Initially, he was only prevented from leaving the country.He discovered that he was a prisoner in his own land when he tried to cross the border into Jordan.
Last month, the Israeli government notified Israeli-Palestinian civil rights activist Ameer Makhoul that his foreign travels pose a serious threat to the security of the state.
Then, on May 6, at 3:10 am, agents belonging to the GSS (the General Security Services, or Shin Bet) stormed into his Haifa home, confiscated documents, lap tops, the hard drives of his daughters’ computers and arrested him.
They then proceeded to search the offices of Ittijah, a Palestinian NGO headed by Mr. Makhoul, and also seized documents and computers.
The activist was charged with espionage, but since the gag order preventing public discussion of the case has only been partially lifted, it is not clear whom Mr. Makhoul is alleged to have met, though it seems to have been a member of Hezbollah.
In fact, the evidence against Ameer Makhoul remains secret.
As director of Ittijah, Mr. Makhoul meets with many militants and activists from the Middle East and elsewhere.
The NGO was founded in in 1995 to promote the development of Palestinian civil society, particularly in Israel.
Coordinating the activities of some eighty other Palestinian NGOs, it cultivates ties with the outside world to publicize the plight of the Palestinian people.
It achieved international recognition during the 2001 Durban World Conference Against Racism where the NGO denounced Israel’s treatment of its own citizens of Palestinian origin.
The accusation of espionage is thus a particularly vague, though useful one to level at any militant whose cause the Israeli government does not approve.
Israel does keep a list of individuals and organizations it is illegal to have any dealings with, yet the list is regularly amended.
An individual it was once permissible to meet can become an official enemy of the state over night. The conferences he (Ameer Makhoul) attends around the world are not like the Israeli ghetto. There are also Iranian, Lebanese, and Iraqi lobbyists present there. Naturally conversations are started and even friendships. No one checks whether the people we speak to are on some Israeli blacklist, Jafar Farah, director of the Israeli-Arab NGO Mossawa Center told ynetnews.
Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, considers the charge of meeting a foreign agent as a loose charge that allows the GSS to criminalize almost any Arab who establishes legitimate relations with political and social activists in the Arab world.
It was only after Mr. Makhoul’s attorneys threatened to boycott Tuesday’s remand hearing that they were finally authorized to meet their client, twelve days after his arrest.
After their first meeting with him, Makhoul’s attorneys, Hassan Jabareen and Orna Cohen, told ynetnews that some of the interrogation sessions lasted days, sometimes without any sleep. During those days, he complained about pains and dizziness. He was examined by a doctor on behalf of the Shin Bet. We understood from him that just like in Omar's case, the interrogations are very intensive with various investigation teams.
Dr. Omar Saeed, a political activist and director of a firm specializing in natural medicine, was arrested on April 24, and also charged with espionage.
Human rights activists consider the arrest of Makhoul as an additional sign that Israel is determined to criminalize all forms of Palestinian activism, even non-violent and legal ones. Ameer Makhoul is a key human rights defender, well known for his civil society activism on behalf of the Palestinian citizens of Israel. His arrest and continued detention smacks of pure harassment, designed to hinder his human rights work. If this is the case, we would regard him as a prisoner of conscience and call for his immediate and unconditional release, declared Philip Luther of Amnesty International.
It feels like there is an atmosphere of de-legitimization against Arab political and social organizations in Israel, and we are all concerned about this. The claim that we are trying to create a state within a state is one which belongs to those who want to shut up the voice of Arab society, Jafar Farah, of the Mossawa Center, told ynetnews.
Human rights activists have come to such conclusions due to the fact Ameer Makhoul’s arrest is by no means an isolated case.
Protests against the occupation and the separation wall are nothing new, but it is Israel’s response that has evolved and become harsher and less tolerant.
In the West Bank town of Bil’in, peaceful protests against the wall have taken place every Friday since February 2005, though some youths do throw rocks at the Israeli army and police.
