International Solidarity Movement

ISM was founded in 2001 during the second intifada by Ghassan Andoni, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Israeli anti-Zionist activist Neta Golan, Palestinian-American activist Huwaida Arraf, as well as Palestinian Christians George Qassis and George N. Rishmawi. Adam Shapiro, Arraf’s Jewish husband, joined the movement shortly after its founding and is also often considered to be one of the founders.

ISM declares that it functions “using nonviolent direct-action and other forms of unarmed resistance as a method for confronting and challenging the Israeli occupation.” Yet in 2002, during the second Intifada, ISM co-founders Arraf and Shapiro wrote an article for the Palestine Chronicle explaining that nonviolent direct action must be an additional tactic along with terrorism, not as a replacement for it.

Arraf and Shapiro wrote: “The Palestinian resistance must take on a variety of characteristics — both nonviolent and violent. But most importantly it must develop a strategy involving both aspects. No other successful nonviolent movement was able to achieve what it did without a concurrent violent movement.”

The article continued: “In actuality, nonviolence is not enough. Rather, what is needed is nonviolent direct action against the occupation. This includes roadblock removal, boycotts, refusing to obey curfew orders, blocking roads, refusing to show ID cards or even burning them.”

In July of 2003, in an interview with the Jordan Star, ISM co-founder Shapiro reportedly “justifies the Palestinian armed resistance against Israel as long as it is targeting Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Otherwise, he is not in favor of suicide bombings.”

On February 23, 2003, Saif Abu Keshek, the co-ordinator for the ISM in Nablus, declared in an interview that “there is support for the armed resistance. It is one of the rights of the Palestinians to fight back against the occupation”.

Abu Keshek further clarified that although the ISM supports non-violent direct action, not armed struggle, they “recognise the right of the Palestinians to choose their way of resistance.”

On October 7, 2002, ISM co-founder Andoni said in an interview that “Palestinians have the full right to resist the occupation with means that they think are suitable.”

Joe Carr, ISM’s local coordinator in Rafah in early 2003 — when Rachel Corrie was killed — explains, “I find nonviolent tactics powerful and effective, but violence & property destruction have been and always will be an essential part of revolutionary movements.”

ISM does not receive government funding and its volunteers pay their expenses out of pocket (except for large projects like the IHH-led flotilla, in which ISM activists were part of a coalition that took advantage of Turkey's political capabilities).

Rishmawi told the San Francisco Chronicle in a July 14, 2004 news story why ISM recruits student volunteers. “When Palestinians get shot by Israeli soldiers, no one is interested anymore,” he said. “But if some of these foreign volunteers get shot or even killed, then the international media will sit up and take notice.”

In the 2002 article, Shapiro and Arraf predicted that “yes, people will get killed and injured” in the course of their volunteering with the ISM and suggested that the casualties “would be considered shaheed.”

ISM has arranged for members to act as “human shields” for Palestinians during military incursions, hindering Israeli soldiers’ movements and placing the soldiers and themselves in grave danger.

At a training session in 2004, ISM activists were instructed how to act as human shields. The trainers advised that in instances where ISM activists were unable to help Palestinians circumvent checkpoints by distracting the Israeli guards, they (ISM) should act as “human shields for Palestinians.”

As one ISM trainer put it: “Soldiers will be less likely to shoot or use violence when Westerners are present. Usually, they [the ISM activists] also carry a camera or video camera, because filming soldiers often makes them leave...”

During the second intifada, ISM sent activists to serve as human shields at the entrances to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and to Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah.

In the spring of 2002, 40 senior terrorist leaders took refuge in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The IDF laid siege to the church but a dozen ISM members snuck past the soldiers to provide support to the terrorists.

In April 2002, during Operation Defensive Shield, Shapiro, Golan and other ISM activists served as human shields around Arafat's presidential compound (the Muqata'a) in Ramallah. Shapiro remained for 24 hours, helping Arafat with public relations.

