Ali Abunimah

Abunimah was born in Washington, D.C., in 1971 to Palestinian refugee parents.[1] He received a B.A. from Princeton University in 1993 and an M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1995.[1] A biographical account by the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs identifies his father as the veteran Jordanian-Palestinian diplomat Hasan Abunimah.[7]

Abunimah worked as a social-policy researcher at the University of Chicago and served as vice president of the Arab-American Action Network.[1] His organizational positions also included membership in the founding steering committee of Al Awda, the Palestinian Right of Return Coalition, and the presidency of the Middle East Cultural and Charitable Society.[2]

His involvement in broadcast commentary followed a 1996 complaint to National Public Radio that its coverage of Israel’s bombing of Lebanon was unbalanced.[1] He was subsequently invited to contribute commentary on U.S. bombings in Sudan and Afghanistan and later appeared on radio and television news programs, particularly NPR and PBS.[1]

Abunimah was a founder, publisher, and editor of Electronic Intifada and Electronic Iraq.[1] The Electronic Intifada was founded in 2001, and he served as its executive director.[2] In 2014, he was living in Chicago and held U.S. citizenship.[8] A biographical note accompanying his 2014 book described him as having written hundreds of articles and having been active in the movement for justice in Palestine for twenty years.[4]

His published work includes contributions to collections issued in 2000 and 2001 and the 2006 book One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.[1]

His book The Battle for Justice in Palestine appeared in 2014.[4] The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs also identifies him as the author of the foreword to the 2015 collection Against Apartheid: The Case for Boycotting Israeli Universities, which advocates an academic boycott of Israeli institutions.[7]

His June 20, 2016, article “21 Palestinian journalists in Israeli prisons” appeared in The Electronic Intifada’s “Rights and Accountability” section.[9] It presented a reported total of twenty-one imprisoned Palestinian journalists, including eight media workers arrested since the beginning of that year.[9] The accompanying author biography identified him as a co-founder of the publication and ended with the statement, “Opinions are mine alone.”[9]

Abunimah’s public advocacy has centered on a one-state framework and BDS campaigns. Published by Metropolitan Books and cataloged at 227 pages, One Country proposes a united political entity rather than the establishment of a separate Palestinian state.[1][5] Its jacket presents that entity as simultaneously a Jewish state and a Palestinian state, with a thriving Jewish community coexisting with a reunited Palestinian nation.[5] The proposal calls on Israelis and Palestinians to put the past aside in pursuit of a peaceful union.[1]

The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs identifies Abunimah as one of fifteen authors of “The One State Declaration,” issued on November 29, 2007, which rejected the two-state solution.[10] Its discussion of his book quotes his interpretation of Hamas’s 2006 election victory as a response to worsening Palestinian circumstances and despair rather than a surge in religious fundamentalism.[10] In that interpretation, the vote expressed rejection of a peace process Palestinians regarded as corrupt rather than a fundamental change in attitudes toward peaceful coexistence with Israelis.[10]

According to the Anti-Defamation League’s account, Abunimah was a keynote speaker at a conference held at Harvard Kennedy School on March 3–4, 2012.[6] The account reported that he advocated a one-state solution and boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaigns as means of pressuring Israel and uniting Palestinians.[6] An undated quotation collected by the Jewish Virtual Library attributes to him the statement that the goal of BDS is “the full restoration of Palestinian rights, not an agreement to create an artificial mini-state in order to save Zionism.”[11]

The Anti-Defamation League has reported that Abunimah compared Israeli policy to South African apartheid and Nazi Germany, described Gaza as a “ghetto” and a “concentration camp,” and characterized the Israeli government as based on “colonial and racial power.”[6] Shortly after the bodies of kidnapped Israeli teenagers Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar, and Eyal Yifrach were found in 2014, the ADL quoted him writing: “Now is precisely the time to say: let all the bloodshed and horror end. Dismantle the racist regime that terrorizes millions of people.”[12] The ADL also quoted a post describing Gaza’s population as “caged in a ghetto because they are not Jews.”[12]

During the May 2021 Israel-Gaza escalation, the ADL quoted Abunimah describing an incident at al-Aqsa as “unprovoked Israeli brutality against worshippers at al-Aqsa.”[13] Responding to the closure of Israel’s main airport amid rocket attacks, he wrote: “Apartheid regime forced to shut down its airport as Palestinian defense forces respond to its terror campaign.”[13]

In October 2023, the ADL reported that Abunimah appeared on an “emergency episode” of The Red Nation Podcast and blamed Israel for violence committed by Hamas; the report did not reproduce his exact words.[14] In December, the ADL characterized him as denying large-scale acts of murder and rape during the October 7 attacks and dismissing such accounts as “colonial atrocity propaganda.”[15]

During Iran’s April 13, 2024, drone and missile attack, the ADL quoted Abunimah expressing hope that the drones would strike what he called “Zionist enemy terror bases and terror infrastructure” and overwhelm Israel’s air defenses.[3] In October 2024, the ADL quoted posts in which he said Yahya Sinwar had died “fighting honorably with and for his people” and had “set Palestine on the road to liberation.”[16]

Swiss police arrested Abunimah in Zurich on January 25, 2025, before a speaking event organized by The Palestine Committee Zurich.[17] Zurich police had requested an entry ban, which the Swiss Federal Office of Police granted; he had initially been questioned on entering Switzerland the preceding Friday.[17] Zurich security official Mario Fehr called him an “Islamist Jew-hater” who calls for violence, while The Electronic Intifada described the arrest as an apparent backlash against expressions of solidarity with Palestinians.[17] UN human-rights experts and activists condemned the arrest and raised freedom-of-expression concerns; UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese called the European climate surrounding freedom of speech “increasingly toxic.”[18]