In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP’s Lara Friedman talks to Ubai Aboudi, director of Bisan Center for Research and Development – a Ramallah-based Palestinian human rights organizes established in 1989. Aboudi talks about Israel’s move on October 19 to designate Bisan and five other Palestinian human rights organizations as “terrorist groups” under Israel’s 2016 anti-terror law, and its follow-up move this week to make a parallel declaration in the West Bank via military order. Ubai, who is an American citizen, also discusses this week’s bombshell news of the hacking of employees of several of the targeted groups, including Ubai, by sophisticated Israeli software (Pegasus), and the implications of the timing of the terror designations, which coincided almost perfectly with the discovery of the hacking.

Watch this conversation on YouTube.

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For more podcasts & webinars on Israel’s Declaration of Palestinian Human Rights Groups as “Terrorist Organizations,” see this resource page. 

Bios:

Ubai Al-Aboudi is Executive Director of Bisan Center for Research and Development and is a researcher in the field of socio-economic rights. He is also the editor-in-chief of Al-Taqadomi ( the progressive) a pier reviewed journal on development in Arabic. Bisan is on Twitter @BisanResearch.

Lara Friedman is the President of the Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP). With more than 25 years working in the Middle East foreign policy arena, Lara is a leading authority on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, with particular expertise on the Israeli-Arab conflict, Israeli settlements, Jerusalem, and the role of the U.S. Congress. She tweets @LaraFriedmanDC.