Omar Shakir

Omar Shakir [Omar S. Shakir] was deported from Israel in November 2019 for promoting anti-Israel boycotts while serving as the Israel and Palestine Country Director for Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Shakir has defended terrorists, whitewashed violent protests and demonized Israel.

Shakir was the 2011-2012 co-president of Students for Palestinian Equal Rights (SPER), a forerunner to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Stanford University (Stanford). As an alumnus, Shakir has defended SJP and has been a featured speaker at SJP events. 

In 2015, Shakir represented anti-Israel activist Steven Salaita in his lawsuit against the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). In 2014, Salaita was fired by UIUC for posting a series of anti-Israel tweets.

As of April 2021, Shakir’s LinkedIn page said he was the Israel and Palestine Country Director for Human Rights Watch (HRW) in New York, NY, since October 2016, and a Fellow for HRW from September 2013 to September 2014. As of April 2021, Shakir’s Twitter account said he was located in Amman, Jordan.

In October 2020, U.S. State Department officials reportedly weighed declaring HRW an anti-Semitic organization due to the group’s “alleged or perceived support for” BDS. On November 19, 2020, while visiting Israel, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S. State Department would label BDS as “anti-Semitic” and prohibit any organization that engages in BDS from receiving government funding.

Also as of April 2021, Shakir’s LinkedIn page said he was a Legal Fellow for the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) from September 2014 to September 2016.

As of April 2021, Shakir’s LinkedIn page said he received a J.D. from Stanford University Law School (Stanford) in 2013, a master’s degree in Arab Studies from Georgetown University (Georgetown) in 2010 and a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Affairs from Stanford in 2007.

Deportation from Israel

Shakir has served as HRW’s “Israel and Palestine Country Director” since October 2016. On July 14, 2016, HRW applied to the Israeli Interior Ministry’s Population and Immigration Authority for a work permit on behalf of Shakir. 

The Israeli Ministry of Interior denied Shakir a work permit on February 20, 2017, citing an opinion from Israel’s Foreign Ministry that HRW’s “public activities and reports have engaged in politics in the service of Palestinian propaganda, while falsely raising the banner of ‘human rights.’” 

Israel’s Ministry of Interior then reversed its decision on March 12, 2017 and Shakir was granted a one-year work visa on April 26, 2017, upon his arrival in Israel. Shakir’s permit was originally to be valid until March 31, 2018.

However, on November 16, 2017, Shakir was notified by the Director General of Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority that his visa status was to be “reviewed, due to the activities in which you have been engaged to promote boycotts on Israel...” 

The notification said that Shakir had “been actively and continuously supporting a strategy that calls for boycotting, withdrawing investments from, and imposing sanctions on Israel,” since his student days and continuing through his time working in Israel.”

Israel’s Entry into Israel (Amendment No. 28) Law, 5777-2017 denies a visa or residency permit for anyone who “has knowingly published a public call to engage in a boycott against the State of Israel” or “any area under its control.”

HRW replied, via its counsel attorney Michael Sfard, to Israel’s Ministry of the Interior on January 15, 2018, saying: “neither HRW – nor Shakir as its representative – advocate for boycott, divestment or sanctions against companies that operate in the settlements, Israel or Israelis (sic).”

In a May 7, 2018 letter responding to HRW’s attorney Michael Sfard, the Israeli Ministry of Interior revoked Shakir’s work permit due to his BDS activities and ordered Shakir to leave the country within 14 days. 

The letter to HRW’s counsel cited a July 12, 2017 recommendation from Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy that “Shakir should be stripped of his work visa and denied re-entry into the country.” The recommendation included a dossier “on Shakir’s activities in the boycott field over the years.”

The letter also concluded that Shakir “is an individual who has actively and continuously supported a strategy espousing boycott, divestment and sanctions with respect to Israel…” and noted: “It is inconceivable that a BDS activist who calls for a boycott of the State of Israel be granted entry into Israel under the guise of representing an organization.”

In a May 8, 2018 statement, Israel’s Minister of Interior Aryeh Deri, speaking on the Ministry’s behalf, said: “It is inconceivable for a boycott activist to get an Israeli visa so that he can do whatever he can to harm the country. I will take action to remove such individuals from the country with all the means at my disposal, and therefore, Omar Shakir will leave Israel.”

That same day, Shakir tweeted: “Breaking: Israel has ordered me deported after compiling 7-pg intel dossier on me. 1st time in @hrw history Israel orders official out. Year ago it denied work permit before reversing, accusing us of 'propaganda'. Now its BDS. Real aim to muzzle dissent.” 

