A US lawmaker and a host of US organizations Thursday condemned the closure by Israeli forces of the premises of seven Palestinian civil society organizations in the West Bank.
Representative Betty McCollum urged the US administration to condemn Israeli efforts to silence Palestinian CSOs.
“Once again the IDF has launched a chilling attack on Defense for Children International-Palestine, a human rights organization supporting Palestinian children. The Biden admin. must condemn these efforts to silence groups advocating for Palestinian human rights & civil society,” she tweeted.
Adalah Justice Project expressed solidarity with Palestinian CSOs who are attacked for their role in fighting Israeli settler-colonialism.
“Israel is threatened by any means of resistance from Palestinians who are fighting for liberation from settler colonial violence. We stand with our partners in Palestine who are being targeted for boldly taking on the Zionist colonizers and holding them accountable for the 74 years of colonial violence done to our people,” it said.
Meanwhile, the US Campaign for Human Rights slammed the Israeli attack on the CSOs and St. Andrew’s Anglican/Episcopal Church in Ramallah as “an assault on human rights work.”
“This is part of Israel’s all-out assault against any Palestinian person or organization that dares to speak up against its colonial regime,” it said.
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) pointed to the key role of the seven Palestinian CSOs in exposing Israeli crimes and defending the rights of the Palestinian people, particularly children, women, farmers and prisoners, against Israeli violence and oppression.
“The Israeli army broke into, ransacked, and shut down offices of 6 Palestinian human rights organizations early this morning. “The most moral army in the world” is so threatened by Palestinian human rights work that it attacked organizations under the cover of darkness, stealing their documentation of Israeli war crimes and welding shut their doors with iron,” it said.
“By shutting these organizations down, the Israeli government is trying to avoid accountability for its human rights violations and make it harder for Palestinians to document and resist Israeli apartheid and occupation.”
“The solidarity work we do to support Palestinians’ struggle for freedom relies on and builds off the work of these organizations. We are outraged and #StandWithThe6,” it added.
In addition, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the US largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, called on President Joe Biden to speak out against raids by Israeli forces on the offices of several Palestinian rights groups.
It said in a press statement that officials with those groups say Israel’s actions are part of a decades-long crackdown on Palestinian political activism and on organizations that document human rights violations by Israel.
“We ask that President Biden speak out against this new attempt to stifle Palestinian political activism and to block documentation of Israel’s ongoing apartheid practices and human rights abuses. The idea of promoting human rights ‘everywhere, except Palestine’ must come to an end,” CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said.
Source: Palestine News & Info Agency