Israeli Democracy Under Threat
Byrnzie
Posts: 21,037
B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
Newsletter
Dear Friends,
While I usually write regarding human rights concerns in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, I am writing now to update you on worrisome developments inside Israel itself. I write with deep concern but also with the conviction that together we can make change.
For some time now, we have witnessed attempts in the Knesset to undermine democracy and human rights in Israel. Over the past year, this has increasingly taken the form of measures directed at groups that criticize government policy and behavior in the Occupied Territories. B'Tselem, as one of the most well-known human rights organizations, is a central focus of these attacks.
Last week, this offensive took a particularly dangerous turn, with the Knesset’s enactment of the Boycott Law. This law creates tort liability for any Israeli individual or entity that calls for an economic, cultural, or academic boycott of Israel, its institutions, or “an area under its control.” While B'Tselem does not promote boycotts, in its explicit penalization of a non-violent form of protest, I see passage of the Boycott Law as a red line that has been crossed regarding the democratic foundation of the State.
The ink is barely dry on this stain on the law books, and today the Knesset is scheduled to vote on the initiative to establish a parliamentary inquiry into the funding and activities of organizations that “delegitimize the Israeli military” in the words of its initiators. Also on the agenda are bills to restrict contributions from foreign governments to human rights organizations in Israel, and several other anti-democratic bills. Even if we succeed in thwarting the initiatives currently pending, it is clear that they are part of a broader trend to silence and hinder human rights organizations, and stifle criticism more broadly. More initiatives will undoubtedly follow.
These attempts will not deter us. As we have done for over twenty years, B’Tselem shall continue to monitor the reality on the ground, conduct comprehensive research, demand accountability and advocate for positive change regarding human rights in the Occupied Territories. At the same time we must now also defend the civic space for such work in Israel – indeed to defend Israeli democracy itself.
I want to close on an optimistic note. Increasingly, Israelis and friends of Israel around the world have realized that these Knesset initiatives are not just a matter that concerns human rights organizations. Many now understand that this is nothing less than a struggle for the character of the State of Israel. I have been heartened by the outpouring of support, both inside Israel and around the world, of people who share our concerns. I urge you to show your support for democracy and human rights in Israel at this crucial time. Join us on Facebook and Twitter, send us a donation to support our work, visit our website and distribute our information. My hope is that each and every one of you will take action, as you deem appropriate, to counter these attacks on Israeli democracy.
Sincerely,
Jessica Montell
Executive Director
B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
Newsletter
Dear Friends,
While I usually write regarding human rights concerns in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, I am writing now to update you on worrisome developments inside Israel itself. I write with deep concern but also with the conviction that together we can make change.
For some time now, we have witnessed attempts in the Knesset to undermine democracy and human rights in Israel. Over the past year, this has increasingly taken the form of measures directed at groups that criticize government policy and behavior in the Occupied Territories. B'Tselem, as one of the most well-known human rights organizations, is a central focus of these attacks.
Last week, this offensive took a particularly dangerous turn, with the Knesset’s enactment of the Boycott Law. This law creates tort liability for any Israeli individual or entity that calls for an economic, cultural, or academic boycott of Israel, its institutions, or “an area under its control.” While B'Tselem does not promote boycotts, in its explicit penalization of a non-violent form of protest, I see passage of the Boycott Law as a red line that has been crossed regarding the democratic foundation of the State.
The ink is barely dry on this stain on the law books, and today the Knesset is scheduled to vote on the initiative to establish a parliamentary inquiry into the funding and activities of organizations that “delegitimize the Israeli military” in the words of its initiators. Also on the agenda are bills to restrict contributions from foreign governments to human rights organizations in Israel, and several other anti-democratic bills. Even if we succeed in thwarting the initiatives currently pending, it is clear that they are part of a broader trend to silence and hinder human rights organizations, and stifle criticism more broadly. More initiatives will undoubtedly follow.
