Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Two Human Rights Defenders From Occupied Palestine Navigate the
Politics of Capitol Hill
________________________________________
Two Human Rights Defenders From Occupied Palestine Navigate the Politics of
Capitol Hill
By Max Blumenthal [1] / AlterNet [2]
April 27, 2016
This month, two front line human rights defenders in occupied Palestine,
Palestine Center for Human Rights (PCHR) founder Raji Sourani and Al Haq
founder Shawan Jabarin, embarked on a speaking tour in New York City and
Washington DC. Following their appearance at Columbia University, where they
spoke at an event organized by the Center for Constitutional Rights, I met
Sourani and Jabarin at a private event in Washington DC. The two had come to
town for a series of meetings in Congress, including with one of the most
knowledgable foreign policy staffers.
Sourani and Jabarin's first meeting took place at the Senate Subcommittee on
State and Foreign Operations in the office of Tim Rieser, a longtime aide to
Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy. Considered a champion of human rights
inside Congress, Rieser is the brains behind the so-called Leahy Law which
restricts US arms sales to serial human rights-abusing nations. In March,
Leahy joined [3] ten members of Congress in signing a letter demanding the
Obama administration investigate Israel and the Egyptian military junta for
"gross violations of human rights." According to a DC based human rights
activist who escorted Sourani and Jabarin to Rieser's office, the two had
hoped to gain a sense of whether the Leahy Law would be enforced, but
received only informal recommendations.
A meeting with Democratic Rep. John Lewis followed the gathering with
Reiser. The DC-based activist told me that Lewis held court with Sourani and
Jabarin for over an hour, far longer than expected and posed for photos with
the men, lending the presence of a living symbol of the civil rights
movement to their cause. He left the two with copies of his 2013 graphic
novel, March [4], on the famous march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in
Selma, Alabama. "They came out of Lewis's office feeling great," the
activist said.
Jabarin and Sourani were given the cold shoulder by the Obama
administration, however. A State Department staffer agreed to meet with
them, but phoned back two hours later to cancel without explanation. The
treatment hardly came as a shock after years of disappointment with Western
governments.
Towards the ICC
Neither Sourani nor Jabarin planned to dedicate their lives to human rights
work. But when they were teenagers, both were arrested by the Israeli army
and tortured in Israeli prisons. At age 18, Jabarin said Israel "killed my
dreams," barring him from traveling to study medicine abroad, where he had a
scholarship waiting for him. The two immersed themselves in international
law and sought out remedies for challenging Israel's occupation of the
Palestinian Territories.
In 1979, Jabarin founded Al Haq in Ramallah, now the seat of the Palestinian
Authority in the occupied West Bank, where Israel has carried out a
sustained campaign of home demolitions, settlement construction and
population transfer. For his part, Sourani founded the PCHR in Gaza City,
now the target of unprecedented violence from Israeli drones, attack jets
and heavy artillery.
Sourani currently presides over a staff of 63. "Even with that size," he
commented, "we don't have one single day to rest. The quantity and quality
of human rights violations we witness are astounding."
During Israel's 51-day assault on the Gaza Strip in 2014, PCHR researchers
were often in severe danger as they set out to document the attacks that
left over 2200 dead and 100,000 homes [5] partly or completely destroyed.
"I used to call Raji every day just to see if he's alive or not," Jabarin
recalled.
With the experience Sourani and his staff gathered, they have trained human
rights workers to document atrocities in Yemen, Libya and Syria. According
to Sourani, Gaza's terrible predicament has honed his organization into "the
most sophisticated human rights group in the Middle East."
Al Haq and PCHR are leading the Palestinian campaign to hold Israel
accountable at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Sourani described the
effort as a last resort. "We exhausted all national legal remedies in
Israel. Khalas! ["Enough," in Arabic] After years of experience we
discovered that this system is providing legal cover for systematic war
crimes. Torture is legalized and legitimized. Extrajudicial killing is
legalized. That's why we shifted to universal jurisdiction cases in the
ICC."