On October 26, 2003, The Los Angeles Times reported that Brian Avery, an ISM activist injured in Israel, sent his family an email shortly before he was wounded explaining that ...the group’s main “actions” ... consisted of “being monitors and witnesses at military checkpoints” and “lodging in the homes of the families of individuals who chose suicide bombing as their method of resisting the occupation.” (Oct. 26, 2003)

ISM’s policy of intentionally placing international volunteers as human shields resulted in the death of Rachel Corrie in 2003 and the killing of Tom Hurndall in 2004.

During a memorial held in her honor, a Hamas activist said of Corrie: “Her death serves me more than it served her. Going in front of the tanks was heroic. Her death will bring more attention than the other 2,000 martyrs.”

ISM refuses to condemn Palestinian violence, even against civilians. In its mission statement, ISM states that, for Palestinians, “armed struggle" is "their right.” “Violent” resistance was defined in the article as “when an armed Palestinian fighter shoots an Israeli who is oppressing him.”

ISM defends the Palestinians’ right to use violence, noting, “we recognize the Palestinian right to resist Israeli violence and occupation via legitimate armed struggle. However, we believe that nonviolence can be a powerful weapon in fighting oppression and we are committed to the principles of nonviolent resistance.”

On June 1, 2016, ISM posted an article to Facebook condemning Israel for charging Professor Imad Barghouthi, a Palestinian astrophysicist, with incitement. Barghouthi was sentenced to prison for seven months for incitement to violence.

Barghouti is a vocal supporter of Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and has called for killing and being killed in the name of Islam.

An October 22, 2014 video showed Barghouthi, at an Al-Quds university Hamas rally, draped in a Hamas banner, urging students to design precision guided missiles (0:33), and sniper rifles as “weapons of the resistance” (1:11) to kill “zionist soldiers” in their bedrooms. (2:35)

Arraf has stated on record that ISM works collaboratively with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the PFLP, all of which have been designated as terrorist groups by the American State Department. Those organizations use violent means, while the ISM works with these organizations, providing non-violent direct action and support, including blocking the progress of Israeli soldiers attempting to apprehend terrorists. An article in Mother Jones described ISM as “Embracing Palestinian militants, even suicide bombers, as freedom fighters.”

On March 27, 2003, Shadi Sukiya, a senior PIJ member involved in the planning of several thwarted suicide attacks, was arrested while hiding in an ISM office in the West Bank. The ISM website has stated that Sukiya “appeared at the ISM office in Jenin in the middle of the night. He was soaking wet, shivering and terrified. The ISM members present did not speak sufficient Arabic and Sukiya spoke no English.”

ISM members, however, allegedly tried to prevent Israeli security forces from searching their Jenin office.

Susan Barclay, the ISM organizer who hid Sukiya, told the Seattle Post Intelligencer that, “she knowingly worked with representatives from Hamas and Islamic Jihad -- terrorist groups that sponsor suicide bombings and exist, according to their charters, to demolish the Jewish state entirely.”

Shadi Sukiya was convicted for, among other charges, facilitating the Karkur Junction bombing attack, killing 14 passengers and wounding 50 passengers.

Another two terrorists who carried out an attack were reported to potentially be tied to ISM. On April 30, 2003, Asif Muhammad Hanif was responsible for killing three people and wounding more than 50 in a suicide bombing at Mike’s Place bar in Tel Aviv. Five days earlier, he and his collaborator Omar Khan Sharif were among a group hosted by ISM members at their Gaza apartment. According to the May 2, 2003 Guardian, “the Britons who mounted the suicide attacks in Israel attempted to join the peace movement as cover for their activities.”

On March 3, 2017, ISM published an article on Twitter as well as posting on their Facebook page, calling for justice for Mohammed al-Qiq. In February of 2017, ISM posted several articles on behalf of al-Qiq on their Facebook page. ISM refers to al-Qiq as a journalist, neglecting to mention his role as a Hamas militant who has been placed under administrative detention for his terror-related activities.