These attempts will not deter us. As we have done for over twenty years, B’Tselem shall continue to monitor the reality on the ground, conduct comprehensive research, demand accountability and advocate for positive change regarding human rights in the Occupied Territories. At the same time we must now also defend the civic space for such work in Israel – indeed to defend Israeli democracy itself.
I want to close on an optimistic note. Increasingly, Israelis and friends of Israel around the world have realized that these Knesset initiatives are not just a matter that concerns human rights organizations. Many now understand that this is nothing less than a struggle for the character of the State of Israel. I have been heartened by the outpouring of support, both inside Israel and around the world, of people who share our concerns. I urge you to show your support for democracy and human rights in Israel at this crucial time. Join us on Facebook and Twitter, send us a donation to support our work, visit our website and distribute our information. My hope is that each and every one of you will take action, as you deem appropriate, to counter these attacks on Israeli democracy.
Sincerely,
Jessica Montell
Executive Director
B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
Do nothing. Just as most white South Africans during Apartheid did nothing.
apartheid aruguement worked in South Africa when Mendela and crew proved that they could be peaceful
— Socrates
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
— Socrates
i can argue that choking off necessary supplies like food and building materials, the blocking of children's toys, the illegal naval blockade, locking a million people into gaza, the checkpoints, the illegal settlement expansions, the "jewish only" roads and facilities, etc. contitutes a systemic inability to be civil, let alone peaceful. the israeli actions are encouraging these attacks.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Depleted uranium
white phosphorous
hundreds of air bombing runs on the worlds' most densely populated area
blockade of essential supplies
tanks
bulldozers
apartheid laws....
Any objective observer can see that blaming this solely on Palestinian aggression is pure ignorace....but that's exactly what I'd expect from someone with a sig like yours....
No opinion on the silencing of dissent in Israel?
never said the israeli's are non-violent, i do not recall the South African government being particularly peace loving either
— Socrates
Are you backpedalling here? Are you not likening the Palestinians to "mendela and crew"....and inferring that the Palestinians have not proven they can be peaceful, as Mendela did? If not, what exactly ARE you trying to say?
— Socrates
Apartheid argument? What Apartheid argument?
The Apartheid regime was brought down by ANC resistance (and violence), strikes, boycotts, public opinion abroad, and international sanctions.
Right, the ANC also blew up night club(s) and targeted all sorts of other public and government areas/buildings. The ANC was far from some peace group. They did what they needed to do, it was hard times, and violence was used very often to defend against such a brutal oppression.
and by many accounts, what is happening in Palestine now is far 'worse' (it's all bad of course) than it was during apartheid South Africa.
Also Israel was supplying South Africa with weapons and technology, used to uphold the racist white government. The Zionists gave Apartheid South Africa nuclear technology.
True.
But apparently the Palestinians need to renounce violence and 'recognize' Israel, despite the fact that the Israeli's have failed to declare just what 'Israel' needs to be recognized - the ever expanding militaristic Israel, or the internationally recognized Israel within the 1967 borders.
You know, that's part of it, the other is this, Israel wants Palestine/Palestinians to 'recognize' Israel as the 'rightful' owners of the land as chosen/given to them by God.
I mean, that's what it pretty much really is about, dig under the Mount, Al Aqsa, restore the old kingdom and wait for the Messiah.
:ugeek:
As far as the Zionists are concerned, the land of Israel encompasses everything from the Jordan river to the Meditteranean sea. This is what they'd like Israel to recognize, in defiance of the whole of the international community - excluding the U.S.
This article sheds some light on this 'recognition' nonsense:
Why does The Times recognize Israel's 'right to exist'?
By Saree Makdisi
03/11/07
Los Angeles Times
'AS SOON AS certain topics are raised," George Orwell once wrote, "the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse." Such a combination of vagueness and sheer incompetence in language, Orwell warned, leads to political conformity.
