Palestine Legal Condemns US Designation of Palestinian Human Rights Group Addameer as Genocide Escalates

CONTACT: Palestine Legal Media, media@palestinelegal.org

Thursday, June 12th, 2025 — Building on a years-long campaign by the Israeli government to undermine and isolate Palestinian civil society organizations, the U.S. Treasury Department recently added the advocacy group Addameer to its “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” (SDGT) list despite widespread consensus that Israel's designation of six human rights groups in 2021 was meritless.

Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association has worked for over 30 years to advocate on behalf of thousands of Palestinian political prisoners being held in Israeli prisons without evidence, charge or trial, through legal support, documentation and public reporting of the torture and other abuses they have faced.

The action against Addameer is the latest in a long list of politicized attacks by the Trump administration against activists and organizations that work to promote civil and human rights. It also mirrors a similar move by the Biden administration designating the group Samidoun last October, demonstrating the continuity of both the U.S. government's disregard for due process and its efforts to criminalize the growing movement for Palestinian rights. 

These designations are part and parcel of the U.S. government's wholehearted complicity in Israel's escalating genocide in Gaza and throughout Palestine, and are aimed at undermining civil society attempts to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against Palestinians. They must also be viewed in the context of the slide into authoritarianism, with the increased use of antiterrorism laws and other repressive tools to target and criminalize social justice organizing and nonprofit organizations.

We reiterate our message from last October, which is even more relevant today:

At this precarious time and in the face of such blatant targeting of what should be protected speech and association under the First Amendment, we are committed to protecting the movement by foregrounding the collective safety of diverse movement groups. And we are committed to the urgent, morally necessary work towards Palestinian freedom, ending U.S. complicity in this genocide, and challenging the very premises of the antiterrorism regime that has historically made criminals of justice activists, while war criminals act with impunity.

For information about the legal implications of the designation, see this resource: Primer: Material Support for Terrorism Laws and Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Sanctions. If you or your group needs legal advice or representation, please contact us via our intake form, and we will aim to connect you with trusted attorneys with relevant expertise. 

For background on how the entire U.S. "antiterrorism" regime has grown out of and been shaped by successive efforts to undermine Palestinian freedom, read our joint report with the Center for Constitutional Rights: Anti-Palestinian at the Core: The Origins and Growing Dangers of U.S. Antiterrorism Law.