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Understanding Israel Palestine
This show is inspired by Citizens for Justice in the Middle East, a local group that has advocated for 20 years for a fair and even-handed U.S. foreign policy that recognizes the rights of both Palestinians and Israelis. Our program offers interviews with journalists, scholars, policy experts and activists to offer multiple perspectives, and to clarify the underlying issues that are often obscured by headline news.
On Oct. 21, Israel charged six prominent Palestinian human rights groups with being terrorist organizations. Israeli, European, and international human rights organizations, U.N. experts, and others have denounced the charge as baseless and politically motivated, a way to shut down the six organizations and muzzle criticism of Israel’s human rights record. Aseel AlBajeh is a legal researcher and advocacy officer at Al-Haq, Palestine’s oldest human rights organization and one of the organizations charged with terrorism under Israel’s 2016 anti-terrorism law. AlBajeh explains the work of Al-Haq, the threat posed to it and the other organizations by the charge Israel is making, and why Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and U.N. experts call the move by Israel not only an assault on Palestinian human rights but on human rights everywhere. They are calling on Israel to revoke the designation. AlBajeh puts the charge by Israel in the context of other actions Israel has taken against Palestinian civil society and the decades-long failure of the international community to uphold international law in israel-Palestine.
