‘Who hits a 64-year-old woman with a bat?’

Cassandra Auren, an American peace activist, was visiting the Palestinian village of Tuba when settlers attacked her with a bat and fractured her skull.

Yuval Abraham, +972 Magazine, March 13, 2023

Cassandra Auren seen following a settler attack in the village of Tuba in the South Hebron Hills, West Bank, March 7, 2023.Cassandra Auren seen following a settler attack in the village of Tuba in the South Hebron Hills, West Bank, March 7, 2023.

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A 64-year-old American citizen was attacked last Tuesday by a group of masked settlers in the South Hebron Hills of the occupied West Bank. Cassandra Auren, a peace activist from Wisconsin, was standing with an Italian activist on land that belongs to the residents of the Palestinian village Tuba, when a group of settlers from a nearby outpost, Havat Ma’on, ran toward them. Auren said that one of the attackers stood behind her, and as she was turning to face him, he hit her in the head with a weapon that she described as looking “like a baseball bat.” She immediately passed out from the blow and was hospitalized with a fractured skull and internal bleeding in her head.

Tuba is an unrecognized village in the Masafer Yatta region of the South Hebron Hills. Like other villages in the area, it is slated for demolition, and its residents, who suffer routinely from harassment by settlers and soldiers, are prevented from building or using infrastructure. Long before the demolition and expulsion orders were issued, and green lit by the Supreme Court, residents were routinely denied building permits and any ability to develop the hamlet. Residents also report that, in recent weeks, settlers from Havat Ma’on have been coming to the village to graze their sheep on Palestinian land, destroying the village crops.

Auren said she came to Masafar Yetta out of a sense of responsibility. “[The United States] sends so much support money to Israel,” she explained, “but without knowing how it is being used to violently push Palestinians from their land. This is money that the U.S. gives with no parameters.”

Auren contacted the U.S. Embassy about the incident, which confirmed to +972 that an American citizen had been attacked near Tuba, and that the Embassy was providing her with assistance. “These settlers come and hit a 64-year-old woman from Wisconsin with a big bat. Who does that?” she said during our conversation. “And in a place where people live, so close to the village. If this had been my home, [it would be as if the attack was] occurring in my driveway. It’s shocking to me that that kind of violence happens so close to where someone lives. Children have to travel that exact path in order to get to their school.”

Cassandra Oren. (Courtesy)Cassandra Auren.

“I have tended to this land with my family ever since I was a child,” said Ali Awad, a local resident, +972 contributor, and one of the victims of the settler attacks. “This is my grandfather’s land. We have never faced anything like this. Suddenly these settlers are coming. They are a group of shepherds from Havat Ma’on who for three weeks have been coming in every day with their flock to destroy our agriculture.”

Israeli authorities have yet to make any arrests for the assault. A police spokesperson told +972 that the police opened an investigation, which is still ongoing. According to Yesh Din, an anti-occupation organization that monitors settler violence in the West Bank, between 2005-2022, police closed 92 percent of cases of settler attacks on Palestinians without filing any indictments.

Correction: An original version of this article used a misspelling of Cassandra Auren’s last name. 

This article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.

The Heartbreak and Defiance of Occupation

WORT 89.9FM Madison
2023-03-12

The Heartbreak and Defiance of Occupation

At a 1979 meeting of Israel’s “Ministerial Committee for Settlement Matters in the Judea and Samaria area,” created in 1972 for the purpose of establishing new settlements in the West Bank, chairman of the committee Ariel Sharon said of the “firing zones” he moved to create in 1967, “They were all aimed at a single goal, which was to create the option of Jewish settlement in the area. … These firing zones were seized for a single purpose, which was to be our land reserves for settlement.”

In the 1980s, Israel classified most of Masafer Yatta, an area in the south Hebron Hills, as a closed “firing zone,” Firing Zone 918, for military training purposes.

In 1999 Israeli forces expelled all the residents in Masafer Yatta on the grounds that they were living there “illegally” and were not permanent residents, despite most residents having documents proving their ownership of their lands.

A few months after the expulsion, they were permitted to return “temporarily” after an interim injunction from an Israeli court, as they fought for their right to remain on their lands. They suffered under IDF training, the noise of helicopters and tanks and presence of troops on the ground, disrupted access to grazing areas, destruction of crops, anxiety and fear among children and adults, blocked roads, denial of water and electricity. But they were home.