No issue better illustrates Orwell's point than coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the United States. Consider, for example, the editorial in The Times on Feb. 9 demanding that the Palestinians "recognize Israel" and its "right to exist." This is a common enough sentiment — even a cliche. Yet many observers (most recently the international lawyer John Whitbeck) have pointed out that this proposition, assiduously propagated by Israel's advocates and uncritically reiterated by American politicians and journalists, is — at best — utterly nonsensical.
First, the formal diplomatic language of "recognition" is traditionally used by one state with respect to another state. It is literally meaningless for a non-state to "recognize" a state. Moreover, in diplomacy, such recognition is supposed to be mutual. In order to earn its own recognition, Israel would have to simultaneously recognize the state of Palestine. This it steadfastly refuses to do (and for some reason, there are no high-minded newspaper editorials demanding that it do so).
Second, which Israel, precisely, are the Palestinians being asked to "recognize?" Israel has stubbornly refused to declare its own borders. So, territorially speaking, "Israel" is an open-ended concept. Are the Palestinians to recognize the Israel that ends at the lines proposed by the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan? Or the one that extends to the 1949 Armistice Line (the de facto border that resulted from the 1948 war)? Or does Israel include the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which it has occupied in violation of international law for 40 years — and which maps in its school textbooks show as part of "Israel"?
For that matter, why should the Palestinians recognize an Israel that refuses to accept international law, submit to U.N. resolutions or readmit the Palestinians wrongfully expelled from their homes in 1948 and barred from returning ever since?
If none of these questions are easy to answer, why are such demands being made of the Palestinians? And why is nothing demanded of Israel in turn?
Orwell was right. It is much easier to recycle meaningless phrases than to ask — let alone to answer — difficult questions. But recycling these empty phrases serves a purpose. Endlessly repeating the mantra that the Palestinians don't recognize Israel helps paint Israel as an innocent victim, politely asking to be recognized but being rebuffed by its cruel enemies.
Actually, it asks even more. Israel wants the Palestinians, half of whom were driven from their homeland so that a Jewish state could be created in 1948, to recognize not merely that it exists (which is undeniable) but that it is "right" that it exists — that it was right for them to have been dispossessed of their homes, their property and their livelihoods so that a Jewish state could be created on their land. The Palestinians are not the world's first dispossessed people, but they are the first to be asked to legitimize what happened to them.
A just peace will require Israelis and Palestinians to reconcile and recognize each other's rights. It will not require that Palestinians give their moral seal of approval to the catastrophe that befell them. Meaningless at best, cynical and manipulative at worst, such a demand may suit Israel's purposes, but it does not serve The Times or its readers.
And yet The Times consistently adopts Israel's language and, hence, its point of view. For example, a recent article on Israel's Palestinian minority referred to that minority not as "Palestinian" but as generically "Arab," Israel's official term for a population whose full political and human rights it refuses to recognize. To fail to acknowledge the living Palestinian presence inside Israel (and its enduring continuity with the rest of the Palestinian people) is to elide the history at the heart of the conflict — and to deny the legitimacy of Palestinian claims and rights.
This is exactly what Israel wants. Indeed, its demand that its "right to exist" be recognized reflects its own anxiety, not about its existence but about its failure to successfully eliminate the Palestinians' presence inside their homeland — a failure for which verbal recognition would serve merely a palliative and therapeutic function.
In uncritically adopting Israel's own fraught terminology — a form of verbal erasure designed to extend the physical destruction of Palestine — The Times is taking sides.
If the paper wants its readers to understand the nature of this conflict, however, it should not go on acting as though only one side has a story to tell.
SAREE MAKDISI, a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA, writes frequently about the Middle East.
Fairly typical of coverage is the New York Times article by Isabel Kershner, headlined “Israel Bans Boycotts Against the State.” It casts the central conflict around the bill in these terms:
Critics and civil rights groups denounced the new law as antidemocratic and a flagrant assault on the freedom of expression and protest. The law’s defenders said it was a necessary tool in Israel’s fight against what they called its global delegitimization.
