Lawyer fired from anti-war NGO for Gaza tweet

Lawyer Ousman Noor was fired from a high profile NGO job for tweeting about Gaza. The Stop Killer Robots campaign, supported by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty, is an anti-war NGO that advocates against the use of robotic and autonomous weapons. It would seem like exactly the sort of organisation that would be opposed to Israel using Palestinians as guinea pigs to test these weapons on but, as Noor discovered, criticism of Israel is off-limits in some anti-war NGOs.

Noor believes his sacking speaks to a wider issue of NGOs like this that operate in the United Nations and rely on relationships with Western diplomats and officials who are, according to him, ‘ideologically pro-Israel’. Noor hasn’t stayed silent, however, and is taking Stop Killer Robots to court in Switzerland for unfair dismissal in order to make sure other pro-Palestine workers in the NGO community and beyond have the confidence to speak out.

READ: Palestinian NGO’s legal case over UK arms sales to Israel to be heard in October