The legal clinics at Haifa University devote most of their resources to helping non-Jews, with a special preference for Muslim-Arab terrorists, according to a report authored by Dr. Shahar Golan for Im Tirtzu, a grassroots Zionist-revival group. One of the cases handled by the clinics reportedly involved the demand by a man convicted of cruel acts of rape to receive festive meals on the Muslim holidays, and not just the sweet dessert that prison authorities hand out.
Legal clinics employ the services of law students, who receive guidance from certified lawyers.
Citing the report in Mida, a Hebrew-language news and commentary site, Akiva Bigman reports that out of 20 cases handled by the clinics since 2009, only two assisted Jewish people. In 8 out of 10 cases handled by the Clinic for Prisoners' rights, the people assisted were terrorist prisoners, most of whom were accused of nationalist murders.
Im Tirtzu found that students at the clinic were employed in attempts to persuade the court to allow Walid Daka, who was convicted of membership in the terror cell that abducted and murdered IDF soldier Moshe Tamam, to receive books from his family, writes Mida. They helped Raed Slahout, who was convicted of attempted murder and assisting the enemy in wartime, and Saeed Salah – who took part in a terror attack that murdered a soldier, Yair Turgeman – to receive permission to study in the Open University.
In addition, reports Bigman, they helped Mahmoud Majadba, who was convicted of cruel acts of rape, to receive special holiday meals during Muslim holidays, arguing in their legal submissions that while the prison management does hand out Middle Eastern baklawa sweets on the Muslim holidays, “it still has an obligation to be egalitarian and consistent in the meals themselves, and not just the desserts.”
Students from another clinic, the Clinic for the Rights of the Arab Palestinian Minority, reportedly worked to fight against the ability of Jewish communities to appoint committes to decide whom they wish to accept as residents; prepared a position paper defending the right of Arab citizens not to stand when the national anthem is played, and fought against the “profiling” of Arab citizens at airports.
The clinic works very closely with radical various radical organizations, says the Im Tirtzu report, and a co-founder of the Clinic for the Rights of the Arab Palestinian Minority also heads a group that recently organized Israel Apartheid Week events.
The University receives government funding, notes Mida. "Since many of these organizations are active participants in the global industry of boycotting Israel, one wonders how the Israel's higher education budgets are directed to these causes.”
The university's reaction, as given by Mida:
“Haifa University is proud of its ability to create top quality research and excellent academic instruction, in an environment that is tolerant, multicultural and accepts 'the other.' Accordingly, the legal clinics, first and foremost, advance a multifaceted social activity in a variety of topics. The clinics provide students with practical experience, and at the same time contribute to the enire Israeli society. This social activity is carried out separately and with no connection to political and ideological stands, and the attempt to paint this important public and social activity in political or partisan colors is misguided and misleading. Among other things, the purpose of the clinics is to enable weakened groups in Israeli society to receive a defense of their rights. Whoever sees this purpose as a sectorial one or political one, of a specific group and not society as a whole – does not understand what a democratic society is. We also stress that the activity in the clinics is not mandatory for students and only students who want to join the clinics' activity do so.”
Im Tirzu, which is headed by Ronen Shoval, won fame in 2010, when it exposed the contribution of New Israel Fund-sponsored organizations to the infamous Goldstone Report, that condemned Israel for alleged war crimes in Gaza. Shoval has called on nationalist Jewish donors, who "are used to buying houses from Arabs in Judea and Samaria or eastern Jerusalem, and settling Jews in them," to start thinking differently, and work to shape public consciousness, too.