The Israeli campaign against independent human rights organisations is no longer a fleeting media backlash to a report, testimony, or journalistic investigation. It has evolved into a systematic policy targeting anyone who seeks the truth and documents crimes and violations against Palestinians, particularly in the Gaza Strip and inside Israeli detention centres and prisons.What Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is facing today, and what I am personally facing, cannot be separated from this broader context: an organised war on documentation and on every independent, professional effort to convey the truth to the world.
Evading accountability by attacking documenters’ credibility
Israel understands very well that independent human rights reports are no longer merely passing media statements. They have become part of the architecture of international awareness and legal accountability, and a primary source for the press, UN mechanisms, and international judicial bodies.
Israel, therefore, no longer confines itself to denying the facts. It targets those who document them, because discrediting the documenter is, in Israel’s calculation, the quickest way to avoid answering for the crime it’s accused of. It also allows Israel to recast itself as the victim of an alleged campaign, rather than as a state implicated in serious violations and required to open its records and detention centres to independent investigation.
The emergence of multiple serious testimonies about rape and sexual torture inside its detention centres does not merely threaten Israel’s image. It redirects attention to what Israel itself is committing within a system it fully controls
As part of shifting the focus from the crime to those who expose it, Israel has targeted Palestinian and international human rights and humanitarian organisations, as well as UN mechanisms. It has restricted their work and refused to renew the registration of many international organisations because they would not submit to its unlawful conditions.
Israel has also incited against journalists, killed dozens of them in Gaza, threatened others, and adopted the same approach towards human rights defenders. Taken together, this amounts to a systematic policy aimed at raising the stakes of documentation and intimidating anyone who exposes the facts, reports them, or demands that they be investigated.
This campaign is not new to us. Euro-Med Monitor and I have faced repeated smear attempts by parties and lobbies linked to Israel, seeking to undermine our credibility because of our human rights work. In more than one case, I was forced to take legal action against parties that published false and defamatory claims. Those cases ended with findings against them, including orders to apologise and pay compensation.
This confirms that the accusations against us do not withstand scrutiny when placed before an independent judicial authority, and that we are being targeted not because of any flaw in our work, but because of its impact in exposing violations and supporting accountability efforts.
What worries Israel?
What truly worried Israel was not only the publication of The New York Times investigation, but the combination of elements it brought together: sexual violence, Palestinian detainees, a global newspaper, and a prominent international journalist such as Nicholas Kristof. This moved the issue beyond the realm of human rights reporting, which Israel usually seeks to isolate and discredit, and into Western public opinion, as well as media and legal institutions that are difficult to ignore.
This issue also strikes at the heart of Israel’s narrative after 7 October. Israel presented itself internationally as the sole victim of unprecedented violence and used that moral position to justify its policies and genocidal approach. The emergence of multiple serious testimonies about rape and sexual torture inside its detention centres does not merely threaten its image. It redirects attention to what Israel itself is committing within a system it fully controls.
Israel also realises that the growing body of testimonies and reports is no longer in its favour. When the issue concerns a systematic pattern of torture and sexual violence inside prisons and detention centres, it is no longer merely a media scandal. It becomes a question of policy, leadership knowledge, institutional tolerance, and failure to prevent abuse or hold perpetrators accountable. These are precisely the kinds of questions that open the door to legal and political responsibility at higher levels.
What is the truth about the NY Times investigation, and what was our role in it?
The claim that we were behind The New York Times investigation is misleading at its core. It reduces a rigorous journalistic effort by a major international newspaper and a veteran journalist to a political narrative aimed at discrediting rather than verifying.
Kristof explained that what he published was based on direct interviews with 14 men and women who reported being subjected to sexual abuse by Israeli security forces, and that these accounts were checked against witnesses, lawyers, and relatives. This was an independent journalistic verification process, not a single allegation or a sole source.
