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<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/NewsDetail/index/2/7300/Israeli-Ministers-Call-For-Civil-Target">http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/NewsDetail/index/2/7300/Israeli-Ministers-Call-For-Civil-Target</a></small></small></small></b><br>
<br>
<big><b>Israeli Ministers Call For "Civil Targeted Killing" of BDS
Activists; Barghouti Mentioned by Name</b></big><br>
<br>
omar barghouti - April 4, 2016<br>
<br>
RAMALLAH: (Editors Note: Omar Barghouti is the founder/leader of the
Boycott Divestment Sanctions Movement that has started hurting the
Israel government following its success in Europe and the United
States in particular. This has led to this current attack and
threats, articulated against BDA leaders and activists by senior
Ministers in the Israeli government.. Barghouti in this first person
report for The Citizen has warned of the dangers imminent in these
threats. This needs to be taken up by the world community at large
to ensure that no harm comes to the Palestinians and others who have
been working relentlessly to bring Israel under some pressure
through the completely non-violent BDS movement.) <br>
<br>
Some on this list, including journalists, have written to me
inquiring about or voicing their concern at the recent Israeli
government minister's threat of "civil targeted killing" against BDS
"leaders" and activists.<br>
<br>
There is of course a good reason to be seriously alarmed when
government ministers anywhere make such threats against human rights
defenders. So imagine the seriousness of the threats when made by an
increasingly pariah and lawless regime of occupation,
settler-colonialism and apartheid that practices extrajudicial
killing against Palestinians with impunity and that considers even
Zionist Israeli dissenters who dare to reveal -- self-censored and
cherry-picked -- Israeli war crimes as "traitors."<br>
<br>
It is worth remembering that in 1995 then hawkish Israeli prime
minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a fanatic Jewish-Israeli
who was influenced by a campaign tainting Rabin as "traitor."
Current Israeli leaders were silent about or even involved in that
incitement campaign.<br>
<br>
Rabin will always be remembered by Palestinians as the Israeli
leader who ordered and orchestrated the ethnic cleansing of
Palestinian cities Lydda and Ramleh in 1948. He will also be
remembered as the minister of "defense" who in the first intifada
(1987-1992) ordered his soldiers to "break the bones" of captured
Palestinian children and youth to prevent them from throwing stones
at the occupation forces.<br>
<br>
Still, the atmosphere then was significantly more "civil" than it is
today! The Israeli "justice" system was still pretending then to be
independent and professional; settlers did not have the effective
control on government that they have today.<br>
<br>
The level of criminal impunity that pervades the Israeli
establishment today has triggered US Senator Patrick Leahy to ask
Secretary of State John Kerry to investigate whether US tax money is
helping Israel in committing "extrajudicial killings" of
Palestinians.<br>
<br>
It is not everyday that such a ranking senator courageously asserts
that he owes it to US taxpayers to have military aid to Israel
reviewed in light of its "gross human rights violations." Loyalty to
Israel's far-right regime of oppression is a considerably higher
priority in the US Senate, after all, than it is to American
taxpayers.<br>
<br>
Back to the veiled Israeli government threat to harm BDS activists,
here are the facts. <br>
<br>
<br>
As was reported in the Israeli media, Israeli Intelligence Minister
Yisrael Katz said (Hebrew) at the largest Israeli anti-BDS
conference, held on March 28 in Jerusalem, that Israel should
engage in “targeted civil eliminations” of BDS "leaders" with the
help of Israeli intelligence, intentionally using language that
plays on the Hebrew term for “targeted assassinations.” My name was
mentioned in this context.<br>
<br>
Here's the link to a youtube for speeches by minister of interior
Arieh Deri and minister of intelligence Yisrael Katz. It is
professionally and accurately translated and subtitled by a
Jewish-Israeli human rights activist (and colleague).Several of
my colleagues (Palestinian, international as well as
Jewish-Israeli BDS leading activists) and I feel alarmed and
seriously concerned for our physical safety after this top-level
threat.<br>
<br>
We are not panicking, needless to say; neither will this remotely
thwart our human rights work. But we do not take such threats
lightly either.<br>
<br>
We are still working on collecting the threats and attacks made by
other<br>
<br>
Israeli government ministers and political leaders against the
BDS movement (and against me by name), like Ayelet Shaked (minister
of justice), Gilad Erdan (minister of strategic affairs and anti-BDS
czar), etc.<br>
<br>
Minister Yisrael Katz in his statements plays on the official
Israeli military term for assassination, "targeted thwarting," and
adds "civil" to it. As Israeli colleagues have pointed out, adding
"civil" to a term used for many years by Israeli officials to
indicate assassination is ambiguous at best.BDS is a global
nonviolent human rights movement led by the Palestinian BDS National
Committee (BNC), the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society.
