Lara Alqasem, 22, a U.S. citizen, appears in court in 2018 after Israel denied her entry on a valid student visa, alleging she supports Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). A 2017 law allows Israeli authorities to bar entry to BDS advocates identified by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs. (Photo by Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs was founded in 2006, but Israel didn’t pay much attention to the nascent BDS movement until late 2009-10, according to Yossi Kuperwasser, who served as director general of the ministry from 2009-14.

That period was a turning point for efforts to hold Israel accountable for its policies toward Gaza, the coastal strip that has been battered by Israeli assaults and economically devastated by an Israeli land, air and sea blockade. In September 2009, the UN Human Rights Council released a report authored by Richard Goldstone, a respected Jewish South African judge, who accused both Israel and Palestinian militant groups of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during Israel’s 2008-09 assault on Gaza. Then, in May 2010, Israeli commandos raided a Turkish ship trying to break the sea blockade of Gaza, killing nine people. That episode sparked international condemnation of Israel’s excessive use of force and of its policies toward Gaza, and Israel ultimately loosened the blockade.

The Goldstone report and the attempt to break Israel’s blockade were not BDS initiatives, but they did fuel BDS calls to hold Israel accountable for human rights abuses. Kuperwasser explains that if an eminent figure like Goldstone could accuse Israel of possible war crimes, it meant that the BDS movement’s efforts to “delegitimize” Israel might convince liberals.

“This [idea of delegitimizing Israel] was ... a red light,” Kuperwasser tells In These Times. “The most important thing [was] to prevent the movement of this idea from the extreme progressive part [to] ... reasonable people.”

Since that period, Kuperwasser says, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs has stepped up its efforts to undermine activists calling for the boycott of Israel. Its budget has steadily grown. In 2015, the Ministry received about $2.5 million; by 2017, that budget had more than quintupled to $13.2 million. In late 2017, the Israeli government, as a whole, announced it would set aside $72 million to attack BDS.

Using that money, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs has embarked on a campaign of surveillance and propaganda targeting the BDS movement.

Because Israel controls all entry and exit points to the Palestinian territories, perhaps the Ministry’s most potent tool is a 2017 law allowing Israel to bar supporters of BDS from entering Israel and Palestine. While the Ministry of the Interior has ultimate authority over whom it lets in, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs supplies the Interior with information about critics of Israel to guide those decisions. Members of U.S.-based organizations Jewish Voice for Peace, American Friends Service Committee and Code Pink have been banned, in addition to Reps. Tlaib and Omar in August. The law is also being used to deport Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch’s Israel-Palestine director. Shurat HaDin kicked off the deportation with a 2017 petition to the Israeli government.

To carry out its attacks on BDS, the Ministry has drawn on the resources of the Mossad. In 2018, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan met with Mossad head Yossi Cohen to discuss “the struggle against the boycott.”

But perhaps the Ministry’s most prominent partner in this effort is Shurat HaDin. Founded in 2003, the nonprofit has made headlines for suing Iran and the Palestinian Authority to win settlements for Israeli and U.S. victims of militant attacks, with help from the Mossad. Yair Netanyahu, the son of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, worked as social media coordinator for Shurat HaDin for nearly a year.

Shurat HaDin has threatened the BDS movement and filed multiple lawsuits aimed at undermining it. Shurat HaDin asked the U.S. Internal Revenue Service in 2014 to revoke the tax-exempt status of the Presbyterian Church after the church divested from three corporations involved in the occupation of Palestine; filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board in 2016 after the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America endorsed BDS; and sued Airbnb on behalf of Israeli settlers for discrimination in 2018 after the home-sharing company decided to remove Jewish-only West Bank settlement listings from its platform. The Airbnb complaint in particular turned U.S. federal law on its head by arguing that delisting the settlements, despite discriminating against Palestinians, is a violation of the Fair Housing Act, a major civil rights-era law. (After heavy pressure from pro-Israel groups, Airbnb reversed its decision earlier this year and the lawsuit was settled.)