Although the International Court of Justice (in 2004) declared that the construction of the wall was a violation of international law and that it should be demolished, the Israeli authorities have refused to do so and done their utmost to prevent even peaceful demonstrations against the wall.
The wall cuts the town of Bil’in in two, and prevents Palestinians from reaching their fields.
The police and army have killed six Palestinian during the weekly demonstrations these last eighteen months, including a ten-year-old boy, and hundreds of others have been injured.
Israel has also resorted to night raids in the West Bank in order to arrest those it considers the leaders of the protests.
One of these organizers, Abdallah Abu Rahma, leader of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, was arrested December 10, 2009, on International Human Rights Day…
He has been charged with incitement, stone throwing and possession of weapons.
This last charge rests on the fact that the activist collected Israeli tear gas canisters and bullet casings shot at the demonstrators that he then gave to the local museum as part of an exhibition. He has yet to be tried…
Mohammed Othman, a leader of the Stop the Wall campaign was arrested last September upon his return from Norway, where he had denounced the wall and its adverse effects on the lives of Palestinians.
He was held for four months, without being charged under administrative detention.
Finally, last January, he was freed, but the conditions imposed for his release are clearly intended to prevent him from resuming his militant activities.
He is banned from traveling outside the West Bank, and must immediately report to the Police every time the authorities see fit to summon him.
Jamal Juma’, leader of the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, was also arrested last December, another victim of Israel’s attempt to intimidate the Palestinian civil rights movement.
Detained without charge, he was released a month later.
Without international pressure I would not be out today.You can tell that there is pressure from abroad from how the guards behave with you inside. Yesterday I was released without charge and I thank everybody for their efforts and support.However, many others are still in detention and there are more arrests of activists every day. The authorities must stop this harassment, he told Amnesty International upon his release.
Weekly demonstrations are also held in Sheikh Jarrah, in Arab East Jerusalem.
There, activists denounce the gradual takeover of Arab homes by Jewish militants.
Last Friday, the police arrested fourteen activists, four of which then required medical attention. The protesters were incensed that the police had allowed right-wing activists to enter the neighborhood on Jerusalem Day, but were preventing them from doing likewise…
It remains to be seen whether the Israeli campaign to crack down on legitimate forms of protest and those that organize them will be successful.
Until the rights of Palestinians are acknowledged and respected however, the civil rights campaign will continue unabated.
I know that Israel's military campaign to imprison the leadership of the Palestinian popular struggle shows that our nonviolent struggle is effective. The occupation is threatened by our growing movement and is therefore trying to shut us down... What Israel's leaders do not understand is that popular struggle cannot be stopped by our imprisonment, Abdallah Abu Rahma told hour.ca.
There are other dismaying indications that Israeli society is no longer a tolerant one.
A recent poll commissioned by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University indicated that if 98% of Israelis support the idea of free speech, 76% considered that human rights organizations should not have the right to expose Israeli abuses.
More than 50% were of the opinion that there is too much freedom of expression.
Furthermore, 82% believe that whistleblowers that obtain information illegally and expose the unethical conduct of the Israeli army should be vigorously prosecuted…
Israelis have a distorted perception of democracy. The public recognizes the importance of democratic values, but when they need to be applied, it turns out most people are almost anti-democratic, Daniel Bar-Tal, a professor at Tel Aviv University‘s school of education told Haaretz. Faith in democratic values was not measured abstractly, but rather was put to the test regarding specific cases. Then, it turns out the Israeli public is not tolerant or pluralistic. The education system teaches students about government authorities and election procedures, but there is no in-depth discussion about democratic values and [how to] instill them. The whole subject of values is perceived as something left-wing, he added.
Foreign critics of Israeli policies are not welcome either.
