Nahal Toosi reports on the latest outrage from Mike Pompeo’s State Department:

The Trump administration is considering declaring that several prominent international NGOs — including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam — are anti-Semitic and that governments should not support them, two people familiar with the issue said.

The proposed declaration could come from the State Department as soon as this week. If the declaration happens, it is likely to cause an uproar among civil society groups and might spur litigation. Critics of the possible move also worry it could lead other governments to further crack down on such groups. The groups named, meanwhile, deny any allegations that they are anti-Semitic.

If the administration does this, this will be government harassment of legitimate and important human rights and aid organizations simply because they have called out and documented abuses by a U.S.-backed client state. There is absolutely no merit to the accusation, but then there almost never is in these cases. It would represent the latest misuse of the charge of anti-Semitism by cynically deploying it against critics of Israeli government policies and abuses. Falsely labeling these groups as anti-Semitic obviously has nothing to do with combating the real evils of anti-Semitism, and by smearing them with this label the administration would be doing a favor to every despot, war criminal, and human rights abuser in the world. The fact that the Trump administration would even consider doing this once again shows their contempt for human rights and international law, and it shows how little interest they have in confronting actual purveyors of anti-Semitism.

Conflating criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Semitism has been a common ploy that hawks have used for years to distract from the serious and ongoing human rights abuses and war crimes that their government has committed against Palestinian civilians for decades. It has been standard practice to smear critics of Israeli policies and practices and U.S. support for the same. The purpose of these smear tactics has always been to damage the critics themselves and to discourage others from speaking up. Fortunately, the smear tactics have been so overused and used in such obvious bad faith for such a long time that these attacks no longer have the same effect that they once did. Instead of harming the reputation of the people being smeared, the attack has tended to rebound back on the cynical hard-liners that have relied on it too often. It would be deeply shameful and dishonest if the State Department made such a declaration, and it would be yet another example of how Pompeo has driven the department into a ditch in just two and a half years.

All of the groups potentially targeted by this declaration are reputable organizations that have done extraordinary work advocating on behalf of abused and suffering people in dozens of countries. Oxfam in particular has done very important humanitarian relief work in a number of countries ravaged by war, including Yemen. Everyone that respects that work needs to let their members of Congress know that we reject the administration’s disgraceful attempt at intimidation.