Shurat HaDin has not succeeded in U.S. federal courts with its attacks on the right to boycott, but that doesn’t matter much. Shurat HaDin is backed by a network of donors, many of them U.S. foundations, whose annual tax-exempt donations underwrite a never-ending series of legal claims that tie up their targets in expensive litigation. Those donations include $1.1 million from U.S. foundations and nonprofits over the past decade, according to an In These Times review. Among its most prominent donors are John Hagee Ministries, the evangelical ministry run by far-right Christian Zionist John Hagee, which has donated at least $225,000 to Shurat HaDin; the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston, which has given $475,000; and the Michael and Andrea Leven Family Foundation, run by Michael Leven, the former COO of Sheldon Adelson’s casino empire Las Vegas Sands, which has sent $25,000.

“They have a lot of resources, so they can throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall,” says Liz Jackson, a senior staff attorney for Palestine Legal, which defends Palestine advocates’ free speech rights and has defended those whom Shurat HaDin has targeted. “[They] paint anyone who’s an advocate for human rights as a terrorist. ... It’s a win-win strategy because they have enough money that they can afford to lose. And even when they lose a case, they get media.”

Shurat HaDin tells In These Times that it directly collaborated with the Ministry of Strategic Affairs in at least two instances. “Sometimes, if they need a warning letter or other legal action to be taken, and they themselves as the Israeli government cannot do it, they ask us to write the letter or bring the legal action,” Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, founder and director of Shurat HaDin, tells In These Times.

In addition to targeting the BNC’s Donorbox account, Darshan-Leitner says Shurat HaDin teamed up with the Ministry to go after the bank account of Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East, a German NGO. The alleged crime? In 2019, its parent group, European Jews for a Just Peace, invited Rasmea Odeh, a Palestinian woman accused by Israel of taking part in a militant attack carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, to speak at an event. Odeh denies participation and says her confession about the attack was tortured out of her by Israeli forces.

In response to the pressure, the Bank for Social Economy shut down the German group’s bank account. The International Legal Forum, for its part, has formed a global network to go after critics of Israel in courts around the world, with official backing from Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs. The organization’s head is Yifa Segal, who previously worked as a lawyer for Shurat HaDin. Segal confirmed to In These Times in an interview that the group has accepted Ministry funding.

In Israel, the International Legal Forum defended an anti-BDS law that lets Israelis sue boycott advocates. In Spain in 2015, it assisted action against cities that passed resolutions endorsing BDS—one city then withdrew its pro-BDS resolution, and another resolution was nullified by a Spanish judge. In the United States, it advocated against a 2016 State Department reminder that products made in illegal West Bank settlements should not be labeled as “made in Israel.” In October 2018, it sued the city of Durham, N.C., and its police chief for discrimination because a non-binding City Council resolution opposed the Durham police doing military-style international trainings. The resolution passed at the request of Palestinian rights organizers who lobby against police training exchanges between U.S. police and Israeli forces.

In September 2017, the Ministry filed documents announcing it would pay the Israel Bar Association to partner with the International Legal Forum in organizing a conference on anti-BDS legal strategies. In 2018, the Ministry announced its intention to provide up to $1 million in financial assistance to the International Legal Forum to foster an international network of attorneys to promote legal research on BDS.

Now, the International Legal Forum has registered as a foreign agent in the United States, tapping the Zionist Advocacy Center to file legal claims about alleged terrorism. It remains unclear what, exactly, that means and which organizations will be targeted. David Abrams, Zionist Advocacy Center executive director, twice told In These Times he had “no comment” for this story.

In the registration documents, Abrams states the International Legal Forum does not take foreign funding, despite what In These Times learned from Israeli government documents and was told by the International Legal Forum’s president, Yifa Segal, herself.

There’s concern among Palestinian rights advocates that Abrams and others are laying the groundwork to step up more financial and legal fights against BDS advocates, but leaders in the BDS movement say they are uncowed and view the response as a measure of their success.

“The Israeli far-right regime’s relentless and desperate measures of repression against the BDS movement are failing,” BDS movement co-founder Omar Barghouti tells In These Times. “The movement’s supporters are increasing like never before, its impact is growing steadily and impressively, and its fundraisers are hitting new records. While Israel is now a model for authoritarian and fascist forces, from Italy to Hungary to Brazil to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the BDS movement for Palestinian rights has become an integral part of the global anti-fascist and progressive wave that strives for freedom, justice and equality for all.”

Alex Kane is a New York-based freelance journalist who writes on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

This investigation was supported by the Leonard C. Goodman Institute for Investigative Reporting. Skyler Aikerson fact-checked this story; Mairav Zonszein contributed translation and reporting.

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