Daniel Sokatch :I oppose BDS. But it’s Israel’s democracy, not the boycott, that’s Netanyahu’s real target
This week, Israel’s ultra-right-wing government would like us to be debating the merits of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. They’d be thrilled if we comb through every tweet of every staffer of each of the 20 organizations on the government’s recently-released blacklist.
Nothing would make them happier than warring op-eds about who should be turned back at Ben Gurion Airport, and who should get the red-carpet treatment.
If we do that – if the Israeli government succeeds in distracting us with a debate about BDS while freedom of speech is becoming more and more conditional, and Israelis are taking to the streets to protest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption – then they’ve made friers and suckers of us all.
read more: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.833864I, along with the New Israel Fund, oppose the global BDS movement that most of the blacklisted organizations support. But right now, it doesn’t matter what you think of BDS. Because that’s not the real issue. We are witnessing the dismantling, piece by piece, of Israeli democracy. Don’t be distracted.
The travel ban blacklist released this week is the unsurprising product of a years-long legislative strategy by the extreme right-wing to infect Israeli democracy with authoritarianism by crippling freedom of expression.
read more: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.833864The travel ban itself – an effort to police dissenting thoughts and the people who think them, especially Palestinians – and the blacklist are just the latest symptoms.
The larger strategy includes the Boycott Law, passed in 2011, which makes any Israeli who calls for any kind of boycott, including a boycott of settlement products, liable to be sued for damages. (At the time, the Knesset’s legal advisor, Eyal Yinon, said that the law would so severely injure freedom of expression that he considered it “borderline illegal.”)
It includes the Nakba Law, which allows the government to pull funding from any Arab-Israeli institution that in any way marks the Palestinian narrative of 1948.
read more: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.833864 nd it includes - through legislation, intimidation and smear campaigns - attempts to silence and delegitimize human and civil rights organizations that defend democracy and oppose the occupation.
Alongside its legislative strategy, the current government uses incitement, scapegoating and lies to suppress free speech and weaken Israeli democracy even further. Arabs, government watchdogs, independent media, the judiciary and those who defend democracy and equality, including NIF and our grantees, are explicitly singled out and demonized by government officials, including Prime Minister Netanyahu.
read more: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.833864Those of us in America recognize this all too well: we have become familiar with Trumpian attempts to solidify power by inciting against minorities, coddling bigots, and even threatening to prosecute political opponents. These tactics are a scourge used by ascendant authoritarian regimes in many corners of the world. They should have no place in Israel.
read more: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.833864Those of us in America recognize this all too well: we have become familiar with Trumpian attempts to solidify power by inciting against minorities, coddling bigots, and even threatening to prosecute political opponents. These tactics are a scourge used by ascendant authoritarian regimes in many corners of the world. They should have no place in Israel.he government has to rely on a strategy of distraction because its own values are so obviously at odds with Israel’s founding values. It is overtly xenophobic and even racist, shamelessly corrupt, pandering to the settler lobby and willing to defend the 50-year-old occupation at all costs. It deflects attention and demonizes its political opponents, who value democracy, equality, and human and civil rights, in order to keep Israelis from asking difficult questions about where their leaders are taking them.The state of freedom of speech and the right to dissent are direct reflections of the health of a democracy. By those measures, Israeli democracy is in critical condition.The first and most urgent is to reject the government’s efforts to eviscerate freedom of expression, even – perhaps especially – for those with whom we disagree. We can’t allow ourselves to be distracted by thinking this is about whether or not we agree with BDS or the tactics of its supporters. If basic freedoms are threatened, democracy is in danger.And we can’t allow ourselves to be distracted when the government advances the next round of democracy-poisoning legislation, including the proposed Nation-State Bill, which would needlessly declare Israel the nation state solely of the Jewish people, strip Arabic of its status as an official state language, and only serve to antagonize and marginalize Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Each time the Prime Minister rails against invented threats and designates enemies from within, we have to ask ourselves: What is he hoping we won’t notice? A regime buckling under the weight of its own corruption and unsustainable, anti-democratic policies can’t keep us distracted forever.
