Since the beginning of the year, Israeli war criminal and “Minister of Defense” Benny Gantz has repeatedly designated Palestinian and international organizations working to defend Palestinian rights and organize for Palestinian liberation as “terrorist.” Today, 22 October, Gantz designated six Palestinian organizations, all known for their defense of Palestinian human rights: Al-Haq, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Defence for Children International Palestine, Bisan Center for Research and Development, the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees.

This follows Gantz and the Israeli regime’s designation of Samidoun as a “terrorist” organization on 21 February 2021. In late August 2021, without issuing a press release, Gantz also designated EuroPal Forum, the International Legal Coalition for Palestine and the Popular Conference of Palestinians Abroad. It is clear that the Israeli regime has fully adopted as standard practice and policy the “terrorist” designation of organizations that effectively challenge its control and expose its crimes on the local, regional and international levels.

The co-founder of activist group Palestine Action will Wednesday challenge a UK government ban under anti-terror laws that has led to mass arrests, sparking free speech and civil liberties concerns. United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk has said the ban "appears disproportionate and unnecessary", while Europe's human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, criticised "excessive limits" on the right to protest. The UK government proscribed the pro-Palestinian group in July days after activists, protesting the war in Gaza, broke into an air force base in southern England. Prosecutors have said they caused an estimated £7 million ($9.3 million) of damage to two aircraft at the base. The legal action brought by the group's co-founder Huda Ammori at London's High Court is expected to last Wednesday and Thursday, with a third day to be set at a later stage. The ban -- which makes being a member of the group or inviting support for it a serious criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison -- has resulted in at least 2,300 arrests, according to protest organisers Defend Our Juries. Those arrested include students, teachers, pensioners and even an 83-year-old retired vicar, with many carried away from the protests by police.

The co-founder of pro-Palestinian activist group Palestine Action can launch a court bid to overturn the UK government's decision to ban the group under anti-terrorism laws, a judge ruled Wednesday. The government earlier this month banned the group days after activists broke into an air force base in southern England. Prosecutors have said they caused an estimated £7 million ($9.3 million) of damage to two aircraft at the base. Being a member or supporting the group is now a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison. Co-founder Huda Ammori asked a judge to allow her to launch a High Court challenge over the ban, calling it an attack on free speech.

After last Saturday’s Palestinian offensive, the imperialist governments and press launched a campaign to discredit supporters of the Palestinian cause. The aim is to frame support for the Palestinian people’s right to resistance as political support for Hamas and its methods. As revolutionary socialists, we must refuse this false equivalence. Does supporting Palestinian resistance mean supporting the strategy and methods of Hamas? Israel is a colonial state created from scratch in 1948 by the imperialist powers, with the complicity of the Stalinist bureaucracy of the USSR, which sought to take advantage of the division of Palestine to gain new spheres of influence. This imperialist project to create a Jewish state drew on existing Jewish Zionist currents active since the end of the 19th century, often encouraged by non-Jewish Zionist leaders promoting anti-Semitic ideas: to create a Jewish state in Palestine to help legitimize the expulsion of Jews from Europe and the United States. Some non-Zionist Jews even denounced the plan to create Israel as a means of creating an “international ghetto.” However, the Zionist project of creating a Jewish state gradually took on a new dimension: after World War II, Israel was to be a colonial enclave that preserves imperialist interests and polices the region on behalf of these powers. Although the Jewish population represented only 30 percent of the Palestinian territory, most of the land was granted to them through the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Zionist militias. Since its establishment, Israel has only conquered new swathes of Palestinian territory through wars, military offensives, and expulsions of Palestinians, whether in 1967, 1973, or since the late 1990s. Palestinians Have the Right to Resist the Colonial Rule of the State of Israel Today, the Palestinian territories have no territorial continuity and are totally dependent on Israel, which exercises almost complete control over vital services such as drinking water, electricity, and even international humanitarian aid. The Palestinian population lives in a clear state of colonial oppression and apartheid, which has been denounced by internationally recognized NGOs such as Amnesty International. On top of this, the Gaza Strip has been under blockade since Hamas seized power over the territory in 2007. Since then, it has suffered six wars. Since 2000, 10,500 Palestinians have died as a result of Israeli military interventions or police brutality. In this context, and despite enormous suffering and humiliation, the Palestinian people have never stopped resisting. Palestinians have an indisputable right to resistance and struggle against the aggression and attacks of Israeli colonialism. Beyond our political disagreements with the Palestinian leadership, we unconditionally defend this right, to use the means at their disposal in such a complex situation, including armed struggle. In this respect, we denounce the likening of Palestinian resistance to terrorism. In the context of ongoing war in Palestine, Hamas must be considered a belligerent, not a “terrorist organization.” -The “terrorist” designation is simplistic and tends to conflate this organization with others such as ISIS and al-Qaeda. Politically, as the Israeli journalist Larry Derfner points out, Hamas is very different from these organizations. Hamas came to power through an electoral process, and its popular support is significant. It is by no means a small group disconnected from the population. What’s more, even though Hamas rules Gaza in an authoritarian manner, Christian minorities are allowed to live in the territory it controls, which cannot be said for groups like ISIS. Rejecting the term “terrorism” does not mean relativizing, still less justifying, Hamas’s crimes against Palestinian and Israeli civilians. Rather, it means countering a fundamentally distorted reading of the situation in Palestine. As journalist Alain Gresh notes in a recent editorial (French),