On May 16, 2018, Shakir tweeted: “Israel ordered me deported over my criticism of its rights record. @hrw & I today sued to challenge unauthorized use of draconian law to monitor speech of foreigners lawfully present in Israel & deport them when they criticize govt.”

Shakir repeated this claim a year later in an op-ed published in The Forward, writing: “For starters, the decision is not about BDS, it’s about muzzling human rights advocacy.” 

On June 27, 2018, Shakir tweeted: “This morning, an Israeli court will hear our case, first challenge to use of new law to expel foreigner on allegations of #BDS support. A lot at stake: ability of @hrw to operate in region's self-proclaimed ‘only democracy’ & space for rights defenders & dissent in Israel today.”

On April 16, 2019, the Jerusalem District Court reportedly found Shakir’s work on behalf of HRW to “‘clearly constitute boycott-promoting activities’” and upheld Shakir’s deportation order, allowing him until May 1, 2019 to exit the country.

The Jerusalem District Court reportedly determined that Shakir was “using his status in the organization [HRW] in order to spread boycott ideology, which he has supported for years… his claim that he only represents the organization’s position is an effort to hide behind the organization and ‘whitewash’ his boycott activity.”

The court reportedly cited Shakir’s refusal a month earlier to “vow not to promote ‘boycotts,’ defined under Israeli law to include calls on companies to stop doing business in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.” 

On September 24, 2019, Shakir and HRW appealed the district court’s decision to deny renewal of his work visa to the Israeli Supreme Court. The day before Shakir was due to leave, the court reportedly allowed him to stay in the country pending the outcome of the Supreme Court appeal. 

On November 5, 2019, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected Shakir’s appeal and upheld the deportation order, giving Shakir until November 25, 2019 to leave the country. 

On November 24, 2019, HRW tweeted a video of Shakir saying [00:00:26]: “We will continue to do the work. We will cover the same topics with the same intensity and with the same vigor. We will not stop until all people, Israelis and Palestinians are treated equally and have their human rights protected. We will not stop.”

On November 25, 2019, Shakir was deported from Israel to Germany.

In a November 25, 2019 HRW live broadcast on Twitter from Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport, Shakir said [00:22:16]: “Please know that our resolve, our determination will not wane one iota… I will not stop doing this work… I will be back when the day comes that we have succeeded in dismantling the systematic human rights abuse that affect Israelis and Palestinian [sic] in a system of discrimination.”
On November 5, 2014, Shakir tweeted an article from The Nation, by anti-Israel journalist Charlotte Silver, that defended Rasmea Odeh. Shakir quoted an accusation by Silver, who accused Israel of obtaining a confession of terrorist activity from Odeh via sexual abuse and implied Odeh had no terrorist history. 

Odeh was a military operative with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization. In 1969, she masterminded a bombing that killed two university students in a Jerusalem supermarket. Odeh also attempted to bomb the British consulate.
 
Odeh confessed, in a highly detailed account, the day following her arrest. In a 2004 documentary, one of Odeh’s co-conspirators directly implicated her as the mastermind. 

In 1970, an Israeli court tried and convicted Odeh for her involvement in both bombings and sentenced her to life imprisonment. However, Odeh was released 10 years later, in a prisoner swap and emigrated to the United States. In 2017, Odeh was deported to Jordan and stripped of U.S. citizenship, after admitting to immigration fraud.

The Charlotte Silver article tweeted by Shakir argued that Odeh’s confession to her participation in the 1969 PFLP bombing was illegally obtained and cited HRW’s demonizing report on interrogation tactics used by the Israeli government. The article also claimed that Odeh “has already spent ten years in prison as a result of one rigged trial. We must now wonder how long she will spend as a result of another.”

On December 5, 2014, while employed as a CCR legal fellow, Shakir tweeted: “Rasmea Odeh: wrongfully convicted & now in solitary confinement as a result of her activism.” 
 
On April 17, 2017, Shakir tweeted: “Marwan Barghouti in @nytimes on why 100s of prisoners in Israeli jails are on hunger strike #PalestinianPrisonersDay”

Marwan Barghouti initiated the 2017 hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners known as the “Dignity Strike.” He headed the Palestinian Authority (PA) terrorist Tanzim force and founded the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. His organizations carried out many deadly attacks against Israeli civilians.

Barghouti financed the bomb used in the Sbarro Cafe bombing and was sentenced to five consecutive life terms in an Israeli civilian court for some of his crimes. Many of the over 1,500 prisoners who participated in the strike had also carried out terror attacks, including Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Secretary General Ahmad Sa’adat.

