Chemi Shalev :Im Tirtzu and the Proto-fascist Plot to Destroy Israeli Democracy
The
group's video portraying human rights activists as terrorist-supporting
traitors is a symptom of a rapidly spreading, potentially terminal
disease.
haaretz.com
his video by Im Tirtzu
accuses four Israeli human rights activists of aiding and abetting
terror. It names their names for all to hear and publishes their faces
for all to see. It marks them as traitors to their own people. It brands
them as accessories to your own upcoming murder.
You
should watch the video. Then you should watch it again. If you’re not
appalled, if you think it’s a fair way to present a valid viewpoint, you
can move on: there’s nothing for you here. If you’re horrified,
however, be warned: this video is just one symptom of a rapidly
spreading and dangerous disease, a harbinger, if you will, of things to
come.
The
four individuals who “star” in the film are Yishai Menuhin, who heads
the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, a group dedicated to
combating harsh interrogations and punishments by Israeli security
authorities; Avner Gvaryahu, whose Breaking the Silence group features
Israeli soldiers testifying in Israel and abroad about the malpractices
and alleged crimes committed by IDF troops against Palestinians; Sigi
Ben Ari, of the Center for Defense of the Individual, which represents
Palestinians under Israeli occupation; and Hagai El-Ad of the more
renowned B’Tselem, which documents human rights abuses in the
territories.
The
deftly edited video is about what Im Tirtzu has wrongly translated as
“foreign agents.” In Hebrew, the word is “Shtulim,” which means
implanted. Thus, the better word in English would be moles. Embedded,
traitorous, terrorist-supporting moles.
The
moniker “shtulim” is the rabid right wing’s new buzzword. It appears in
a proposed anti-NGO law submitted this week by Likud MK Yoav Kish. It
also features in a recent Im Tirtzu report on Israeli human rights NGO’s
that are funded by foreign, mostly European governments. The report
created a stir by claiming that a Palestinian fund was also financing
some of the leftist NGO’s, but that turned out to be false. Who cares?
No one paid attention to the correction: The damage was done.
The
video portrays Menuhin as a "shatul” working for Holland; Gvaryahu for
Germany; Ben Ari for Norway and El-Ad for the European Union. So they
are not only accessories to murder, they are foreign agents, as the
video states, working for foreign governments. Hostile and evil foreign
governments, of course.
Im Tirtzu’s campaign seems to be timed to coincide with the ongoing efforts
led by Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked to stifle foreign NGO’s
and human rights groups. Last month, Shaked submitted to the Knesset a
“Transparency Law” that would compel NGO’s whose budget relies on at
least 50% funding by foreign governments to declare themselves publicly.
The law stipulates that representatives of such NGO’s must mention
their funding each and every time they make contact with civil servants.
They must also wear special nametags when they are in the Knesset.
“These
NGO’s challenge the authority of the government that has been elected
by the people,” Shaked told the Knesset on November 1. “They undermine
the sovereignty and character of the State of Israel.” Vladimir Putin,
who recently pushed through a similar though far tougher law against
“undesirable” NGO’s in Moscow couldn’t have said it better. The
foreign-funded, civil society NGO’s that have been decimated in recent
years “present a threat to the basic constitutional order of the
Russian Federation, its defense capability or its state security,” as
the law submitted to the Duma in August states.
Shaked’s
Transparency Law only applies to NGO’s receiving funds from foreign
governments, though these are only a pittance compared to the vast
foreign-sourced funds that buttress many more, non-leftist NGO’s. That’s
no coincidence, of course: European governments tend to fund groups
that cater to their concern for Palestinian rights and a 2-state
solution. The
hundreds of millions of dollars coming from rich Jews and Evangelical
churches, mainly in America, are earmarked for expanding settlements, evicting Palestinians from their East Jerusalem homes defending Jewish terrorists and making sure peace never comes.
But
these funders or their motives are A-OK in Shaked’s book; perhaps she
doesn’t consider them “foreign”. Perhaps she knows them all too well. In
any case, she doesn’t seem to be worried that the U.S. or other foreign
governments might retaliate by revoking the tax exempt status that
fuels the flow of right-wing and conservative contributions to groups,
including Im Tirtzu, as well those directed at Jewish settlements, as
detailed in Uri Blau’s recent Haaretz revelations. If
they do, you can rest assured that Shaked and her cabinet colleagues
will be the first to accuse such governments of being anti-Semitic.