Palestinian civil society employees and political activists say they are determined to continue their work despite the criminalisation of their organisations by Israel and the hacking of their phones with Pegasus spyware developed by Israeli company NSO Group.

On October 19, Israel designated six internationally renowned Palestinian civil and human rights organisations as “terror groups” under its domestic Anti-Terrorism Law, claiming they had connections with the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) group. The PFLP’s armed wing was active during the Second Intifada and carried out attacks against Israeli targets.

The rights groups deny any links to the PFLP and Israel has failed to publicly release any evidence to substantiate its claims.

The “terror” designation was followed by military orders in the occupied West Bank labelling the organisations as “unlawful” under British-era Defence Emergency regulations.

“I will carry on working to help Palestinians no matter what,” Salah Hammouri, a lawyer for Addameer prisoner rights group – one of the targeted organisations – told Al Jazeera.

The Israeli government’s decision on Friday to outlaw six Palestinian civil society organisations operating in the West Bank has caused consternation in the US and EU and been condemned by human rights organisations as an attempt to silence civilian advocacy and peaceful protest against the occupation.

The NGOs were declared as terrorist organisations because of their alleged links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a less known group active in the past which is designated as a terrorist group by both Israel and EU.

Members of the NGOs are accused of transferring funding to the group or being themselves affiliated to the group or in one case even being involved in a terror attack in 2019. In particular, Israel claims that the money the NGOs are receiving from European countries are transferred to PFLP to recruit new members and pay their salaries, including assistance to convicted prisoners and their families.

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An order signed by Israel’s defense minister on Friday designated six leading Palestinian human rights groups “terror organizations,” marking an escalation in Israel’s effort to deprive independent agencies that document Israeli military abuses in the occupied territories of funding from U.S. foundations and European nations.

Israeli law criminalizes providing funds to groups designated as terrorist organizations and authorizes the police “to prevent activities by or in support of terrorist organizations, including organizing meetings, marches, or training.”

The rights groups uniformly rejected the charge — made in an unsigned statement from Israel’s internal security service and its bureau of counter-terror financing — that all six are secretly run by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which carried out bombings and hijackings starting in the late 1960s.

Because the Israeli agencies said the designations were based on secret evidence that was “concealed for security reasons,” the rights groups were given no opportunity to rebut an accusation that struck their many international and Israeli partners as transparently false.