Head of Israeli-Arab NGO admits to spying against Israel

NGO Monitor
16 November '10

On October 27, 2010 Haaretz reported that Ameer Makhoul the director of Israeli-Arab NGO Ittijah, “confess[ed] to charges of spying, contact with a foreign agent and giving information to the enemy.” Makhoul, as head of Ittijah, has a background of anti-Israel activities characterized by demonization and hate rhetoric. For example, an Ittijah email during the Gaza war claimed, “the IDF is turning Gaza into kind of an extermination camp, in the full sense of the word and with the full historical relativity.”

Despite the serious charges against Makhoul, NGOs defended him and attempted to portray the Israeli justice system as illegitimate. Amnesty International accused Israel of “harassment of [a] human rights defender” and that his detention was “designed to hinder his human rights work.” Without providing evidence for these claims, Deputy Director of Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa Programme Phillip Luther asserted that it was “unlikely...that there are genuine grounds to prosecute Makhoul.”

Similarly, Adalah labeled Makhoul “a political activist and human rights defender,” and implied that his arrest was linked to “attacks against human rights organizations in Israel working to defend Palestinian rights.”

Following Makhoul’s plea bargain, the NGOs have not issued retractions or corrections of their misstatements.

(Click here for full Digest (VOL. 9, NO. 1)

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