Faced with growing domestic criticism from left wing human rights groups, the far-right Israeli coalition government today pushed through the creation of a parliamentary panel of inquiry that will “probe” such organizations on a number of fronts.
The effort, which was introduced by the Yisrael Beiteinu Party of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, aims primarily at groups critical of Israel’s foreign policy and assorted wars. According to MP Fania Kirshenbaum (Yisrael Beiteinu), the groups are to blame for growing international criticism of the far right government.
The vote passed 41-16 after voiciferous debate, which included MPs accusing the groups of “terror links” for criticizing Israeli wars and at least one insisting that the organizations are encouraging draft resistance because they “do not really care about the state of human rights.”
Members of the targeted groups, including Peace Now and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel condemned the announcement, saying it would do serious damage to freedom of speech within Israel. One dissenting member of the ruling coalition, Minister Herzog (Labor), condemned the probe, warning it would damage Israel’s international standing to be seen so overtly stifling dissent.
now that the peace process is out of the way, finally we can get rid of the real problems with our world… those damn antiwar groups always trying to delegitimize war.
Is it any wonder why well educated Israelis are leaving to go countries like Britain, the US, Canada, and Germany. Israeli government actions like what we see in this article only incourages the brain-drain. Progressive and well educated Israelis do not want to raise their families in what is becoming an extremist state.
Since Israel has the highest per capital level of engineers in the world and is the leading incubator of high tech ideas, your contention that there is a "brain drain" is foolish. There is far more intellectual and political freedom in Israel then there is on your average U.S. college campus where I am sure "progressive and well educated Israelis" (usually code for pampered, coddled Israelis of European background) can grouse and whine like their American counterparts.
We are a democracy. Just because we have expelled the people of the wrong religion and we continue to call land occupied to insure that the majority of the population never gets any rights or own property. If you do not believe that we are a democracy then we will follow Joe Macarthy's methods to handle your complaints. We are a democracy and you hate us for our freedom. We will make peace as we believe as a democracy we will insure you have a say unless we do not like what you say. Come to think about it you sound like you are anti-semitic.