Journalists contacting human rights organisations is not a conspiracy. It is a natural part of professional work, especially when Israel prevents independent access to Gaza and detention centres, and withholds records, camera footage, and medical files. Israel cannot block every path to verification and then attack everyone who seeks the truth through the means still available.
Most importantly, the facts addressed in the investigation are not isolated. They form part of a broader body of documentation involving independent UN bodies, Palestinian organisations with field experience, and independent Israeli organisations such as B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights – Israel.
A smear campaign without evidence
The campaign does not present evidence. It presents smear material designed to look like evidence to those already inclined to believe it. It does not show that any specific testimony was fabricated, that any particular incident was distorted, or that any Euro-Med Monitor report was proven wrong. What is being circulated is largely based on taking posts out of context, recycling images, and invoking family ties to manufacture suspicion.
I am Palestinian and a son of Gaza. I do not disown my society or detach myself from the suffering of my people. I lost my sister, her children, and many members of my family to the Israeli killing machine. This does not make me less professional, strip me of the right to engage in human rights work, or permit Israel to use my identity and suffering as weapons to smear my work. Objectivity and professionalism do not mean abandoning one’s humanity or remaining silent in the face of crimes. They mean confronting crime with methodology, accuracy, verification, and law.
In all cases, Euro-Med Monitor’s reports are not based on the personal views of any individual within the organisation, but on clear documentation methodologies. These include direct interviews, assessing the consistency of testimonies, cross-checking information, evaluating sources, analysing patterns, protecting victims and witnesses, and reading the facts in light of international law.
If Israel wants to challenge these reports, it should respond to the methodology, facts, and testimony, not to family, background or cropped images.
Furthermore, if Israel believes that what has been published, and what we and others have documented, is untrue, the remedy is clear: open the detention centres to independent investigation, grant access to the International Committee of the Red Cross and international investigators, and provide medical records, camera footage, and investigation files.
Attacking Euro-Med Monitor, the journalist, or the newspaper does not refute a single testimony, invalidate a single fact, or absolve Israel of accountability.
Deterring documentation: the real objective
The most dangerous aspect of this campaign is that it does not target us alone. It targets the very environment that makes documentation possible. When Israel defames organisations, threatens journalists, pursues witnesses, and intimidates victims, it is trying to impose collective silence around its crimes. We are already seeing the effects. Many victims and witnesses hesitate to speak, not because they lack testimony, but because they fear retaliation, defamation, and danger to themselves and their families amid the ongoing genocide, siege, and lack of protection.
The involvement of the Israeli prime minister, foreign minister, and official agencies in this attack sends a clear message to journalists, organisations, victims, and witnesses: approaching the issue of prisons, torture, sexual violence, and secret detention will come at a political, media, and personal cost.
In this sense, the campaign targets not only past documentation, but also any documentation yet to come.
We will not stop
We are treating this campaign with the utmost seriousness and are raising its risks with the United Nations, states, international mechanisms, and all bodies concerned with the protection of human rights defenders and journalists. We hold Israel fully responsible for any harm to our teams, witnesses, victims, or anyone cooperating with us.
At the same time, it must be clear that this campaign will not hinder our work. We did not begin documenting abuses because conditions were safe or easy, and we will not stop because Israel has decided to raise the stakes. To retreat in the face of intimidation would mean to leave victims without a voice, crimes without a record, and perpetrators without accountability.
In all cases, confronting this campaign is not about protecting Euro-Med Monitor alone, or any one individual. It is about protecting the space for independent human rights work, professional journalism, and people’s right to truth and justice. It is also a defence of the international system itself, because human rights organisations, independent journalism, and mechanisms of documentation and accountability are essential to ensuring that international law remains effective rather than just words on paper.
If Israel succeeds in intimidating those who document abuses, the first victim will not be Euro-Med Monitor, but those whose testimonies will be buried, while the crimes committed against them are allowed to remain without accountability. For all these reasons, we say firmly: we will not stop until accountability and justice are achieved.