Threats, repression and travel bans
Because of their determination to publicize Israeli human rights crimes and
hold their authors accountable before international legal bodies, Sourani
and Jabarin have become targets of Israel and its international lobbyists.
Their appearance at Columbia University was pre-empted by an intimidating
letter [6] by right-wing NGO Monitor Legal Advisor Anne Herzberg to the
Columbia Law School raising questions about the sponsors of the event.
NGO Monitor bills itself as a watchdog organization providing "critical
analysis" of international NGOs, but is, in practice, an arm of Israel's
right-wing government. The group's founder, Gerald Steinberg, has worked
[7]as a consultant to the Israeli government and served on a steering
committee overseen by the Israeli Prime Minister's Office. In testimony
before Israel's Knesset, Steinberg called for [8] "a response like in war"
against human rights organizations. He urged the Israeli government to back
groups like his that created the impression of a "civil society"
counter-attack.
NGO Monitor's failed attempt to prevent Sourani and Jabarin's appearance at
Columbia is an extension of the escalating assault by the Israeli government
on human rights organizations. Both men have been barred from traveling
abroad by Israeli security services.
According to Jabarin, Al Haq's funders have been confronted with a wave of
threats and intimidation from pro-Israel forces. Recently, members of his
staff have been finding at the doorsteps of their homes what he called
"funeral flowers," or dead flowers accompanied by cards inscribed with
threatening messages. He said his group's computer serves have been
attacked, his staff has received threatening emails, and that he and Sourani
are subject of a constant parade of attacks in the Israeli press.
"If you search our names on Google," Jabarin said, "I guarantee you will see
the word 'terrorist' next to them. We know this work is not a joke and we
are prepared to pay the price to continue it."
Jabarin filed his submission at the Hague -- the home of the ICC -- on
November 23, 2015. Trapped in Gaza, where travel is rendered nearly
impossible by the ongoing Israeli siege, Sourani held a simultaneous press
conference in the rubble of homes destroyed by the Israeli army.
"This was just a small step," Jabarin said of the press conference in the
ruins of Gaza. "Raji [Sourani] was surrounded by people who had lost their
beloved, lost their properties, their houses -- everything. And this
submission to the ICC gave them hope that justice was coming."
He pointed to the Obama administration as a principal antagonist in the
quest for Palestinian human rights. "You saw the US pressure Palestine not
to go to the ICC," Jabarin recalled. "They don't want us to accept justice!
This is the contradiction that makes us feel a little angry."
Yet as he stood in a living room in DC surrounded by supporters, including a
few bearing pins promoting the presidential candidacy of Senator Bernie
Sanders, Jabarin took stock of the shifting political winds. "You are the
new America for us," he told his audience, "not the administration."
Editor's note: This story has been updated since initial publication
Max Blumenthal is a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and
the award-winning author of Goliath [9] and Republican Gomorrah [10]. His
most recent book is The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza. Follow him
on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal [11].
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [12]
[13]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/two-human-rights-defenders-occupied
-palestine-navigate-politics-capitol-hill
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/max-blumenthal
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/patrick-leahy-senate-israel-egypt-stat
e-221366
[4] http://www.amazon.com/March-Book-One-John-Lewis/dp/1603093001
[5]
http://www.alternet.org/world/after-destroying-100000-homes-netanyahu-threat
ens-even-more-destruction-gaza
[6]
https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/719928155004411906?ref_src=twsrc%5E
tfw
[7] https://faculty.biu.ac.il/~steing/conflict/CV.pdf
[8]
http://972mag.com/what-is-ngo-monitors-connection-to-the-israeli-government/
90239/
[9] http://www.amazon.com/Goliath-Life-Loathing-Greater-Israel/dp/1568586345
[10] http://republicangomorrah.com/
[11] http://twitter.com/maxblumenthal
[12] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Two Human Rights
Defenders From Occupied Palestine Navigate the Politics of Capitol Hill
[13] http://www.alternet.org/
[14] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Two Human Rights Defenders From Occupied Palestine Navigate the
Politics of Capitol Hill
Two Human Rights Defenders From Occupied Palestine Navigate the Politics of
Capitol Hill
By Max Blumenthal [1] / AlterNet [2]
April 27, 2016
This month, two front line human rights defenders in occupied Palestine,
Palestine Center for Human Rights (PCHR) founder Raji Sourani and Al Haq
founder Shawan Jabarin, embarked on a speaking tour in New York City and
Washington DC. Following their appearance at Columbia University, where they
spoke at an event organized by the Center for Constitutional Rights, I met
Sourani and Jabarin at a private event in Washington DC. The two had come to
town for a series of meetings in Congress, including with one of the most
knowledgable foreign policy staffers.
