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Palestine Think Tank
Wednesday 13 جمادى الآخرة 1431, by
All the versions of this article:
“Promised Land”– news and opinion from Israel – Ma’ariv (p. 12) by Arik Bender, wrote an article dated April 29th 2010 entitled Knesset moves to outlaw human rights organizations in Israel, “Something very troubling is happening to “the only democracy in the Middle East”.
“More than 20 MKs, including members of opposition party Kadima, proposed a new bill which will make it possible to outlaw important human rights groups in Israel. Among the organizations mentioned in the proposed bill are Doctors for Human rights, The Coalition of Woman for Peace, The Public Committee against Torture in Israel, and Adalah: the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights. All these organizations receive funds from the New Israeli Fund.
The article proceeded by saying: “According to a report in Maariv, the new bill will outlaw any organization “which is involved in activity intended to lead to the prosecution or arrest of IDF officers and government officials for war crimes.” The word “involved” gives it a very broad definition.
Note the phrase with which the article was started with: “Something very troubling is happening to “the only democracy in the Middle East”. Isn’t this more than true? More than probably it is, when we see that more than 20 MKs (The “Israeli Knesset”, which is the “Israeli” parliament , “proposed a new bill which will make it possible to outlaw important human rights groups in Israel”, and more than half of those who are considered “Israeli” support limiting and curbing activities of Human Rights organizations!
So what is left of democracy if the activities of human rights organizations are limited, curbed and illegitimated, especially in what is claimed to be the only democracy in an entire region and a central part of the world?
We mean the rights of the occupied people being trampled on by a certain group of people, including the occupier taking the liberty of restraining freedom of expression in addition to limiting the human rights of other people by denying them free movement. The occupiers, citizens of the Zionist state, illegally occupy and steal land other kinds of property, and have been doing so continually. Not only is property their concern, but they take the lives of the occupied people, be they young or old, by any sort of assassination or targeting. Let us not forget how they demolish and then take possession of the property of Palestinian Arabs and throw their residents in the street to be replaced by Zionist racist invaders.
We mean in an entity where the death penalty by its courts is banned against its citizens, but where its executive body and its elected juridical body, including its supreme court of justice, the highest judicial body, permits its executive body to overturn law to permit assassination of those it chooses by its armed forces or intelligence, whether internal or external. This means that the death penalty is not permitted by law against the entity’s first class citizens belonging to a certain religious faith, which the state claims to assume this religious character, but it certainly may be imposed on other categories of citizens and occupied non-citizens who belong to other religious faiths and ethnicities.
We mean this entity which permits itself to threaten its neighbors in Arab and non-Arab states and resistance forces and punishes them just because they dare to arm themselves. An occupied people is entitled to arm themselves by prescriptions of international law so as to enable themselves to defend their sovereignty with effective arms and weapons. They do this because it is their right. They must simply “break the existing balance of power with an illegal entity” that uprooted an entire population from its ancestral homeland, an entity that owns formidable conventional and unconventional arsenals of arms and weapons. These arsenals have allowed this rogue entity to wage an unending series of wars and terror operations against the indigenous population of the land it occupied with the aim of replacing them, as well as threatening its Arab neighbors and far away non-Arab and non-neighboring countries with demolition and destruction, just because they want to develop their lands and strengthen their citizens.
We mean this entity that issues an order it calls No 132 by the strength of which it is legal to put infants on trial and imprison them.
A public opinion poll published in the “Israeli” daily Haaretz showed that the majority of Jews in occupied Palestine desired to curb the activities of human rights organizations, and wants to punish those who uncover unethical and illegal military activities and also to strike the press that publishes information about that. The results of this poll simply demonstrate how undemocratic the Zionist entity is and what little interest and respect for human rights its first class citizens have. This extends as well into the public and governmental bodies, at all branches, executive, judicial and legislative.
We mean in this entity where prisoners of war who number about 8,000 in the prisons and detention camps of Zionist occupation who suffer from catastrophic health conditions and health care that is almost unavailable, and in most cases the detention is harmful for their health if not deadly, which the occupation authorities subject them to in order to achieve certain special aims. Reports said that in addition to that Zionist doctors who practice various types of torture against the prisoners of war, these doctors use them for experiments for “Israeli” pharmaceutical companies. Also proved reports said that the Zionist entity and those belonging to it steal organs of Palestinian Arab martyrs and these organs become valuable merchandise.
This poll showed that a majority of the Jewish inhabitants of occupied Palestine are Zionist by all means of the word, and not simply people who belong to the Jewish faith and respect human rights and human dignity irrespective of their religious faith or ethnicity.
The published poll results exposed the racism of the vast majority of Jewish faith inhabitants though many of their presence in occupied Palestine is illegal in every international statute regarding occupation.
The poll said that the vast majority of “Israelis” want to severely curtail, or in a less drastic, but still scandalous way, they at least support limiting activities of Human Rights organizations, and believe it is just to punish not the perpetrator of human rights abuses but rather anyone who uncovers unethical and illegal military actions. They believe it is crucial to bar the press from publishing anything about that.
The poll revealed that almost six “Israelis” out of ten, a massive 58% of those canvassed, declared that human rights organization should not be allowed to uncover unethical “Israeli” practices nor should they be permitted to practice their activities freely, while half of them, 51%, said that there is excessive freedom of expression in “Israel”.
56% said that that “Israelis” who support punishing the “Jewish state” or boycotting it should themselves be punished.
73% support severely punishing journalists who publish reports that uncover information about unethical and illegal activities committed by the “Israeli” army and/or the (Shabak).
64% see that the “Israeli” press should not be allowed to publish reports that security bodies consider to cause danger to public security.
42% said “Israelis” should not be allowed to publish reports of Palestinian sources, which puts the army in a negative position, even if what was written had proven to be correct.
We ask ourselves and we ask you, is it not time to outlaw an entity that has such little tolerance for human rights and democracy before this tendency brings more suffering and disaster to the region?