PCHR tries to counter “Terrorists in Suits”–and can’t

Last year Israeli’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs released “Terrorists in Suits,” which showed how many top members of anti-Israel NGOs were linked to terror groups, most often the PFLP but also Hamas.

Now, PCHR – one of the organizations targeted – has written a rebuttal report.

However, it doesn’t point out any inaccuracies!

For example, PCHR writes:

On February 2019, the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs released a report titled “Terrorists in Suits”, accusing several Palestinian NGO’s, especially the human rights organizations, that attempting to eradicate the State of Israel. And they also posted about the directors of these institutions as they have relations with Palestinian organizations as “terrorists”, so they published Photoshopped pictures for some of them such as the Lawyer Raji al-Sourani, the director of PCHR, and Sha’wan Jabarin, general director of al-Haq.

The report alleges that it exhibits the connections between dozens of the human rights organizations and the so-called “terrorists” groups. It also attempted to create a connection between human rights organizations, BDS, Hamas Movement, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The report is based on fake information in a misrepresented context regarding the former and decades old activities of human rights activists with Palestinian political parties. The report also claims that BDS and human rights organizations are attempting to deceive the world and hide behind a humanitarian and human rights facade to destroy the State of Israel, as it alleges that those organizations do not recognize “Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state”, and they aim to eradicate the State of Israel. The report used the membership of the Palestinian National and Islamic Forces, a political coalition of 15 Palestinian factions, in the BDS National Committee (BNC), which includes the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO) , to paint its allegations as truths.

Note that PCHR doesn’t say that the report isn’t true. Because they can’t. Here is the Terrorists in Suits page they are referring to:

 

 

The “Photoshopped pictures” are simply two different edits of the same picture – they are clearly of the correct person and don’t misrepresent them.

The Israeli report freely admits that Wisha’s prison sentence was many years ago, but when such a high percentage of PFLP terrorists become members of NGOs, it is clear that the NGOs exist to do the same job that the PFLP does. In fact, the leader of the cell that killed 17-year old Rina Shnerb last year was at the same time working for the European-funded Addameer NGO.

PCHR’s response is meant to give the impression that “Terrorists in Suits” is filled with inaccuracies, but in the end they cannot find anything specific that was incorrect! The entire purpose of the PCHR report is to make it look like they have a substantive response, knowing that most people will not actually read it and hoping that EU funders of these NGOs – who often look for any excuse to continue to fund these organizations to pretend they care about human rights - -will feel better about funding terrorist-infested organizations since they seemingly responded.

Much of the rest of the report attacks NGO Monitor, accusing it of falsehoods, again without rebutting a single example. It’s almost humorous.