
© Mohammed Zaanoun/ActiveStills
Palestinians walk through neighborhood in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza Strip, destroyed in Israeli airstrikes May 2021.
Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz declared six prominent Palestinian human rights groups to be "terrorist organizations" on Friday.
The defense ministry order accuses the groups of serving "as an arm of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine," a leftist political party banned by Israel, the US and the European Union due to its opposition to normalization with Israel.
Some of the six targeted groups -
Al-Haq, Addameer, Defense for Children International Palestine, the
Union of Palestinian Women Committees, the
Union of Agricultural Work Committees and the
Bisan Center for Research and Development - have cooperated closely with the
International Criminal Court in its war crimes probe in the West Bank and Gaza.
Gantz's conduct may come under ICC scrutiny as he twice perpetrated major massacres of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, as army chief of staff in 2014, and as defense minister earlier this year,
when he vowed that "no person, area or neighborhood in Gaza is immune."
Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders,
reacted to the "disturbing news" on Friday by saying that "human rights defenders are not terrorists and should never be smeared like this."
The targeted groups include
"key partners" of the UN Human Rights Office in the West Bank and Gaza.
Comment: In other words, the UK government is prepared to charge ahead with its program, regardless of the real science or the parents' concerns.