And then in May 2022, more than 20 years after the case began, the Supreme Court in Jerusalem ruled that the residents of Masafer Yassa could be expelled.

Ali Awad, activist and journalist and resident of the village of Tuba in Masafer Yatta talked to Gil Halsted about what is happening now. Awad write for 972 Magazine and posts often on Instagram as ali_awad98.
 

Email Congress Now to keep Jubbet Ahd Dhib School Standing

Dear Friend,

I am writing to you today with an urgent and time sensitive request for intervention, as yet another Palestinian school in the West Bank faces demolition by the Israeli Army. In this case, the the Jubbet Ahd Dhib School was not afforded due process or even given their day in court, and it can now be demolished at any time. Reach out to your Senators and Representative now and ask them to stand up for Palestinian children and their right to an education.

Email Congress Now

  • In 2017, the original school building in Jubbet Ahd Dhib was demolished by the Israeli Army, the night before the first day of the school year
  • The Palestinian Authority then rebuilt the school overnight, and the school has faced harassment at the hands of settlers since
  • Intervention by the U.S. State Department since 2017 has helped keep the school standing – but now it looks like it is in real danger

 

Rebuilding Alliance has been advocating to safeguard Masafer Yatta schools in our Contact Congress briefing series this year, and last year we tried everything we could to save the Sfai school, but to no avail. But out of all of the cases that we have seen, this case is especially horrendous:

– A powerful settler group, Regavim, pushed the government of Israel to demolish the school

– The school has not even gotten the opportunity to be involved in the proceedings of the case, no due process has been afforded to the village, and the village’s petition to appeal was rejected last week.

The children of Jubbet Ahd Dhib have the right to an education, and the right to learn in a safe school that isn’t threatened by settlers and the army. The only thing that can keep their school standing now is political pressure. Please Email Congress now and stand up for the children of Jubbet Ahd Dhib.

Sincerely,

Nisreen Malley, Advocacy Coordinator
Rebuilding Alliance

P.S. If possible, please take a moment to support Rebuilding Alliance’s work. You can donate online, or if you prefer to use mail, please make your check out to ‘Rebuilding Alliance’ and mail to: Rebuilding Alliance, 50 Woodside Plaza Ste. 627, Redwood City CA 94061

Upcoming Events: March 12-16, 2023

Sunday, March 12: WORT interview with Masafer Yatta Activist
Thursday, March 16: Cindy and Craig Corrie on WORT
Thursday, March 16: Tantura Film and Discussion


 
On Sunday March 12 at 5 pm, tune into WORT’s World View program for a taped interview with Masafer Yatta activist Ali, who will discuss the current situation of Israeli army and settler attacks and Palestinian resistance there.  (The interview will be aired after the news.)

Thursday March 16, 2023 marks the 20th anniversary of the killing of Rachel Corrie in Rafah. We continue to mourn her loss and celebrate her life. We will never forget her.

Locally, we invite you to tune in to WORT Radio’s A Public Affair with host Allen Ruff at 12 noon on Thursday March 16, 89.9 FM or listen on line for a live conversation with Rachel’s parents Cindy and Craig. 

A Public Affair with host Allen Ruff
WORT 89.9 FM Madison

Live Interview with Cindy & Craig Corrie, parents of Rachel Corrie
Thursday, March 16, 2023 10-11 am PDT; Noon-1pm CDT; 1-2 pm EDT

The Corries will talk with host Allen Ruff about their daughter, 20 years of the Rachel Corrie Foundation, RCF’s kinship with the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project, and the foundation’s commitment to Gaza and to Palestinian rights today, as startling events continue to unfold in the region.

The hour-long program can be heard live at the WORT 89.9 FM website here. The program will be archived at the WORT 89.9 website for later listening, as well.

At 9 pm CT on March 16, we also invite you to join a zoom showing and discussion of the new film Tantura, about the 1948 massacre in that village, co-sponsored by the Rachel Corrie Foundation as part of a year-long commemoration. 

