Hagai El-Ad

Hagai El-Ad is the executive director of B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.

Recent Articles

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid greets President Joe Biden at Ben Gurion Airport during the latter's first official visit to Israel as U.S. president, July 13, 2022. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)

The bloody legacy of ‘shared values’

Israel's 'unbreakable bond' with the U.S. means Biden will do little more on his trip than pay lip service to two states while continuing to support apartheid.

By Hagai El-Ad July 13, 2022

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets U.S. Vice President Joe Biden in Jerusalem. (Avi Ohayon/GPO)

Biden warned of Israeli annexation 50 years ago. Will he finally stop it?

Progressives should remind Biden of his early moral clarity on Israel's occupation — and that rhetoric without action is what has helped sustain it.

By Hagai El-Ad November 30, 2020

Laith Abu Zeyad and his mother, Zubayda Khatib, in Jerusalem on March 11, 2018.

Palestinians have mothers, too

The Israeli government that barred a son from being with his dying mother in her final moments is the same one whose police took a son away from his mother.

By Hagai El-Ad June 8, 2020

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the King David hotel in Jerusalem on February 25, 2014. (Miriam Alster/FLASH90)

Israel doesn’t need ‘advice’ against annexation — it needs consequences

Half a century of occupation is ample time for powerful states like Germany to learn that rhetoric without action simply reinforces Israeli impunity.

By Hagai El-Ad April 30, 2020

Palestinian health workers disinfect Palestinian workers as they cross back from Israel into the West Bank at a checkpoint in Tarqumiya, March 27, 2020. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)

Even under pandemic, Israel can’t treat its subjects as equals

A country led by an ethnocentric, racist prime minister has come up against a universal threat that affects all people under its control.

By Hagai El-Ad March 30, 2020

A Palestinian family sits in their destroyed home in the At-Tuffah district of Gaza City, which was heavily attacked during last Israeli offensive, September 21, 2014. (Activestills.org)

No matter who wins elections, Israel’s victory image is clear

A poster featuring Palestinian leaders defeated and humiliated is the epitome of Israel’s vision of absolute 'victory' over Palestinians.

By Hagai El-Ad March 2, 2020

Human Rights Watch Israel and Palestine Director Omar Shakir speaks to press ahead of his deportation from Israel, flanked by HRW head Kenneth Roth, right, and attorney Michael Sfard, left, November 25, 2019 (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org).

How Israel’s top court outlawed moral opposition to the occupation

In the topsy-turvy world of Israel's High Court, international law is nothing more than a disguise to delegitimize the state and its settlements.

By Hagai El-Ad January 16, 2020

An Israeli attack on a U.N. school in Beit Lahiya using white phosphorus, Gaza, January 17, 2009. (Muhammad al-Baba)

To understand the violence of Israel’s occupation, know these 30 stories

Violence and whitewashing are the double helix of the occupation's DNA. Here are 30 stories of Palestinians killed or harmed by its brutality, collected by B'Tselem over three decades. And they’re just the tip of the iceberg.

By Hagai El-Ad December 10, 2019

Young Palestinian men sit beneath the separation wall in the West Bank city of Al-Ram, September 29, 2014. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

The world had decades to stop annexation. Just ask Palestinians

Partially annexed or temporarily occupied, Palestinians living under Israel’s thumb do not need legal expertise or international recognition to realize how cheap their lives are to their oppressor. By Hagai El-Ad On the eve of Israel’s recent elections, Prime Minister Netanyahu made a campaign promise to annex parts of the West Bank, which was followed…

By Hagai El-Ad April 19, 2019