Anti-Israel protesters. Photo: Maddy Cozins/Wikimedia Commons.

The head of a pro-Israel advocacy group made up of Israel Defense Forces veterans vowed to expose Israeli NGOs that “fuel the system of hate” against the Jewish state by “acting under the guise of human rights.”

In an interview with The Algemeiner on Thursday, Amit Deri, founder and chairman of Reservists on Duty, was explaining the impetus for his group’s report, released this week, detailing the workings of Adalah — The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel — which, he said, is a blatant example of an organization that engages in “domestic activities that undermine and delegitimize” the country from within.

Deri told The Algemeiner that the report constitutes a warning to other such organizations, which promote the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement inside the country that it is working to “bring down.”

“We are putting them on notice — that we will be there to expose them,” he said. 

One key goal of conducting investigations like the one on Adalah, Deri said, is to arm Israeli legislators with information in the battle to persuade international sources, such as the UN and EU, to cut off funding to such groups.

Deri said that Adalah was his group’s first target, because it is one of the country’s most controversial NGOs. According to the report, Adalah engages in widespread anti-Israel activities, including promoting BDS and prosecuting IDF officers and senior Israeli officials abroad. 

“Policy-makers must understand that Adalah is not about so-called human rights for Arabs and Palestinians, but rather about attacking Israel and the IDF from within, mainly through the country’s legal system,” he said. “If they are concerned about Palestinian society’s human rights, why are they not attacking Hamas and the Palestinian media for glorifying terror? Where is their outcry against the oppression of women, the LGBTQ community and overall religious intolerance? Why do they not take issue with how Palestinian children are being taught to hate Israel?”

Adalah has been a prominent voice at the UN Human Rights Committee, calling for investigations into Israeli “war crimes.” It provided extensive testimony for the controversial Goldstone Report, which accused Israel and the IDF of violating international human rights law during Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009. Judge Richard Goldstone, its author, later expressed regret that his report may have been “inaccurate.” 

As the The Algemeiner reported in July, Adalah was the subject of a detailed 62-page Hebrew report, released by the Institute for Zionist Strategies (IZS), which refuted, point by point, a list of 100 Israeli “discriminatory laws.” An IZS spokesman said that Adalah’s list highlights a key method used by the BDS movement to portray Israel as an “apartheid state” — by accusing the country of discrimination against its Arab citizens through the local legal system.

Adalah did not immediately respond to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment on the Reservists on Duty report.