The Shin Bet representative tasked with briefing U.S. Congress on Israel’s designation of six Palestinian civil society NGOs as terrorist groups presented evidence on an unrelated organization.
The document had previously been presented to European diplomats in May in an attempt to convince them to stop funding the organizations. Sources who were shown it at the time said it did not convince them. According to sources, additional evidence was presented to the U.S. State Department and other officials with higher security clearances.
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The document discusses a total of seven organizations: Six are the civil society organizations that Defense Minister Benny Gantz designated as terrorist organizations last week. The seventh, the Health Workers Committee, was designated as a terrorist organization affiliated with the PFLP in January 2020.
The Health Workers Committee is at the center of a trial in an Israeli military court that will begin in a few days. Israel is charging four of their employees with membership in the PFLP and inflating receipts to divert donor money for the organization’s benefit.
The document consists of employee transcripts and presents segments of the police investigation of the employees, which were based on extremely lengthy investigations conducted earlier by the Shin Bet, in which the suspects are often denied access to a lawyer. Two of the employees whose testimonies are at the center of the document were dismissed in 2019, on allegations of embezzling the organization’s funds.
Shawan Jabarin, right, director of the al-Haq human rights group, speaks during a rare meeting of solidarity between leaders from Israeli human rights organizations and representatives from six PalestMajdi Mohammed/AP
The quotations were supposed to prove that the six groups – Addameer, Al-Haq, Bisan Center, Defense for Children International Palestine, the Women’s Committee, and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees – are part of a network serving the PFLP, but were only based on evidence from the Health Workers Committee employees.
A quote from an employee of the HWC appears on one of the document’s first pages from the investigation and relates to all seven of the organizations: “The institutions belonging to the Popular Front are related to one another and are the organizations’ lifeblood economically and organizationally. In other words – laundering money and funding the operations of the Popular Front.”
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The quote is identical to one presented in a press briefing only a few days ago, after the declaration of the organizations as terrorist groups.
The transcript quotes the employee as stating that the PFLP controls a number of different institutions in the West Bank. He then lists the six organizations and those supposedly leading them on behalf of the Popular Front, except for Al-Haq, which is not mentioned.
A quote appears later in the document from the investigation of an employee of the Health Workers Committee, who says Al-Haq is an institution belonging to the PFLP and that someone who is not a PFLP activist cannot work there. The document does not bring evidence to support this statement, and it is the only quote directly mentioning Al-Haq.
An indictment was filed in December 2019 against another employee of the HWC, Walid Khantashe, for holding a position in the PFLP, participating in military training and involvement in terrorist attacks carried out by others. The indictment does not mention his work for the HWC or a suspicion of embezzling funds to the organization, though it is noted he was the HWC’s chief financial officer.
The document later presents screenshots of the group’s receipts that were allegedly inflated, but no evidence was presented that the funds ever reached the PFLP. According to one of the employees, money was transferred from the organization to fund PFLP activities in universities, as well as aid to patients and members of the group that have been killed.
The investigation also refers to activities such as a joint summer camp for the organizations, which was allegedly held on behalf of the PFLP, and included lectures and a dabke course. But during the same investigation, the employee said the diversion of the money was intended to pay off the debts of the HWC.
In addition, the document includes a quote referring to a supreme committee of the PFLP which decides where the laundered funds received from the organizations will go – whether to military purposes or other purposes. However, the material from the investigation reveals that the employee in question says he didn’t know how the money reaches the committee and how it is distributed.
Two employees of one of the organizations that were designated as terrorist groups, Union of Agricultural Work Committees, are Samer Arbid, who is charged with the murder of 17-year-old Rina Shnerb in August 2019, and Abed el-Razeq Faraj, who was charged as an accessory to manslaughter. As a result, the Dutch funding to this organization was frozen, and it is now being reexamined.
The Shin Bet denied the claims that the material presented to American officials was circumstantial and inadequate. “In various briefings given to different bodies in the United States, also including Congress, concrete and unambiguous information was provided related to the activities of the relevant organizations and the PFLP, after they were declared terrorist organizations by the defense minister, with the approval of the state prosecutor,” said the Shin Bet.
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