[News] Trump sanctions Palestinian human rights organization Addameer over alleged political connections

[Anti-Imperialist News]

mondoweiss.net
<https://mondoweiss.net/2025/06/trump-sanctions-palestinian-human-rights-organization-over-alleged-political-connections/?ml_recipient=157003017642575627&ml_link=157002924795364374&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2025-06-12&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines+RSS+Automation>
Trump sanctions Palestinian human rights organization over alleged
political connections
Michael Arria
June 11, 2025
------------------------------

The Trump administration has imposed sanctions on a leading Palestinian
human rights group and five other charities for alleged links to
Palestinian political factions designated by Israel and the U.S. as
“terrorist groups.”

Addameer, which provides legal services to Palestinian prisoners, was
designated
<https://mondoweiss.net/2022/09/israel-pressuring-biden-to-accept-terrorist-designation-for-palestinian-ngos/>
as a terrorist group by Israel in 2021, and the country’s government has
been pressuring the United States to impose sanctions ever since. Israel
has refused to provide any evidence linking the organization to militants.

The other sanctioned groups are Al Weam Charitable Society, Filistin Vakfi,
El Baraka Association for Charitable and Humanitarian Work, Israa
Charitable Foundation Netherlands and Associazione Benefica La Cupola d’Oro.

“Today’s action underscores the importance of safeguarding the charitable
sector from abuse by terrorists like Hamas and the PFLP, who continue to
leverage sham charities as fronts for funding their terrorist and military
operations,” said <https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0162> Deputy
Secretary Michael Faulkender in a statement. “Treasury will continue to use
all available tools to prevent Hamas, the PFLP, and other terrorist actors
from exploiting the humanitarian situation in Gaza to fund their violent
activities at the expense of their own people.”

In a 2022 interview,  Addameer Director Sahar Francis told
<https://mondoweiss.net/2022/01/it-wont-end-with-us-addameer-director-warns-of-repercussions-of-israeli-terror-designation/>
*Mondoweiss* that attacks on the group didn’t start with Israel’s
designation.

“The campaign against us has been ongoing for many years: harassment, smear
campaigns, defamation, the distribution of false information about us by
different groups like NGO monitor, UK Lawyers for Israel, and other right
wing Israeli groups,” explained Francis.

“The policy behind all these attacks is actually to terrify the donors, and
to terrify those who were investing in civil society in Palestine,” she
continued.

In August 2022, the Israeli army raided
<https://mondoweiss.net/2022/08/israeli-army-raids-shuts-down-offices-of-6-palestinian-civil-society-organizations/>
the offices of seven Palestinian civil society organizations in the
occupied West Bank, including Addameer. The soldiers
<https://x.com/Addameer/status/1560126708916830210> broke the office doors
and confiscated material. The UN published a report finding no basis for
Israel’s claims about the groups and concluded that the targeted
organizations provided “critical human rights, humanitarian and development
work in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

The Trump administration’s sanctions on the legal group comes amid the
deadliest period in history for Palestinian prisoners. Addameer says
<https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/palestinian-prisoners-israeli-detention-abuse-starvation-death>
that 10,100 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli detention,
twice the amount that were being held before the October 7 attack. That
number does no include prisoners from Gaza being held in Israeli military
facilities.

“It is important to highlight the growing number of arbitrary restrictions
imposed by the occupation on legal access to imprisoned political leaders
and those serving life sentences — particularly since the beginning of the
genocidal war on Gaza — including prolonged solitary confinement,” reads a
joint statement put out by Addameer and a number of other human rights
groups last month.

“The inhumane conditions in which Palestinian political prisoners are being
held represent another facet of the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip,” it
continues. “The continued escalation by the brutal prison system against
detainees in various prisons and military camps has entered a more
dangerous phase than in previous months. Time has now become a critical
factor in determining the fate of thousands of prisoners and detainees held
by the Israeli occupation, amid a period in which Israel continues to carry
out acts of genocide with complete impunity.”

The Trump administration’s sanctions were criticized by many on social
media.

“The Trump administration, continuing its complicity with the Israeli
regime in the perpetration of genocide in Palestine, just days after
sanctioning judges of the ICC, has now announced sanctions on the
celebrated & long-serving Palestinian human rights organization,” wrote
human rights attorney Craig Mokhiber. “The US, on behalf of an oppressive
foreign regime, is criminalizing humanitarian & human rights work.”

“Addameer is a first-rate human rights organization dedicated to exposing
Israeli violations against Palestinian prisoners, which is precisely why it
has been targeted by Israel’s extremist government and now the Trump
administration,” tweeted author Khaled Elgindy.
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