Noam Chomsky, the 81-year-old MIT professor and prominent left-wing critic of both Israeli and American policies, and who happens to be Jewish, was denied entry into Israel last Sunday, after having been questioned for three hours…
He was to give a lecture at Birzeit University, a Palestinian establishment located in Ramallah, and also visit Hebron and Bil’in. His daughter was denied entry as well.
The official asked me why I was lecturing only at Bir Zeit and not an Israeli university," Chomsky recalled. "I told him that I have lectured a great deal in Israel. The official read the following statement: 'Israel does not like what you say.'"
Chomsky replied: "Find one government in the world which does."
"The young man asked me whether I had ever been denied entry into other countries. I told him that once, to Czechoslovakia, after the Soviet invasion in 1968," he said, adding that he had gone to visit ousted Czechoslovak leader Alexander Dubcek, whose reforms the Soviets crushed, according to Haaretz.
For the legal affairs journalist Boaz Okon, the decision to bar Chomsky from entering Israel is a foolish act in a frequent series of recent follies. Put together, they may mark the end of Israel as a law-abiding and freedom-loving state, or at least place a large question mark over this notion…However, in Israel our government has already started to threaten the freedom, or at least the freedom of those perceived as “others.” We are no longer interested in what “others” have to say, let alone in their right to live here normally. We want them to get out of here. We persecute “others” based on generalizations, suspicions, bias, or just because they annoy us, he wrote in ynetnews.
Last month, a famous Spanish clown, Ivan Prado, who wanted to establish an international clown festival in Ramallah, was also denied entry on security grounds. He was suspected of having ties to terrorist organizations.
Since its war on Gaza in January 2009, and the release of the Goldstone report that severely criticized Israel’s conduct during the conflict, Israel has been on the defensive and now views criticism emanating from human rights organizations, Palestinian civil rights groups or any other source as simply the latest attempt, and the most potent to date, to undermine the state of Israel and its right to exist.
As a result, it has responded harshly and shrilly. It is determined to place limits on free speech, questioning the loyalty of domestic critics, and the motivations of foreign ones.
Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of waging a propaganda war to discredit the organization, according to the NYT.
Last year, an Israeli official told the NYT that Israel was going to dedicate time and manpower to combating these groups.
Israel also considers Arab-Israelis a strategic threat, presumably because of who they are, non-Jewish, and supporters of the Palestinian cause.
Hence, all initiatives designed to promote Palestinian society and enhance Palestinian rights will not be tolerated, even if they are law abiding and peaceful. The Shin Bet security service will thwart the activity of any group or individual seeking to harm the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel, even if such activity is sanctioned by the law indicated a letter sent by the Prime Minister’s Office to the editor of a publication of the Israeli-Arab Balad party in 2007.The authorities clearly perceive Palestinian political activity the aim of which is to promote and protect their civil and human rights as a threat to Israeli democracy.
But what kind of democracy is it if it deems it can only survive by denying the rights of a minority of its citizens?
In essence, can Israel be both Jewish and democratic?
The Shin Bet clearly prefers to protect the Jewish character of the nation at the expense of its democratic character. Moreover, those whose actions may lead to the dilution of the Jewish essence of the state of Israel will be harassed, arrested and denied their fundamental human rights.
In short, Israelis fear that tolerating dissent within and views that weaken the government of the country, no matter how legitimate and accurate those views may be, will embolden the Israeli-Arabs, the occupied Palestinians, reinvigorate their efforts to assert their fundamental rights, and thus amounts to an existential threat that could possibly destroy Israel as it is currently constituted, Jewish and thus undemocratic.
Democracy is Israel’s real enemy.
As a result, Israel is waging war on democracy and all those who demand that their fundamental rights be acknowledged and respected.
This war on democracy manifests itself in various ways: occupying and building settlements on Palestinian land, harassing and arresting civil rights activists, expelling foreign critics, and seeking to destroy the reputation of those bold enough to expose Israeli unethical behavior (Richard Goldstone).
Preserving the status quo is thus an Israeli priority. This is conditioned on keeping the Palestinians under total Israeli subjugation.
