[PAA-Discuss] FW: Re: An outraged article in yesterday's Ha'aretz

[Lee Loe]

FYI. Lee

  _____  

From: Professor Schwartz' symposium on the Iraq war
[mailto:IRAQVIEWS-L at lists.sunysb.edu] On Behalf Of Michael Schwartz
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 11:15 AM
To: IRAQVIEWS-L at LISTS.SUNYSB.EDU
Subject: FW: Re: An outraged article in yesterday's Ha'aretz


 
 
Michael Schwartz
ms42 at optonline.net
  _____  

This article, published in the Israeli liberal newspaper, calls out the
latest in a series of internal developments within Israel that are quite
frightening.  This is, as far as I know, the first time that a mainstream
newspaper has published an article that applies the word "fascist" to the
Israeli regime.  It is addressed to a quite amazing, newly-passed, Israeli
law that would allow virtually any dissent to be prosecuted, by virtually
anyone with the resources and intention to do so.   Unlike the U.S. laws
that allow anyone giving (intentional or unintentional, tangible or
rhetorical) support to U.S.-government designated terrorists (an already
frightening license to destroy dissent),  this law allows prosecution of
anyone who gives "support" to any boycott against Israel or the settlements.
So it is a giant step beyond the already terrifying Patriot Act in the U.S.,
and it now allows people who protest against the illegal settlements to be
legally attacked.  
 
Quite amazing.   
 
  <http://www.haaretz.com/images/logos/logoGrey.gif> 
*         Published 18:18 12.07.11 
*         Latest update 18:18 12.07.11

Israel's boycott law: The quiet sound of going fascist


This is the one. This is where the slope turns nowhere but down. When the
Knesset passed the boycott law, it changed the history of the state of
Israel.

By Bradley Burston
<http://www.haaretz.com/misc/writers/bradley-burston-1.335>  Tags:
Palestinians <http://www.haaretz.com/meta/Tag/Palestinians>  Israel
<http://www.haaretz.com/meta/Tag/Israel%20settlements> settlements Israel
occupation <http://www.haaretz.com/meta/Tag/Israel%20occupation>  Israel
<http://www.haaretz.com/meta/Tag/Israel%20boycott> boycott 
This is the one. Don't let what we like to call the relative calm here, fool
you. When the Knesset passed the boycott law Monday night, it changed the
history of the state of Israel.
In real time, a tipping point of great magnitude can sound a lot like
nothing at all. But if the Boycott Law makes it past challenges filed by
human rights and pro-peace organizations in Israel's High Court of Justice,
then anything goes, beginning with democracy itself.
Join Haaretz.com on  <http://www.facebook.com/haaretzcom> Facebook and share
your views on this article 
Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak and 10 other cabinet ministers already
know this. That's why they failed to show up for the vote.
They stayed away because they know that this is the stain that may prove
indelible. The Boycott Law is the litmus test for Israeli democracy, the
threshold test for Israeli fascism. It's a test of moderates everywhere who
care about the future of this place.
This is the one. This is where the slope turns nowhere but down.
Q. What is wrong with the law?
1. The measure
<http://www.acri.org.il/en/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Comparative-US-Israel-
boycott-ENG.pdf> curbs political freedom of expression in Israel in a number
of ways, setting potentially significant - and dangerous - precedents. It
allows any individual to, in effect, become a private law enforcement
agency, empowered to bring lawsuits against anyone or any group the
plaintiff accuses of having taken part in or even simply supported any
action the plaintiff construes as a boycott against Israel, against the
settlements, or even any individual Israeli, for any reason.
2. The measure erases the legal differentiation between settlements and
Israel proper, regarding targeted boycotts against goods from the
settlements as actions harmful to the state of Israel itself.
3. The Knesset's apolitical Legal Advisor Eyal Yinon has ruled that the
law's broad definition of "boycotting the state of Israel", coupled with its
"civil wrongdoing" or anyone-can-sue clause, may compromise freedom of
expression where it comes to public debate over the fate of the West Bank.
Prior to the Monday vote, Yinon stated that the law could be brought to bear
against targeted boycotts "whose goal is to influence the political debate
in connection with the future of Judea and Samaria, a discussion which has
been at the heart of political debate in Israel for more than 40 years now."
4. The effect of the law could be crippling to the efforts of all
organizations and many individuals working for Israeli-Palestinian peace and
enhanced freedoms and human rights within Israel and the territories. The
rabid anti-NGO campaigns of Im Tirtzu and other groups could escalate into a
full-bore "lawfare" offensive, hauling them repeatedly into court and
costing them prohibitive legal fees.
Q. Who benefits from all of this?
For the hard right, this is a clear win-win. First, there is the language of
the law, through which Israel effectively and without fanfare annexes the
settlements, and, in so doing, acknowledges that the settlements have
annexed the state of Israel.
Secondly, the more untenable the law, the more anti-democratic its spirit
and the more delusional its provisions, the more it delights those within
the pro-settlement power base. Furthermore, this increases the likelihood
that the High Court - reviled by the far-right and radical religious - will
strike it down, only adding luster to those who incite against the Court.

