UK Lawyers for Israel calls to proscribe Doctors Without Borders as terror group - Middle East Eye
Pro-Israel advocacy group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has urged the British government to ban the charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which operates in Gaza, as a terrorist organisation.
A recent UKLFI report claimed MSF employees were linked to members of Palestinian militant groups, which the aid organisation has strenuously denied.
Fadi Jihad Mohammed al-Wadiya, a physiotherapist employed by MSF, was killed in an Israeli strike on 25 June 2024. Israel claimed he was a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a Palestinian armed group.
In February, MSF said it had "had no indication that Fadi Al Wadiya might have been involved in military activity of any kind prior to his killing by the Israeli Forces".
In response to the UKLFI complaint last week, the organisation said: "MSF unequivocally refutes the allegations made by the Israeli authorities that we knowingly hired people with ‘ties to terrorism’. MSF would never knowingly employ anyone involved in military activities, which contradicts our core values and ethics."
"The MSF staff members whom Israel has alleged to have ‘ties to terrorism’ were only reported as such to our organisation after they had been killed," the charity alleged.
"If Israeli authorities had reliable information about any MSF staff involvement in military activity, they never shared it with us before their deaths," it continued.
"For months, MSF has been the target of a disinformation campaign, and we strongly condemn the intentional spread of false allegations."
An Israeli air strike damaged a bus belonging to MSF which was carrying 10 humanitarian workers in Gaza City on Tuesday.
In 2023, MSF UK raised £11.3m for work in occupied Palestine.
A UKLFI spokesman said: "British donors giving money to MSF are entitled to expect the highest possible standards of vetting and due diligence, particularly where substantial sums are being transferred into territory controlled by Hamas.
"The evidence we have assembled raises serious questions about people employed by MSF, the organisations with which it works and whether adequate safeguards have been put in place to ensure that charitable resources cannot be exploited by terrorist organisations."
The UK's Charity Commission said last week it was "actively assessing the concerns raised to determine the appropriate next steps".
The allegations against MSF can be traced back to the Israeli government, which earlier this year claimed that two MSF employees had links to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, accusations the medical charity strongly denied.
Israel banned MSF from operating in Gaza and the occupied West Bank in February after the organisation refused to hand over a list of its Palestinian and international staff.
The organisation said it was unable to secure basic assurances regarding the use and protection of that information.
In the past few years, the Israeli government has repeatedly accused charities operating in Gaza of links to Hamas.
Earlier this year, Israel banned numerous aid groups from operating in Gaza, which rights groups have warned undermine humaniatrian access in the enclave.
Since it was founded in 2011, the British advocacy group UKLFI has been at the forefront of efforts to discredit and pressure individuals and organisations in the UK that criticise Israeli policies, as well as aid groups helping Palestinians.
UKLFI appears 128 times in the European Legal Support Centre's Britain Index of Repression database, which documents what it describes as the systematic repression of Palestine solidarity activism across Britain.
The centre argued that UKLFI has helped to create a "chilling environment" in which individuals and organisations withdraw or modify lawful Palestine-related activity due to fears of legal escalation.
In the centre's analysis, UKLFI appears repeatedly as an "initiating" or "escalating" actor against acts of Palestinian solidarity - often through complaint letters, legal threats or public pressure that prompts schools, universities, employers and public bodies to open disciplinary procedures or cancel events.
