated with members of US-designated terror organizations, such as the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).
  • On July 28, 2019, the organization hosted Jamil Hilal to discuss his book, Spotlight on the crisis of the Palestinian political elite, which analyzes “the imposed priorities and obstacles to efforts towards realizing a Palestinian state.” Hilal has been referred to by Arabic news sources as a former member of the DFLP and an editor of the DFLP’s magazine.
  • On May 2, 2018, MIFTAH published an interview with Majida Al-Masri, a member of the DFLP Political Bureau.  In a 2012 op-ed in the Palestinian newspaper Al Hayat al Jadida, Al-Masri called for reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas “so that we will be able to stand against the occupation, to halt its activities against our prisoners, and to turn to the struggle to liberate Palestine – all of Palestine.”
• Following the killing of terrorists responsible for carrying out lethal attacks on Israeli civilians, on December 13, 2018, Ashrawi tweeted, “In the last 24 hrs. Israeli forces carried out 4 summary executions of #Palestinians in the West Bank, raided villages & towns, & detained dozens. Israeli settlers are on the rampage, protected by the Israeli army. This reign of #terror has compounded the pressure cooker effect.”
• On January 26, 2008, MIFTAH published a memorial notice for George Habash, founder of the PFLP.
• In 2006, MIFTAH described Wafa Idrees, one of the first female Palestinian suicide bombers, as “the beginning of a string of Palestinian women dedicated to sacrificing their lives for the cause.” Idrees detonated herself on January 27, 2002, killing 81 year-old Pinhas Takatli and wounding another 150 Israeli civilians. She is described as one of the “several young women” who “decided to join the ranks of the resistance movement.