My last Israel-Palestine diary (posted July 4) described how Israel’s government chose to fall on its own sword and call new elections, in order to protect the framework that provides pseudo-legal cover for Apartheid reality in the West Bank.
In brief, the pseudo-legalistic, sleight-of-hand Apartheid Law that magically makes this atrocity “Legal” (only within the myopic Israeli system, of course) was set to expire on July 1. Due to the governing coalition’s flimsy standing, it had failed to extend it (the entire opposition, most of whom are ardent supporters of that regime, voted against in order to cause the coalition trouble). The coalition was still safe from external toppling at least for a while longer, but its two leaders decided to call a new election on the last day before that law expired. The new elections triggered an automatic renewal of the Apartheid framework, until after that election’s aftermath.
For those who prefer their information visually, here’s a 2-minute video about the West Bank Apartheid system, from pro-democracy Israeli news outlet 972mag.
The outgoing government has received quite a bit of glowing coverage in the West, because it managed to (temporarily?) oust longstanding hard-right PM Bibi, and because despite still being right-wing it includes elements traditionally seen in Israel as “Left”, and even one (Islamic) Arab party. What passes for “Liberal press” in Israel nowadays has taken to calling it “The Government of Change”, and has been cheerleading it shamelessly no matter its actions.
These actions? On the Palestinian front, if there has been any “Change” it’s for the worse.
And the worst offender is Security (a.k.a. “Defense”) Minister, General Benny Gantz, nominally (and mistakenly) perceived as a centrist. Security is Israel’s most powerful cabinet post, and directly controls the military-rule part of the West Bank Apartheid system (as well as the far worse regime Gaza is forced to live under). Gantz has held Security since 2020, starting under Bibi and sliding unscathed into the new coalition in June 2021.
Beyond continuing all the daily “essential” bread and butter of tyrannizing over Palestinians, under Gantz the military Occupation authorities have gone out of their way, engaging in voluntary extra-curricular persecution and undermining of Palestinian life and society, and frankly pushing further away any hope of a future peaceful, free, mutually respectful life in the country.
In particular, Gantz and his underlings have developed an obsession with leading Palestinian civil-society NGOs, which his office falsely declared as “Terror Organizations” last October. For some reason, Gantz and the rest of the pathetic “Government of Change” have thought that Israel’s Western allies who provide some of the funding for these NGOs, would be convinced by the type of shitty brainwash that works on the Israeli public, and cut off funding. It didn’t work, no one outside Israel was convinced — so a few weeks ago Gantz decided to double down and physically loot, destroy, and shut down the NGOs’ offices.
I wrote “Gantz” several times here. But please do not misunderstand: just like everything in the Occupation-Apartheid enterprise, this is not a single man’s endeavor. It really takes a village, or rather, an entire state apparatus committed to “innovative” ways and extra-credit efforts for maintaining and perpetuating this racist dictatorship, all else be damned.
More details below the fold.
the organizations now banned and persecuted
- Al-Haq, a human rights NGO founded in 1979;
- Addameer, an organization supporting Palestinian political prisoners;
- Defence for Children International – Palestine;
- The Bisan Center for Research and Development, a social-justice think tank;
- The Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, one of Palestine’s foremost feminist organizations;
- The Union of Agricultural Work Committees, a rural development and empowerment NGO.
guilt by association
Unsurprisingly, all 6 NGOs are left-leaning. Israel blames them for being little more than fronts and puppets of Palestine’s foremost leftist (officially, Marxist-Leninist) politico-militant organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Supposedly, all 6 have been misdirecting donor $$ (and donors are often Western European governments) towards the PFLP in order to fund terrorism activities, and generally marching to the PFLP’s orders.
Occupied Palestinians being a One-Degree-of-Separation society, clearly there’s a web of familiarity and social-familial relationships between left-leaning activists and organizers, and leftist politicians and militants. tl;dr — the classic Guilt by Association fallacy.
(An Aside about the PFLP)
Israel and many Western nations label the PFLP a terror organization. It is a simplistic, self-serving definition, tinged with racism of the “Rules for Thee, not for Me” flavor. In most nations struggling for independence under forcible oppression, major movements mix political and military operations. I will not mince words myself: the PFLP has engaged in terror activities in the past, some of them gruesome. But note that —
- When the shoe was on Zionism’s foot, i.e., before Israel’s independence, our leading movements had also committed terrorism, and were (and continue to be) extremely proud of their military wings.
- The PFLP is long, long past its heydays of the 1960s-80s. Just like most Israeli Jews have no use for leftist politics anymore, Palestinians have veered away from that as well. The PFLP is barely a secondary force in current Palestinian politics. Even if indeed all 6 NGO leaderships were willing to sell their souls — and they are NOT — the claim that present-day PFLP is capable of such massive masterminding and puppeteering of Palestinian society pillars, all under the noses of 55 years of Israeli secret police, as well as annual reviews by major European government donors, is beyond laughable. It is beyond pathetic.
the accusations against the 6 NGO’s are an intelligence-insulting pile of bullshit
Since spring 2021 Gantz’s office has been spamming European donors with some version of these claims. It first sent them a report with “evidence” to the effect. The Europeans after seeing this document, responded with typical politeness that it is a Nothingburger: a bunch of speculations, guilt-by-association, and second-hand hearsay from discredited “witnesses”.
