The Electronic Intifada (EI) is an online publication based in Chicago which covers the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a Palestinian perspective, "aimed at combating the pro-Israeli, pro-American spin" its editors believe exists in mainstream media accounts.
EI may not be firing machine guns or throwing stones, but its computer is on the new frontline of the century-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are no bullets, no explosives and no noise, but the Internet has become an extension of the war of attrition between Israel and the Palestinians.
Uri Noy, director of the information and Internet division at Israel's Foreign Ministry says web sites like Electronic Intifada constitute cyberpropaganda. Electronic Intifada is rich with quotes of international resolutions and conventions -- carefully culled to bolster the Palestinians' self-image as victims of a historic injustice not at all of their own making. Although the Web writers claim total objectivity, only information that shows Israel as wrong and the Palestinians as right is used.
It is a battle in cyberspace as Palestinian activists struggle to make political gains on the Internet. The Electronic Intifada Web site has the goal of showing that Israel is violating international law and international human rights. The website contributes to the war to delegitimize Israel by publishing articles that compare Israelis to Nazis and promotes campaigns for anti-Israel BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions). EI submissions use apartheid rhetoric, and accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing, Judaizing Jerusalem, and genocide.
As documented by NGO Monitor, EI plays a central role in the Durban strategy of political warfare against Israel, with frequent accusations of “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “slow genocide.” Articles on the EI site justify violence against civilians, call Gaza a “concentration camp,” and label Palestinian participation in peace talks as “collaboration.”
EI is mainly a compilation of news from publications all over the Internet. It does collect some of its own news from a wide variety of sources and is adorned with photos, such as a picture of a lone, small Palestinian boy aiming a stone at an Israeli tank.
EI has an extensive section supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, including academic, consumer, cultural, and church boycotts, commercial divestment, and government sanctions against Israel. Issues reports on developments and “victories” in BDS.
The Electronic Intifada (EI) was founded in 2001 by four activists affiliated with the International Solidarity Movement and associated with Bir Zeit University, the hotbed of Palestinian nationalism in the West Bank. The key figure was Nigel Parry, a Scottish citizen who worked as Bir Zeit's Webmaster and previously built other anti-Israel Web sites, and is currently an eclectic Internet consultant, writer and musician based in Pittsburgh.
The other activists were Ali Abunimah, an American citizen of Palestinian descent, and a lecturer and a researcher in social policy at the University of Chicago; Arjan El Fassed, a human rights activist based in the Netherlands; Laurie King, an anthropologist and former coordinator of the International Campaign for Justice for the Victims of Sabra and Shatila (the Palestinian camps in Lebanon where Israeli-backed Christian militias massacred Palestinians in 1982) and the managing editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies in Washington.
In December 2010, Maureen Claire Murphy, managing editor of Electronic Intifada and a former Al-Haq employee, was subpoenaed by the FBI to appear before a Federal Grand Jury for her work with the Palestine Solidarity Group.
According to their website, Electronic Intifada is mainly funded by its readers with additional funds provided by private foundations. It claims not to receive funds from any governments or political parties. In 2010 it received $130,000 in donations from individuals and $83,000 from private foundations.
NGO Monitor, however, criticized the Dutch NGO Interchurch Organisation for Development Cooperation (ICCO) for providing financial support to Electronic Intifada. ICCO provided €150,000 between 2006 and 2009. This money actually came from the Dutch government and the EU since ICCO receives 95% of its budget from them. In 2010, ICCO provided another €50,000 in “support from private funds.” ICCO praised EI as an “internationally recognized daily news source” that “contributes to a balanced opinion,” ignoring evidence of its anti-Semitism.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder and executive director of EI. Born in Washington, DC on December 29, 1971, he is a Palestinian American who serves as a Board of Directors member for the Arab American Action Network and the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center. Abunimah is also a founding steering committee member of Al Awda, the Palestinian Right of Return Coalition. His personal website, abunimah.org, acts as a clearinghouse for his writings, which are fiercely hostile toward Israel and the United States.