Mideast Focus Ministry 10th Annual Film Series
Break the Silence – Stories of Occupation
Tantura: Film & Discussion

Thursday – March 16, 2023, 7 pm PT

Zoom only: Register for a link to this film and discussion by requesting a link at seattlemideastfocus@gmail.com

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The Huwara pogroms by Israeli settlers and military

Demolition Report

Good Shepherd Collective, 3 March 2023

Palestinians walking across the desert after the Israeli military demolished their homes.
Over $5,000,000 in reported damages after the Huwara pogroms — a collobrative night of violence organized by the Israeli settler movement and the Israeli military. Over 30 homes and 100 cars were burnt, as well several injured and one Palestinian killed.

Demolition Data

It’s critical to remember that while Israel’s use of home demolitions is a constant tool for indigenous displacement and erasure, the ebbs and flows of this formal policy’s execution are shaped by different political formations. A rise in home demolitions almost always corresponds to the power of the most fascist, right-wing elements in Israeli society. Therefore, it is no surprise that demolition metrics are up across the board. There is a 155% increase in displaced people compared to last year’s timeframe (January 1 through March 2, 2022, compared to January 1 through March 2, 2023). These numbers don’t account for the number of demolitions that happen inside the Green Line in places like the Naqab or the Galilee regions as well as other non-Jewish communities.

Organizations like Regavim, Ir David, the Hebron, and Ateret Cohanim have all funneled hundreds of millions of charitable donations through channels in the United States, Canada, and the U.K. to develop political programs that ushered in more robust, aggressive, and permanent policies that structured to erase Palestinian communities and replace them.

These financial structures have been essential in financing the ultra right-wing government, with members of the aforementioned organizations all utilizing their previous organizations to make inroads into the government and ultimately gaining MK positions — like Bezalel Smotrich — the co-founder of Regavim.

Dismantling the financial mechanisms that underpin the settler movement must take an elevated position within the Palestinian movement for liberation if we want to prevent the next Huwara. Learn more at defundracism.org

 Data from January 1, 2023 to March 2, 2023.
 Donor
 Funded
 Structures
 Demolished
 Israeli
 Operations
 35  226  93
Impact on Palestinian Lives
 Type  Displaced  Affected  Structures
Households  59  1,778  Residential: 60
People  318  10,851  Agricultural: 73
Males  163  5,704  Livelihood: 35
Females  143  5,159  WASH: 21
Children  150  4,724  Infrastructure: 4
 Others: 12

The State Department Should Deny Smotrich Entry

Please take this action aimed at the State Department. It is outrageous (and against US law) that someone who openly advocates for the genocidal “erasing” of an entire Palestinian town is allowed to freely visit the U.S. and spread his venomous hatred.

We are informed that the main restraint of Israeli ethnic cleansing in Massafer Yatta and other areas is the opposition of the U.S. State Department. They need to know that there’s a large constituency for Palestine.

The State Department must follow its condemnation of settler attacks on Hawara with action

One of the highest Israeli officials who endorsed the recent settler attacks in the town of Hawara and has publicly stated Israel should “erase” the town is planning to visit the US next week, while the affected town is still grappling with the aftermath of the brutal assault.

Sign our petition to call on the U.S. government to cancel Israeli Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s visa and deny him entry into the United States. The Biden Administration should make it clear that criminals advocating for genocide are not welcome in our country.

On February 26, 2023, armed Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian villages of Hawara, Burin, Zaatara, and Asira al-Qibliya in a pre-planned raid. Now, Israeli media reports that the army knew of the intention of the settlers to attack Hawara and did nothing to stop them. Dozens of Israeli settlers rampaged through Palestinian towns on Sunday night, torching cars and homes, injuring more than 100 Palestinian civilians, and killing Sameh Aqtash in his home. Earlier that day calls to descend on the villages were shared on social media networks. Prior to the attacks, Bezalel Smotrich “liked” a tweet posted by settler leader Davidi Ben Zion, who said the town of Huwara should be “erased.” Given a chance to explain himself the next day, Smotrich doubled down, saying: “I think that the town of Hawara needs to be erased. The State of Israel needs to do it, and not, heaven forbid, private citizens.”

After the attacks, U.S. State Department Spokesperson Ned Price condemned the statements, saying “I want to be very clear about this. These comments were irresponsible. They were repugnant. They were disgusting.” Condemnation is good, but words are not good enough and condemnation is only valid when followed by real, substantive action.