On January 6, 2017, ISM called on Facebook for “Days of Action to Free Ahmad Sa’adat,” the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Sa’adat was elected the General Secretary of the PFLP in 2001. The PFLP, founded by George Habash, is designated a terrorist organization by the European Union, Canada, the United States and Israel. Sa'adat was found guilty and incarcerated for organizing the 2001 assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi.

On December 17, 2016, ISM tweeted a statement from Rasmea Odeh’s defense committee. On December 30, 2016, ISM posted on Facebook a call to assist in the defense of Odeh during a retrial.

Odeh was a military operative with the PFLP. 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 January 2013, the ISM website published a sympathetic article on Sammer Issawi, containing no acknowledgement of, much less disapproval of, his terrorist activities. In March, it posted a statement from him on their website.

Issawi is a member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) who received a 26-year prison sentence in 2002. During the second intifada he manufactured and distributed pipe bombs and, in several incidents, fired indiscriminately on Israeli civilian vehicles.

In December 2013, the Israeli Hadash Party posted on its official Arabic Facebook page an interview where Issawi called for the kidnapping of Israelis: “We want the release of the prisoners. The prisoners' release will be brought about by kidnapping and [prisoner] exchanges. Nothing will happen without that.”

On February 19, 2017, ISM posted on Facebook an article about Sheikh Raed Salah being barred from traveling abroad or entering Jerusalem for five months. The article noted that although Salah is the leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel, and in 2015, the Israeli state banned the Islamic Movement, the ban was “condemned by Palestinian organizations across the political spectrum as an attack on all Palestinians in ’48 Palestine [pre-1967 Israel], who hold Israeli citizenship.”

Salah, leader of the extreme wing of the Islamic Movement in Israel, has endorsed the conspiracy theory that was started by Syria’s government-owned newspaper, Al Thawra, about Jews being warned not to come to work at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. In a 2007 sermon, Salah also employed the medieval European blood libel that Jews use the blood of gentile children to make matzah for Passover.

ISM’s most ambitious campaign has been the Free Gaza Movement (FGM), launched by ISM founders Huwaida Arraf and Adam Shapiro, together with Greta Berlin and US-based ISM coordinator Paul Larudee. FGM states on its website that its goal is “to break the Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza’s 1.8 million civilians” by “direct action… using non-violent means.”

Much of FGM's early success can be attributed to the ISM’s active participation. In advance of and during the first several missions to Gaza, ISM made its media team available to FGM and posted FGM press releases on its own site. As a result, FGM was able to reach an established audience of ISM activists and supporters.

The ISM’s involvement in the flotillas was made clear by a leadership overlap and the participation of those leaders in organizing and public relations efforts for the flotillas, as well as the participation of its activists in the flotillas themselves. Most notably, Huwaida Arraf, an ISM co-founder who served as FGM's chairperson until 2012. Arraf was aboard the 2008 Free Gaza flotillla, as well as the 2010 flotilla that was raided by Israeli commandos on May 31 of that year.

FGM states on its website that its activists are committed to “direct action in confronting Israel’s abuse of Palestinians using non-violent means.”

But FGM's May 2010 flotilla, organized by Arraf in conjunction with the pro-Hamas Turkish Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH), was marked by deadly clashes between activists and Israeli security forces.

Activists aboard the flotilla’s lead ship — the Mavi Marmara — agitated for violent confrontation with Israeli soldiers and chanted “Khaibar, khaibar ya yahud,” a slogan glorifying the killing of Jews. The protesters refused all instructions to change course and attacked Israeli forces with iron bars, metal chairs, knives, stun grenades and firearms, rocks and bottles, as soon as they boarded the Marmara.

The 2011 United Nations’ Palmer Commission report found that the flotilla agitators initiated an organized and violent confrontation with Israeli forces. Following the incident, the Mavi Marmara was found to be carrying no humanitarian aid whatsoever, on board — only crude weaponry.

Arraf resigned from this position in October, 2012, following a series of anti-Semitic tweets posted on the official Twitter feed of the Free Gaza Movement.