Shakir linked to a New York Times article by Barghouti titled: “Why We Are on Hunger Strike in Israel’s Prisons.” In the article, Barghouti claimed “Israel has tried to brand us all as terrorists to legitimize its violations, including mass arbitrary arrests, torture, punitive measures and severe restrictions. As part of Israel’s effort to undermine the Palestinian struggle for freedom, an Israeli court sentenced me to five life sentences and 40 years in prison …”

In a May 2, 2017, op-ed for HRW, Shakir expressed support for the Palestinian prisoners then on hunger strike in Israeli prisons.

Whitewashing Violent Protests

On May 14, 2018, Shakir tweeted: “History will remember today as day US/Israeli officials celebrated embassy move as Israeli forces fired on unarmed Palestinians in Gaza, who they've kept caged in for decade, occupied for half century & blocked (refugees) from recognized right to return for 70 years. Black mark.”


The same day, Shakir tweeted: “As some prepare to inaugurate US embassy, Israeli forces gunning down Palestinians. Scene reminds me of Egyptian song written amid mass killings of protesters: ‘People are dancing, people are being killed & loudest sound at party is the sound of silence’" 

On May 16, 2018, a Hamas senior official, Salah al-Bardawil, stated that 50 out of 62 protesters killed during the May 14 Gaza border protest were Hamas operatives. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) also claimed that three of its members were killed at the same protest.

On May 15, 2018, Shakir wrote an article, published in USA Today, titled: “Israeli Open-Fire Orders Predictably Result in Bloodbath.” 

In the article, Shakir claimed: “Bloodshed on this scale results directly from these open-fire orders that green-light the firing on demonstrators irrespective of the threat they pose, along with Israel’s decades-long failure to hold accountable soldiers who violate their already lax open-fire orders.”



Also on May 15, 2018, Shakir tweeted: “... Israel maintains a system of entrenched discrimination against Palestinians, but its bullets don't discriminate.”

On June 13, 2018, Shakir tweeted: “Breaking: @hrw investigation finds that Gaza killings apparent war crimes. @AvigdorLiberman, @netanyahu sanctioned policy to fire on demonstrators who posed no imminent threat to life. Time for targeted sanctions against those implicated in serious abuses.”

Demonizing Israel

During the coronavirus pandemic, a February 4, 2021 New York Times article reported Shakir’s assertion that Israel was obligated to provide vaccines to the Palestinians. The article quoted Shakir as saying: “After 50 years of occupation with no end in sight, Israel’s duties go beyond offering spare doses.” 


On April 7, 2020, Shakir tweeted: “As countries worldwide shutter prisons amid #COVID19 pandemic, Israel should uncage the 2 mill Palestinians held in world's largest open-air prison…”

On January 23, 2018, Shakir promoted a HRW report on Twitter that accused Israel of war crimes. Shakir tweeted: “Today in Geneva, UN conducts review of Israel’s rights record over last 5 yrs. @hrw did its own review, finding Israel carried out war crimes & that rights abuse & institutional discrimination against Palestinians systematic #UPR29.”

On April 21, 2016, Shakir, then a legal fellow for CCR, spoke on “BDS: Context and Challenges” at the Jerusalem Fund & Palestine Center in Washington, D.C. During his remarks at the event, Shakir compared [16:18] Zionism to South African apartheid and said [00:17:28] “If you replace those terms with Zionists, it’s a very similar logic to what’s led to the creation of the State of Israel and the maintenance of the occupation.”

Shakir quoted [00:18:20] from a 1976 South African publication called “Apartheid South Africa,” saying: “Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common quote they’re both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark people. They used colonial logic and racism. They saw the people around them as inferior.”

On February 26, 2015, Shakir tweeted: “‘Gaza is not just a ‘kind of’ concentration camp, it's the hood on steroids’ @CornelWest tells Stanford's @palumboliu.”

Defending SJP

On February 18, 2016, Shakir tweeted a video of a speech he delivered as a representative of CCR at a February 10, 2016 panel event held at Kent State University (Kent State) titled, “The Palestine Exception to Free Speech in America.”

At the event, Shakir promoted [00:18:14] the Palestine Exception to Free Speech, a September 2015 report released by CCR and Palestine Legal (PL), which documented what the authors claimed to be the suppression of Palestinian human rights and advocacy in the U.S. 

During his speech, Shakir defended [00:23:56] Columbia University SJP members who hung a banner at the entrance of the university that read: "Stand for Justice. Stand for Palestine." The banner was hung to kick off Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) on campus.


In March 2014, Columbia SJP activist Jannine Salman made a large banner that was hung at the entrance of Barnard college. The banner read: “Stand for Justice, Stand for Palestine” and featured a map of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, with no internal borders, colored uniformly green.The banner was reportedly removed after “students, their parents and alumni” said it made them “feel uncomfortable and unsafe in the space” and that it gave the impression Barnard was “endorsing SJP's message that Israel as a Jewish state does not have the right to exist.”