After the official October announcement, Europeans (and the US too) requested evidence. Following some wait, a minor variation of the very same document was sent. Still, out of respect for Israel’s ability to do them political damage, some donors have cooled off the NGOs and paused for investigation. In August the European governments returned to Israel with a final statement that yes, indeed it’s all a Nothingburger and they are resuming full support of the 6 NGOs. (btw, the CIA has mumbled things to the same effect)
The Israeli raids reported in this diary took place a week or two after the European announcement. A barbaric, juvenile doubling down.
what the NGO’s are saying
Al-Haq director Shawan Jabarin has been among the most vocal. After the raids he said
Israel has no justice system for Palestinians — it is an illusion. They are even threatening Israeli lawyers for representing us, trying to criminalize their legal work. This is why our call is for people to open their eyes and to address the reality on the ground: this is an apartheid, colonial state, and this is the nature of the illegal occupation here.
Ubai Al-Aboudi, Bisan’s executive director said
Let’s not forget that this comes just a few days after Israel admitted that it killed five children in the Gaza Strip.[in the context of Israel expecting complete impunity for whatever it does to Palestinians — AO]
What they are attempting to do is to reengineer Palestinian civil society, declaring which organizations are ‘good’ and which are ‘bad.’ And for them any organization that criticizes them, that talks about the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, economic rights and social rights, the historic narrative of Palestine — these are the ‘bad’ organizations that they want to shut down.
Most leading Israeli human-rights organizations have also expressed solidarity with their Palestinian colleagues throughout this now-yearlong ordeal.
But what’s in it for Israel?
Why would Israel’s government go after these NGOs with such ferocity, losing whatever shreds of credibility its “intelligence” agencies have outside the bubble, wasting energy on steps that there’s a good chance it will need to walk back, and frankly being quite ridiculous? A few explanations, all plausible, none mutually exclusive.
1. Impunity
As Mr. Al-Aboudi above reminds us, Israel model 2022 has almost lost all living memory of being held accountable by the West. So it goes total loco in this story simply because it can, and it expects to pay no price. Just like it paid no price for mowing down unarmed protestors at the Gaza border in 2018, or for storming a Turkish ship with humanitarian assistance and killing 9 (again) unarmed activists including a US resident in 2010. And everything it has done in between, and since then, and for quite a few years before 2010. No price. Zero accountability.
The only ones holding Israel accountable nowadays are Palestinians themselves, who are of course orders of magnitude weaker.
2. Get Rid of the Witnesses and Evidence
This theory is very popular in the progressive press. You may not know it, but in March 2021 special prosecutor Fatou Bensouda launched an official International Criminal Court investigation into the Occupation, including the routine Apartheid part and the 2014 Gaza war (where both sides are being investigated). Palestinian NGOs are on-the-ground witnesses who have amassed reams of evidence on these issues. The theory says Israel is engaged in a naked attempt to at the very least undermine, and possibly eliminate, this key class of witnesses as well as much of the evidence.
This is a plausible theory, but as an Israeli society insider (or ex-insider?) and longtime observer of Occupation structures and mindsets, it doesn’t quite click as the main thing. Here are my two more favored explanations.
3. The Tyrant’s Obsession
The Occupation is a regime. Regimes want to perpetuate themselves. And in the quest to achieve that, dictatorships everywhere tend to become obsessive, paranoid, and overreaching. Any sign of “Unauthorized Life” among the subjects becomes a threat, a target. Both NGO leaders quoted above echo this observation.
4. “Casual” Racism
As a child growing up in 1970s Israel, the society around me conveyed to me strongly that we Israelis are brave anti-racists, and also that Arabs are inherently evil and inferior. In the era of Faux News brainwash and massive GQP delusions, I don’t need to convince the reader that it’s easy for entire societies to hold such blatantly self-contradictory, reality-defying views at once.
This condescending racism towards Arabs was a major factor blind-sighting Israel to the 1973 war’s surprise attack: most of us (well, I was 7 at the time) could not envision Arabs being capable of such sophistication, coordination and daring. In subsequent decades, many types of Arabs “succeeded in graduating from” most of our prejudices. So Egyptians, etc. - perhaps not so evil and primitive in our eyes anymore. But the pernicious core racist beliefs have lingered on, in our attitude towards Occupied Palestinians.
Now, of course as people grow they get to know actual Palestinians, and this primal prejudice gets softened, or even disappears. But still: as far as the common Jewish-Israeli gut-reaction to reality goes, and according to mainstream Israeli discourse, Occupied Palestinians can be either uneducated farmers (and their obedient/fanatic wives), or uneducated day-laborers in our businesses (ditto)— or terrorists. Or any combination of the above.
But Palestinian civil society? Human rights organizations? Think tanks? Social development funds? Feminist leaders?
Deep in the core of Jewish-Israeli psyche, these are fantasy unicorns. Literal impossibilities. No, the only explanation making sense to us is that these NGOs are nothing but fronts for terrorists.
Ugh, for shame.
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Unfortunately, I have loads of material for upcoming Banality of Apartheid series diaries, just from the ordinary goings-on of recent weeks. Such as the story about the decree published 5 days ago, that visiting foreigners must report to the Occupation any romantic relationship with an Occupied Palestinian, within 30 days of its inception.
I will write more as time and energy allow. Thank you for reading. Please do not soil the comment thread.