In America, one is called “racist” at the drop of the hat. This epithet is no longer limited to people who discriminate based on race but is used against people who voice any disagreement with leftist PC. If you are against multiculturalism, you are called a racist. If you are against illegal aliens you are a racist. If you are for limiting Muslim immigration, you are a racist. If you want to ban sharia law, you are a racist, and so on. The reason for such name calling is to inhibit you from expressing a contrary opinion. Unfortunately it works.
In Israel, the appellation of choice by the left is ‘anti-democratic”, or worse,”fascist”. Any effort to protect the state of Israel, is attacked. So if you are in favour of the Naqba Law which withholds government money from institutions or bodies that undermine the state, you are a fascist. If you voted for the anti-boycott legislation which protects the livelihood of institutions and Israelis living in Yesha, you are a fascist. If you are in favour of a loyalty oath for all citizens, you are a fascist. If you favour an investigation of NGO funding, you are a fascist.
And, heaven forfend, if you criticize the behavior or origin of some of the tent protestors, you are villified and shunned.
These defenders of democracy are in fact anti-democratic themselves.
They see nothing wrong or anti-democratic in excluding rightists from academic faculties, in excluding rightists from the Israeli Supreme Court, in not giving equal time to rightists on National media, in denying a radio license to Arutz Sheva, and in fighting for a Judenrein Palestine,
They are also hypocrites. They fully approve of the law that prohibits ”insulting a public official” and are all for the arrest of Rabbis who endorse treatises of religious law that discuss the permissibility of killing enemy civilians when it would save IDF lives in wartime.
The most egregious thing they did in the name of democracy was to outlaw the Kach Party headed by Rabbi Meir Kahane as being racist. Kach/Kahane advocated separating Jews and Arabs, denying Arabs citizenship and expelling them. He saw them as a threat to Israel as a Jewish state. He has been proven right on that last count. His fellow MK’s preferred to be “democratic” and turn a blind eye.
Such expulsion from the Knesset constituted interference in political expression, and would clearly violate free speech norms in the US, In the name of free speech, he should have been allowed to make his case and voice his concerns. On the other hand the Arab MK’s can say and do whatever they want to undermine the Jewish state and nothing is done to stop them.
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As a case in point, when Im Tirtzu, the proactive Zionist student group, issued a Report last year, condemning the New Israel Fund and others for financing far left NGO’s, the Left was outraged. Haaretzpublished an article by Gideon Levy, who called it “A McCarthyite movement”. Because Maariv had the audacity to reprint parts from this Report, Levy referred to them as “the tabloid daily that never shrinks from McCarthyism”. He came to the defense of these NGO’s as follows:
“Oy, gevalt! There are nongovernmental organizations that want Israel to be a better, more just state, and that the New Israel Fund dares to underwrite.”
Not so. Their real agenda is to undermine Israel as a Jewish state.
Then in March of this year, Israel passed the Naqba Law. The fact that this law did not limit free speech but simply denied state funding to groups which sought to undermine the state, did not prevent the Left from screaming bloody murder about the death of free speech.
On the same day, the Knesset passed a bill allowing small communities in the Negev and Galilee to set up admissions committees. It seemed that many communities wish to prevent Arabs from moving in, because it would change the nature and harmony of the communities and endanger Jewish girls. The Left fought this as discriminatory and unacceptable.
They support a solution that creates a Palestinian state based on the separation of Arabs and Jews and even expulsion of Jews, but are against separation in Israel.
The last outrage to upset the Left was the passing of the Anti-Boycott Bill. Naomi Chazan, the head of NIF in an interview in Haaretz under the title, Fighting for the Soul of the Israel, said:
“The Boycott Law is in some ways the most problematic in terms of basic rights in a democratic society. It touches on fundamental freedoms: freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, freedom of association and certainly also freedom to protest. The law rules out any possibility of protest. From the point of view of democracy, this is a wrong that almost beggars description. Every person who, for reasons of conscience, does not buy products made in the settlements becomes a criminal. “
A close reading of the law simply makes it a tort (civil wrong) to advocate or participate in a boycott against the State of Israel, which is defined as the“deliberate abstention from economic, cultural or academic ties with a person or with another body, only due to their affinity to the State of Israel, its institutions or an area that is under its control, in such a way that may harm him economically, culturally or academically.”
It allows the court to impose punitive damages irrespective of the actual damage. The left believes that it is their inalienable right to cause such damage in the name of free speech. It doesn’t believe in the right of the state to protect its citizens and institutions from such actions.
As Eugene Kontorovich points out in Does the Anti-Boycott Law harm Free Speech,
“These criticisms [of the bill] are wrong as a matter of principle. More insidiously, they hold Israel to a standard never applied to other nations, and criticizes it for passing laws that are well within the western democratic mainstream.”
The ZOA supported the law with these comments
“Israel is under existential threat from many countries and peoples around the world. Israel is enduring an organized worldwide campaign to boycott, divest from and sanction (BDS) the Jewish state."
The ZOA sharply criticized the New Israel Fund for having “falsely claimed that the bill “criminalizes freedom of speech,” and said that "Gush Shalom falsely states the law is ‘a death sentence for the right to freedom of expression.’
Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin, wrote,
“Those seeking to implement boycotts are not merely expressing criticism of government policies but are, in fact, waging economic warfare on Israel. Moreover, such boycotts are not merely symbolic efforts to chide the Jewish state on a particular issue but part of an insidious international conspiracy to strangle a nation."
“If the majority of Israelis, and it would appear a majority of the country as well as the Knesset backs this measure, it is because they rightly see advocacy of boycotts as racist attacks on their very existence… Israel’s foes are not, as some in this country falsely assert, merely objecting to its possession of the West Bank and the city of Jerusalem but its very existence.”
Defenders of these NGO’s cry “McCarthyism” or “fascism” based on the unsubstantiated charge that Israel is limiting their free speech. While doing so they clothe themselves with the beatific intent of defending Human Rights and making Israel a more just society. The truth is otherwise.
The Goldstone Report, which accused Israel of all manor of war crimes, was largely compiled from material provided by what is often referred to as Israel’s “human rights community.” which includes B’tselem.
Jonathan Pollack argues in his brilliant analysis of B’Tselem Witch Trials in Commentary
“In making such a profound contribution to the Goldstone Report, B’Tselem was performing the task to which it has truly dedicated itself: not the defense of human rights in the West Bank and Gaza, but the delegitimization of Israel and its existence as a Jewish state."
In many ways I view the activities of the human rights NGO’s as giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Such activities could amount to sedition or subversion, if not treason. They are truly miscreants.
The “human rights organizations” are dedicated to preventing Israel from being uniquely Jewish or pursuing uniquely Jewish goals such as retaining Judea and Samaria. They do so in the name of democracy and human rights. For them Zionism is racism.