During his speech, Shakir claimed [00:23:56] the 2014 Columbia banner controversy was an example of a “bureaucratic barriers” tactic, which he defined [00:23:34] as “neutral sounding administrative policies or measures that disproportionately affect Palestine organizing.”

Shakir claimed [00:24:36] that Barnard’s decision to no longer allow banners to hang from the university’s entrance following the SJP banner controversy [00:24:43] “sounds very neutral but disproportionately affects Palestine organizing.”

During his remarks, Shakir also defended [00:47:59] anti-Semitic tweets made by anti-Israel professor Steven Salaita in 2014, which Shakir admitted [00:48:31] “were indeed vulgar.”

On January 29, 2015, Shakir tweeted: “We sued U of Illinois today for violating Constitution in firing @stevesalaita for tweets on Israel's bombing of Gaza.”

On November 12, 2015, CCR announced that Salaita had agreed to release his claims against UIUC for firing him in exchange for the university’s agreement to pay him an $875,000 settlement.

BDS Activism

On May 18, 2012, Shakir participated as a keynote speaker [00:06:21] in a “Divestment Launch" event at Stanford organized by Students Confronting Apartheid in Israel (SCAI). SCAI later became known as SJP at Stanford University (Stanford). 

On February 19, 2013, as founder and co-president of Stanford Students for Palestinian Equal Rights (SPER), formerly SCAI, Shakir introduced a BDS resolution to the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) Undergraduate Senate at Stanford, which failed to get the required two-thirds approval. SCAI’s name was changed to SPER in 2012. 

The resolution called for Stanford’s Board of Trustees to reconsider the university’s investments in a number of companies doing business with Israel, which the resolution’s authors alleged violated Palestinian human rights and international law. 

On April 21, 2016, Shakir spoke on “BDS: Context and Challenges” at the Jerusalem Fund & Palestine Center in Washington, D.C. At the event, Shakir said [00:05:07] he would be specifically looking “historically, comparatively, and theoretically at why boycott, divest and sanctions is such an effective tool.”
 
In a May 11, 2017 article in Malaysia’s TheSun, Shakir was quoted as saying he traveled to Bahrain “to lobby participants at this week's Fifa [Fédération Internationale de Football Association] congress to ban Israel from holding league football games in West Bank settlements.” 
 
On May 10, 2017, Shakir tweeted: “Held 18 hrs, denied entry to Bahrain. Hoped to press FIFA on matches in illegal Israeli settlements. Space for rights defenders shrinking.”

On May 4, 2017, the BDS website reported “over 170 Palestinian football clubs and sports associations” issued a letter to FIFA Council Members calling on FIFA to suspend the Israeli Football Association’s (IFA)’s membership due to “its inclusion of seven football clubs” based in the West Bank.
 
On May 11, 2017 after FIFA’s Council reportedly voted to postpone voting on the issue at FIFA’s annual Congress, the BDS website reported “FIFA’s President Hijacks Vote on Israeli Settlements, Continues Violations of FIFA Statutes” and “bows to Israeli bullying tactics.” The BDS website article went on to say: “This latest capitulation to Israeli bullying will only serve to invigorate the growing movement to suspend Israel from world football …”

Supporting BDS

On June 11, 2020, Shakir tweeted in support of a decision by the European Court of Human Rights, “emphasizing that BDS constitutes protected free speech. Major decision reaffirms right to boycott to challenge rights abuses, be it in Israel/Palestine or elsewhere.”
 
On February 12, 2020, Shakir tweeted in support of a blacklist of companies doing business with Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria, writing: “Long awaited release of the UN database of settlement businesses should put all companies on notice: to do business with illegal settlements is to aid in the commission of war crimes, says @hrw. A major step in the global effort to end corporate complicity in rights abuse ½."
 
Shakir tweeted that the “Database identifies 112 companies facilitating illegal Israeli settlements & rights abuses.” The list was reportedly “based on input from BDS groups, including Human Rights Watch.” 
 
On November 19, 2018, Shakir praised Airbnb on Twitter for its November 2018 announcement that it would remove 200 listings in Israel’s West Bank from the Airbnb platform, due to pressure from BDS activists. 
 
Shakir tweeted: “Welcome step by @Airbnb to stop listing in settlements.Companies like @bookingcom should follow suit. Our 65-page report, "Bed and Breakfast on Stolen Land" out tomorrow. You won't want to miss it…”
 
In April 2019, Airbnb reversed its decision “to move forward with implementing the removal of listings in the West Bank from the platform” and said it would allocate its profits from the region to non-profit organizations dedicated to humanitarian aid. 
 
