The battle over the Israeli government’s effort to ban six leading Palestinian human rights and civil society organizations for supposed “terrorist” connections is taking place in the U.S. The Biden administration has the ability to compel the Israeli government to reverse what advocates for Palestinians call an “act of tyranny” against groups that support political prisoners and detained children.
But Biden has been sitting on his hands. The State Department hosted an Israeli delegation on the question but has done nothing to challenge the so-called evidence– even as Europeans who have seen the Israeli dossier say there is nothing there, as EU High Rep Josep Borrell said earlier this week.
Biden is assessing the political risks of taking on the new Israeli government. And here liberal Zionists have a critical role. They could attempt to provide Biden with the political capital inside the Jewish community and Democratic Party to confront Israel– or they could hold the bag for Israel yet again.
The signs are not encouraging. Earlier this week we showed how a leading liberal Zionist congressperson, Steve Cohen, happily served as Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s prop on a visit to Israel last week. Though Gantz is the minister who issued the authoritarian measure.
And two liberal groups — Chicago’s Reform community and Americans for Peace Now — have lately provided platforms to Israelis to argue that there is evidence that the Palestinian groups have terrorist links.
Gilad Kariv, a Labor member of Knesset in the governing coalition and a Reform rabbi, spoke by video to Chicago Reform Jews a week ago and said that liberal American Jews have a responsibility to support the new Israeli government and take on the American left’s critique of Israel. You must give us a chance, Kariv said, because the government has not annexed portions of the West Bank, as Netanyahu’s government planned to do.
Kariv also sought American Jewish solidarity on Benny Gantz’s declaration that six Palestinian groups are terrorist fronts. There is some basis for the declaration, he implied.
Talking about the Defense Minister and his decision, I will say carefully that the fact that the evidences in regard to those six human rights or civil society organizations are not presented in the media doesn’t mean that there is no real base for the decision. I’m not saying that I’m supporting this decision, I don’t know enough in order to say something smart about this decision. I know that the ministers of the Labor Party and Meretz Party, the two leftwing zionist parties in the government, will be exposed to the evidences, and I also know that the United Arab List, which is part of the coalition, is not leaving the coalition over this decision, and one of the reasons that they’re not leaving the coalition is that Benny Gantz went to meet Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and two days after this decision about the six Palestinian organizations, the same Defense Minister came with a package of economic gestures toward the Palestinian Authority. So if we want to judge seriously the policies of our Defense Minister, we can not address only the decision to ban six… organizations, we also need to talk about the fact that…. this government is the working to strengthen the Palestinian Authority.
So I think one of our duties is to show people that the picture in regard to the Palestinian Israeli conflict is more complicated than ‘Israel is deepening the occupation’.
Kariv’s interlocutor, Rabbi Wendi Geffen, of North Shore Congregation Israel, did not push back in any way on these comments.
But Israeli human rights attorney Michael Sfard has said that Israel’s claims against the highly-respected organizations are “shattered” in the eyes of the world. While Sahar Francis, the head of the targeted organization Addameer, which advocates for Palestinian prisoners, says that the Israeli dossier is based on lies and torture. And Ubai al-Aboudi, the head of another of the six organizations, the Bisan Center, has told a DC audience that “This is state terrorism at its finest hour.”
Sfard called the designation an “act of tyranny” in an event hosted by the liberal Zionist group Americans for Peace Now.
But Americans for Peace Now also hosted security analyst Yossi Alpher who argued that the designation is based on real evidence. Alpher said in part:
Gantz argues that funds delivered by European donors to the six NGOs found their way to the PFLP, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine which is widely acknowledged as a terrorist organization. This claim is not totally without foundation. When Gantz bothered to show the evidence to angry Labor and Meretz politicians who had been kept in the dark about his decision, and to American and European officials, their protest against the terrorist label applied by him to the NGOs became more subdued…
As a veteran of Israel’s intelligence community, I have the highest respect for the IDF and Shin Bet analysts whose assessments informed Gantz’s decisions. But I am concerned that at some stage in the process, assessments were politicized. And I am concerned that Gantz really did not know how best to utilize the information provided to him.
The fact that leading liberal Zionist groups are giving a platform to such claims when the conscience of the world is shocked by the rightwing government’s overreach is disturbing. It shows that liberal Zionists here are very responsive to the demands of their partners, the liberal Zionists in the Israeli government.