Q. Who is fighting the law?
The Gush Shalom organization Tuesday filed the first High Court legal
challenge to the new law.
The Association for Civil  <http://www.acri.org.il/en/?p=2766> Rights in
Israel, the Coalition of Women for Peace, Physicians for Human Rights, the
Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, and Adalah, the Legal Center for
Arab Minority Rights in Israel, have also announced that they will challenge
the law in the High Court. Peace Now
<https://www.facebook.com/home.php#%21/pages/%D7%AA%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%95-
%D7%90%D7%95%D7%AA%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%A0%D7%99-%D7%9E%D7%97%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D%D
7%94-%D7%90%D7%AA-%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%A6%D7%A8%D7%99-%D7%94%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%A0%D7
%97%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%99%D7%95%D7%AA/189691237754726>  and the Solidarity
(Sheikh Jarrah) movement  <http://www.atzuma.co.il/solidarity> have begun
collecting thousands of personal pledges advocating boycotts against
settlement.
A number of U.S. Jewish organizations have condemned the bill, notably the
Anti-Defamation League, which generally refrains from criticizing Israeli
government policy and actions. ADL President Abraham Foxman said the bill
was a disservice to Israeli democracy. J Street and Ameinu were among other
U.S. groups to denounce the law.
Q. How dare you call this a step toward fascism in Israel?
I'm pretty much no different from everybody else here - just learning by
doing. I'm learning about fascism one step at a time. "Now they tell me,"
I'm thinking to myself. I'm learning that the success of the Boycott Bill is
a textbook case of the quiet appeal, the brilliant disguise, the endlessly
adaptable expertise in the workings of democracy , that help explain the
progress of fascism in our time. So this is what I've found out so far:
At first, it doesn't feel like fascism. That's why it works.
At first, to people whose nerves are bleeding and torn and altogether shot
from generations of bearing arms and bearing wars and bearing children who
will face still more wars, and between them, chaos and trauma and fury and
grief and going without, fascism can sound like quiet. It can sound like
actual calm. It's an understandable mistake. What have these people had to
compare it to?
To people who feel vilified on reflex and demonized by rote, this new
direction of ours can feel like freedom. That's why it works in a place like
this. While it's getting up to speed, fascism's just another word for
nothing left to lose.
I have friends whose livelihood is bound up with preserving the sense that
democracy in Israel is as sound as ever; that if it's under attack, it's
only from enemies foreign and domestic. I feel for them now. They'll have to
dismiss or minimize or ignore the Boycott Bill. They'll  have to pretend. At
first, they could hope that no one would notice or care. Not, as they say,
bloody likely. Fascism, the human construction that it is, has its better
days and worse, and Monday was the best ever.
And this was not only because the day began with Glenn Beck being hosted in
the Knesset by Likud MK Danny Danon, the carefully coiffed Mad Hatter of
Israeli Tea Party wannabes. 
 
It was how the day ended that mattered.
Q. What's next in line?
A list of new bills, beginning next week, each designed to choke debate, gag
protest, punish criticism, and/or cement the rule of the right. First up:
The return of a bill to create McCarthyesque committees to investigate
organizations the panels deem leftist. The bill was originally withdrawn for
lack of votes in Knesset, but, buoyed by the success of the Boycott Law, the
McCarthy Bill's sponsors now believe they can win passage.
Q. Do you see any cause for hope at all?
Paradoxically, the Boycott Law may yet prove to be a disaster for its
primary sponsors, the settlement movement. First, there is the economic
element. While the law appears to effectively annex the territories, erasing
any legal difference between Israel proper, the West Bank and East
Jerusalem, it may single-handedly spur an unprecedented world protest
boycott on settler-produced goods. And thanks to the sweeping language of
the boycott law, the poison written in smoke and fun-house mirrors, the
boycott may extend to the Golan as well, in particular, to Yarden wines.
But what may more effectively stymie the march toward fascism in Israel are
the budding doubts of the supporters of laws such as these. You could hear
them on Tuesday, headed by Likud Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, forced by
the absence of Netanyahu and Barak to defend the law on his own.
The former Peace Now activist, sounding pained and put-upon, condemned
boycotts as inherently undemocratic and illegitimate. In terms that were as
worthy a description as any of the Boycott Law itself, Steinitz called
boycotting "a belligerent attempt to impose one's will on a public which
thinks otherwise".
 
 
 
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