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NY Times, Jan. 23 2016
Arrest of Leftist Israeli Activist Underlines Political Split
By ISABEL KERSHNER
JERUSALEM — Ezra Nawi, an Israeli Jewish plumber, has a long history as
a left-wing activist helping Palestinians in their struggle against
Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Now he is under arrest in Israel,
after a right-wing activist surreptitiously filmed him bragging about
exposing Arab brokers who tried to sell Palestinian land to Jewish
settlers. Such sales are a capital crime under Palestinian law.
Considered variously as a big-mouthed provocateur and a colorful
human-rights adventurer, Mr. Nawi has become the latest symbol in the
battle between advocacy groups on opposite sides of Israel’s political
spectrum, and the increasingly fierce debate here over the nature of
Israeli society and democracy.
The debate has heated up as Israel’s conservative government is pushing
forward contentious legislation that would require nongovernmental
organizations to disclose funding they receive from foreign governments
in their publications, advertising and meetings with public officials.
The proposed bill, which supporters say is meant to increase
transparency, would apply mainly to leftist groups critical of Israel’s
policy toward the Palestinians, since rightist groups mostly receive
private funding from abroad, and it has already drawn harsh criticism
from the Obama administration and European diplomats.
Daniel B. Shapiro, the American ambassador to Israel, took the unusual
step of meeting with Israel’s justice minister, Ayelet Shaked of the
rightist Jewish Home Party, and then released a pointed statement
afterward noting Washington’s “concern” about the bill.
“A free and functioning civil society is an essential element of a
healthy democracy,” the statement said. “Governments must protect free
expression and peaceful dissent and create an atmosphere where all
voices can be heard.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel later endorsed the bill, set
to be introduced in Parliament as early as next week, saying, “I do not
understand how a requirement for transparency is antidemocratic; the
opposite is true.” He added, “Financing by governments is certainly
something the public should know about.”
Mr. Netanyahu said the legislation should “require reports about the
first shekel or dollar from foreign governments,” rather than apply only
to groups that raise more than half their money abroad. But he also
urged dropping a provision that would require representatives of
foreign-funded groups who appear in Parliament to wear tags saying so.
Some have compared the legislation to a 2012 law in Russia that required
nongovernmental organizations to register as “foreign agents” if they
raised money abroad. In India, foreign-backed groups are prohibited from
engaging in political activity, a law that activists there feared was a
way of curbing criticism of government policies.
Here in Israel, it is part of a toxic tug of war over the boundaries of
political discourse amid mounting international criticism of Israel’s
policies toward the Palestinians. The dwindling left is frequently
vilified as traitorous, as empowered right-wingers create ever-narrower
definitions of Zionism. And the tactics are getting uglier.
Mr. Nawi, a gay Arabic speaker in his 60s and a prominent member of an
Israeli-Palestinian rights group called Taayush, was not caught in a
sting by the security apparatus for either Israel or the Palestinian
Authority. Instead, he was tripped up by a plant from a right-wing
organization, Ad Kan, which says it aims to “expose the true face” of
what it terms anti-Israeli organizations.
Video from Ad Kan’s hidden camera was broadcast by the respected
television documentary program “Uvda” — like an Israeli “60 Minutes” —
on Jan. 7. A court-imposed gag order on Mr. Nawi’s arrest — for, among
other charges, contact with a foreign agent and conspiracy to commit a
crime — was lifted on Thursday.
It is an odd case. Mr. Nawi, described in a 2009 New York Times profile
as “the Robin Hood of the South Hebron Hills,” helping Palestinians who
love him and “thwarting settlers and soldiers who view him with
contempt,” is now accused of endangering the lives of Palestinians. That
is because selling land to Israeli Jews is punishable by death according
to the Palestinian Authority. Although the authority is not known to
have carried out any executions for any offense in more than a decade,
there have been reports of torture in its prisons.
The Ad Kan video, from about a year ago, shows Mr. Nawi behind the wheel
of his jeep, bragging about what appeared to be a dubious sideline to
his activist work in the West Bank. He told the man sitting next to him,
whom he believed to be a fellow sympathizer, that he sometimes posed as
a land broker and engaged with other land dealers mediating sales of
Palestinian-owned land to Jewish settlers, then handed over their
details to the Palestinian Authority security services.
Asked what the Authority did with such people, Mr. Nawi said it “catches
them and kills them.”
Days later, he was arrested at the airport as he was about to leave the
country.
The Ad Kan sting also embroiled Nasser Nawajah, a Palestinian from the
hills of the southern West Bank, who was filmed suggesting that Mr. Nawi
arrange a meeting with a land dealer in an area under Palestinian
Authority jurisdiction to facilitate the dealer’s arrest. Mr. Nawajah, a
field worker for B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group that monitors
Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, and a third activist, Guy Butavia,
an Israeli, were also detained in connection with the case.
B’Tselem, in a statement, said that Mr. Nawajah reported to the
Palestinian Authority that a Palestinian citizen of Israel, “purporting
to be a land dealer,” was trying to sell land partly owned by Mr.
Nawajah’s family. “This is the only legitimate course of action for
Palestinians” in such cases, the statement said, adding that the land
dealer was alive and well, and had never been arrested.
An Israeli court ordered the release of Mr. Nawajah on Thursday on the
grounds that Israel had no jurisdiction in the matter. But all three men
are expected to remain in custody until at least Sunday.
Ad Kan activists say they have been planting their moles in leftist
organizations for more than two years and promise to reveal additional
material that they say will embarrass the groups. The exposure comes on
the heels of another campaign by Im Tirtzu, an Israeli ultranationalist
group, which labeled leaders from four leftist groups, including
B’Tselem, as “foreign agents” and equated their work on behalf of
Palestinians with support for terrorism.
For the left in Israel, the virulence of the rightist campaigns reflect
an increasingly hostile environment in which liberal values and free
speech appear to be under attack. The promotion of the so-called
Transparency Law by the justice minister, Ms. Shaked, has added to the
sense of threat hovering over the organizations.
Mr. Netanyahu, though, likened the proposed legislation to a
congressional requirement that witnesses at hearings disclose any
federal grants or contracts of payments they receive originating with a
foreign government.
A final draft of the bill has not yet been published. But Peace Now,
another Israeli group that opposes Israel’s occupation of the
territories captured in the 1967 war, said that it did not resemble the
standing rules of the House of Representatives. Instead, Peace Now said,
it includes “draconian clauses that consist of severe violations of
freedom of speech which do not exist in any other democratic country.”
The split over the bill reflects the broader political divide. Gerald
Steinberg, a political science professor and the president of NGO
Monitor, an advocacy group that tracks the work of nongovernmental
organizations critical of Israel, said that the amount of funding
provided by governments of the European Union was “out of proportion.”
Describing it as “a challenge to Israeli sovereignty,” he said it gave
“a very narrow part of Israeli civil society a major boost in terms of
their ability to influence internal debate and the marketplace of ideas.”
But Talia Sasson, a lawyer who worked in the state attorney’s office and
is now the president of the board of the New Israel Fund, a nonprofit
group that promotes civil rights in Israel and is a frequent target of
criticism from the right, said that the connotation of the transparency
bill was “to tell the Israeli public that these organizations work
against the state.”
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