Mira Sucharov Im Tirzu's Pernicious Video Equates Human Rights With Treason
In its ongoing efforts to demonize Israeli human-rights NGOs, the right-wing organization Im Tirtzu has released a new propaganda video that is terrifying – both intentionally and unintentionally.
The
video is intentionally terrifying in that it appeals to Israelis’ most
immediate, visceral fears these days: being stabbed by a Palestinian in
the street. Unlike the many stabbing-attack videos circulating around
social media, this dramatized one is shot from the perspective of the
victim, meaning you: the viewer.
It is also unintentionally frightening in that it represents yet another iteration of the assault on civil rights in Israel.
As
a swarthy-looking man raises his arm to stab the viewer, the image
freezes. “Before the next terrorist stabs you,” the narrator says, he
already knows that this activist, a planted agent from Holland, will
protect him from a Shin Bet interrogation; that activist, a plant from
Germany, will call the soldier who tried to protect you a “war
criminal;” yet another activist, planted by Norway, will protect him in
court; and another, an EU agent, will call Israel a “war criminal.” The
faces depicted are not foreign agents at all. They are Israeli staffers
of four NGOs: the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, Breaking
the Silence, HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual and
B’Tselem. And they are all named. "While we fight terror, they fight
us," says the narrator.
Founded in 2006, and based at a dozen colleges and universities around Israel, Im Tirtzu bills itself
as working “to strengthen and advance the values of Zionism in Israel,”
and boasts that it is “one of the most important and influential
organizations in the Israeli public arena.” The New Israel Fund has thus
far been one of its main NGO targets.
“It's
hardly surprising that an organization deemed by an Israeli court to
have fascist characteristics will choose to use incitement, lies and
smears against people and groups who do not march in lockstep with the
government,” B’Tselem told Haaretz in an email from their spokesperson.
“We will continue to document and expose the occupation and its wrongs,
and resist Israel's half-century military control over millions of
Palestinians.”
(Note that in July, Israel’s Supreme Court dismissed the Jerusalem Court’s earlier ruling that Im Tirtzu has fascist tendencies. The term "fascism" is popularly used by Israelis who take offence at practices by extremist groups like Im Tirtzu.)
“The
real problem is that the right-wing tactics are working so well that
incitement and slander against Breaking the Silence and other left-wing
or human-rights organizations are supported not only by the prime
minister and the defense minister, but also from politicians who define
themselves as moderate, like MK Yair Lapid, head of the secular Yesh
Atid party,” Lior Amihai, a former staffer of Peace Now who is currently
studying human rights in London, told Haaretz. “And this legitimization
of incitement is very dangerous, especially during the violent climate
in Israel and Palestine right now.”
Peace
Now head Yariv Oppenheimer responded to the assault on his human rights
colleagues by tweeting an image of an investigation by his organization
that links one of Im Tirtzu’s funders to the violent settler "price
tag" attacks, under the header, “Funding Im Tirtzu Means Funding Jewish
Terrorists.”
Oppenheimer’s tweet references the tip of the iceberg, one that Haaretz has been working to uncover in its recent investigative series revealing the extent to which West Bank settlements are supported by American and Israeli donors, a funding process that often lacks transparency.
The
effort by the Israeli right to vilify what is known in Israel as the
left, and what in any democratic society is known simply as those who
seek to uphold civil liberties and human rights, is part of a larger
struggle to control the public sphere. Education Minister Naftali
Bennett, for example, is now calling to ban Breaking the Silence
— an organization that gathers testimonies from soldiers of wrongdoing
by the Israel Defense Forces — from visiting Israeli schools. Calling
their activities “lies and incitement,” Bennett said that “Breaking the
Silence has slandered Israel abroad, and made it their goal to hurt
their brothers who defend us."
Bennett’s
claim that Breaking the Silence propagates lies is one trotted out by
the right in Israel, despite having no basis in truth. Bennett’s Knesset
colleague from the Likud party, Oren Hazan,
unwittingly proved this by phoning the organization earlier this year,
posing as a veteran soldier who wants to join the ranks of those giving
testimony about the army's wrongdoings. It didn’t take long for Breaking
the Silence to spot the ruse, thus proving that their vetting system —
designed to weed out false testimony — actually works.
Other groups, like Honest Reporting, who attempt to delegitimize Breaking the Silence use provocative headlines like "Soldiers’ 'Testimonies' Break Credibility, Not Silence," without presenting data to falsify the testimonials.
The
most troubling aspect of Im Tirtzu’s video, though, is that it equates
human rights and civil liberties with treason. Only a distinctly
anti-democratic element of society would consider the upholding of basic
democratic norms and practices – including adhering to the rule of law
and upholding the rights of the individual – as cause for inciting
against the citizens engaged in those democratic practices.
The
only comfort we might take in this campaign is that the human-rights
NGOs it targets are apparently so robust and influential that they
motivate a group like Im Tirtzu to attack them in such a pernicious and
inciting way. It is a cold comfort, indeed.
Mira
Sucharov is associate professor of political science at Carleton
University in Ottawa, and is a regular columnist at Haaretz.
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