Democracy in Israel Under Attack
Byrnzie
Posts: 21,037
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/no ... go-funding
Israeli ministers accused of trying to muzzle critics with funding curbs
Senior cabinet members have approved a bill limiting foreign donations to political not-for-profit organisations
Phoebe Greenwood in Tel Aviv
Guardian.co.uk, Sunday 13 November 2011
An Israeli cabinet committee has voted to pass legislation backed by the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, that would cut tens of millions of pounds in foreign funding to human rights organisations.
The ministerial committee for legislation passed two bills, one of which limits all funding for non-governmental organisations from foreign bodies, including the United Nations, to 20,000 shekels (£3,300) a year. The other seeks to tax all contributions to NGOs by foreign states. Those who support the bills say many NGOs are political groups working under the guise of human rights to "delegitimise Israel".
Last week, Matthew Gould, Britain's ambassador to Israel, added his voice to concerns from international diplomats. Gould met the bill's sponsor, Likud minister Ophir Akunis, to warn him that the passage of his legislation would reflect very badly on Israel in the international community.
On Sunday, embassy sources in Tel Aviv confirmed they would be monitoring the bill's progress carefully.
In 2010, the British embassy donated £300,000 to human rights organisations in Israel.
The EU's ambassador to Israel, Andrew Standley, is also reported to have contacted Netanyahu's national security adviser, Yaakov Amidror, last Thursday to advise him that approving the bill would threaten Israel's standing as a democratic state.
Eleven ministers voted for the bill on Sunday, while five voted against. A senior Israeli official defended the government position: "It is not good for democracy to allow foreign governments to be directly involved in political activities.
"In Britain, you had a very open and democratic debate about the Iraq war. How would the British public feel if they discovered France or Russia had funded one side of that debate?"
Likud's Benny Begin, son of the former prime minister Menachem Begin, was among ministers who opposed the bill, which means it must now pass a second cabinet vote before it can be submitted to the Knesset. This vote is not expected to take place for several weeks.
The government has suggested the bill may be amended to distinguish between groups with a political agenda and those working genuinely to promote human rights.
The distinction has offered little comfort to activists who claim such a law would in effect criminalise political dissent. Among those groups in jeopardy is the leading Israeli rights organisation B'Tselem, which receives hundreds of thousands of pounds from the British embassy and UK charity Christian Aid each year. Sarit Michaeli, the group's spokeswoman, says it stands to lose half its annual budget if the law is passed, but it will continue its work regardless. Many smaller organisations, she says, will be worse off.
Christian Aid donates £200,000 annually to organisations in Israel, including B'Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights and the Association for Civil Rights.
It has expressed concern that Sunday's cabinet decision reflects a wider trend in Israeli legislation that compromises the country's treaties with the EU binding it to the defence of human rights.
"This is yet another blow to democracy in Israel," said William Bell, a Middle East expert at Christian Aid. "Whether this legislation is passed or not, it has succeeded in creating a great deal of insecurity and uncertainty among the Israeli NGO community, or anyone talking about issues it would seem the government doesn't want it to talk about."
There is recent precedent of the Knesset approving legislation to restrict activists. In February 2010, a bill proposing to withdraw the charitable status of organisations receiving money from foreign states was passed, increasing scrutiny of how NGOs are funded.
Israeli ministers accused of trying to muzzle critics with funding curbs
Senior cabinet members have approved a bill limiting foreign donations to political not-for-profit organisations
Phoebe Greenwood in Tel Aviv
Guardian.co.uk, Sunday 13 November 2011
An Israeli cabinet committee has voted to pass legislation backed by the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, that would cut tens of millions of pounds in foreign funding to human rights organisations.
The ministerial committee for legislation passed two bills, one of which limits all funding for non-governmental organisations from foreign bodies, including the United Nations, to 20,000 shekels (£3,300) a year. The other seeks to tax all contributions to NGOs by foreign states. Those who support the bills say many NGOs are political groups working under the guise of human rights to "delegitimise Israel".
Last week, Matthew Gould, Britain's ambassador to Israel, added his voice to concerns from international diplomats. Gould met the bill's sponsor, Likud minister Ophir Akunis, to warn him that the passage of his legislation would reflect very badly on Israel in the international community.
