{"id":15455,"date":"2021-01-29T01:52:46","date_gmt":"2021-01-29T01:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=155834"},"modified":"2021-01-29T01:52:46","modified_gmt":"2021-01-29T01:52:46","slug":"btselems-historic-declaration-israels-open-war-on-its-own-civil-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/29\/btselems-historic-declaration-israels-open-war-on-its-own-civil-society\/","title":{"rendered":"B\u2019Tselem\u2019s Historic Declaration: Israel\u2019s Open War on Its Own Civil Society"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\u201cA Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is Apartheid,\u201d was the title of a January 12 report<\/a> by the Israeli rights group B\u2019Tselem. No matter how one is to interpret B\u2019Tselem\u2019s findings, the report is earth-shattering. The official Israeli response merely confirmed what B\u2019Tselem has stated in no uncertain terms.<\/p>\n

Those of us who repeatedly claimed that Israel is not democratic, governed by an apartheid regime and systematically discriminates against its ethnic and racial minorities, in favor of the country\u2019s Jewish majority, purportedly have nothing to learn from B\u2019Tselem\u2019s declaration. Thus, it may seem that the report, which highlighted racial discrimination in four major areas \u2013 land, citizenship, freedom of movement and political participation \u2013 merely restated<\/a> the obvious. In actuality, it went much further.<\/p>\n

B\u2019Tselem is a credible Israeli human rights organization. However, like other Israeli rights groups, it rarely went far enough in challenging the Israeli state\u2019s basic definition of itself as a democratic state. Yes, on numerous occasions it rightly accused the Israeli government and military of undemocratic practices, rampant human rights violations and so on. But to demolish the very raison d\u2019etre<\/em>, the basic premise that gives Israel its legitimacy in the eyes of its Jewish citizens, and many more around the world, is a whole different story.<\/p>\n

\u201cB\u2019Tselem rejects the perception of Israel as a democracy (inside the Green Line) that simultaneously upholds a temporary military occupation (beyond it),\u201d the Israeli rights group concluded<\/a> based on the fact that the \u201cbar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be clear on what this actually means. Israel\u2019s leading human rights organization was not arguing that Israel was turning into an apartheid state or that it was acting contrary to the spirit of democracy or that Israel is an undemocratic apartheid regime only within the geographic confines of the occupied Palestinian territories. None of this. According to B\u2019tselem, which has for decades diligently documented<\/a> numerous facets of Israeli government practices in the realm of politics, military, land-ownership, water distribution, health, education, and much more, Israel is, now, wholly an apartheid, undemocratic regime.<\/p>\n

B\u2019Tselem\u2019s assessment is most welcomed, not as a belated admission of a self-evident reality but as an important step that could allow both Israelis and Palestinians to establish a common narrative on their relationship, political position and collective action in order to dismantle this Israeli apartheid.<\/p>\n

Relatively, Israeli groups that criticize their own government have historically been allowed much larger margins than Palestinian groups that have done the same thing. However, this is no longer the case.<\/p>\n

Palestinian freedom of speech has always been so limited and the mere criticism of the Israeli occupation has led to extreme measures, including beatings, arrests, and even assassinations. In 2002, a government-funded organization, NGO Monitor, was established<\/a> precisely to monitor and control Palestinian human rights organizations in the occupied territories, including Addameer, al-Mezan Center, al-Haq, PCHR among others. The Israeli army raid<\/a> on the Ramallah-based offices of the Palestinian human rights group Addameer in September 2019 was one of many such violent examples.<\/p>\n

However, Israeli government actions of recent years are pointing to an unmistakable paradigm shift where Israeli civil society organizations are increasingly perceived to be the enemy, targeted in myriad ways, including defamation, financial restrictions<\/a> and severing of access to the Israeli public.<\/p>\n

The latter point was put on full display on January 17, when Israeli Education Minister, Yoav Galant, tweeted<\/a> that he had instructed his ministry to \u201cprevent the entry of organizations calling Israel \u2018an apartheid state\u2019 or demeaning Israeli soldiers, from lecturing at schools\u201d.<\/p>\n

Oddly, Galant demonstrated B\u2019Tselem\u2019s point, where the group challenged Israel\u2019s very claim to democracy and freedom of expression, by curtailing Israeli human rights workers, intellectuals and educators\u2019 own right to express dissent and to challenge the government\u2019s political line. Simply stated, Galant\u2019s decision is a functional definition of totalitarianism at work.<\/p>\n

B\u2019Tselem did not back down. To the contrary, the group expressed<\/a> its determination \u201cto keep with its mission of documenting reality,\u201d and making its \u201cfindings publicly known to the Israeli public, and worldwide\u201d. It went even further as B\u2019Tselem director Hagai El-Ad met with hundreds of Israeli students on January 18 to discuss the inconsistency between military occupation and the respect for human rights. Following the meeting, El-Ad tweeted<\/a> \u201cThe @btselem lecture did take place this morning. The Israeli government will have to contend with us until the apartheid regime ends.\u201d<\/p>\n

The B\u2019Tselem-Galant episode is not an isolated spat, but one out of many such examples, which demonstrate that the Israeli government is turning into a police state against, not only Palestinian Arabs, but its own Jewish citizens.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the decision by the Israeli Ministry of Education is rooted in a previous law<\/a> that dates back to July 2018, which was dubbed the \u201cBreaking the Silence law\u201d. Breaking the Silence is an Israeli civil society organization<\/a> of army veterans who became vocal in their criticism of the Israeli occupation, and who have taken it upon themselves to educate the Israeli public on the immorality and illegality of Israel\u2019s military practices in occupied Palestine. To silence the soldiers, former Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett ordered<\/a> schools to bar these conscientious objectors from gaining access and directly speaking to students.<\/p>\n

The latest government\u2019s decision, taken by Galant, has merely widened the definition, thus expanding the restrictions imposed on Israelis who refuse to toe the government\u2019s line.<\/p>\n

For years, a persisting argument within the Palestine-Israel discourse contended that, while Israel is not a perfect democracy, it is, nonetheless, a \u2018democracy for Jews\u2019. Though true democracies must be founded on equality and inclusiveness, the latter maxim gave some credibility to the argument that Israel can still strike the balance between being nominally democratic while remaining exclusively Jewish.<\/p>\n

That shaky argument is now falling apart. Even in the eyes of many Israeli Jews, the Israeli government no longer possesses any democratic ideals. Indeed, as B\u2019Tselem has succinctly worded it, Israel is a regime of Jewish supremacy \u201cfrom the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2021 at 5:52pm and is filed under Academic Freedom<\/a>, Activism<\/a>, Apartheid<\/a>, Democracy<\/a>, Education<\/a>, Freedom of Expression\/Speech<\/a>, Human Rights<\/a>, Hypocrisy<\/a>, Israel\/Palestine<\/a>, Land Theft<\/a>, Nationalism<\/a>, Occupation<\/a>, Racism<\/a>, Zionism<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cA Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is Apartheid,\u201d was the title of a January 12\u00a0report by the Israeli rights group\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1352,212,284,432,428,771,6,579,221,289,280,4,290,784,295],"tags":[3313,217,584,616,1047,773,755,587,225,757,2968,590,1065,593],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15455"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15455"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15456,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15455\/revisions\/15456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}