Independent says that a "new McCarthyism" is sweeping Israel. Yes but don’t tell Americans. It of course centers on the official harassment of the New Israel Fund, a Zionist group that supports democracy inside Israel:
Ms [Naomi] Chazan cites the arrests of Israelis at demonstrations against the encroachment of Jewish settlers in the Arab East Jerusalem district of Sheikh Jarrah. And the interrogation and fingerprinting last month of her friend Anat Hoffman, of the reform group Religious Action Centre, who for 20 years has challenged ultra-Orthodox control of the Western Wall by seeking to entrench the right of women to pray in shawls there.
"There is an assault on the basics of law and order but most important I see this as part of a very pernicious attempt to stifle alternative voices, and most seriously to equate criticism with betrayal. And there is a very strong political underpinning to that. I would go further … behind this [is] a group of people who don’t want a political settlement. They don’t want peace, so they’re trying to delegitimise the human rights movement."