Shaked,
of course, is a colleague and confidante of Education Minister Naftali
Bennett: both belong to the Habayit Hayehudi Party. On Monday, Bennett
announced with much fanfare that he is henceforth prohibiting representatives of Breaking the Silence
from entering Israeli high schools. It then turned out that his own
campaign manager and public relations guru, Moshe Klughaft, had produced
the incendiary foreign-agent, Im Tirtzu video. And that the
spokesperson of the anti-“shtulim” campaign is Dana Mizrahi, who until
recently was employed, you guessed it, by Naftali Bennett. Probably a
coincidence, no?
Im
Tirtzu, you will recall, are the perpetrators of the infamous smear
campaign against the New Israel Fund, which in 2010 featured the vaguely
anti-Semitic cartoon of then NIF president Naomi Chazan with a horn on
her head. Im Tirtzu accused the NIF of supplying the damning testimonies
to the Goldstone Commission that investigated the 2009 Cast Lead
Operation in Gaza, even though it turned out that A. Goldstone had
mainly relied on other evidence B. NIF hadn’t appeared before his
inquiry and C. Im Tirtzu’s claims involved groups that may have been
funded by NIF but over which it did not exert direct control.
Since
then the NIF has tightened its guidelines for handing out funds but it
has nonetheless been under constant attack by Im Tirtzu and its legions
of fellow travelers, in Israel as well as the U.S. NIF is often depicted
as traitorous, anti-Zionist, pro-BDS, Arab-loving and Jew-hating.
Notwithstanding the possible claims of a conflict of interest stemming
from the joint Haaretz Q with NIF conference
held in New York this week, allow me to state for the record that as
far as I’m concerned the connection between these defamations and
reality lies somewhere between infinitesimal and non-existent, and
that’s being generous.
In
a 2013 verdict rendered by the Jerusalem District Court on a libel suit
submitted by Im Tirtzu, Judge Rafael Yaakobi found that the group’s
positions have “a certain common denominator with certain principles of
fascism.” The verdict was subsequently annulled by mutual consent in an
agreement brokered by the Supreme Court. Not so Yaakobi’s words,
however: they continue to plague the movement and ring even truer today.
For
this is the ultimate purpose of Im Tirtzu and its proto-fascist allies
in and out of government: to silence the opposition, to stifle dissent,
to identify left wing ideologies with the nation’s enemies, to equate
their criticism with a knife in the nation’s back, in the worst of
time-tested, anti-democratic traditions. It’s a no-holds-barred, take no
prisoners campaign: even Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has been tarred and feathered as a traitor in recent days for having dared to speak at the Haaretz conference to which representatives of Breaking the Silence had also been invited.
And
have no doubt: it is a campaign that enjoys wide and ever-growing
public support, fanned and inflamed, unwittingly or not, by Prime
Minister Netanyahu and many of his ministers. At the very least, it
provides a convenient scapegoat for Israel’s frustrating inability to
stem Palestinian violence or to reverse its international isolation.
And
why am I telling you all this? So you should know. So you won’t be able
to claim that you are surprised, that there was no prior warning or
that the dark clouds weren’t on the horizon. Israeli democracy, as you
would define it, is under siege. It hasn’t fallen yet, but its’ not
impregnable either; its defenses are already starting to crumble.
Strong, fanatic and dedicated forces are working to undermine democracy
and civil society. They are encountering only feeble resistance en
route to their target.
All
that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing,
as Edward Burke famously said. Most of us are doing nothing, so
malevolence is gaining ground. I have never been a great fan of Breaking
the Silence, Public Committee Against Torture, the Center for the
Defense of the Individual or even B’Tselem for that matter: they’ve been
too one-sided for my taste. But I’m certainly going to look them over
again in the next few days to decide which might enjoy my modest
contribution. After coming for them, after all, someone closer to me
will inevitably be next in line. Later, or perhaps sooner, it might even
be me.
Chemi Shalev
Haaretz Correspondent
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