Real News Network, a professional online alternative to US corporate media, has this comprehensive report about a Knesset bill to criminalize Palestinian, international and Israeli efforts to promote and enact boycotts against Israel. Last week, it passed its “preliminary reading” in the Knesset, with two more rounds to go to become law.

If passed, this stunning bill will mark the most severe and antidemocratic backlash thus far against the boycott, sanctions and divestment movement (BDS) to pressure Israel to abide by international law.

The video below includes an interview with Dalit Baum of Who Profits, the project of Israel’s Coalition of Women for Peace that documents which companies profit from Israel’s occupation. The proposed law would put the Coalition out of business, mandating that any Israeli who promotes boycotts be held liable for economic losses suffered by an Israeli company because of the boycott. The report also references the Reut Institute report about the “soft warfare” against Israel –which the rest of the world calls civil society advocacy for universal democratic rights– which we have covered here at length.  There’s also recent news about the harassment of Israeli refuser and BDS support Yonatan Shapira, though no mention of arrest of Palestinian Israelis Ameer Makhoul and Omar Said and others. The entire law depends on the ability of Israeli intelligence services to build and maintain a large databases of internationals and Israelis.

Settlement-based businesses have already reported significant losses due to a new Palestinian Authority ban on settlement-produced goods. The law would ban international supporters of BDS from the country for 10 years, and would  financially devastated the Palestinian Authority by withholding monies rightfully owed to the Palestinians according to international law.

The bill, supported by the so-called “centrist” group Kadima, is one third of the way to being passed.It is part of a cluster of anti-democratic laws being pushed through the right wing Knesset including, according to Peace Now’s Yariv Oppenheimer: the “NPO registration bill,” the “cinema-loyalty bill” (which demands a loyalty statement as a condition for receiving a budget from the state for making movies), the “citizenship revocation bill” and the “loyalty bill”. Oppenheimer goes on:

Along with these bills, the coalition is succeeding in promoting bills that discriminate in favor of the right wing side of the political map and which give privileges to settlers and their supporters.  The “law for pardoning opponents of disengagement,” the “Golan referendum bill” and the “bill for preserving the rights of Israeli citizens in parts of the Land of Israel to which Israeli law does not apply”–all these are legislative initiatives that place the settlers in a unique legal status above other citizens, and even above the Knesset.

It’s impossible to defend White House Grande Dame of journalism Helen Thomas’ recent off the cuff statement that Israeli Jews should go back to Germany…..or Poland. (She said Israel should get out of Palestine, but it wasn’t clear if she meant the Occupied Territories, which Israelis should get out of, or Israel behind the green line.) It was deeply offensive and wrong.

One of this country’s most important and courageous journalists said something terribly wrong, was massively criticized, apologized for it, and was forced into retirement. Exactly the way it should be, right? Wrong.

It’s hard to even chart out the hypocrisy of the whole affair. What happened in 2002 when House Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians on MSNBC’s Hardball? An outraged response? Nary a peep. That same year Senator James Inhofe also called for Israel to permanently retain all of the Occupied Territories, “Because God said so. “  Did he quit? No. And what to make of the fact that Obama’s White House summoned infinitely more moral outrage for Thomas’ terrible but certainly not lethal remarks, than for the death of 9 people on the Mavi Marmara, including a 19-year-old US citizen shot in the head. (One prompted “deep regret”, the other was “reprehensible”. Guess which was which.)

There’s also the glass house in which Rabbi Nessenoff lives: he’s the one who recorded the Thomas gotcha video and who, it seems, has offered the world his own offensive imitation of a Mexican priest, and believes that Palestinians all belong back home…in Jordan.

In Israel, the hypocrisy is even more painful, where it should be noted that the Israeli military recently created an order that, according to many human rights groups and Ha’aretz, “will enable mass deportation from West Bank.” Who had to retire because of that? Maybe because it wasn’t an off the cuff remark to suggest ethnic cleansing, but an actual military order to allow it, its authors escaped opprobrium.

Just this week, Likud party MK, Miri Regev shouted at Hanin Zuabi, an Arab member of the Knesset from Nazareth who went on the Gaza flotilla, “Get back to Gaza, you traitor!” Sounds familiar, as though Thomas herself could have said it. Outrage meter? Zero. Then again, Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai wants Zuabi stripped of her Israeli citizenship, so telling her to go back to a place she is not from actually seems pretty mild by those standards.

Moshe Yaroni, who abhors what Thomas said, compares her treatment to Israel’s response to the Jerusalem Post’s Caroline Glick who is surely responsible for what will go down as one of the most morally heinous pieces of agitprop in modern history:

In Israel, the premier woman journalist in the country went a hell of a lot farther, in a premeditated, rather than an impetuous fashion. And there is hardly a peep in response in her home country.

Caroline Glick is well-known to readers of right-wing e-mail lists, and of course, of the Jerusalem Post, where she is the deputy managing editor and a regular columnist. She is also a fellow at the extremist neoconservative Center for Security Policy in Washington.

Caroline Glick with fellow travelers Morton Klein and John Bolton

Glick herself is an extremist, and even those who agree with her (and who would, of course, not refer to her as an extremist) would have to agree that she situates herself well to the right of the current Israeli government. And that’s all well and good; she’s an op-ed writer, and she is certainly entitled to her opinions.