Sign our petition now urging the Biden Administration to deny Smotrich’s visa to the United States! AJP Action will hand deliver the petition to U.S. officials at the Department of State next week.

According to US law, the State Department can, and should, deny visas to any individuals who incite violence against civilians. Not only that, some human rights organizations believe that Smotrich has possibly committed the act of incitement to genocide, which also would prevent him from acquiring a U.S. visa under US law. If the US truly condemns such behavior, denying him entry should be a given.

Sign our petition today and spread it far and wide. Let’s say it loud and clear: genocidal racist Israeli leaders are not welcome here, and the United States must take the necessary steps to end its long-standing enablement and abetting of Israel’s apartheid against the Palestinian people.

Sign Our Petition Here

In solidarity,
Ayah Ziyadeh
Advocacy Director, AJP Action

 

Global Day of Online Action #EndEthnicCleansing

Palestine is on fire. Since yesterday night, Palestinian villages of Huwara, Burin, Asira Qabliya, Beita, Beit Furiq and Za’atara in South Nablus district have been under full attack by Israeli settlers, supported by their military. Settlers all across the West Bank have attacked people and their lands, burned their homes, streets and cars. Over 100 Palestinians have been injured.

This is part of apartheid Israel’s long term – and now dramatically escalating – strategy to deny Palestinians their very right to exist, destroy their villages and to ethnically cleanse them from their land.

TODAY the UN Human Rights Council starts its sessions. It is time to act NOW.

Israels latest onslaught makes today’s Global Day of Online Action, prepared together with the #EndEthnicCleansing network, ever more urgent.

Please join us to tell the UN it’s time to:

  • Uphold Palestinian rights
  • Stop Israel’s impunity
  • Dismantle Israeli apartheid.

You can find more about how to join below.

United we prevail,
Stop the Wall Campaign, February 27, 2023

SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLKIT

Global Day of Online Action

#EndEthnicCleansing #DefendMasaferYatta

Monday February 27

Aims

In the occasion of the start of the 52nd session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the #EndEthnicCleansing network promotes this Global Day of Online Action to:

  • Raise awareness that Israel’s 75 years old ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is intensifying. 
  • Demand concrete international action to end Israel’s impunity, including through sanctions and an end to military and security ties – Let’s tell them that time has run out to deplore and condemn.
  • Call on the UN to comply with its duty to end apartheid and demand it re-activates its mechanisms to fight apartheid.
  • Join boycott and divestment campaigns against bulldozer companies JCB (@JCBmachines), Hyundai Heavy Industries (@HyundaiHeavyInd), Volvo (@VolvoGroup) and other corporations that enable and profit from Israel’s ethnic cleansing.
  • Support Palestinian steadfastness against the ongoing colonization of their land.

The imminent threat of the ethnic cleansing of over 1000 people in 14 villages in Masafer Yatta region is paradigmatic. Unfortunately, it is only one of many places where Palestinians are resisting apartheid Israel’s strategy of expulsion that stretches from the Galilee to the Jordan Valley, spanning almost the entire area C of the occupied West Bank and reaching the Naqab in the south.

SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLKIT

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Stop Nora’s Eviction أوقفوا تهجير نورة

Occupied Jerusalem, 2/18/2023

On 6 February 2023, the Israeli occupation’s high court rejected a request from the Ghaith-Sub Laban family to appeal an eviction order issued in March 2022 in favor of an Israeli settler organization. The family’s request for appeal, submitted through their lawyer Mohammad Dahleh, is the last legal intervention possible within the Israeli occupation’s legal system.

This latest decision comes after over 45 years of repeated lawsuits against the family by Israeli occupation and its settlers with the aim of seizing the family’ house that is rented from the Jordanian Government since 1953 under a protected tenancy lease. The High Court’s refusal to intervene means that the elderly couple, Nora Ghaith-Sub Laban (67) and her husband Mustafa (72) will be forcibly removed from their house after 15 March, clearing the way for an Israeli settler organization to seize the property.

