I read, today, in Haaretz that “two controversial bills – one prohibiting calls for a boycott against Israel, and the other restricting the ability of human rights groups to raise funds abroad – are likely to be the focus of fierce debate in the Knesset next week.” This will be just the latest example of Israel’s counter-democratic parliament passing bills and laws with little resemblance to democracy.
What first comes to mind is the incongruent nature of the two bills. On the one hand, the anti-boycott bill forbids causing economic harm to institutions, arms, etc. of the State of Israel for political reasons via boycotts… That, is, the Occupation, as an institution of the State of Israel is protected from boycott, and anti-Occupation boycott advocates are subject to punishment. On the other hand the Knesset is toying with a bill to legislatively boycott human rights NGOs. It seeks to limit the human rights community’s ability to accept donations that originate from foreign government sources, essentially only because they advocate for human rights and reveal, criticize and seek to change Israeli human rights policy. It seems that for the Knesset, human rights is like cottage cheese… The price of human rights is too high so they boycott it. However, the righteous demand for fair pricing of a basic food staple is no less just than the struggle against homophobia (which Israel’s hasbarganda program has pinkwashed) or the struggle for religious pluralism. And certainly the struggle for fairly priced cottage cheese is no less important than the struggle against the Occupation and for human rights. It is clear, I guess, that this Knesset is for the Occupation and against human rights.
Never mind the fact that boycott is a legitimate, non-violent, common and, in fact very Jewish form of social protest. Prominent Jews advocated boycotts of racially segregated bus lines in the US south in the 1960s. There was a boycott of Pepsico in the framework of the struggle for freedom for Soviet Jewry. And never mind that Human rights, many progressive and liberal Jews might say, are enshrined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence. In essence Israel, through the current ruling coalition’s legislative tentacles, is effectively saying that boycott is a crime and that Israel is officially estranged from human rights. How else can it rectify the coupling of these two legislative initiatives? Is Israel a human right observant state? (Answer the question as you like… but at least for the sake of argument…). If so the boycott law and the funding limitations are out of place. If the answer is in fact that Israel is divorcing itself from human rights, well then the two laws should steam role there way through the Knesset.
That being said, I, as a human rights worker who seeks out foreign government funding for human rights advocacy, and yes advocacy that is in obvious dissonance with Israeli policy and advocacy for social change, will not cease this activity. If Israel is in fact declaring its divorce from human rights and we as ‘children’ of the divorce are asked to choose a parent, I choose human rights.
Post Script: I imagine that if Rabbi Abraham Joshua Hecshel, who said that ”I felt my legs were praying” as he marched for civil rights with Martin Luther King Jr., were alive today he would shudder at the current Knesset’s molestation of human rights. If not I imagine that he is turning over in his grave.
Louis Frankenthaler lives in West Jerusalem with his family. He is a human rights worker and doctoral student.
