By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor
Geneva — Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has taken exceptional and involuntary measures in response to a systematic Israeli campaign of disinformation, defamation, incitement, and direct and indirect threats targeting the organisation, its chairman, and members of its team. The campaign escalated after false accusations linked the organisation to a New York Times investigation into systematic sexual violence against Palestinians inside Israeli prisons.
Following an intense wave of incitement and threats, a restructuring of field and institutional operations has become necessary. These measures include downsizing the team and reducing activities across the occupied Palestinian territory and the wider region, suspending operations at the central Geneva office, closing offices in the occupied Palestinian territory and Lebanon, and shifting toward virtual and essential field-based work as circumstances require.
Among the latest repressive measures documented is an agreement concluded by Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli with Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority to bar nearly 40 staff members and affiliates from entering Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, including founder and chairman Ramy Abdu, senior officials, board members, and employees.
The ongoing campaign constitutes a systematic attempt to silence independent human rights voices and undermine efforts aimed at exposing the truth and ensuring accountability for grave crimes and violations committed against Palestinians.
The campaign has included the distortion and manipulation of public statements, the fabrication of false allegations regarding political or organisational affiliations, and widespread incitement campaigns accompanied by threats that have extended to calls for the physical assassination of the organisation’s president and several staff members.
This escalation would not have reached such a dangerous level without the continued international silence surrounding Israeli crimes and the persistent failure to take meaningful action to hold perpetrators accountable for grave violations committed against Palestinian civilians, including the targeting of journalists, human rights defenders, and humanitarian workers.
What Euro-Med Monitor is facing today forms part of a broader policy targeting anyone who documents crimes or approaches the truth. Palestinian and international human rights organisations, humanitarian institutions, and UN mechanisms have all faced restrictions, delegitimisation efforts, and incitement campaigns, while journalists in Gaza have been systematically targeted and killed.
These precautionary measures reflect the seriousness with which the threats are being treated. The risks posed by this campaign are being raised before the United Nations, states, and relevant international mechanisms, as confronting such attacks is essential to protecting independent human rights work, professional journalism, and the public’s right to truth and justice.
Despite these dangerous circumstances, human rights and humanitarian work will continue through every possible means. Documentation of violations, advocacy for victims, and efforts to ensure accountability and prevent impunity remain ongoing responsibilities grounded in the conviction that protecting truth and defending human dignity are not optional, but fundamental obligations and moral duties.
Our work and documentation efforts did not begin because conditions were safe or easy, and they will not end because Israel has decided to raise their cost. Retreating in the face of intimidation would mean leaving victims without a voice, crimes without a record, and perpetrators without accountability. At the same time, Euro-Med Monitor is aware that these efforts confront a power that exercises force without restraint while benefiting from impunity and international indifference.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe
28 May 2026
Source: countercurrents.org