In 1977 the United Nations decided that the November 29th it would be the international day of solidarity with the Palestinian people. The date and the celebration are more than necessary this year than ever, after last October 22 the Israeli Ministry of Defense announced the designation of six of the main Palestinian human rights organizations as “Terrorist organizations & rdquor;. The accusation, without evidence or legal foundation, has unleashed a global campaign of support from international civil society under the slogan # StandWithThe6.
Several United Nations representatives and legal experts in international law have already spoken out about this new attack by Israel against human rights defenders. They denounce “the manifestly flagrant misuse & rdquor; of the Israeli anti-terrorism and security legislation, and warn that it undermines “the security of all”, jeopardizing fundamental freedoms like those of association and expression. We continue, instead, waiting for a clear condemnation response from the EU and its member states at a time when urgent measures are needed to support the designated organizations to reverse these designations.
Despite their severity, these new attacks they are not entirely surprisingRather, they are the culmination of decades of persecution by the Israeli Government against Palestinian organizations. ‘Las 6’, along with others also persecuted such as the Health Work Committees – with four imprisoned workers, such as the Spanish Juana Ruiz placeholder image -, are fundamental in the provision of evidence in the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which last March announced lthe opening of an investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine. Since then, criminalization has increased exponentially. In the words of Sahar Francis, director of Addameer, one of the persecuted NGOs, “Israel wants to silence us because we expose its crimes. The discrediting campaign is therefore directed against key organizations and individuals in the denunciation and documentation of the violations of rights that Israel commits, in a generalized and systematic way, on the Palestinian population. “Much of our work is evidence of the apartheid state imposed by Israel. Now we run the imminent risk of being arrested or that our offices are closed because of our work & rdquor ;, denounce from Al-Haq, another of ‘6’.
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Reporting Israel’s crimes and protecting the Palestinian population cannot be a crime. Solidarity cannot be a crime. Israel persecutes the Palestinian entities but also the international entities that we support, some of which are Catalan and integrated into Lafede.cat, and that is why we will celebrate this year with great conviction the ‘Setmana de Solidaritat amb el Poble Palestí’. As these attacks are also directed against the Catalan institutions that support them through us, we will take the opportunity to ask them for courage in their commitment to global justice. We must raise our voices and position ourselves against this injustice, and we must maintain and strengthen support for the Palestinian people and their organizations, making explicit the essential task that they carry out. The Barcelona City Council International Cooperation Council has already positioned itself in this regard. The Catalan Government and the other administrations, as members of the international community, have the duty to end complicities with Israel, as long as it continues to violate the rights of the Palestinian population and those who defend them with impunity.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com