Should the Palestinians succeed in developing a vibrant non-violent civil rights movement, and as the BDS movement continues to develop, Israel’s position will become untenable.
It will either have to crack down hard, thus abandoning all pretence of being a democratic state, or accommodate Palestinian demands, and evacuate the West Bank, thereby dangerously alienating the most militant strand of its population, the settler movement.
Israel’s objective therefore is to prevent the development of a Palestinian civil rights movement, and leave the militants with no other choice but surrender or violence.
If they resort to the latter, then the Israelis will once again make the claim that peace is not possible because they have no one with which to negotiate.
It is much more comfortable dealing with the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah, radical organizations that resort to violence. Israel can respond in kind, and is under no pressure to recognize or have any contact with them. Hence, its desire to preserve the status quo, and prevent the emergence of a democratic civil rights movement it would be compelled to accommodate and recognize.
Israel should come to its senses.
The Middle East is in dire need of peace and democracy.
We all know what needs to be done: promote and support those organizations and individuals seeking to resolve conflicts peacefully.
This entails and is conditioned upon recognizing the fundamental human rights of everyone.
Peace will come only at that price.
Until that day, the struggle continues, for the simple reason that the oppressed never surrender, or in the words of Ameer Makhoul,
Palestinian civil society protests Israel's repressive policies of intimidation but at the same time resolves to continue our struggle. We have achieved unity, and it is important for us to protect this. We will not allow Israel to isolate members or parts of our community. We have become more influential in the Arab media and we will use this influence. We have built our international networks and we call on them to support us. The attacks that are meant to divide us have had the complete opposite effect. Injustice unites us; we are all together in this struggle.
(the photograph of the wall in Bil'in can be found here)
Human rights activists have come to such conclusions due to the fact Ameer Makhoul’s arrest is by no means an isolated case.
Protests against the occupation and the separation wall are nothing new, but it is Israel’s response that has evolved and become harsher and less tolerant.
In the West Bank town of Bil’in, peaceful protests against the wall have taken place every Friday since February 2005, though some youths do throw rocks at the Israeli army and police.
Although the International Court of Justice (in 2004) declared that the construction of the wall was a violation of international law and that it should be demolished, the Israeli authorities have refused to do so and done their utmost to prevent even peaceful demonstrations against the wall.
The wall cuts the town of Bil’in in two, and prevents Palestinians from reaching their fields.
The police and army have killed six Palestinian during the weekly demonstrations these last eighteen months, including a ten-year-old boy, and hundreds of others have been injured.
Israel has also resorted to night raids in the West Bank in order to arrest those it considers the leaders of the protests.
One of these organizers, Abdallah Abu Rahma, leader of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, was arrested December 10, 2009, on International Human Rights Day…
He has been charged with incitement, stone throwing and possession of weapons.
This last charge rests on the fact that the activist collected Israeli tear gas canisters and bullet casings shot at the demonstrators that he then gave to the local museum as part of an exhibition. He has yet to be tried…
Mohammed Othman, a leader of the Stop the Wall campaign was arrested last September upon his return from Norway, where he had denounced the wall and its adverse effects on the lives of Palestinians.
He was held for four months, without being charged under administrative detention.
Finally, last January, he was freed, but the conditions imposed for his release are clearly intended to prevent him from resuming his militant activities.
He is banned from traveling outside the West Bank, and must immediately report to the Police every time the authorities see fit to summon him.
Jamal Juma’, leader of the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, was also arrested last December, another victim of Israel’s attempt to intimidate the Palestinian civil rights movement.
Detained without charge, he was released a month later.
Without international pressure I would not be out today.You can tell that there is pressure from abroad from how the guards behave with you inside. Yesterday I was released without charge and I thank everybody for their efforts and support.However, many others are still in detention and there are more arrests of activists every day. The authorities must stop this harassment, he told Amnesty International upon his release.