Right now those partners are calling on American Jews to support a rightwing government so that Netanyahu will not return. Kariv says that the new government is mending the torn social fabric of Israeli society and that its historic inclusion of an Arab party (the rightwing UAL or Ra’am list) is improving relations between Jews and Palestinians. Though as he concedes, the government is not doing anything to solve the conflict.
And to be sure, the center-right Israel lobby is happily pushing the Israeli government line in the U.S.
Kariv’s call on American liberal Zionists to represent for the Israeli government against the American left is surely being voiced by other Israelis: Merav Michaeli and Nachman Shai of Labor and Tammy Zandberg and Nitzan Horowitz of Meretz.
And those calls are surely being heeded. J Street has had little to say about the terrorism designation since its initial, short statement, condemning it. And to repeat, leading Democrats had a grinning meeting with Gantz last week to discuss the eternal nature of the U.S.-Israel bond.
It’s little wonder the Biden administration is keeping its mouth shut.
Update: A reader points out that Americans for Peace Now has given a lot of support to the six Palestinian groups accused of terrorism. Hadar Susskind (president and CEO of Americans for Peace Now) tweeted support for the great Rep. Jim McGovern letter calling on the U.S. to denounce the designation. And the main Americans for Peace Now Twitter account has also tweeted out support for the Palestinian groups. I should have mentioned these comments in my original post, but again, no one at APN countered Yossi Alpher’s claims. This is why I characterized the support for Gantz in liberal Zionist circles as quiet.
Just to put this all in perspective, Israel has always used the bogeyman of the day for maximum effect – today the term of art is “terrorism” but it used to be – please be sure you’re sitting down – communism. From Walter Hixson’s “Architects of Repression” (advertised up above), page 73 (emphasis mine) –
A perfervid anti-communist, Reagan condemned the Soviet Union as an ‘evil empire’ and viewed all groups associated or allied with it – including the PLO – as forces of global unrest. Eager to exploit this theme, Israeli Prime Minister Begin told Secretary of State Alexander Haig that the PLO was a ‘satellite of the Soviet Union’ and would ensconce communism in ‘Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district’ if Palestine were allowed to become an independent state.
No American politician can defend Israel’s crimes on moral grounds. Therefore Israel’s control must depend entirely on its capacity to corrupt.
Awakening the American people to this corruption will dissolve its control. No candidate for office could successfully face the voters while serving known corruption. Removing Israel’s mask will remove its control, and restore a great measure of sanity to Congress. And it would end borrowing billions yearly to pay as wasteful trubute to Israel.
The political moment in both America and Israel is particularly fragile in terms of the lurking ex leader. In America Trump’s presence and threat to American democracy as embodied by his actions on January 6th and since is quite manifest and Joe biden and the democrats’ electoral vulnerabilities are very real and apparent. In Israel though the situation is not identical there is a similar fear that Netanyahu is lurking in the wings ready to take the stage again. I don’t have much hope that the Lapid Bennet government will move the ball forward in terms of coming face to face with the lack of a strategy worthy of that name vis a vis the West Bank. Then again Likud has so dominated the scene since 2009 that any breath of “hope” is amplified as if it were something of substance rather than a mirage or a delusion. In fact, the current government is a freak of nature, a coalition based on common interests, including the common interest to avoid hard decisions.
I understand the impatience of Sfard echoed by phil weiss, nonetheless it’s not a normal situation and it should be understood in the context of “confusion”. It is confusion that there is not a right wing coalition led by Likud. It is only Bibi’s unwillingness to leave the stage of history that enables the current government. American left Zionism’s timidity is a fact. But the fear of Bibi’s return is the emotional essence of this current moment in Israeli politics.
Its interesting to note how assertions can yet presumed to be credible when the track record on veracity has been questionable so many times past. The US government does not enjoy as much this presumption.
Also interesting is how the fortunes of these organizations can ride on questions of behavior by individuals. A whole group’s credibility can ride on an individual’s actions. This is an important lesson in politics that can be useful in calculating the effects on Palestinian fortunes from undisciplined/lone wolf actions. Calculations of what is gained, what lost, are useful.
“Rabbi Wendi Geffen, of North Shore Congregation Israel, did not push back in any way on these comments.”
This is the same synagogue that hosted a pro-war rally in conjunction with the Israeli consulate in 2009. The aim of the rally was to “educate and mobilize” the Chicago Jewish community to back Israel’s war in Gaza.