The article’s text makes it clear who the “good guys” and “bad guys” are supposed to be and portrayed the law as “antidemocratic” and a sign of creeping totalitarianism in the Middle East’s only democratic state.
In fact, as even Kershner reported, there is a debate within the Israeli government about the law, with Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein backing the bill and Knesset legal adviser Eyal Yinon arguing that elements of it border on unconstitutional restrictions on speech. There will almost certainly be a legal challenge and the law might well be modified or overturned completely. That is normal democratic procedure.
If the reporting wasn’t bad enough, the newspaper also published an editorial, “Not Befitting a Democracy,” that begins dishonestly:
Israel’s reputation as a vibrant democracy has been seriously tarnished by a new law intended to stifle outspoken critics of its occupation of the West Bank.
After all, the law is not focused on justifying the country’s policy on the West Bank — an argument used since the Times expects its readers to agree that the law is terrible if posed in those terms — but primarily against boycotts organized by those who want to wipe the country as a whole off the map.
After quoting criticisms from the leftist newspaper Ha’aretz (not identified as such, of course) that this law would transform “Israel’s legal code into a disturbingly dictatorial document,” and the ADL, the editorial continues:
Israel’s conservative government is determined to crush a growing push by Palestinians and their supporters for boycotts, disinvestment and sanctions against Israel. Since last year, many Israeli artists and intellectuals, as well international artists, have canceled performances and programs in Israel and the West Bank to protest the settlements. The bill’s sponsor, Zeev Elkin, said his concern was that the calls for a boycott “increasingly have come from within our own midst.
“With peace talks stalemated, Palestinians are searching for ways to keep alive their dream of a two-state solution, including a push for United Nations recognition this fall. Israel risks further isolating itself internationally with this attempt to stifle critics.”
Note that the Times does not hint at why the peace talks have stalled — involving two and a half years of the Palestinian Authority refusing to negotiate — and views it as being taken for granted that the Palestinians merely dream of a two-state solution. To portray the BDS movement as part of the way the Palestinians keep their dreams alive is to deny its real goal.
Aside from the Palestinian Authority, the majority of anti-Israel grassroots’ boycott efforts in the West come from groups supporting or even directed by Hamas, which opposes a two-state solution and negotiations with Israel altogether.
But here’s the trick. In its original version, Kershner’s article contained the following two paragraphs that were published online:
“For years now there have been laws in the United States that come with fines and prison sentences for anyone who calls for a boycott of Israel, and yet the Israeli who persuades American companies to boycott us is completely exempt. That is ludicrous,’” Mr. Elkin was quoted as saying in the popular Yediot Aharnot newspaper.
He was referring to a federal law in the United States that forbids Americans from complying with, furthering or supporting a boycott of a country that is friendly to the United States.
This is important information since any reader told that the new Israeli law is the same as existing American laws would conclude that the new measure isn’t so horrible, anti-democratic, or a sign of Israel’s collapsing democracy. But these two paragraphs were quickly deleted after their original online publication. The original title, “Israel Outlaws Pro-Palestinian Boycotts,” was also deleted perhaps since readers might be less sympathetic if given a headline saying the boycott was “against the state,” implying some kind of cover-up was being perpetrated to protect a regime rather than a nation.
At any rate, the excised material contradicted the premise that the Times wanted to promote. So out it went. Such a flagrant action to torpedo balance would have outraged editors decades ago, yet now that’s the way things are done in the modern advocacy, agenda-driven media.
All the news that’s fit to print, indeed!
David Gerstman closely monitors and writes about the media.
— Socrates
So boycotts meant to affect policy on the West Bank will be viewed as collateral damage, because they're only going after boycotts organized by Ahmadinejad?
Funny, most of the boycott/divestment emails I receive have the words "end the seige of Gaza" or "social justice" or "human rights" in them: nothing to do with the West Bank, or any other overarching goal....example:
http://www.cjpme.org/TabbedEnhancedItem ... 1000000364