On Sunday, embassy sources in Tel Aviv confirmed they would be monitoring the bill's progress carefully.
In 2010, the British embassy donated £300,000 to human rights organisations in Israel.
The EU's ambassador to Israel, Andrew Standley, is also reported to have contacted Netanyahu's national security adviser, Yaakov Amidror, last Thursday to advise him that approving the bill would threaten Israel's standing as a democratic state.
Eleven ministers voted for the bill on Sunday, while five voted against. A senior Israeli official defended the government position: "It is not good for democracy to allow foreign governments to be directly involved in political activities.
"In Britain, you had a very open and democratic debate about the Iraq war. How would the British public feel if they discovered France or Russia had funded one side of that debate?"
Likud's Benny Begin, son of the former prime minister Menachem Begin, was among ministers who opposed the bill, which means it must now pass a second cabinet vote before it can be submitted to the Knesset. This vote is not expected to take place for several weeks.
The government has suggested the bill may be amended to distinguish between groups with a political agenda and those working genuinely to promote human rights.
The distinction has offered little comfort to activists who claim such a law would in effect criminalise political dissent. Among those groups in jeopardy is the leading Israeli rights organisation B'Tselem, which receives hundreds of thousands of pounds from the British embassy and UK charity Christian Aid each year. Sarit Michaeli, the group's spokeswoman, says it stands to lose half its annual budget if the law is passed, but it will continue its work regardless. Many smaller organisations, she says, will be worse off.
Christian Aid donates £200,000 annually to organisations in Israel, including B'Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights and the Association for Civil Rights.
It has expressed concern that Sunday's cabinet decision reflects a wider trend in Israeli legislation that compromises the country's treaties with the EU binding it to the defence of human rights.
"This is yet another blow to democracy in Israel," said William Bell, a Middle East expert at Christian Aid. "Whether this legislation is passed or not, it has succeeded in creating a great deal of insecurity and uncertainty among the Israeli NGO community, or anyone talking about issues it would seem the government doesn't want it to talk about."
There is recent precedent of the Knesset approving legislation to restrict activists. In February 2010, a bill proposing to withdraw the charitable status of organisations receiving money from foreign states was passed, increasing scrutiny of how NGOs are funded.
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
It does exist in some degree and in some aspects. Hence the existence of these human rights organizations and other NGO's who are now under attack by the Israeli government.
Fair enough.
by Byrnzie...
in every post...
it's so refreshing...
the holocaust...
to Byrnzie.
I'm confused, i got the feeling Byrnzie was Anti-Israel. Yes/No?
You are not confused.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
If Israel wants to cut Foreign Funding they could always try putting on their big girl panties and stop sucking on the tit of the Foreign Government that donates $3 billion to them annually.
Right, because anyone critical of Israel must be a supporter of the holocaust.
Genius.
The Arab-Israeli conflict, is not really a conflict, it is a war – a war of the Arabs against the Jews. In many ways, this conflict has been a conflict between narratives. We who strongly support Israel have done a poor job in formulating a narrative which will combat the story spun by the other side. We can do better.
The Durban conferences, the request for UN recognition of a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood, and the general animus in the Middle East and elsewhere toward Israel and toward the Jews, what are they really about? Is the Durban conference and the claim that Israel is a racist nation really about reforming the people of Israel and curing them of their racism?
I think their real interest is to situate the Palestinian people within a narrative of victimization. This is their ulterior goal: to see themselves and to have others see them as victims of colonialism, as victims of white supremacy.
Listen to their language; it is the language of colonial oppression. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas claims that Palestinians have been occupied for 63 years. The word oppressed is constant, exploited. In this, there is a poetic truth; like poetic license, in a poetic truth a writer will bend the rules in order to be more effective.
I will give you one example of a poetic truth that comes from my group, black Americans. We make the following claims: America is a deeply, intractably racist society. It may not be as conspicuous today as it was before. Nevertheless, it is still there today structurally and systemically, and it still holds us back and keeps us from achieving the American dream.