Weekly demonstrations are also held in Sheikh Jarrah, in Arab East Jerusalem.
There, activists denounce the gradual takeover of Arab homes by Jewish militants.
Last Friday, the police arrested fourteen activists, four of which then required medical attention. The protesters were incensed that the police had allowed right-wing activists to enter the neighborhood on Jerusalem Day, but were preventing them from doing likewise…
It remains to be seen whether the Israeli campaign to crack down on legitimate forms of protest and those that organize them will be successful.
Until the rights of Palestinians are acknowledged and respected however, the civil rights campaign will continue unabated.
I know that Israel's military campaign to imprison the leadership of the Palestinian popular struggle shows that our nonviolent struggle is effective. The occupation is threatened by our growing movement and is therefore trying to shut us down... What Israel's leaders do not understand is that popular struggle cannot be stopped by our imprisonment, Abdallah Abu Rahma told hour.ca.
There are other dismaying indications that Israeli society is no longer a tolerant one.
A recent poll commissioned by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University indicated that if 98% of Israelis support the idea of free speech, 76% considered that human rights organizations should not have the right to expose Israeli abuses.
More than 50% were of the opinion that there is too much freedom of expression.
Furthermore, 82% believe that whistleblowers that obtain information illegally and expose the unethical conduct of the Israeli army should be vigorously prosecuted…
Israelis have a distorted perception of democracy. The public recognizes the importance of democratic values, but when they need to be applied, it turns out most people are almost anti-democratic, Daniel Bar-Tal, a professor at Tel Aviv University‘s school of education told Haaretz. Faith in democratic values was not measured abstractly, but rather was put to the test regarding specific cases. Then, it turns out the Israeli public is not tolerant or pluralistic. The education system teaches students about government authorities and election procedures, but there is no in-depth discussion about democratic values and [how to] instill them. The whole subject of values is perceived as something left-wing, he added.
Foreign critics of Israeli policies are not welcome either.
Noam Chomsky, the 81-year-old MIT professor and prominent left-wing critic of both Israeli and American policies, and who happens to be Jewish, was denied entry into Israel last Sunday, after having been questioned for three hours…
He was to give a lecture at Birzeit University, a Palestinian establishment located in Ramallah, and also visit Hebron and Bil’in. His daughter was denied entry as well.
The official asked me why I was lecturing only at Bir Zeit and not an Israeli university," Chomsky recalled. "I told him that I have lectured a great deal in Israel. The official read the following statement: 'Israel does not like what you say.'"
Chomsky replied: "Find one government in the world which does."
"The young man asked me whether I had ever been denied entry into other countries. I told him that once, to Czechoslovakia, after the Soviet invasion in 1968," he said, adding that he had gone to visit ousted Czechoslovak leader Alexander Dubcek, whose reforms the Soviets crushed, according to Haaretz.
For the legal affairs journalist Boaz Okon, the decision to bar Chomsky from entering Israel is a foolish act in a frequent series of recent follies. Put together, they may mark the end of Israel as a law-abiding and freedom-loving state, or at least place a large question mark over this notion…However, in Israel our government has already started to threaten the freedom, or at least the freedom of those perceived as “others.” We are no longer interested in what “others” have to say, let alone in their right to live here normally. We want them to get out of here. We persecute “others” based on generalizations, suspicions, bias, or just because they annoy us, he wrote in ynetnews.
Last month, a famous Spanish clown, Ivan Prado, who wanted to establish an international clown festival in Ramallah, was also denied entry on security grounds. He was suspected of having ties to terrorist organizations.
Since its war on Gaza in January 2009, and the release of the Goldstone report that severely criticized Israel’s conduct during the conflict, Israel has been on the defensive and now views criticism emanating from human rights organizations, Palestinian civil rights groups or any other source as simply the latest attempt, and the most potent to date, to undermine the state of Israel and its right to exist.