The family house, located in Aqabat Al-Khalidiyeh in the Muslim quarter is part of a large building complex, seized by Israeli settlers over the years leaving the Ghaith-Sub Laban family the last Palestinian residents. In 2016, the Israeli high court partially accepted a previous appeal by the family against an earlier eviction order, granting them a partial “remedy of justice” whereby the house would remain with the family for additional ten years until 2026. That partial “remedy of justice” however, also ruled that elderly Nora and husband would be the only tenants, while their sons, daughter and grandchildren would not be permitted to live with them in the same house. Additionally, the settlers were allowed to file a new eviction case against the family two years following the high court ruling in 2016, which is the case that resulted in the current eviction order.

The forced displacement of the Ghaith-Sub Laban family is not an isolated case; several families in the same neighborhood are also facing proceedings initiated by Israeli settlers, in addition to dozens of families in Jerusalem’s Old City, Silwan, Sheikh Jarrah and other neighborhoods in the occupied city. According to the United Nations’ Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), at least 218 Palestinian families in Jerusalem are under the danger of forced displacement in favor of Israeli settlers, as well as dozens of other properties seized over the years. In the upcoming month, Israeli occupation authorities and courts are finalizing proceedings to prepare for the forced displacement of five other families in occupied East Jerusalem, in addition to the Ghaith-Sub Laban family, including four families in Sheikh Jarrah and Kubaniyet Um-Haron and one family in Batn Al-Hawa in Silwan.

Forced displacement of Palestinians and seizing their houses, along with the house demolitions policy that targets over tens of thousands of Palestinian houses and structures in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, are part of a systemic policy and practice of forcible transfer of Palestinians, settlement expansion and increasing Jewish presence in all the occupied Palestinian territory that Israel has been practicing non-stop since 1948. The aim of these policies is to create a Jewish majority and the slow transfer of Palestinians either through direct forced displacement and destruction of property or through creating a coercive environment that leads to their transfer.

The timing of the high court’s refusal to intervene in the Ghaith-Sub Laban’s case is not coincidental, as Israeli occupation authorities aim to forcibly displace the family before the beginning of the upcoming holy month of Ramadan. It also reflects well the current politicization of the court, as well as the role of the Israeli legal system in facilitating Israel’s expansion, annexation, and oppressive policies against Palestinians under the disguise of justice. Israel’s new government of settlers and extremists has been very vocal about its hatred and racism against Palestinians, and are accelerating measures of forced displacement, demolitions and collective punishment of the entire Palestinian population.

The family reminds Israel, the occupying power, that East Jerusalem is an occupied territory to which the Fourth Geneva Convention applies. The forced displacement and transfer of protected persons is a grave breach of international law and a war crime. The wanton destruction of civilian property is a war crime. The family also reminds the international community of their third state party obligations under the Convention and demands the international community to take all measures necessary to bring to a halt the impending forced displacement and demolitions of Palestinian families and civilian property, in all of the occupied Palestinian territory.

Finally, the family reminds the international community and the United Nations that Israeli measures and policies of systemic forced displacement and destruction of Palestinian property are catalyst for further escalation and violence. There cannot be peace or quiet while Palestinians are being killed displaced and dispossessed and their basic rights are trampled on a daily basis. It is time for justice and accountability.

Ghaith-Sub Laban Family
 

The theft of Harun Abu Aram’s body, home, and life

Harun was born into, paralyzed, and killed by Israel’s colonial system. The struggle to dismantle it begins in the cave where he spent his final years.


Harun Abu Aram in his village of Al-Rakeez in Masafer Yatta, West Bank. (Emily Glick)

Yuval Abraham, +972 Magazine, February 16, 2023

Harun Abu Aram is dead. For two years, he lay completely paralyzed in a dirty cave, without running water, plagued by pain. This was his life from the moment an Israeli soldier arrived in the South Hebron Hills, in the occupied West Bank, to confiscate an electric generator and shot Harun in the neck in January 2021. The army refused to allow his family to build a home for him, despite the fact that the family was on their privately-owned land, and so they were forced to live in the cave. This is what Israeli expulsions and ethnic cleansing look like in the region of Masafer Yatta.

On Tuesday morning, at 26 years old, Harun took his final breath. His mother, Farisa, who goes by the nickname Shamiya, never left his side. She bathed his immobilized body with a bucket of water. She stayed awake with him as he writhed in pain during the nights. His sisters loved him deeply, holding the phone to his face whenever relatives would call to ask about him.