Sourani and Jabarin's first meeting took place at the Senate Subcommittee on
State and Foreign Operations in the office of Tim Rieser, a longtime aide to
Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy. Considered a champion of human rights
inside Congress, Rieser is the brains behind the so-called Leahy Law which
restricts US arms sales to serial human rights-abusing nations. In March,
Leahy joined [3] ten members of Congress in signing a letter demanding the
Obama administration investigate Israel and the Egyptian military junta for
"gross violations of human rights." According to a DC based human rights
activist who escorted Sourani and Jabarin to Rieser's office, the two had
hoped to gain a sense of whether the Leahy Law would be enforced, but
received only informal recommendations.
A meeting with Democratic Rep. John Lewis followed the gathering with
Reiser. The DC-based activist told me that Lewis held court with Sourani and
Jabarin for over an hour, far longer than expected and posed for photos with
the men, lending the presence of a living symbol of the civil rights
movement to their cause. He left the two with copies of his 2013 graphic
novel, March [4], on the famous march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in
Selma, Alabama. "They came out of Lewis's office feeling great," the
activist said.
Jabarin and Sourani were given the cold shoulder by the Obama
administration, however. A State Department staffer agreed to meet with
them, but phoned back two hours later to cancel without explanation. The
treatment hardly came as a shock after years of disappointment with Western
governments.
Towards the ICC
Neither Sourani nor Jabarin planned to dedicate their lives to human rights
work. But when they were teenagers, both were arrested by the Israeli army
and tortured in Israeli prisons. At age 18, Jabarin said Israel "killed my
dreams," barring him from traveling to study medicine abroad, where he had a
scholarship waiting for him. The two immersed themselves in international
law and sought out remedies for challenging Israel's occupation of the
Palestinian Territories.
In 1979, Jabarin founded Al Haq in Ramallah, now the seat of the Palestinian
Authority in the occupied West Bank, where Israel has carried out a
sustained campaign of home demolitions, settlement construction and
population transfer. For his part, Sourani founded the PCHR in Gaza City,
now the target of unprecedented violence from Israeli drones, attack jets
and heavy artillery.
Sourani currently presides over a staff of 63. "Even with that size," he
commented, "we don't have one single day to rest. The quantity and quality
of human rights violations we witness are astounding."
During Israel's 51-day assault on the Gaza Strip in 2014, PCHR researchers
were often in severe danger as they set out to document the attacks that
left over 2200 dead and 100,000 homes [5] partly or completely destroyed.
"I used to call Raji every day just to see if he's alive or not," Jabarin
recalled.
With the experience Sourani and his staff gathered, they have trained human
rights workers to document atrocities in Yemen, Libya and Syria. According
to Sourani, Gaza's terrible predicament has honed his organization into "the
most sophisticated human rights group in the Middle East."
Al Haq and PCHR are leading the Palestinian campaign to hold Israel
accountable at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Sourani described the
effort as a last resort. "We exhausted all national legal remedies in
Israel. Khalas! ["Enough," in Arabic] After years of experience we
discovered that this system is providing legal cover for systematic war
crimes. Torture is legalized and legitimized. Extrajudicial killing is
legalized. That's why we shifted to universal jurisdiction cases in the
ICC."
