One wonders what precisely the doyen of the “human rights brigade”, Hagai El-Ad, the CEO of B'tselem, sought to achieve with his recent oped (“Israel’s charade of Democracy” June 1st 2015, New York Times). Was it to lament that Israel triumphed in the Six Day War of 1967? When hacking through the turgid prose, one hopes to be rewarded with an original thought or innovation, but El-ad only seemed capable of rehashing the same tired and clapped-out arguments regarding surrendering Judea and Samaria.
Perhaps the laziest concoction was his sweeping denigration of all “settlers” as the sole obstacle to “true democracy” in Israel. It takes a special blend of narrow-mindedness and indifference to history to tar an incredibly diverse cross-section of the population as war criminals and obstacles to peace.
Indeed, the entire suggestion that peace would break out and democracy would ensue in the event of retreating from Judea and Samaria has been shown to be entirely fallacious.
It would seem that El-Ad “forgot” about Operation Protective Edge, which was a direct consequence of the 2005 Disengagement, and consisted of forcibly removing every Israeli civilian and soldier from Gaza in the misplaced hope that the Gazan population was more interested in governing themselves than in attacking Israel.
No one denies that the status quo is detrimental to all sides, but is El-Ad really suggesting that building a house in Gush Etzion in Judea is in any way comparable to the foreign-funded systematic campaign of incitement in the PA education system or the pernicious efforts spent trying to isolate Israel in international fora? Efforts, which in his short-sightedness, will not stop at his beloved Green Line.
One wonders whether “the human rights brigade” believes the Palestinians have any human agency whatsoever. The question arists after describing the litany of failure of Oslo, and the abortive parliamentary elections of 2006, all of which, according to El-Ad, had nothing to do with them
This hypocrisy unfortunately does not represent the full measure of El-Ad’s stunted world view. The suggestion that Israel’s democratic standing is damaged as a result of its presence in Judea and Samaria has been argued long and hard. It remains the primary point of contention in every General Election and has been used to separate Left and Right. For those who respect the democratic process, groups that see public opinion move away from their agenda have the integrity to reassess their priorities. Yet El-Ad’s disdain for the Palestinians is dwarfed by his disdain for mainstream public opinion in Israel. He has given up, and prefers now to carp to the world with help of the New York Times.
El-Ad made great mention of the anniversary of almost a half-century of “occupation”, yet his intervention stands in stark contrast to a far more important anniversary that we are commemorating. It has been said that the political discourse in Israel has to be elevated. As a society, we will only be able to fulfil that promise when all parts of society engage with each other. On the anniversary of the yahrtzeit of Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Fraenkel and Gilad Shaer, in the light of the unity prize and special events that took place in their memory today, we would do well to honour that memory and their parents’ efforts by engaging, not attacking, each other.