REPORT: Casa Árabe, the think tank of spanish public institutions against Israel

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Casa Árabe (Arabic House) is a Spanish public consortium, led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, that operates as a strategic centre in the relations of Spain with the Arab world. The institution is also supported economically by the Autonomous Community of Madrid, the Autonomous Government of Andalusia and the City Councils of Madrid and Cordoba. The President of its Board of Directors is the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alfonso Dastis, and the Vice Presidencies are occupied by the respective Presidents of the Autonomous Regions and Cities mentioned above.
Since its foundation in 2006, Casa Árabe carries out, as stated in its web page, «its activities as an active platform and tool of the Spanish public diplomacy, integrating its actions in a solid Network of Houses together with House of America, Asia House, Africa House, House of the Mediterranean and Sefarad-Israel Centre».
But behind an apparently harmless public declaration of intentions there is hidden, in its more than 10 years of existence, a hostile and permanent anti-Israeli agenda in all the fields of activity of Casa Árabe: academic, cultural and bibliographical. They are not isolated cases and they seem to follow a clear strategy of criminalization of Israel, of trivialization of the terrorism suffered by the Israeli society and, in a nutshell, the permanent acceptance of the theories that do not pursue peace in the region but the destruction of the only democracy in the Middle East.
Institutions like the Casa Árabe and similar ones have an annual budget of millions of Euros exclusively of public money. The sole use of a single taxpayers’ Euro in activities aimed at persecuting Jews and their right to a nation-state deserves the firmest reprobation by its main administrator, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as a firm revision of the contents of hate broadcasted from the Casa Árabe itself.
Below are some examples of that sick anti-Israeli obsession:
The PFLP, terrorist organization, sits down at the Casa Árabe
– Palestine and the political changes in the Arab region, by Raji Sourani
Raji Sourani is founder and director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. He has been condemned for being an active member of the PFLP.
– The water shortage in Palestine and Jordan
The event included the participation of Abdellatif M.A. Mohamed, Vice Director of the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC) in the Palestinian Territories. PARC is known for its anti-Israeli rhetoric, launching false accusations and actively promoting the boycott of Israel.
 
Anti-Israeli bias
– Organization of the university course «Palestine: half a century of occupation». The title of the event «Palestine: half a century of occupation. A legal, political and human approach.» is in itself indicative of the biased nature of the «course», which can hardly disguise its partiality and propaganda nature.
– Conference of Ilan Pappé
A historian who on several occasions, in his own words, has no problem in recognising his lack of objectivity or the «irrelevance» of telling the truth.
– The land speaks Arabic
The conference was directed by the anti-Israeli activist Teresa Aranguren, sadly known for statements such as: «Hamas is not the problem of the Middle East; the problem is Israel». The historian that intervened is another example of lack of academic rigour, many of his thesis on the conflict being publicly refuted.
– Palestinian Refugees in the Middle East: an unsustainable context
The conference was directed by another «celebrity» of the militant anti-Israeli activism in Spain, the ex-correspondent of the Spanish Public Television RTVE in the Middle East, who was removed from her post after flagrant evidence of her bias.
 
Unilateral vision of the conflict
– The Nakba and the current situation in Palestine
– Palestine and Israel: the future of the two-state solution
– Commemoration of the Palestinian Day of the Nakba
– Commemorative event of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People
– Jerusalem in our memory
 
Publications that criminalize Israel
– The Palestinian problem sixty years after the Nakba, written by Nur Masalha
 
Diffusion of an exclusive, discriminatory ideology that glorifies terrorism
– Books with discriminatory content

Casa Árabe intended to host a conference with Omar Barghouti, founder of the anti-Semite movement of boycott of Israel. Also invited were the so-called «human rights activists» Manal Tamimi and Munther Amira.

Promotion of the Intifada, which they call «Palestinian Civil Resistance».

 
Collaborations with anti-Israeli organizations
– Casa Árabe organises routes in Cordoba together with the Fundación Al Fanar, an organization that profusely uses its social networks to launch messages of hate against Israel. In its own site it has a declaration of intentions against Israel. It also organises workshops with said foundation.
– Casa Árabe has offered its physical space repeatedly to the Círculo Cultural Hispano Árabe, an organization with a harmless appearance, oriented, according to its own statutes, towards spreading the Arabic culture in Spain.
– The association is presided by Abdo Tounsi, a furious anti-Israel activist, director of the magazine Palestina Digital, a libel oriented to criminalising everything Israeli, trivializing the Shoa and promoting hatred against Israel. He is the founder of the publishing group Tunsol.
The Círculo is a regular at the Casa Árabe, which gives public coverage to its initiatives: initiative for the acknowledgement of the Arabic Madrid, Spanish-Arabic Book Fair, homage to the poet Mahmud Sobh, etc. Even participating in them as a speaker: the media as a window of mutual perception.
 
Speakers and directors with a belligerent discourse towards Israel
– Another regular of Casa Árabe is a speaker like Ignacio Álvarez-Ossorio, who publicly has participated in boycott campaigns of Israel, persecuted by our Courts of Justice and by the European Union for promoting anti-Semite hatred and discrimination. Álvarez recently wrote a prologue for a publication for some one criminally judged for serious crimes of harassment and coercion against the American Jewish artist Matisyahu, which took place in 2015 in the Rototom Musical Festival and which placed our country in the international limelight as a shameful example of anti-Semitism.
– Even with extremely belligerent profiles against Israel such as Gema Martín, who occupied the maximum position in the organization. Martín was Director of Casa Árabe between 2006 and 2012. Hardly a few months before her appointment, she compared Israel with the jihadist organization Hamas, calling the terrorists «a good government» and minimising the imposition of the Sharia (Islamic law).