Oren Ziv | Cosa succede quando chiami uno di estrema destra un "fascista" in Israele

What happens when you call a right-winger a 'fascist' in Israel  

 Tribunale israeliano: Palestinian Media Watch è di parte e il suo direttore non è un esperto

Sintesi personale

Un attivista di estrema destra ha  citato in giudizio  l'attivista di sinistra Anat Matarin  quanto lo ha definito un "arch-fascista" in un post su  Facebook del 2017.
Shai Glick è il fondatore di un'organizzazione chiamata BTSALMO (un riff sull'organizzazione israeliana per i diritti umani B'tselem). Tramite BTSALMO ha chiesto ai ministri del governo israeliano e ai capi delle autorità locali di esercitare pressioni  per non finanziare o ospitare eventi organizzati  da  gruppi di sinistra critici nei confronti dell'occupazione.
Dopo l'udienza di martedì scorso, Glick ha pubblicato una dichiarazione su Facebook: "Il 16 luglio 2018 ho intentato una causa contro il Dr. Anat Mater per avermi chiamato un arch-fascista. Dopo un'udienza e le dichiarazioni in aula, ho capito che non dovevo presentare una causa  legale  e che tali argomenti dovrebbero essere arbitrati nella sfera pubblica. Non chiedo risarcimenti ,ma scuse ". "Quest'uomo è un fascista, è semplicemente così semplice", ha detto Michael Sfard, avvocato di Matar. "Ci sono quelli che diranno di non esserlo - questa è un'opinione legittima ,ma Shai è un fascista nell'appartenenza politica   ".
Nel suo post originale, pubblicato nel  settembre 2017, Matar ha affrontato i tentativi di ottenere dallo stato il finanziamento per il teatro arabo-ebraico di Jaffa, gestito da Yigal Azarti. All'epoca Glick, insieme al  ministro della Cultura Miri Regev, stava conducendo una campagna per togliere  il budget al  teatro perché ospitava un evento a sostegno di Dareen Tatour, una cittadino palestinese di Israele imprigionata  per le sue poesie .Nel post  che ha pubblicato sulla sua pagina Facebook martedì scorso, Matar ha esposto i motivi per cui ha scelto di etichettare Glick come un "fascista":  "Voglio approfondire ciò che intendevo quando ho chiamato Glick un fascista: nel contesto attuale, è importante invocare il ruolo centrale che l'informatore  gioca in un regime fascista o in  un regime con caratteristiche fasciste. . Questa visione dell'ideologia fascista si basa sulla definizione di un fascista come qualcuno che lavora per zittire gli altri in nome del presunto bene della nazione  " Al contrario di altri sistemi legali, il sistema giudiziario israeliano non ha creato gli strumenti per gestire la situazione creata da  un uomo che archivia, ripetutamente ,cause legali  da lui intentate semplicemente per molestare coloro che percepisce come suoi rivali politici", ha detto Sfard, avvocato di Matar." Fino a quando Glick non sarà costretto a pagare le spese legali di coloro che ha denunciato,  continuerà a  colpire  le persone di sinistra per le loro osservazioni, nonostante il fatto che lui stesso abbia fatto commenti indecenti sulla sinistra, chiamando i suoi membri  collaboratori, traditori e nemici della gente. Mi sono già occupato della sua denuncia  contro l'organizzazione anti-occupazione Breaking the Silence  che lo ha definito un bugiardo in risposta ai commenti  da lui pubblicati  sul sito israeliano Mako. "
Sfard ha notato che si rammarica di aver accettato di archiviare il caso contro Breaking the Silence. Glick ha un'altra causa contro un attivista di sinistra.

A prominent right-wing activist published a statement last week acknowledging that he shouldn’t file lawsuits to resolve political arguments, as part of an agreement to settle a lawsuit he filed. Left-wing activist Anat Matar, whom he sued for calling him an “arch-fascist” in a 2017 Facebook post, agreed to publish a statement expanding on all the reasons why she labeled him a fascist in the first place.

Related stories

• The biggest myth about Israeli politics
  By Dahlia Scheindlin | April 24, 2019
• In Israel's elections, only the far right is talking about democracy
  By Dahlia Scheindlin | March 22, 2019
• How to turn human rights activists into 'traitors' in a few easy steps
  By Orly Noy | February 6, 2019
• Activists discover right-wing mole during Gaza solidarity protest
  By Oren Ziv | December 23, 2018

(Full Disclosure: Anat Matar is the mother of Haggai Matar, the executive-director of “972 — Advancement of Citizen Journalism,” the NGO that serves as the publisher of both +972 Magazine and Local Call.)

Shai Glick is the founder of an organization called BTSALMO (a riff on Israeli human rights organization B’tselem). Through BTSALMO, he has demanded that Israeli government ministers and heads of local authorities pressure venues to pull funding from or not host events by left-wing groups critical of the occupation.

The expanded text Matar agreed to publish as part of the settlement, explaining her decision to describe Glick as an “arch-fascist,” was taken from her reply to his lawsuit filed with the court. In it, Matar addresses the central role of “informants” in fascist regimes or regimes with fascist qualities, while explaining why a person who acts to silence others can be termed a fascist.