I met his mother for the first time at the end of 2020, when Israeli bulldozers arrived to demolish the family home. She built it for Harun, who was meant to get married and raise a family in one of its rooms. An inspector from the Civil Administration, the military body that governs the occupied territories, berated Shamiya not to retrieve any of the family’s belongings.

The bulldozer plowed through the home with everything inside, including kitchen cabinets. Doha, Harun’s youngest sister, cried as she watched her home torn to shreds. I remember how the dust stuck to her hair, and how her mother, a proud woman, said: “They demolished, we’ll continue to build.”

Weeks later, Harun was shot after he attempted to prevent Israeli soldiers who had arrived at his village of Al-Rakeez from confiscating a communal generator.

Harun Abu Aram in his village of Al-Rakeez in Masafer Yatta, West Bank. (Emily Glick)

Harun Abu Aram in his village of Al-Rakeez in Masafer Yatta, West Bank. (Emily Glick)

‘Geographic terrorism’

The last years have seen armed soldiers aggressively trying to block Palestinian construction by confiscating their tools, often at the behest of Israeli settlers living nearby. Sometimes, settlers themselves try to stop Palestinian construction, as they reportedly did last Saturday in the town of Qarawat Bani Hassan, where they shot and killed 27-year-old Methqal Abd al-Halim Rayan. Other times, soldiers fly drones to take aerial photos and send them to the Civil Administration, whose inspectors then arrive. This is one part of Israel’s vast colonial system, one that systematically prevents Palestinians from building their homes in areas such as the South Hebron Hills.

The dreadful hum of these drones buzzed overhead during the countless times I visited Al-Rakeez, one of the smallest villages in Masafer Yatta. Drones that peered into the homes of the poor farmers, forcing them to build at night, in secret.

Harun’s killing is a result of this colonial system, and more specifically, of the sick worldview that deems Palestinian construction as a form of “terrorism,” thereby creating a pretext for the army to “counter” it with military might.

Israeli politicians like to call this the “battle for Area C.” During hearings in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee at the time, Likud MK Avi Dichter referred to Palestinian building as “geographic terrorism”; right-wing MK Gideon Sa’ar argued that it will “determine the future borders of the country”; and far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, who today serves as finance minister, said that the Israeli army is responsible for the “battle.”

Palestinian residents from the village of Al-Majaz look on as the Israeli army trains in Masafer Yatta, June 21, 2022. (Oren Ziv)

Palestinian residents from the village of Al-Majaz look on as the Israeli army trains in Masafer Yatta, June 21, 2022. (Oren Ziv)

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You Can’t Save Democracy in a Jewish State


Protesters in Tel Aviv hold placards that say “Israeli students fighting for democracy” and “Without democracy there is no academy.” (Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)

Peter Beinart, New York Times, Feb. 19, 2023

The warnings come every day: Israeli democracy is in danger.

Since Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government announced plans to undermine the independence of Israel’s Supreme Court, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have demonstrated in the streets. All of Israel’s living former attorneys general, in a joint statement, have warned that Mr. Netanyahu’s proposal imperils efforts to “preserve Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.” Liberal American Jewish leaders are cheering on the protests. Earlier this month, Alan Solow, the former head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said he and other American Jewish notables “share the concerns of tens of thousands of Israelis determined to protect their democracy.” In a public declaration, Mr. Solow and 168 other influential American Jews warned that “the new government’s direction mirrors anti-democratic trends that we see arising elsewhere.”

On the surface, the battle between Mr. Netanyahu and his critics does indeed look familiar. In recent years, from Brazil to Hungary to India to the United States, anti-government protesters have accused authoritarian-minded populists of threatening liberal democracy. But look closer at Israel’s political drama and you notice something striking: The people most threatened by Mr. Netanyahu’s authoritarianism aren’t part of the movement against it.

The demonstrations include very few Palestinians. In fact, Palestinian politicians have criticized them for having, in the words of former Knesset member Sami Abu Shehadeh, “nothing to do with the main problem in the region — justice and equality for all the people living here.”

The reason is that the movement against Mr. Netanyahu is not like the pro-democracy opposition movements in Turkey, India or Brazil — or the movement against Trumpism in the United States. It’s not a movement for equal rights. It’s a movement to preserve the political system that existed before Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition took power, which was not, for Palestinians, a genuine liberal democracy in the first place. It’s a movement to save liberal democracy for Jews.

