By Ted Belman
Israel’s boycott bill has passed. According to Netanyahu: Boycott law reflects democracy in Israel it may be summarized as follows,
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According to the law, a person or an organization calling for the boycott of Israel, including the settlements, can be sued by the boycott’s targets without having to prove that they sustained damage. The court will then decide how much compensation is to be paid. The second part of the law says a person or a company that declare a boycott of Israel or the settlements will not be able to bid in government tenders.
[..] Netanyahu said the law does not taint Israeli democracy. “What stains (Israel’s) image are those savage and irresponsible attacks on a democracy’s attempt to draw a line between what is acceptable and what is not,” he said.
“Don’t get confused,” Netanyahu continued. “I approved the law, and if I hadn’t approved it it wouldn’t have passed. I am against boycotts targeting Israel.” Netanyahu spoke of the settler families who might be affected by boycotts. “We have brothers living eleven minutes away from here, in Ma’ale Adumim. You want to get rid of Ariel and Gush Etzion? Go to the Knesset and form a government that will act that way. But hurting families and children in Ariel? I find that illegitimate .”
On Tuesday, Israeli leftist organizations launched a series of protests against the boycott law passed in the Knesset the night before.
The Gush Shalom movement took its campaign to the legal level and filed a petition to the Supreme Court claiming the boycott law is unconstitutional and anti-democratic.
Dozens of Israeli law professors protest against the boycott law
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32 academics sign petition aimed at Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein stating that boycott law is unconstitutionaland does grievous harm to the freedom of political expression and freedom of protest.
Netanyahu replied,
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“What mars its image are the reckless, irresponsible attacks against the legitimate attempt by a democracy on the defensive to draw a line between what is acceptable and what isn’t acceptable,”
Arab MK Zoabi in Violent Rage at PM’s Speech
YNET editorial calls it an Undemocratic Immoral Law
In my opinion, democracy must be sacrificed to pursue a Zionist agenda. Those who stress the democratic nature of the state, undo its Zionist purpose.
I do not have the right to join with my neighbors in agreeing not to sell to a black or other minority. If I am a grocery market owner I do not have the right to join with other owners in boycotting the union. If I am a bully in school I do not have the right to advocate the shunning of anyone. If I try to organize a economic boycott of an industry in Texas such as the beef growers I could be sued for damages. if I say something malicious and I can’t proveit about a dentist or doctor that I am in a billing dispute with I can be sued for damages. There are a multitude of torts that I am responsible for. Liberals applauded the suit against the Ku Klux Klan and against the American Nazi party for what they advocated since it was claimed that they caused damage and physical harm to others. Boycott has long been used by the Arabs (well before the existence of the state of Israel) to damage the Jews. Currently it is illegal in the United States for a firm to boycott Israel as part of the Arab campaign to destroy Israel. href=’#comment-115809′>@Shy Guy –
@ Shy Guy:
We in Yamit waited for your Feiglins to mobilize in support of Yamit and Ophira as well as fighting against the whole Camp David agreements. For three years we waited and in the end there was a staged show&tell which mostly supported Begin coming when it was a fait accompli. later we learned of the tradeoff between Begin and Gush Emunim which essentially sold out the Jews in Sinai for additional settlements in Y&S and Gaza.
When Sharon announced the Gaza retreat the residents did essentially Nada along with most of the so called right, political religious and secular.
I don’t trust the so called religious right anymore than the radical left. They have shown and so far proved that they will not fight the government and it’s institutions over any principle, nationalist or religious.
While it may be correct that this law might theoretically be turned against the right, in so many ways the reasons for Feiglins concern are already in play and evident even without the law. At least the law levels the playing field at least theoretically, not that I believe most Israeli judges would find for any right wing complainant.
At least judging from the outcry and apparent anger and fear by Israels liberal left, maybe they understand something I don’t? I hope they are right.
@Shy Guy – Actually I disagree with you.