As a result, it has responded harshly and shrilly. It is determined to place limits on free speech, questioning the loyalty of domestic critics, and the motivations of foreign ones.
Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of waging a propaganda war to discredit the organization, according to the NYT.
Last year, an Israeli official told the NYT that Israel was going to dedicate time and manpower to combating these groups.
Israel also considers Arab-Israelis a strategic threat, presumably because of who they are, non-Jewish, and supporters of the Palestinian cause.
Hence, all initiatives designed to promote Palestinian society and enhance Palestinian rights will not be tolerated, even if they are law abiding and peaceful. The Shin Bet security service will thwart the activity of any group or individual seeking to harm the Jewish and democratic character of the State of Israel, even if such activity is sanctioned by the law indicated a letter sent by the Prime Minister’s Office to the editor of a publication of the Israeli-Arab Balad party in 2007.The authorities clearly perceive Palestinian political activity the aim of which is to promote and protect their civil and human rights as a threat to Israeli democracy.
But what kind of democracy is it if it deems it can only survive by denying the rights of a minority of its citizens?
In essence, can Israel be both Jewish and democratic?
The Shin Bet clearly prefers to protect the Jewish character of the nation at the expense of its democratic character. Moreover, those whose actions may lead to the dilution of the Jewish essence of the state of Israel will be harassed, arrested and denied their fundamental human rights.
In short, Israelis fear that tolerating dissent within and views that weaken the government of the country, no matter how legitimate and accurate those views may be, will embolden the Israeli-Arabs, the occupied Palestinians, reinvigorate their efforts to assert their fundamental rights, and thus amounts to an existential threat that could possibly destroy Israel as it is currently constituted, Jewish and thus undemocratic.
Democracy is Israel’s real enemy.
As a result, Israel is waging war on democracy and all those who demand that their fundamental rights be acknowledged and respected.
This war on democracy manifests itself in various ways: occupying and building settlements on Palestinian land, harassing and arresting civil rights activists, expelling foreign critics, and seeking to destroy the reputation of those bold enough to expose Israeli unethical behavior (Richard Goldstone).
Preserving the status quo is thus an Israeli priority. This is conditioned on keeping the Palestinians under total Israeli subjugation.
Should the Palestinians succeed in developing a vibrant non-violent civil rights movement, and as the BDS movement continues to develop, Israel’s position will become untenable.
It will either have to crack down hard, thus abandoning all pretence of being a democratic state, or accommodate Palestinian demands, and evacuate the West Bank, thereby dangerously alienating the most militant strand of its population, the settler movement.
Israel’s objective therefore is to prevent the development of a Palestinian civil rights movement, and leave the militants with no other choice but surrender or violence.
If they resort to the latter, then the Israelis will once again make the claim that peace is not possible because they have no one with which to negotiate.
It is much more comfortable dealing with the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah, radical organizations that resort to violence. Israel can respond in kind, and is under no pressure to recognize or have any contact with them. Hence, its desire to preserve the status quo, and prevent the emergence of a democratic civil rights movement it would be compelled to accommodate and recognize.
Israel should come to its senses.
The Middle East is in dire need of peace and democracy.
We all know what needs to be done: promote and support those organizations and individuals seeking to resolve conflicts peacefully.
This entails and is conditioned upon recognizing the fundamental human rights of everyone.
Peace will come only at that price.
Until that day, the struggle continues, for the simple reason that the oppressed never surrender, or in the words of Ameer Makhoul,
Palestinian civil society protests Israel's repressive policies of intimidation but at the same time resolves to continue our struggle. We have achieved unity, and it is important for us to protect this. We will not allow Israel to isolate members or parts of our community. We have become more influential in the Arab media and we will use this influence. We have built our international networks and we call on them to support us. The attacks that are meant to divide us have had the complete opposite effect. Injustice unites us; we are all together in this struggle.
(the photograph of the wall in Bil'in can be found here)
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