By Noam Sheizaf
|Published January 23, 2016
It's open season on anyone opposing the occupation
There
is a campaign being carried out against anyone actively opposing the
occupation in Israel, and it doesn’t matter if you’re an activist in the
field, a human rights attorney or a former soldier talking about what
you were ordered to do.
Ta’ayush
member Ezra Nawi is brought to a Jerusalem court on January 20, 2016.
Nawi, an Israeli Jew active opposing the occupation, was arrested after a
right-wing organization put him in the crosshairs of a hidden-camera
‘sting operation.’ (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
“Activists
from the shady organization, “Ta’ayush,” who we tracked from within and
outside, behind closed doors and during clashes on Saturdays, are going
to fall one by one. Don’t worry friends. We will finish off Ezra Nawi
and move on to Guy Butavia… and many others.”
That
message was published and quickly spread on Facebook following the
arrest of Ezra Nawi, and before the arrest of Guy Butavia, another
activist in Ta’ayush, and B’Tselem field worker Nasser Nawajah. The three were arrested after a right-wing group, “Ad Kan,” gave allegedly incriminating materials to the police and primetime investigative news show, “Uvda.”
A month earlier, far-right group Im Tirzu marked other anti-occupation activists as targets:
B’Tselem Executive-Director Haggai El-Ad; executive director of the
Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, Yishai Menuchin; a prominent
member of Breaking the Silence; and an attorney who protects
Palestinians in Israeli courts on behalf of Hamoked — Center for the
Defense of the Individual. This week it was revealed that right-wing
group “Regavim” hired a private investigator to
track human rights attorney Michael Sfard and Israeli human rights
organization Yesh Din. There is a connection between each of these, of
course.
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The
past few days have seen politicians and pundits comparing the “extreme
left” to the “extreme right,” between the Ta’yush activists to the
suspects in the Duma murders. Alon Dian wrote brilliantly about the mainstream’s tendency to create this kind of symmetry —
replacing principled, moral judgment with statistics. But there is a
different, more fundamental point that does not get the attention it
deserves. In the case of Duma, the police went and looked for the
perpetrators only after the crime was committed. The same goes for all
the recent hate crimes by right-wing extremists, which were investigated
by the state (the vast majority of so-called “price tag attacks” end
with no indictment).
But
in the case of the Ta’ayush activists, the process was reversed: “Ad
Kan” did not go to the South Hebron Hills to investigate the harassment
of land sellers. They went in search of ways to bring down Ta’ayush. To
infiltrate the organization and get dirt on as many activists as
possible. Like in the case of Michael Sfard and Breaking the Silence:
first the Right found its target, and only then did it start looking for
crimes. To the chagrin of Regavim, the materials it found and published
about Sfard did not lead to the same storm that the Uvda report or
recent articles on Breaking the Silence did. But the principle is
identical.
The criminals from the South Hebron Hills
A
member of Ta’ayush speaks to Israeli army officers during a direct
action in solidarity with Palestinian residents of the South Hebron
Hills, January 17, 2016. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
This
is the fundamental issue. This is the reason left-wing activists feel
it is open season on them. Because the targeting of activists has become
personal, using their names and images. Because the goal is to find
something — anything — to eliminate them, at all costs. If not through
police investigations, then by tarnishing their public images, like in
the case of former Ambassador to South Africa Alon Libel. Perhaps a
recent article on him in Yedioth Ahronoth,
in which he was secretly filmed giving a lecture to Breaking the
Silence activists, will bring about a change in the law and Libel will
find himself in prison. If not, then maybe someone will decide to wait
outside his home and beat him up. When the head of Im Tirzu was asked
about the possibility that his contemptible campaign could actually
bring physical harm to the heads of these organizations, he shrugged and
said that it “would be their responsibility.” Things have never been
clearer.
A
prominent right-wing journalist with whom I used to work often said, in
an entirely different context, that “once you enter the system’s
pipeline, someone will find something about you.” That is why in a state
governed by law, the police investigates crimes rather than people. At
this moment, the logic in Israel is the exact opposite — the Right is
investigating people. The media, the police, and the pathetic
politicians of the Israeli center are following in its wake. Before the
land seller case, the Samaria and Judea Police Division tried to pin on
Nawi a series of traffic violations. Only the fact that were able to
make an even better case stick saved us from reading op-eds about how
“the Left is protecting a traffic violator.”
The
reason these people were targeted is crystal clear. There is not much
in common between Ta’ayush and Michael Sfard, or between Breaking the
Silence and Ezra Nawi, aside from the fact that they all struggle
against the occupation.
They say Breaking the Silence is hated in Israel because they speak about the occupation abroad, and that B’Tselem is hated because they receive donations from foreign countries.
Nonsense. Ta’ayush does not speak abroad. In fact, they aren’t even an
NGO, but rather an informal organization made up of people who every Friday and Saturday
head to the South Hebron Hills — in the hottest days of summer and in
the freezing winter — to stand up to settlers from illegal outposts and
the army that backs them. This is a boring, difficult task, which often
includes accompanying Palestinian shepherds and farmers — so that they
are not attacked by settlers — planting trees, or cleaning out water
wells that have been either sealed shut or destroyed.