The principle that Mr. Netanyahu’s liberal Zionist critics say he threatens — a Jewish and democratic state — is in reality a contradiction. Democracy means government by the people. Jewish statehood means government by Jews. In a country where Jews comprise only half of the people between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, the second imperative devours the first.

To understand just how illiberal the liberal Zionism championed by Mr. Netanyahu’s leading opponents is, consider the actions of Yair Lapid, his predecessor as prime minister. Last month, Mr. Lapid penned a nearly 2,000-word essay in which he wrote, “If this Netanyahu government does not fall, Israel will cease to be a liberal democracy.” It didn’t include the word “Palestinian.”

That becomes less surprising when you realize that as foreign minister, in 2021, Mr. Lapid implored the Knesset to renew a law that denies Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip who are married to Palestinian citizens the right to live with their spouses inside Israel proper. The law is blatantly discriminatory; Jews can immigrate to Israel and gain immediate citizenship whether they have relatives in the country or not. And far from denying the legislation’s discriminatory nature, Mr. Lapid celebrated it. The law, he explained in a tweet in July 2021, “is one of the tools meant to ensure the Jewish majority in the State of Israel.”

When Tucker Carlson and Viktor Orban employ this kind of logic — when they promote policies designed to ensure that the percentage of white Christians in their countries doesn’t dip too low — American Jewish liberals recognize it as anathema to the principle of equal citizenship on which liberal democracy rests. Yet many now see Mr. Lapid as liberal democracy’s champion because he opposes Mr. Netanyahu’s judicial changes.

Another major figure in the anti-Netanyahu movement is former defense minister Benny Gantz, who last month urged Israelis “to protest for safeguarding Israeli democracy.” But as defense minister in 2021, Mr. Gantz designated six leading Palestinian human rights groups as terrorist organizations in what the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem called “an act characteristic of totalitarian regimes.” Israeli troops later forced their way into the organizations’ offices, seized documents and then welded shut the doors. Do those sound like the actions of someone interested in “safeguarding” democracy?

The problem runs deeper than just these politicians. When American Jewish leaders like Mr. Solow express solidarity with those “Israelis determined to protect their democracy,” they are not only deluding themselves about Mr. Netanyahu’s leading opponents. They are deluding themselves about Jewish statehood itself.


A protester holding a Palestinian flag in Tel Aviv at a demonstration against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government. (Tsafrir Abayov/Associated Press)

For most of the Palestinians under Israeli control — those in the West Bank and Gaza Strip—Israel is not a democracy. It’s not a democracy because Palestinians in the Occupied Territories can’t vote for the government that dominates their lives. When Mr. Gantz sends Israeli troops to shut down their human rights groups, West Bank Palestinians can’t punish him at the ballot box. They can complain to the Palestinian Authority. But the P.A. is a subcontractor, not a state. Like other Palestinians, its officials need Israeli permission even to leave the West Bank. In Gaza, too, Israel determines, with help from Egypt, which people and products enter and exit. And Gaza’s residents, who live in what Human Rights Watch calls “an open-air prison,” can’t vote out the Israeli officials who hold the key.

This lack of democratic rights helps explain why Palestinians are less motivated than Israeli Jews to defend Israel’s Supreme Court. As the Israeli law professors David Kretzmer and Yael Ronen note in their book, “The Occupation of Justice,” “in almost all of its judgments relating to the Occupied Territories, especially those dealing with questions of principle, the Court has decided in favor of the authorities.” Enfeebling the court would undermine legal protections that Israeli Jews take for granted but most Palestinians did not enjoy in the first place.

To be fair, roughly 20 percent of the Palestinians under Israeli control enjoy Israeli citizenship and the right to vote in Israeli elections. Yet it is often these Palestinians who protest most vociferously against Israel’s democratic credentials. In 2009 the Palestinian Knesset member Ahmad Tibi quipped that Israel was indeed “Jewish and democratic: Democratic toward Jews and Jewish toward Arabs.” To many liberal Zionists, that might sound churlish. After all, Mr. Tibi has now served in Israel’s Parliament for almost 25 years. But he understands that the Jewish state contains a deep structure that systematically denies Palestinians legal equality, whether they are citizens or not.

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