But at her web site, Latma, Glick has raised her vitriol to a whole new level. In a video overflowing with racism, a group of Israelis satirize the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla. You can see it for yourself here, if you can make it through the whole thing.

In a most contemptible fashion, almost every trope of bigotry is on display in the video, which features the contention that the massive suffering in Gaza is all an elaborate fabrication. For a quick rundown of this “fabricated” suffering, check out B’Tselem’s summary of conditions in Gaza.

This level of cruelty is truly astonishing. Even if one contends that the Gaza blockade is a necessary security measure (see my earlier article for why it has the opposite effect), it is appalling to see fellow Jews laughing about it. And don’t we know all too well the offense in denying such things?

The punch line, of course, is that because of her truly abominable and utterly vile video, Caroline Glick and is being hailed as a Hasbara hero in Israel- while one of our few truly great journalists has ended an otherwise remarkable career. Yaroni continues:

No, the real concern, the real question is where is the Israeli outrage? We wouldn’t expect it from the government, of course. In fact, the Government Press Office e-mailed the video to journalists and later apologized, saying it had been done in error. That is unlikely to say the least. Mark Regev, the Prime Minister’s Office Spokesman said “I called my kids in to watch it because I thought it was funny. It is what Israelis feel. But the government has nothing to do with it.”

The courageous blog, Coteret, run by Didi Remez, blasts the video and all it represents. But in the mainstream Israeli media and commentary, there is nothing. This blatantly hateful and racist video is perfectly acceptable in Israel.

Glick, on her blog, magnifies her hypocrisy by spending a great many words blasting Thomas for her offensive remarks.

Grit Tv’s Laura Flanders may be onto something when she says:

Thomas’s crime wasn’t just Antisemitism — it was Antisemitism in defense of Palestine. That’s the true source of the outrage. The outrage that Obama and Biden and most other U.S. officials, to say nothing of the majority of the press corps, can’t seem to find for others.

I’m not sure. Had Helen Thomas made a similar remark about African Americans, for example, I’m not sure the same fate wouldn’t have befallen her. If only I could feel confident that power-brokers in the world of journalism and even my own government cared as much about my Arab and Palestinian friends as they seem to care about me… as a Jew of course.

A warm smile and easy laugh reveal Hebah Ismail’s unthreatening, gentle personality. An American citizen, this 3L of Egyptian descent works with the International Human Rights Clinic on projects related to Bedouin land rights. Hebah wears a hijab. She still does not know which of one, or combination, of these characteristics prompted the immigration personnel at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport deny her entry to Israel.

After continued interrogation, she was approached by an authority:

“I don’t remember his exact words,” she says. “But basically he told me, ‘Before we get started, we want you to know that this is a democratic country, and we respect other points of view. But we found things on your external hard drive that are very concerning.’ He was sure I had some other objective, but I had no idea what that could be.”

Hebah tried to assure the security officer that her trip related only to the clinical project and a personal desire to visit Jerusalem. But he remained convinced that an article on her computer describing modern Israeli as being on land previously held by Palestinians pointed to a more insidious motivation and began pressuring Ismail to allow him to read her emails.

“He told me, ‘I cannot let you through until I know I can go home and get a good night’s sleep,’” Ismail said. “He kept saying, ‘If you let me go through your email, I’ll let you in.”

Ismail had been cautioned in advance that he had no right to read her personal emails. Her decision to bar him from her emails resulted in the immediate confiscation of her cell phone, 23-hour detention in a holding area until the next return flight to the U.S., and a permanent  ban on travel to Israel. Ismail’s professor who she was trying to meet in Israel commented:

“There is a general practice of denying entry to American citizens,” Amara said. “Its not uncommon with those of Palestinian origin, or anything about Jerusalem, the Negev, human rights. In the past, I had an American student of Pakistani descent who was also denied entry. No matter what you say, they assume you are going to the Territories.”

They can demand their rights without reference to statehood and without negotiations to achieve them. That means they punt on the question of one state, two states, or three states (don’t forget Gaza).  They demand their rights whether they are exercised within Israel or within their own country.  After all, basic human rights are guaranteed to all people, whether in their own state or as a minority in another country.These rights are specifically guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was ratified by the United Nations with the support of, among others, the United States and Israel.  (It was written by Eleanor Roosevelt, the US delegate).

The rights it guarantees (the right to vote, equality before the law, freedom of movement and resistance, peaceful assembly and association, the right to own property and not to be deprived of it, among others) are precisely the rights denied to the Palestinians of Gaza, West Bank, and East Jerusalem.

Why shouldn’t the Palestinians demand these rights, laying aside the question of a state with internationally recognized borders until the Israelis are ready to seriously discuss returning to the pre-’67 borders?

But would Israelis agree to granting Palestinians basic human rights? That is hard to say.  The far right has a strong racial animus to Arabs and would be reluctant to see any change in the status quo.

But that is not true of most Israelis.  Most Israelis are deeply troubled by the occupation but cannot imagine how it would be possible to evacuate hundreds of thousands of settlers from their West Bank homes.  They might be relieved if the Palestinians focused on rights rather than territories.

Wise words.

-Cecilie Surasky