A
group of Ta’ayush activists walk toward a Palestinian hamlet in the
South Hebron Hills on Saturday, January 17, 2016. The activists’
presence is often enough to prevent settlers from targeting Palestinians
and to deter the army from kicking them off their land. (Photo by Oren
Ziv/Activestills.org)
A
decade and a half ago, when I served as a soldier in South Hebron
Hills, the army still accompanied Palestinian children in order to
prevent settler harassment. But the truth is that even back then, this
was the wildest, ugliest place in the country. One of the settlers, who
immigrated from apartheid South Africa, advised us to treat the
Palestinians the way they used to treat blacks in his native land.
Another settler, who lived in a cave in the West Bank, used to march his
small herd of sheep directly into Palestinian fields, and when they
tried to keep the animals away from their crops, the man would call the
army because, well, the Palestinians were harassing Jews.
The
reality of the Israeli Wild West did not interest the either the public
or the media back then. It doesn’t interest them today. Uvda never
bothered to go to the occupied territories to talk about the difficult
reality farmers face there on a daily basis. The only people who cared
were the activists in Ta’ayush, who do everything they can to stand up
to much larger, far more organized forces. And now they are paying the
price for it. Just like Michael Sfard, who argued before the High Court
of Justice — and won — that the land belonging to the villagers of Bil’in was stolen for
the sake of building a new neighborhood for Jews, all using deceptive
claims of “security needs.” Just like B’Tselem’s field worker Nasser
Nawaj’ah, who sat in jail following Uvda’s report while bulldozers
demolished a protest tent against land expropriation in his home village
of Susya. First they ignore the story, then they target those who speak
about it, then they look for dirt, and then they demand the rest of the
Left condemn the wrongdoers, lest everyone be considered a criminal.
The
fact that Ta’ayush’s activities focus on Israel/Palestine, rather than
abroad, hasn’t helped them much. Michael Sfard’s appeals to Israeli
courts, rather than The Hague, were what led the Right to persecute him.
The fact that Breaking the Silence does not reveal the names of the
soldiers who give testimony, so that they do not face prosecution around
the world or even in Israel, did not help. They are all fighting the
occupation — that is their real crime. Instead of going to speak on
television panels about the need for a “political horizon,” they tried
to do something about the reality here. The occupation is the ruler, and
it eliminates its opponents. Not because they are strong or threaten
it, but because there really is no other way. Because the project of
control in the occupied territories is in crisis, and we need to place
the blame on someone.
The Right’s vision
It is no coincidence, of course, that Ad Kan’s campaign is backed by the publicly funded Samaria Settler Council,
and that Regavim — which spends huge sums on tracking human rights
organizations — is also backed by state-funded local councils in the
West Bank. Ta’ayush, on the other hand, is run entirely by volunteers.
Now it seems that the only people who actually received money for their
trips to South Hebron Hills were Ad Kan’s moles, possibly funded by
Israeli taxpayers.
The
state and the Right are joining hands because the occupation is the
state. Guy Butavia discovered in his interrogation that the questions he
was asked by the police were passed on by Ad Kan. Israeli police in the
West Bank, a division of the Israel National Police that is totally
incompetent when it comes to solving recurring attacks against
Palestinians — and which closes investigations into people who attack
left-wing activists in broad daylight and in front of the cameras —
suddenly acted with maximum efficiency in response to the Uvda
investigation. Ezra Nawi was arrested at the airport despite the fact
that there was no order preventing him from leaving the country. Why?
How? Who cares. The arrestees were prevented from meeting with their
attorneys, as if we were dealing with a “ticking bomb.” Not only were
these blatantly political arrests, the most basic rights of the
detainees were suspended.
Something
dawned on human rights organizations and anti-occupation activists this
week. It seems clear to all that a new campaign has begun. Much of the
public is apathetic toward the Ta’ayush arrests, as goes for all
political persecution. In history classes we used to ask ourselves how
the “silent majority” and the “good people” allowed for such horrible
things to happen. Now the answer is clear: if someone is being
persecuted, there was probably a good reason, and the majority of people
continue living their lives, because that is what people do. The
weakness of Israel’s left-wing parties is far less clear to me. They are
still playing the old game of trying to wedge themselves into the
mainstream while the reality has changed completely.
It
must be repeated: the Right has no solution for the current situation.
The Palestinians will continue to resist the occupation, even if all the
human rights organizations are shut down. Even if Israel manages to
silence the Palestinians for a month, a year, or five. Those who view
Arab citizens of Israel as enemies will turn them into enemies. Those
who view Israelis who oppose the occupation as traitors won’t stop
there. The only vision the Right is presenting is a civil war between
Jews and Arabs, and between Jews and Jews. The only thing preventing
that from happening is Israel’s sheer military strength. But desperation
will also find a way to break through even that. With every day that
passes, the price of changing direction only rises, and those who are
able to step on the brakes prefer to sit on the fence.
http://972mag.com/its-open-
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