Following the hearing last Tuesday, Glick posted a status on Facebook: “On July 16, 2018 I filed a lawsuit against Dr. Anat Mater for calling me an arch-fascist. After a hearing and statements read in court, I understood that I should not file such lawsuits and that such arguments should be arbitrated in the public sphere.”

SUBMIT

“This man is a fascist, it’s just that simple,” said Michael Sfard, Matar’s attorney. “There are those who will say he is not — that is a legitimate opinion. He is an arch-fascist. This is the opinion of a person who specializes in the field. Mr. Shai Shamai Glick is a fascist on several levels: he is a fascist in the public political sense, and he is a fascist in his discourse.”

In her original post, published September 2017, Matar addressed attempts to get the state to pull its funding from the Arab-Hebrew Theater in Jaffa, managed by Yigal Azarti. At the time, Glick, alongside efforts by Culture Minister Miri Regev, was leading a campaign to pull the theater’s budget because it hosted an event in support of of Dareen Tatour, a Palestinian citizen of Israel jailed for her poetry.

Matar’s original post:

I don’t know how many years I have known Yigal Azarti. Many years. You cannot think of him without the words “dedicated, brave and humble” immediately coming to mind. If the contemptible [Finance Minister Moshe] Kahlon and [Culture Minister Miri] Regev make good on their malicious efforts (and those of arch-fascist Shai Glick) and cut the budget of the theater Yigal has run for many years – an amazing and praiseworthy project – we won’t leave Yigal to fend for himself. I have no idea how to raise funds to reach the sums they plan to cut, and we don’t yet know if it will happen, but we must try.

In the expanded text she published on her Facebook page last Tuesday, Matar laid out the reasons she chose to label Glick a “fascist”:

I want to expand on what I meant when I called Glick a fascist: in the current context, it is important to invoke the central role that the act of informing plays in a fascist regime, or a regime with fascist characteristics. In the famous educational experiment “The Third Wave,” the phenomenon of informing was listed as one of the dominant signs that students had accepted fascism. Brecht’s play “The Informant” is possibly the most clear and concise expression of the horror of informing: the ability to recruit an ordinary citizen to serve as an arm of the regime and inform on any deviation from the nationalist-consensus edict. This insight into fascist ideology is based on the definition of a fascist as someone who works to silence others in the name of the supposed good of the nation, to inform on subversive voices from the left who are marked as enemies, traitors, etc. Therefore, and in accordance with Shai Glick’s actions and treatment of institutions, organizations, and people that express opinions that deviate from the regime’s edicts, labeling him a fascist is, in my professional understanding, accurate.

Shortly after Matar published the Facebook status in 2017, Glick sent her a letter demanding she pay him NIS 500,000 ($140,000) in damages. Last year he filed the lawsuit in a small claims court; after one hearing, Matar requested the case be transferred to the magistrate’s court, which would allow the sides to present evidence.

During the hearing, Glick, who represented himself, highlighted that he is interested in an apology rather than monetary compensation. “I said I do not ask for money, just the publication of an apology,” Glick said at the start of the discussion. “This is an act by an expert that causes damage to a private individual,” he said, referring to the fact that Matar is as a lecturer of philosophy at Tel Aviv University. Sfard called this a classic effort to silence free speech that must be rejected out of hand.

“As opposed to other legal systems, the Israeli judicial system has not created the tools to handle such a failure, of a man who repeatedly files lawsuits simply to harass those he perceives as his political rivals,” said Sfard. Until Glick is forced to pay the legal fees of those he sues, Sfard continued, he will continue to take leftists to court for their remarks, despite the fact that he himself has made unseemly comments about leftists. “He calls them collaborators, traitors, and enemies of the people, he calls Breaking the Silence thousands of names. He sits in a glass house and throws stones.”

“This is not the first time I have dealt with this plaintiff,” Sfard said, referring to Glick’s lawsuit against anti-occupation organization Breaking the Silence, which he also represents. Breaking the Silence called Glick a liar in a response to comments he made about the organization in a profile of him published by Israeli site Mako. “We have made similar offers every single time this has happened, even offering to withdraw the lawsuit without consequences.”

Sfard noted that he regrets agreeing to dismiss the case in the last lawsuit against Breaking the Silence as well as the court order that Glick pay minor legal fees of several hundred shekels. Glick has another lawsuit open against a left-wing activist.

Following the hearing, Glick asked Attorney Sfard to sign a copy of his book, “The Wall and the Gate.” In the dedication, Sfard wrote “I hope you learned something.”

*Disclosure: Shamai Glick recently filed a complaint against Local Call with the Israel Press Council Committee on Professional Ethics of Journalism about an opinion piece in which he is mentioned. The complaint has yet to be arbitrated.

A version of this article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.

Before you go...

A lot of work goes into creating articles like the one you just read. And while we don’t do this for the money, even our model of non-profit, independent journalism has bills to pay.

+972 Magazine is owned by our bloggers and journalists, who are driven by passion and dedication to the causes we cover. But we still need to pay for editing, photography, translation, web design and servers, legal services, and more.

As an independent journalism outlet we aren’t beholden to any outside interests. In order to safeguard that independence voice, we are proud to count you, our readers, as our most important supporters. If each of our readers becomes a supporter of our work, +972 Magazine will remain a strong, independent, and sustainable force helping drive the discourse on Israel/Palestine in the right direction.

Support independent journalism in Israel/Palestine Donate to +972 Magazine today