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Antisemitism Is Infecting Human Rights Groups - My Charity Had to Act
(The Times-UK) Sigrid Rausing - I founded the Sigrid Rausing Trust nearly 30 years ago, working on human rights issues. Following Charity Commission guidance, we have strong clauses in our grant contract requiring grantees to abstain from incendiary language that may promote violence. After the Oct. 7 atrocities, a check of our grantees' websites and social media accounts found that five (out of 400) had posted disturbing material: a group working on social and economic rights in Tunisia expressed "pride" in the Hamas action. Another called for "support for the guerrilla Palestinian people in their war against the Zionist entity." A media group in Lebanon described the Hamas action as "resistance," referred to the murdered civilians as "settlers," and dismissed Israeli information about Hamas atrocities as "lies." A group in Canada almost immediately termed Israel's actions "genocidal." Atrocities against civilians are obviously contrary to human rights and international humanitarian law, and we cancelled our contracts with the groups in question. It wasn't a hard decision to make. Sympathy with a cause (or a people) can never justify violence against civilians. Terrorism is always wrong.