Threats, repression and travel bans
Because of their determination to publicize Israeli human rights crimes and
hold their authors accountable before international legal bodies, Sourani
and Jabarin have become targets of Israel and its international lobbyists.
Their appearance at Columbia University was pre-empted by an intimidating
letter [6] by right-wing NGO Monitor Legal Advisor Anne Herzberg to the
Columbia Law School raising questions about the sponsors of the event.
NGO Monitor bills itself as a watchdog organization providing "critical
analysis" of international NGOs, but is, in practice, an arm of Israel's
right-wing government. The group's founder, Gerald Steinberg, has worked
[7]as a consultant to the Israeli government and served on a steering
committee overseen by the Israeli Prime Minister's Office. In testimony
before Israel's Knesset, Steinberg called for [8] "a response like in war"
against human rights organizations. He urged the Israeli government to back
groups like his that created the impression of a "civil society"
counter-attack.
NGO Monitor's failed attempt to prevent Sourani and Jabarin's appearance at
Columbia is an extension of the escalating assault by the Israeli government
on human rights organizations. Both men have been barred from traveling
abroad by Israeli security services.
According to Jabarin, Al Haq's funders have been confronted with a wave of
threats and intimidation from pro-Israel forces. Recently, members of his
staff have been finding at the doorsteps of their homes what he called
"funeral flowers," or dead flowers accompanied by cards inscribed with
threatening messages. He said his group's computer serves have been
attacked, his staff has received threatening emails, and that he and Sourani
are subject of a constant parade of attacks in the Israeli press.
"If you search our names on Google," Jabarin said, "I guarantee you will see
the word 'terrorist' next to them. We know this work is not a joke and we
are prepared to pay the price to continue it."
Jabarin filed his submission at the Hague -- the home of the ICC -- on
November 23, 2015. Trapped in Gaza, where travel is rendered nearly
impossible by the ongoing Israeli siege, Sourani held a simultaneous press
conference in the rubble of homes destroyed by the Israeli army.
"This was just a small step," Jabarin said of the press conference in the
ruins of Gaza. "Raji [Sourani] was surrounded by people who had lost their
beloved, lost their properties, their houses -- everything. And this
submission to the ICC gave them hope that justice was coming."
He pointed to the Obama administration as a principal antagonist in the
quest for Palestinian human rights. "You saw the US pressure Palestine not
to go to the ICC," Jabarin recalled. "They don't want us to accept justice!
This is the contradiction that makes us feel a little angry."
Yet as he stood in a living room in DC surrounded by supporters, including a
few bearing pins promoting the presidential candidacy of Senator Bernie
Sanders, Jabarin took stock of the shifting political winds. "You are the
new America for us," he told his audience, "not the administration."
Editor's note: This story has been updated since initial publication
Max Blumenthal is a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and
the award-winning author of Goliath [9] and Republican Gomorrah [10]. His
most recent book is The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza. Follow him
on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal [11].
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [12]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[13]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/two-human-rights-defenders-occupied
-palestine-navigate-politics-capitol-hill
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/max-blumenthal
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/patrick-leahy-senate-israel-egypt-stat
e-221366
[4] http://www.amazon.com/March-Book-One-John-Lewis/dp/1603093001
[5]
http://www.alternet.org/world/after-destroying-100000-homes-netanyahu-threat
ens-even-more-destruction-gaza
[6]
https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/719928155004411906?ref_src=twsrc%5E
tfw
[7] https://faculty.biu.ac.il/~steing/conflict/CV.pdf
[8]
http://972mag.com/what-is-ngo-monitors-connection-to-the-israeli-government/
90239/
[9] http://www.amazon.com/Goliath-Life-Loathing-Greater-Israel/dp/1568586345
[10] http://republicangomorrah.com/
[11] http://twitter.com/maxblumenthal
[12] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Two Human Rights
Defenders From Occupied Palestine Navigate the Politics of Capitol Hill
[13] http://www.alternet.org/
[14] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