Established in 2005, on the first anniversary of the ICJ advisory
opinion against Israel's wall, BDS calls for fundamental Palestinian
rights under international law.<br>
<br>
The BDS movement is anchored in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and rejects, accordingly, all forms of racism and
discrimination on the basis of identity, including
anti-Semitism.In the last couple of years, Israel has been
desperately waging a legal warfare (lawfare) against BDS, after
failing for 10 years to even slow down the impressive spread of the
movement. Israel is fostering an environment in France, the UK,
the US, Canada, Germany, Australia and elsewhere akin to
McCarthyism, advocating for extreme suppression of civil liberties
and freedom of speech. Butstill, this is the first time that an
Israeli government minister so violently incites against Palestinian
human rights defenders<br>
<br>
As Katz has openly alerted us in his statements, Israel's
intelligence services plan to fabricate supposed connections between
BDS "leaders" and "terror organizations." Aside from sullying our
names, this mafia-like campaign of intimidation is implicitly
setting the ground for physically harming us, especially in light
of the toxic atmoshpere in Israel.<br>
<br>
Israel's Chief Rabbi for the Sephardic community is calling for the
ethnic cleansing of all "non-Jews" from "the land of Israel."<br>
<br>
A Jewish settler leader has called Palestinian and other Christians
"blood sucking vampires" who should be "expelled" from Israel. He
called for torching even more of our churches, after many
Palestinian churches and mosques have indeed been torched by
far-right settlers, while protected, and therefore supported, by the
Israeli military, security forces and judiciary.<br>
<br>
Settlers who have torched to death Palestinian toddler Ali Dawabsheh
and his parents last year and later celebrated their gruesome acts
of terror have yet to be sentenced for the murders. This has
naturally encouraged other settlers to torch the house of the
remaining eyewitness to the crime, Ali's uncle.<br>
<br>
Summing up a growing sentiment among Israeli dissenters, the
prominent Israeli journalist Gideon Levy called 2015, "the year of
blatant and unapologetic Israeli fascism." I wonder how Levy might
describe 2016 when it ends.<br>
<br>
It is in this specific environment of rampant racism, criminality
and utter impunity that one needs to read minister Katz's threat of
"targeted civil elimination." In Israeli society today, as Senator
Leahy rightly notes, soldiers, security forces and armed settlers
easily get away with murder of Palestinians, quite literally.<br>
<br>
Indeed,"targeted civil assassination" could well be understood by
far-right settlers or other extremist elements in Israel as a
license to kill by a "civilian," rather than by the
military/security apparatus. Although Katz goes around the bushes
and avoids defining the term in any accuracy, his claim that some
BDS leaders and activists are connected to "terrorism" and
"terrorist organizations" further amplifies this between-the-lines
license to kill.<br>
<br>
The US administration and the EU are also responsible, of
course, for this criminal impunity. Other than providing the
life-line for Israel's regime of apartheid and occupation, arming it
to its teeth and protecting it from any serious international
sanctions for decades, the US and the EU sent their Tel Aviv
ambassadors to participate in this Israeli anti-BDS conference. They
have yet to raise a peep in protest over the implicit threat to
neutralize human rights defenders that were made there.<br>
<br>
This amounts to a tacit US and EU green light to Israel to go ahead
with its mad and illegal war on the nonviolent BDS movement and its
main activists, in Palestine and around the world.<br>
<br>
This is the reason why I am seriously concerned for my physical
safety and that of my Palestinian, Israeli and international BDS
colleagues. We hold the Israeli government responsible for any
physical harm that may be inflicted on any of us as a result of this
vile attempt to silence our voices.<br>
<br>
We also hold the US administration and the EU partially
responsible for any such attacks.Regardless of their position on
BDS, human rights organizations and citizens of the world who care
about civil rights and human rights are called upon to take a clear
position defending our right to advocate for BDS as a matter of
conscience and free speech. They are also called upon to condemn in
unambiguous terms this unprecedented Israeli government incitement
to violence against Palestinian and other human rights defenders.<br>
<br>
Moshe Dayan once said that "Israel must be like a mad dog, too
dangerous to bother." The current Israeli regime is scrupulously
heeding Dayan's advice. But "mad dogs" can be stopped. Indeed, mad
dogs must be stopped, as there is no telling whom they may bite
next.<br>
<br>
<br>
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