Daniel Sokatch is CEO of the New Israel Fund.
Nothing would make them happier than warring op-eds about who should be turned back at Ben Gurion Airport, and who should get the red-carpet treatment.
If we do that – if the Israeli government succeeds in distracting us with a debate about BDS while freedom of speech is becoming more and more conditional, and Israelis are taking to the streets to protest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption – then they’ve made friers and suckers of us all.
read more: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.833864I, along with the New Israel Fund, oppose the global BDS movement that most of the blacklisted organizations support. But right now, it doesn’t matter what you think of BDS. Because that’s not the real issue. We are witnessing the dismantling, piece by piece, of Israeli democracy. Don’t be distracted.
The travel ban blacklist released this week is the unsurprising product of a years-long legislative strategy by the extreme right-wing to infect Israeli democracy with authoritarianism by crippling freedom of expression.
read more: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.833864The travel ban itself – an effort to police dissenting thoughts and the people who think them, especially Palestinians – and the blacklist are just the latest symptoms.
The larger strategy includes the Boycott Law, passed in 2011, which makes any Israeli who calls for any kind of boycott, including a boycott of settlement products, liable to be sued for damages. (At the time, the Knesset’s legal advisor, Eyal Yinon, said that the law would so severely injure freedom of expression that he considered it “borderline illegal.”)
It includes the Nakba Law, which allows the government to pull funding from any Arab-Israeli institution that in any way marks the Palestinian narrative of 1948.
read more: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.833864 nd it includes - through legislation, intimidation and smear campaigns - attempts to silence and delegitimize human and civil rights organizations that defend democracy and oppose the occupation.
Alongside its legislative strategy, the current government uses incitement, scapegoating and lies to suppress free speech and weaken Israeli democracy even further. Arabs, government watchdogs, independent media, the judiciary and those who defend democracy and equality, including NIF and our grantees, are explicitly singled out and demonized by government officials, including Prime Minister Netanyahu.
read more: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.833864Those of us in America recognize this all too well: we have become familiar with Trumpian attempts to solidify power by inciting against minorities, coddling bigots, and even threatening to prosecute political opponents. These tactics are a scourge used by ascendant authoritarian regimes in many corners of the world. They should have no place in Israel.
read more: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.833864Those of us in America recognize this all too well: we have become familiar with Trumpian attempts to solidify power by inciting against minorities, coddling bigots, and even threatening to prosecute political opponents. These tactics are a scourge used by ascendant authoritarian regimes in many corners of the world. They should have no place in Israel.he government has to rely on a strategy of distraction because its own values are so obviously at odds with Israel’s founding values. It is overtly xenophobic and even racist, shamelessly corrupt, pandering to the settler lobby and willing to defend the 50-year-old occupation at all costs. It deflects attention and demonizes its political opponents, who value democracy, equality, and human and civil rights, in order to keep Israelis from asking difficult questions about where their leaders are taking them.The state of freedom of speech and the right to dissent are direct reflections of the health of a democracy. By those measures, Israeli democracy is in critical condition.The first and most urgent is to reject the government’s efforts to eviscerate freedom of expression, even – perhaps especially – for those with whom we disagree. We can’t allow ourselves to be distracted by thinking this is about whether or not we agree with BDS or the tactics of its supporters. If basic freedoms are threatened, democracy is in danger.And we can’t allow ourselves to be distracted when the government advances the next round of democracy-poisoning legislation, including the proposed Nation-State Bill, which would needlessly declare Israel the nation state solely of the Jewish people, strip Arabic of its status as an official state language, and only serve to antagonize and marginalize Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Each time the Prime Minister rails against invented threats and designates enemies from within, we have to ask ourselves: What is he hoping we won’t notice? A regime buckling under the weight of its own corruption and unsustainable, anti-democratic policies can’t keep us distracted forever.
Daniel Sokatch is CEO of the New Israel Fund.
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