To contradict this claim, one can come forward with evidence to suggest that racism in America today is about 25th on the list of problems facing black Americans. One can recount one of the great untold stories of America, namely, the moral growth and evolution away from that problem. This is not to say that racism is completely extinguished, but that it no longer prevents the forward progress of any black in the United States. There is no evidence to suggest that it does. Yet, this claim is still the centerpiece of black American identity – this idea that we are victimized by a fundamentally, incurably racist society.
Poetic truths like that are marvelous because no facts and no reason can ever penetrate. Supporters of Israel are up against a poetic truth. We keep hitting it with all the facts. We keep hitting it with obvious logic and reason. And we are so obvious and conspicuously right that we assume it is going to have an impact and it never does.
Why not? These narratives, these poetic truths, are the source of their power. Focusing on the case of the Palestinians, who would they be if they were not victims of white supremacy? They would just be poor people in the Middle East. They would be backwards. They would be behind Israel in every way. So this narrative is the source of their power. It is the source of their money. Money comes from around the world. It is the source of their self-esteem. Without it, would they be able to compete with Israeli society? They would have to confront in themselves a certain inferiority with regard to Israel – as most other Arab nations would have to confront an inferiority in themselves and be responsible for it.
The idea that the problem is Israel, that the problem is the Jews, protects Palestinians from having to confront that inferiority or do anything about it or overcome it. The idea among Palestinians that they are victims means more to them than anything else. It is everything. It is the centerpiece of their very identity and it is the way they define themselves as human beings in the world. It is not an idle thing. Our facts and our reason are not going to penetrate easily that definition or make any progress.
The question is, how do they get away with a poetic truth, based on such an obvious series of falsehoods? One reason why they get away with it in the Middle East is that the Western world lacks the moral authority to call them on it. The Western world has not said “your real problem is inferiority. Your real problem is underdevelopment.” That has not been said, nor will ever be said – because the Western world was once colonial, was once racist, did practice white supremacy, and is so ashamed of itself and so vulnerable to those charges, that they are not going to say a word. They are not going to say what they really think and feel about what is so obvious about the circumstances among the Palestinians. So the poetic truth that Palestinians live by carries on.
International media also do not feel that they have the moral authority to report what they see. On the contrary, they feed this poetic truth and give it a kind of gravitas that it would never otherwise have.
Consequently, we need to develop a narrative that is not poetic, but literal and that is based on the truth. What would such a narrative look like?
It would begin with the presumption that the problem in the Middle East is not white supremacy but the end of white supremacy. After World War II, the empires began to contract, Britain went home, France went home, and the Arab world was left almost abandoned, and in a state of much greater freedom than they had ever known before.
Freedom is, however, a dicey thing to experience. When you come into freedom, you see yourself more accurately in the world. This is not unique to the Middle East. It was also the black American experience, when the Civil Rights bill was passed in 1964 and we came into much greater freedom. If you were a janitor in 1963 and you are still a janitor in 1965, you have all these freedoms and they are supported by the rule of law, then your actual experience of freedom is one of humiliation and one of shame. You see how far you have to go, how far behind you are, how little social capital you have with which to struggle forward. Even in freedom you see you are likely to be behind for a long time. In light of your inability to compete and your underdevelopment, freedom becomes something that you are very likely going to hate – because it carries this humiliation.
At that point formerly oppressed groups develop what I call bad faith. Bad faith is when you come into freedom, you are humiliated and you say, “Well you know the real truth is I am not free. Racism still exists. Zionism is my problem. The State of Israel is my problem. That is why I am so far behind and that is why I cannot get ahead.”
You develop a culture grounded in bad faith where you insist that you are less free than you really are. Islamic extremism is the stunning example of this phenomenon. “I have to go on jihad because I am fighting for my freedom.” Well you already have your freedom. You could stay home and study. You could do something constructive. But “No, I cannot do that because that makes me feel bad about myself.” So I live in a world of extremism and dictators.
This is not unique to the Middle East. In black America we had exactly the same thing. After we got the civil rights bill and this greater degree of freedom, then all of a sudden we hear the words “black power.” Then all of a sudden we have the Black Panthers. Then we have this militancy, this picking up of the gun because we feel bad about ourselves. We feel uncompetitive and this becomes our compensation. It is a common pattern among groups that felt abandoned when they became free.
