This is the Hezbollah-linked activist behind lawfare on Israelis By Canaan Lidor and David Isaac
https://www.jns.org/this-is-the-hezbollah-linked-activist-behind-lawfare-on-israelis/
Long before he perfected the use of lawfare to hound Israelis abroad, Belgian-Lebanese anti-Israel activist Dyab Abou Jahjah was already seen as “one of the most dangerous figures” for modern European Jews, according to a community activist from Antwerp.
Versatile, charismatic and persistent, Abou Jahjah, a 54-year-old Hezbollah supporter, has a track record of making antisemitic statements and calls to violence. Last year, he founded the Hind Rajab Foundation in Brussels to mount legal action against Israelis on disputed war crimes charges.
A newcomer among anti-Israel NGOs, HRF has brought passionate intensity to its legal campaign against Israeli soldiers, bringing charges against them when they travel to foreign countries.
To many, the ability of Abou Jahjah to hijack justice authorities and achieve a celebrity status despite his record is symptomatic of a broader bias that’s turning Belgium—and Western Europe—increasingly inhospitable not only to Israelis, but to Jews in general.
Over his 20-year career, Abou Jahjah has skillfully used the language of human rights and international law to cast himself as a modern-day Che Guevara to Western audiences. At the same time, he has employed antisemitic rhetoric and glorified violence to gain Muslim support.
Abou Jahjah’s rise reflects “the multiple failures that now threaten the future of Belgium’s Jewish community, as well as the fabric of its society,” said Michel Kotek, head of Belgium’s Jewish Information and Documentation Center.
An alleged ex-fighter for Hezbollah who has admitted lying to obtain Belgian citizenship, Abou Jahjah has become a media-savvy intellectual there while also working as a high school teacher.
So far, HRF, though reaping a public relations windfall, has not persuaded any country to charge an Israeli. HRF’s most recent achievement was getting Belgian federal prosecutors to have police question two Israelis at the Tomorrowland music festival last month. They were released without restrictions, but prosecutors referred their cases to the International Criminal Court, the Belgian media reported on Wednesday.
Before that, HRF got a Brazilian court to open a probe earlier this year against an Israeli soldier on vacation.
Michael Freilich, a Belgian-Jewish lawmaker who has tracked Abou Jahjah closely, told JNS that HRF is “on the path to achieving the goal of getting an Israeli detained abroad.”
When soldiers leave Israel, HRF targets them for prosecution for “war crimes” in their destination countries. It has filed complaints in Ecuador, Belgium, the UAE, Brazil, Argentina, Sri Lanka, France, the Netherlands, Cyprus, Thailand and the UK.
“What makes this effort different is they seem to be combing the internet for soldiers who post on social media. Then, if they end up in Europe or elsewhere, they file complaints,” Anne Herzberg, legal adviser at NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research institute, told JNS.
HRF’s funding remains opaque, though it’s clearly significant. “They comb social media and run extensive data mining. That costs money. Who’s funding this?” Herzberg asked. “I don’t think they’re doing this alone.”
In June, Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry said HRF filed a brief with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, accusing more than 1,000 IDF soldiers of “war crimes” in Gaza and Lebanon. It also filed complaints against at least 30 soldiers while they were abroad.
In its Tomorrowland legal complaint, HRF filed jointly with the Global Legal Action Network, another anti-Israel NGO with whom it has partnered. GLAN collaborates with Al-Haq, which Israel designated a terrorist group in 2021.
HRF files under “universal jurisdiction” laws, which allow courts to prosecute certain crimes, such as war crimes, regardless of where the alleged incidents took place.
Last month, Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism recommended that HRF and its members be added to Israel’s barred-entry list.
Abou Jahjah’s story in Belgium began in the 1990s, when he arrived as a Lebanese asylum seeker, claiming he was fleeing Hezbollah.
“Most asylum seekers invent a story, and I said I had a conflict with Hezbollah leaders,” he told the New York Times in 2003. “It was just a low political trick to get my papers.”
He was briefly married to a Belgian woman, which secured his claim to Belgian citizenship. That ex-wife later tried to sue Abou Jahjah, claiming that she had been tricked into the marriage, The New York Times reported. His Belgian citizenship can’t be revoked despite his admission to having entered the country under false pretenses.
He also admitted to “some military training,” presumably with Hezbollah, and once posed with an AK-47.
Before starting HRF, Abou Jahjah created the Arab European League, a radical Muslim advocacy group.
In 2006, the group posted a cartoon on its website showing Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler, implying Jews fabricated the Holocaust. A Dutch appeals court in 2010 fined the group for hate speech and ordered the removal of the cartoon.
In 2015, Abou Jahjah called then-Antwerp mayor Bart De Wever, now Belgium’s prime minister, “a Zionist c**ksucker.” In 2009, he wrote three times on Facebook that Jews in Israel “can leave with a suitcase or in a coffin,” according to the Jewish newspaper Joods Actueel. He first claimed the screenshots were fake, then said his account had been hacked.
After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Abou Jahjah said he felt “a feeling of victory.”
Abou Jahjah did not respond by press time to a JNS request for an interview or a reaction to the allegations made by critics.
Despite his record, mainstream media in Europe and beyond have often lionized Abou Jahjah. A 2002 Time Magazine profile described him as “charismatic, good-looking, articulate and brash—and he may have a point.” The Times profile likened him to “a trapped panther.” Dutch magazine VN described him in 2016 as “a few kilos heavier, married and a father of two daughters, but still the handsome beau he used to be.”
In 2006, Abou Jahjah said he had gone to Lebanon to fight against Israel during the Second Lebanon War. He later returned to Belgium and resumed teaching, though Freilich said he appears to have left that position to focus on HRF.
“Despite terror ties, Abou Jahjah is still welcomed in primetime studios. He’s fawned over by Belgium’s media, who never confront him over antisemitism or violence,” Kotek said.
But Belgium’s media drew a line in 2017, when De Standaard newspaper fired Abou Jahjah for writing, “By any means necessary, ‘#freepalestine,’” on social media after a Palestinian terrorist killed Israeli soldiers by ramming a truck into a crowd.
Beyond media appearances, “he’s been skilled, through HRF, at occupying the lawfare niche, which benefits from rising hostility to Israel,” Freilich said.
Still, “each of Abou Jahjah’s political campaigns has failed,” he added. His latest parliamentary run, under a pro-Palestinian party, “failed miserably.” Even in Brussels—sometimes dubbed the “jihadist world capital”—there’s little support for him, Freilich said.
He attributes HRF’s traction not to Abou Jahjah’s personal appeal, but to growing anti-Israel sentiment in media and public life.
“Every judge and policeman is part of society. So when a radical, a terror supporter, a self-declared Hezbollah henchman files a complaint, it’s taken seriously today. It wouldn’t have been a decade ago,” Freilich said.
“Antisemitism is back in fashion and they’re fully capitalizing on it,” Herzberg agreed. Belgium, she noted, “has long ranked among the worst in Europe for antisemitism. The fact that HRF is based there says a lot.”
Some NGOs barred from operating in France or other countries now incorporate in Belgium. “It’s like the Delaware of antisemitic NGOs,” she said, referencing the U.S. state popular with businesses for its legal protections.
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