Haaretz reports:
Military Intelligence is collecting information about left-wing organizations abroad that the army sees as aiming to delegitimize Israel, according to senior Israeli officials and Israel Defense Forces officers.
The sources said MI’s research division created a department several months ago that is dedicated to monitoring left-wing groups and will work closely with government ministries. In recent weeks, the head of the new unit has been taking part in discussions in the Prime Minister’s Office about how to prepare for the possible arrival of a Gaza-bound flotilla in May. . .
The new MI unit will monitor Western groups involved in boycotting Israel, divesting from it or imposing sanctions on it. The unit will also collect information about groups that attempt to bring war crime or other charges against high-ranking Israeli officials, and examine possible links between such organizations and terror groups.
Omar Barghouti comments:
While Western democracy leaves a lot to be desired, it still enables activists to legally challenge this seemingly unprecedented move by Israel’s Military Intelligence to monitor “left-wing” activists who criticize Israel and organize effective solidarity with the Palestinian people, especially in the form of BDS.
Israel is effectively announcing without shame — how typical! — that it will employ its officers to spy on activists in the West who are not engaged in any illegal activity by international standards! Of course by Israel’s standards of “justice,” a Palestinian living in his family’s home for generations can — and is often — criminalized if his/her papers are deemed insufficient for living there!
Are Western intelligence services complicit in this? Will they allow Israel to spy on their citizens as part of its crusade to muzzle critics of Israel and criminalize criticism and boycott of Israel?
Are civil rights in the West suspended when it comes to effective campaigns aiming at holding Israel’s occupation and apartheid accountable to international law and universal principles of human rights? Will France’s and Canada’s despicable examples of repressing the civil rights of BDS supporters and all those opposed to Israel’s policies or entire regime of oppression spread to the rest of the West?
Even Israel’s foreign ministry thinks the army is “overreaching” with this McCarthyesque crusade to suppress dissent. The ministry also sheds doubt on the very definition of “de-legitimization,” the new bogey — bogus, too — term used by the Israeli establishment and well-oiled lobbies in the West to kill debate and character-assassinate BDS advocates. Was the boycott of South African apartheid a form of de-legitimizing whites, Afrikaaners, Christians? Was the divestment campaign against Sudan for its horrific crimes in Darfur a hidden effort to de-legitimize Sudan, Islam, Arabs?
Regardless of anyone position on Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid, shouldn’t Western foreign ministries take action — for once — to stop Israel’s unmatched arrogance and impunity by publicly condemning its overt plans to spy on Western citizens? Does freedom of speech still mean anything when the subject of speech is unfavorable to Israel and its intimidating lobby groups?
Is it a sign of the new-new-World we are coming to, when Arabs (at least some!) can openly criticize their governments, the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and just about anything else, while in the West free speech is strictly curtailed when it touches the “red lines,” Israel being the reddest of all?