On May 29, 2018, Shakir promoted an HRW report on Twitter that called for pressure on Israeli banks to stop doing business with settlements. Shakir tweeted: “New @hrw research shows Israel's 7 largest banks directly & substantially involved in settlement enterprise: operating branches, partnering in new construction, providing home mortgages & loans to settlement authorities. These acts facilitate war crimes.”

On November 28, 2017, Shakir tweeted: “Settlements are war crimes. Doing business with them amounts to complicity in them. @UNHumanRights database of settlement businesses urgently needed to build pressure on companies to cease these activities.”

In his tweet, Shakir included an HRW report calling on the UN Human Rights Council to publish its list of businesses operating in Israeli settlements.
 
On November 15, 2017, Shakir’s tweeted in support of  H.R. 2407, a 2019 bill introduced to the U.S. Congress by U.S. Congresswoman Betty McCollum to “promote human rights for Palestinian children living under Israeli military occupation."
 
Shakir wrote: “#Palestinian kids suffer routine violence in #Israeli military detention and blatant discrimination in military courts with a near 100% conviction rate. New @BettyMcCollum04 bill demands US not fund these abuses. @hrw”
 
U.S. Representative Betty McCollum stated her bill, H.R.2407, was to end “abusive Israeli military detention practices” related to Palestinian children and that it “amends a provision of the Foreign Assistance Act… to prohibit funding for the military detention of children in any country, including Israel.”
 
Section seven of the bill proposed authorizing “$19,000,000 each fiscal year" for “monitoring human rights abuses associated with Israel’s detention of Palestinian children." Eligibility was extended to “any Palestinian age 21 or younger providing documentation of military detention since January 1, 2009."
 
According to the bill, the funds were to be referred to as the “Human Rights Monitoring and Treatment for Palestinian Child Victims of Israeli Military Detention Fund."
 
McCollum was a keynote speaker at the 2018 National Conference of US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), where she suggested that then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wished to advance apartheid inside of Israel and to force a massacre of unarmed protesters in Gaza.
 
USCPR — formerly known as the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation — is a coalition of American-based anti-Israel organizations that lobbies the United States Congress to adopt anti-Israel policies and end government support for Israel.
 
On May 19, 2016, Shakir tweeted an article by pro-BDS professor David Palumbo Liu. that summarized an April 27, 2016 talk by BDS founder Omar Barghouti at Stanford University promoting the BDS movement.

On March 10, 2016, Shakir tweeted about Israeli cosmetics company Ahava: “Another #BDS victory: Ahava, facing boycott pressure, moving its factory out of West Bank.” 

Shakir’s tweet included an article reporting the decision of Ahava to move its factory out of the West Bank due to pressure from BDS activists.

On December 23, 2015, Shakir tweeted an article written by Salaita, titled: "How to practice BDS in academe."

In January 2015, Shakir signed a letter pledging to honor “the BDS call…[and] engage with Palestinians in our communities and support delegations to Palestine that are meant to highlight the reality on the ground of occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing.”

The letter specifically called for the boycott of the Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), sponsored by the Shalom Hartman Institute. MLI was founded by Imam Abdullah Antepli, the first Muslim chaplain at Duke University, as an educational program for Muslim Americans to “understand why Jews believe what they believe, how Jews see their history, why Jews are so attached to this contested strip of land (Israel) — and thus to better engage with American Jews.”

BDS

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by Omar Barghouti in 2005 to challenge “international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.” BDS is an allegedly “Palestinian-led movement,” although leading BDS activists have admitted [00:01:01] this is not true. 

One of the demands of BDS includes [point 3] what is generally known as the “right of return,” a demand discredited as a way to eliminate Israel. Barghouti said the “right of return” is a means to “end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”  

Barghouti has said that BDS “aims to turn Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.”

In his activism, Barghouti has also said [00:05:55] regarding Israel: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No…rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”

The movement has been linked to numerous terrorist organizations and received a public endorsement from Hamas in 2017.

BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.

The movement’s most notable achievement has been the infiltration of university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments and student groups, backed by their own anti-Israel members and affiliates, have proposed resolutions on some form of boycott of, or divestment from, Israel and Israeli-affiliated entities.

Boycott resolutions, although non-binding, have been passed by student governments on numerous North American campuses.

BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents on campus. On one campus, when the student government debated a BDS resolution, reports emerged of violent threats against those opposing it.

Social Media and Weblinks

Twitter:https://twitter.com/OmarSShakir

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/omarsshakir