by Dan Diker
Defense Minister Benny Gantz’ exposes there are operational and financial links between Palestinian terror organizations and civil society- “human rights” groups -funded largely by European countries
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IDF thwarting a a massive Hamas terrorist network in the West Bank, November 22, 2021.
(photo credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)
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The recent international reaction to Israel’s Defense Minister
Benny Gantz’s decision to designate and outlaw six Palestinian civil
society organizations as terror groups points to two important lessons
learned: The Palestinian leadership’s ongoing success in prosecuting an
international political war against Israel, and Israel’s failure to
expose and counter the Palestinian leadership’s hybrid warfare
strategy.
Gantz’s
statement, based on years of hard evidence provided by research
organizations and the Israeli government, exposed operational and
financial links between Palestinian terror organizations and civil
society- “human rights” groups -funded largely by European countries.
The declaration should have been an open and shut case both in Israel
and the West. The evidence is overwhelming, and most of it is publicly
available. However, the international outrage Gantz's designation
triggered towards Israel reflected his failure to present the evidence,
context, and Israel’s legal right of response to the Israeli and
international public. He thereby undermined his and Israel’s strong
case, which fallaciously positioned him and by extension, the
government, and the people of Israel, as enemies of liberal democracy
and its cherished principles of freedom and human rights.
For
years, research institutions, including the Jerusalem Center for Public
Affairs (JCPA) and NGO Monitor, have exposed the direct links between
terror organizations and so-called Palestinian civil society groups. The
Jerusalem Center’s BDS Unmasked, published in 2016, and its 2019
publication The PACBI Deception: Unmasked, revealed the association of
Palestinian terror groups, including the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad
(PIJ) as full members in the BDS National Committee (BDS Movement) in
Palestinian Authority-governed Ramallah.Following
years of research revelations, in 2018, Israel's Ministry of Strategic
Affairs issued "Terrorists in Suits", a major detailed report exposing
the incontrovertible ties between the PFLP terror group and the above
mentioned “human rights” organizations.
The
broad condemnation of Gantz’s statement by groups such as Human Rights
Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, and J Street raises serious
questions about their intellectual, moral, and professional integrity.
Here
are two examples of the convergence of Palestinian terror and human
rights groups: Khalida Jarrar, former vice president of the human rights
group Addameer, was sentenced to two years in prison in March 2021 for
her activities in the PFLP. Another illustration is provided by the case
of Shawan Jabarin- a convicted and formerly incarcerated PFLP member
who has served as Executive Director of Al-Haq, one of the Palestinian
civil society organizations designated by the Ministry of Defense.
The
decision against making a public case against the “human rights” groups
- terrorist intersection is the latest example of a deeper problem that
has plagued Israeli governments since the Oslo accords in the 1990s.
Israeli
governments over the past 30 years have failed to expose the
Palestinian leadership’s strategy of politically-driven “Hybrid
Warfare,” which combines terrorism on one hand and political deception,
disinformation, demonization, and delegitimization of Israel on the
other. By doing so, the Palestinian leadership adopted the Cold War
strategies of the Soviet and Chinese regimes.
Over the past decade the free world has come to recognize the
danger inherent in the hybrid warfare threat. In 2014 the NATO Summit
summary document recognized political deception and disinformation as
components of Hybrid Warfare employed by Russia in its occupation of
Crimea and by Hezbollah in Lebanon and ISIS, in Iraq and Syria. The PLO
has also been using this strategy effectively for decades; Arafat and
his Soviet backers led the 1975 UN campaign that resulted in the
adoption of the infamous UN Zionism is Racism resolution with Arafat and
the Palestinian leadership intensified the crusade prosecuting a
political warfare campaign branding Israel as an apartheid regime at the
UN sanctioned World Conference Against Racism in 2001 in Durban, South
Africa. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has sustained this political warfare
against Israel using demonizing and delegitimizing rhetoric libeling
Israel as an “apartheid” entity in his Durban IV speech in September
2021.
In fact,
the apartheid libel has today become the internationally accepted lingua
franca regarding the only Jewish State: at the UN, by some members of
the U.S. House of Representatives, in some European Parliaments, in the
international media, and across Western academia. These statements of
intentional, calculated disinformation are acts of war no less than
those fought in 1948, 1967, 1973, 1982 and the Palestinian and
Iranian-backed Hybrid Warfare against Israel that continue today.
This
Palestinian strategically driven ideological war requires an immediate
response for the sake of Israel’s national security. It is essential
that Israel dedicate the necessary resources to establishing a national
security council effort to counter Palestinian hybrid warfare. There is
precedent in the West. Great Britain and the United States established
political warfare offices as part of their wartime efforts in defeating
the Nazis and the Soviet Union, respectively. It
is now time that Israel garners the resources and mobilize the
collective political will to overcome the decades-long PLO, PA and
Hamas’ led Hybrid War to dismantle Israel as a Jewish-Democratic state.
Dan
Diker is a research fellow and the director of the program to counter
political warfare and BDS at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
(JCPA). He previously served as the secretary general of the World
Jewish Congress (WJC).
This op-ed is published in partnership with a coalition of organizations that fight antisemitism across the world. Read the previous article by Dr. Shmuel Katz
Dan Diker
Source: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/palestinian-hybrid-warfare-is-a-strategic-threat-to-israels-security-686975
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