Speak your mind in Israel at your own peril; Knesset boycotts free speech
Had the dateline been Iran or China, we’d find outrage in the morning newspapers and on the evening televised news. But interesting that you can’t accidentally channel surf or flip a daily broadsheet rag into some news about the Knesset banning speech by Israeli citizens endorsing boycott movements aimed at the occupation of Palestinian territories. The law has a lot to say about how Israel views its illegal expansion outside internationally recognized borders, and pretty clearly tells any other parties in the discredited peace process, that it’s route to peace involves claiming all land it occupies as its own.
The vote came the day after members of the Israeli parliament queued to personally deliver Glenn Beck hand jobs (you practically expect them to grant him a permanent seat and turf a Palestinian family so he can have an East Jerusalem home with a view). There’s not much I can say about this. More importantly, I think, is what many Israeli citizens who do not agree with their county’s policies will do about it. Here, I share a statement that my pal Rann Bar-On made earlier today on new, still-in-its-bubble-wrap Google+ social network. He has approved the statement being put in as public view as possible. Here’s hoping that more people follow the example:
- Edit: Rann’s is based off one made by another friend of mine, Bekah Wolf, which you can find here.
- Edit 2: Here we have a boycott statement signed by growing number of Israelis.
GUEST POST FOLLOWS ==>
Rann: Please feel free to share this in any forum whatsoever. I have (for the first time ever) set this as open to the entire Internet, because that’s the point!
I am making this statement because the Israeli government recently made it illegal to do so. There is much discussion about whether or not people should sign statements against the anti-boycott law with their own names. People are referring to the “decline” in Israeli democracy. Many want to know the risk involved.
Palestinians have not had the luxury of deciding how “risky” an act of defiance against Israeli occupation and apartheid will be. So long as Palestinians risk imprisonment, injury, and death for the sake of freedom, I won’t cower in the face of much less risk. I think every other Israeli citizen should do the same. Worrying about having your bank accounts frozen is no excuse at all.
I will not only attach my name, but my Israeli ID number. I will publish links to this in all public forums I participate in. I call on all Israeli citizens to do the same.
So here goes:
I call for boycott against the State of Israel in order to harm the State of Israel by means of boycott. If this is not clear enough, I will clarify: I (Ran Baron, ID number: 036490597) hereby call for any person to deliberately avoid economic, cultural or academic ties with another person or another factor only because of his ties with the State of Israel, one of its institutions or an area under its control, in such a way that may cause economic, cultural or academic damage. I knowingly publish a public call for a boycott against the State of Israel, hoping that according to the content and circumstances of the publication there is reasonable probability that the call will bring about a boycott; I am aware of this possibility.
And in Hebrew, for the those lovely people at the Shabak, some of whom do not speak English.
So, this trial was not about my position on Muslims killing American civilians. It was about my position on Americans killing Muslim civilians, which is that Muslims should defend their lands from foreign invaders – Soviets, Americans, or Martians. This is what I believe. It’s what I’ve always believed, and what I will always believe. This is not terrorism, and it’s not extremism. It’s what the arrows on that seal above your head represent: defense of the homeland.
