Mossawa

Activities

• Utilizes “various methods, including governmental advocacy in the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) and government, international advocacy with a particular focus in Europe, the United States, and South Africa,” and “contributed several position papers used in the decision making processes of international actors such as the UN, EU, and the US state departments.”
• Mossawa’s reports to UN committees and other international bodies omit or minimize the context of terrorism to condemn Israeli security measures.
• In February 2014, Director of Mossawa Jafar Farah, together with leaders of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), Shatil, and Combatants for Peace, metwith European Parliament President Martin Schultz. At the meeting, Farah presented a letter to Schultz accusing Israel of “population transfer” and “forced displacement” and urging the European Union to take action to influence Israeli policy in the region. This “echo chamber,” whereby the EU and European governments fund NGOs and then repeat their false, inaccurate, or misleading allegations in determining foreign policy, produces damaging and ill-informed policies, while exacerbating conflict between the EU and Israeli democratic polity.
• In June 2013, Mossawa, together with the Embassy of South Africa, organized a workshop for schoolchildren to learn about “struggle against colonialism and the apartheid regime in South Africa, and the current post-apartheid reality.” As part of the workshop, the students “were able to identify with the situation of South Africa pre-1994 which echoed the reality of their own lives.”
• In May 2018, Director of Mossawa Jafar Farah was arrested at a violent “Gaza Strip solidarity rally” that included “stone throwing at officers, property damage, attempts to block roads and the disturbing of public order.” Farah alleged that a policeman broke his knee while in custody, and the Israeli police are investigating the claims. The EU issued a statement about the incident, and the EU Ambassador to Israel visited him.
• Published a 2013 submission to the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights urging the international community to heed the recommendations of the Special Rapporteur [Richard Falk] to “employ terms as ‘annexation’, ‘ethnic cleansing’, ‘apartheid’, ‘colonialist’ and ‘criminality’” to “more adequately” express “the actual nature of the situation in the OPT”. The submission maintains that Israel’s “continuous violations” are the “core reason of human rights abuses and persistent suffering that Palestinian people” and states that the “referral of the situation to the International Court of Justice is compulsory.”

Political Advocacy

• Features annual “Racism Reports” on its website, published by the Coalition Against Racism (CAR) and funded by the EU, which accuse Israel of “racism” and “discrimination.”
• Features the “Homeless in Your Own Home” blog, which intends to provide “a glimpse of the daily challenges… of the Palestinian Arab minority of Israel.” The blog accuses Israel of “collective discrimination,” “home demolitions,” and denying basic rights to minority citizens. The blog attempts to advance the narrative that the Palestinians and Bedouin are the native and legitimate residents of the land and that Israel is a foreign, occupying power.  The blog refers readers to the websites of highly politicized NGOs including: Mossawa, Adalah, Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), Mada El Carmel, and the Arab Center for Alternative Planning.
• In May 2024, as a member of the Habitat International Coalition, was a signatory on a statement claiming, “Palestinian resistance, combined with the sustained and strategic efforts of the global solidarity movement, is the only way through which the Israeli genocidal war on the Gaza Strip will end, Israel’s colonial-apartheid regime will be sanctioned and dismantled, and colonial states will be held accountable for their complicity.”
• In March 2023, Friends of Mossawa Director Suha Salman Mousa participated in a conference to discuss “progressive strategies, visions, and alternatives to Nakba and Apartheid.”
• In February 2023, Mossawa International Media Coordinator Ibrahim Khalilye published an article claiming that “Israel is putting its commitment to Jewish supremacy above the functioning of its healthcare system, proposing rejecting graduates of Palestinian universities in favor of ‘Jewish purity’.”
• In August 2022, Mossawa condemned the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. According to Mossawa, “This is what the Israeli military does; it vaguely defines the concepts of terrorism as it pleases in an attempt to suppress any and all types of opposition to the occupation and the Israeli government’s systematic discrimination against Palestinians.”
• In May 2018, following the riots at the Gaza border, Mossawa called for people to refuse to “carry out crimes of this kind that violate all human rights charters…It’s time for any Jew or Arab to refuse to send her children to conquer, oppress, and shoot demonstrators.”
• In April 2018, Mossawa called for a “March to the Palestinian Coast of Atlit” (sic) to mark the “Nakba.” The statement refers to “Zionist gangs” who “conquered our villages and cities…after a chilling massacre” and alleges that “Israel has not stopped planning to destroy tens of Arab villages, the seizure and control of lands, the destruction of houses and the expulsion of the residents and their concentration in isolated areas.”
• On March 1, 2010, the Nazareth District Court dismissed a lawsuit filed by Mossawa against NGO Monitor for alleged defamation.
• In 2009, joined a coalition of NGOs in a letter to the Norwegian Government Pension Fund, calling “upon the Norwegian people to join us in our efforts and to stop investing in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.” The letter accused a number of Israeli and international corporations of “provid[ing] specifically designed equipment for the surveillance and repression of Palestinian population through restrictions of movement and collective punishments.”
• In 2007, Mossawa published a position paper (funded by the EU, Germany and the UNDP) rejecting Israel as a Jewish state and the “state symbols: for Jews only” (the flag and national anthem). The position paper alleged that “[t]he State of Israel was established on the ruins of the Palestinian people, for whom the event was a national tragedy – the Nakba.”
• Farrah was a member of the steering committee that wrote the document “The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel.” The document, which was published in 2006, states that “Israel is the result of a colonialist action initiated by the Jewish-Zionist elites in Europe and the West, established with the help of colonialist states, and strengthened under the shadow of an intensification of Jewish immigration to Palestine in light of the results of World War II and the Holocaust.” The document furthers that “Israel implemented Judaization in various ways…the expulsion of the Palestinian people … the destruction of the villages … and the broad expropriation of lands …The definition of the state as a Jewish state and the use of democracy for the Jewish service remove our feet from its ranks and place us in conflict with the nature and nature of the state in which we live.”