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Monday, April 22, 2019
Israeli court upholds expulsion of human rights defender
Israeli
judge upholds expulsion of Human Rights Watch’s Jerusalem director over
advocacy calling on businesses to end complicity in Israeli settlements
on occupied Palestinian land.APA images
-18 April 2019
An Israeli court on Tuesday upheld a government decision to expel Omar
Shakir, the director of the Jerusalem office of Human Rights Watch. The
court based its ruling on a 2017 law that bars entry to people who
advocate for a boycott of Israel or its settlements in occupied
territory.
This comes as the campaign to stop international firms from profiting from Israel’s settlements scored several new successes.
Israel ordered me deported over my criticism of its rights record. @hrw & I today sued to challenge unauthorized use of draconian law to monitor speech of foreigners lawfully present in Israel & deport them when they criticize govt https://t.co/snw4Z9RBv9 https://t.co/qc51AoDOrK pic.twitter.com/aLNYFCxDZf— Omar Shakir (@OmarSShakir) 16 May 2018
“The ruling sets a precedent that could hamper the work of other advocacy organizations and jeopardize the status of other rights workers in Israel.”
According to Human Rights Watch, this is the first case in which the
Israeli government has relied on the 2017 amendment of its so-called Law
of Entry to expel a person who is present in the country lawfully, as
far as Israel is concerned.
The court claimed that Shakir has called for boycotts since he was a
student activist in the United States more than a decade ago, as well as
his subsequent work promoting Human Rights Watch’s research on the
activities of businesses, including global tourism companies Airbnb and Booking.com, that participate in and profit from Israel’s theft of Palestinian property.
Human Rights Watch has stated that
companies that do business in Israel’s settlements inevitably benefit
from and contribute to Israel’s policies “that dispossess, discriminate
against, and abuse the human rights” of millions Palestinians.
Following Tuesday’s court ruling Human Rights Watch reasserted its
position that “businesses should halt their activities in illegal West
Bank settlements.”
Setbacks for settlements
Businesses that operate in Israeli settlements – all of which are
illegal under international law – are coming under increasing global
pressure to stop aiding colonization of occupied land.
In what the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National
Committee (BNC) called a “significant victory,” FNV, the largest trade
union in the Netherlands with more than one million members, has dropped HP as a partner in discount offers to its members.
“As long as we do not know for certain that HP is not complicit in human
rights abuses, we will no longer include them as an offer in FNV
membership offers,” the union informed members.
HP – also known as Hewlett-Packard – has long been a focus of activists because
HP-branded businesses have supplied the Israeli military with racial
profiling technology for its checkpoints restricting the movement of
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
And this week it emerged that France-based insurance and financial giant AXA quietly divested last year from Israeli arms maker Elbit.
AXA is facing an ongoing campaign to divest from all Israeli companies involved in violations, including Israel’s top banks that finance settlements.
.@AXA IM divests from Israel's @ElbitSystemsLtd
The @SumOfUs_Fr @Campagnebds campaign against AXA's problematic investments continues, as an AXA subsidiary remains linked to Elbit, and AXA maintains investments in Israeli banks which finance settlementsbit.ly/2KJybfT
La Campagne BDS France se félicite de la décision d’@AXA de se retirer, en partie, d’Elbit Systems mais appelle le groupe d’assurance à mettre un terme à TOUS ses investissements complices de l’apartheid israélien. Communiqué de @SumOfUs_Fr : frama.link/VV39xc1L #ProudToBeAXA
Dans le cadre de la journée internationale d’action en direction d’@AXA complice de l’apartheid israélien, les militant·e·s de Lyon ont mené 2 actions, dans le centre-ville et devant l’immeuble de l’assureur | via @palestine69 #ProudToBeAXA #PalestinianPrisonersDay
Les militant·e·s de Marseille ont participé à la journée internationale d’action en direction d’@AXA, complice de l’apartheid israélien. Elles·ils ont distribué des tracts et ont fait signer des cartes, qui seront envoyées à la direction. #ProudToBeAXA #PalestinianPrisonersDay
International banking giant HSBC also divested from Elbit last year following a grassroots campaign.
And this week, Palestinians are stepping up their campaign demanding that sportswear company PUMA end its sponsorship of football teams based in Israeli settlements.
Today @Puma shareholders are gathering for its Annual General Meeting.
Stand with 200+ Palestinian sports teams urging Puma to end its support for illegal Israeli settlements pushing Palestinian families off their land.
Pledge to #BoycottPuma: buff.ly/2ZdYoGC
No distinction
Human Rights Watch does not explicitly support the broader BDS –
boycott, divestment and sanctions – movement for Palestinian rights. But
the group notes that in the ruling to expel Shakir, the Israeli judge
“held that Israel’s anti-boycott law does not distinguish between
boycotts directed at Israel and those directed at only West Bank
settlements.”
Israel’s interior ministry and strategic affairs ministry began their effort to
expel Shakir last May, ordering him out of the country within 14 days.
But the decision was stayed pending court appeals by Human Rights Watch.
The strategic affairs ministry, which leads Israel’s well-funded effort to combat the growing global movement in support of Palestinian rights, compiled a dossier of Shakir’s activities, which it said demonstrates his support for BDS.
Most activities listed in the dossier predate Shakir’s employment with
Human Rights Watch and relate to his activism as a student at Stanford
University, calling for full and equal rights for Palestinians.
One pretext cited in the dossier for expelling Shakir is that he shared on Twitter an article written by scholar Steven Salaita and published by The Electronic Intifada in 2014:
Helpful resource for academics, by @stevesalaita in @intifada: "How to practice BDS in academe" electronicintifada.net/blogs/steven-s…
srael’s attempts to deport Omar Shakir are part of its broader efforts
to prevent human rights defenders from witnessing and documenting human
rights violations, as well as to stifle any opposition to those abuses,”
the Center for Constitutional Rights stated Wednesday.
The civil liberties group noted that last year Israel prohibited its
executive director Vince Warren and board chair Katherine Franke from
entering Israeli-controlled territory on political grounds.
The Gaza-based human rights group Al-Mezan condemned the
Israeli court decision as “a serious escalation of the legislative and
judicial attacks by Israel against human rights defenders, despite the
legitimacy of their work and their use of peaceful means such as
research and advocacy to protect rights guaranteed by international
conventions.”
The Israeli judge ordered Shakir out of the country by 1 May, but said
implementation would be delayed while the legal process continues.
Human Rights Watch is appealing the ruling to Israel’s high court.
Israel’s attempts to silence human rights defenders appear to have the
support of the United States government, which earlier this month barred entry to Omar Barghouti, a co-founder of the BDS movement, despite the fact that he had a valid visa.
Ideological exclusion has been used in the past to revoke or deny visas to some of the world’s leading artists and thinkers.
If the government is using this political censorship tool again, it’s a disgrace — and violates the First Amendment.apnews.com/f369e80e1dfa4f…
The American Civil Liberties Union called the US government’s
“ideological exclusion” of Barghouti “political censorship” and a
violation of the First Amendment.