This is the real story of the Palestinians and of the Middle East. They will never be reached by reason until they are somehow able to get beyond bad faith, to get beyond this sort of poetic truth that they are the perennial victims of an aggressive and racist Israeli nation.
Challenging their narrative with this explanation will enable us to be more effective. Until now, we have constantly used facts and reason and have not progressed.
Durban is a perfect example of bad faith because Durban is way of saying Israelis are racist and they are our problem. Durban really is a way of saying I am not free. I am still a victim. That is the real purpose of Durban. The Palestinian unilateral claim for recognition from the UN is also a perfect example of bad faith. If Palestinians proceed to the Security Council, they will very likely be turned down, and will respond by saying: “I told you we were victims. I told you the West is racist,” and so on. It refuels the same sad identity.
The irony and the tragedy of all this is that it keeps these groups in a bubble where they never encounter or deal with the truth. This becomes a second oppression for all these groups. They have been oppressed once, now they are free and yet they create a poetic truth that then oppresses them all over again.
How are you going to have good faith if you are raised being told that the society in which you are trying to compete is against you, is racist? It is always the Palestinians who suffer, and will continue to suffer, because all of their energy is going into the avoidance of their situation rather than into being challenged by it and facing into it.
The strength of our argument is that it gives the Palestinians a way out. Development is the way out. The West can help you to compete. It may take a little while. But the alternative is a cycle of violence and hatred and poetic truths about constant victimhood.
The pattern of bad faith in certain places comes to embrace a kind of ethic of death. As Osama bin Laden claimed: in the West, you are all afraid of death, but we love death. Why would you love death? If you are not afraid of death then you are aggrandized; all of a sudden you are a big man. You are not a little, recently freed, inferior. Instead, you are somebody who manages, who conquers his world, who has power. For terrorism is power, the power of the gun. This poetic truth leads to a terrible, inconceivable fascination with death and violence and guns and bombs. It consumes a whole part of the world every single day – rather than the boring things that good faith requires, like going to school, raising your children, inventing software for instance, making money.
This is the way the narrative must be retold.
Shelby Steele is the Robert J and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow, Hoover Institute, member of the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order
— Socrates
What is "a supporter of the Holocaust" Byrnzie?
Its interesting that you would characterize the Holocaust as something that is either "supported" or not.
Herman Cain
WOOT
woot....
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
I don't know where our enemies get the idea that America is soft.
If only we all had Gimme's courage...
Jeez....
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
why do you respond to a troll?
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Your on the side of the poor Iranians then.
OK. What's your point?
hahaha
feel free ... my suggestion is to move on as all you are doing is clearly responding in a way in which he wants ...
its not about being 'soft'.. its about being just.
think about this:
had the colonies not won the american war of inependence, those highly valued heroes of history such as jefferson and washington probably would have been hung for treason against the crown... its a mighty thin line at times.. not to mention dependent on ones perspective.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
I don't think supporting Israel 100% is just. Neither do I think supporting Hammas committing a terrorist attack is just.
it not even about supporting israel 100% but more about supporting them blindly irrespective of their actions. it defies all logic.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Yes. That is all the Palestinians and their allies want. :roll:
I think Hitler had similar demands and folks kept giving in. It's a quality foreign policy. If we don't learn from history - we are doomed to repeat it.
no comparison between hitler and the palestinian people. thats just lazy thought.
what the palestinians are asking for is nothing less than theyre due. but they are continually denied and oppressed by a govt who carries a big stick and the weight of western guilt on its shoulders. it is partly because of the inaction against hitler that we have this situation. no one gave a fuck about the jews cause they were seen as the 'other' and now we are bending over backwards to accomodate them and creating another 'other'
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
the only thing hitler demanded territorywise was he wanted the land in austria to be annexed and it was. he stole the rest of the land via war. that demand is nothing like what the palestinians are demanding. they are demanding their land back and israel is insuring that they can not take it back by force via sanctions, blockades, denying foriegn aid, and taking $4 billion us dollars a year in military assistance. the palestinian = hitler comparision is one of the most obscene comparisons i have ever read on the internet...
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."