Abunimah authored the 2006 book One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, which rejects a two-state solution for the Mideast conflict and proposes instead the creation of a single, united, democratic state for Israelis and Palestinians alike. To actualize this, he says “coercion is necessary,” and dismisses Jewish concerns of living under an Arab majority as “irrational, racist fears.” He acknowledges that in a one-state solution “we couldn’t rule out some disastrous situation” for Jews.
In Abunimah's view, Palestinian violence and terrorism is caused entirely by Israel's "land confiscation," its "ongoing orgy of violence," and its "routine human-rights abuses" that have "made life under a seemingly endless occupation so intolerable."
He labels PA President Mahmud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad as “collaborators”, and PA participation in peace talks as “collaboration.” Collaboration is punishable by death in the PA and Gaza.
On his personal Twitter account, Abunimah accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing. He says Zionism “is one of the worst forms of anti-Semitism in existence today,” claiming that it “dehumanizes its victims, denies their history, and has a cult-like worship of ethno-racial purity.” He refers to Israel’s self-defense policy in Gaza as an “attempted genocide.”
Holocaust references appear frequently in his comments. He calls Gaza a “ghetto for surplus non-Jews,” compares the Israeli press to “Der Sturmer,” and claims “Supporting Zionism is not atonement for the Holocaust, but its continuation in spirit.” He calls Gaza a “concentration camp” and repeated a claim that IDF statements are the words “of a Nazi.”
An interesting facet to the life experience of Ali Abunimah is his contacts with Barack Obama before Obama became President of the USA.
In the late 1990s, Abunimah met Barack Obama when the latter was a representative in the Illinois state senate. “He [Obama] impressed me as progressive, intelligent and charismatic,” says Abunimah. “I distinctly remember thinking, ‘if only a man of this caliber could become president one day.’”
In 2001 and 2002, the Woods Fund of Chicago, whose Board of Directors included Obama, made grants totaling $75,000 to Abunimah’s AAAN.
According to journalist John Batchelor, Abunimah “has remembered Mr. Obama’s speaking in 1999 against ‘Israeli occupation’ at a charity event for a West Bank refugee camp; and Mr. Abunimah … has also recalled Mr. and Mrs. Obama at a fundraiser held for the then-Congressional candidate Obama in 2000 at Rashid and Mona Khalidi’s home, where Mr. Obama made convincing statements in support of the Palestinian cause.” “[Obama] came with his wife,” Abunimah said. “That’s where I had a chance to really talk to him. It was an intimate setting. He convinced me he was very aware of the issues [and] critical of U.S. bias toward Israel and lack of sensitivity to Arabs.... He was very supportive of U.S. pressure on Israel.”
Said Abunimah in March 2007, “Over the years since I first saw Obama speak, I met him about half a dozen times, often at Palestinian and Arab-American community events in Chicago including a May 1998 community fundraiser at which Edward Said was the keynote speaker. In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor. On that occasion and others, Obama was forthright in his criticism of U.S. policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”
In June 2007 Abunimah said, “When Obama first ran for the Senate in 2004, the Chicago Jewish News interviewed him on his stance regarding Israel’s security fence. He accused the Bush administration of neglecting the ‘Israeli-Palestinian’ situation and criticized the security fence built by Israel to prevent terror attacks: ‘The creation of a wall dividing the two nations is yet another example of the neglect of this administration in brokering peace,’ Obama was quoted as saying.”
In January 2008, Abunimah told interviewer Amy Goodman: “I knew Barack Obama for many years as my state senator -- when he used to attend events in the Palestinian community in Chicago all the time. I remember personally introducing him onstage in 1999, when we had a major community fundraiser for the community center in Deheisha refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. And that’s just one example of how Barack Obama used to be very comfortable speaking up for and being associated with Palestinian rights and opposing the Israeli occupation.”
In March 2007 Abunimah alleged, with displeasure, that Obama had become more sympathetic to Israel in recent years. Said Abunimah: “If disappointing, given his historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power.”
“The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood,” Abunimah added. “He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing. As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, ‘Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.’ He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and U.S. policy, ‘Keep up the good work!’”