Unless the elected representative exert direct action the Israeli unelected funtionaires, well known in many instances as plants from the extreme unJewish sector, will not dispense justice equally. It is blatantly biased. Facts are facts.
The Law brings to the fore the people’s majority declaration of intent. Woe to anyone violating again the decisions of the majority…
Boycotts of cheese do not address a specific section of the cheese producing factories while boycotts against specific persons, universities, books, factories are rampant for extreme political goals.
We are interested on tearing down the later. Israeli products made in certain regions of Eretz Israel have been maliciously boycotted both here and overseas. One has to recall Olmert’s agreement with Europeans to prevent the sale of certain Israeli farm products, which had to be labeled to harm the producers.
The foreign financed “political persons”, in fact foreign operatives, sabotaged with intent to harm at all level specific Jews.
They are now put on notice that those they harm have recource of law.
I am not particularly interested on the opinions of certain folk overseas.
Moshe Feiglin: The Boycott Law
Once again, good people with good intentions have done something that is not good. According to the Boycott Law adopted by the Knesset this week, it is forbidden for an Israeli citizen to boycott or to call for a boycott on Israel or its institutions.
This is actually a blow for basic civil rights. There is no difference between the right to call for a boycott of cottage cheese or the right to call for a boycott of products produced in the settlements or the right to call for a boycott of a university that employs lecturers with whom I do not agree.
Everybody has the right to boycott – including the State. The government (not the Knesset) as the representative of the majority, can decide that it will not include those who call to boycott it in government tenders or in any other benefits. That is exactly what the government currently does; it boycotts Judea and Samaria and does not issue tenders there – despite the fact that the citizens in those areas are loyal to the State. No Israeli court will require the government to build in Judea and Samaria in contradiction of what it perceives as the public good. Likewise, if a university lecturer calls for a boycott of Israel, the government can withhold its funding from that university until the lecturer is fired.
Will the court allow that to happen? Of course not. By the same measure, the Israeli courts will neuter the Boycott Law of any meaning. That is a double loss for the national camp. We have created another tool with which to trample civil rights in Israel (a tool that will ultimately be used against the faith based public alone) and we also have not helped the settlements.
As anyone could have expected, the unJews rushed to their courtiers, (including inefable Mr. Rivlin’s cousin), and breathlessly demanded to have the Law by our elected representative, struck down by the self elected aggregate.
One can expect as well, interminable contortions by said courtiers to in one way or another try to do precisely that.
The people must finally be ready to call for free elections for Jewish Judges.
One should care less about foreigners views on this or other subjects.
With the conservative Likud in solid power (it looks like it will stay that way), why does everyone think that it is necessary to debate the issue. The law is passed and the rest of the world will either abide by it or they can go to war with Israel. I am so tired of this wrangling over various issues. Please annesx Judea and Samaria outright, build it up as rapidly as possible, move a large part of the population into it, build schools, synogoges, shopping malls and cemetaries. Let’s get on with it.
United Nations / 10-07-2011
UN ‘Human Rights’ official apologizes to Jews and animals
Jews and dogs: “GET OFF MY LAWN”
MUST READ: Lynched in London
by Giulio Meotti
Boycott Law lets Israel defend itself
By ELIHU STONE
Yes it is an act of war.
Typical hypocrisy from Europe which puts people on trial for criticizing islam. Why do they think they have the right to constantly butt-in to Israel’s internal affairs?
The Israeli Left has no moral standing to criticize this law. It was the one that criminalized free speech and they did so to silence Meir Kahane. As hypocrites, they’re worried this law might affect them in their pocketbooks! Boy, the grass always sure looks greener on the other side.
If they don’t like it, they can move to America which by the way has a far tougher anti-boycott law than Israel!
FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL NEVER BE, ONLY ISRAEL YESSIREE!!!
Many European countries have hate speech laws. Further, many American universities punish “hate speech” which is defined by each college administration on a case-by-case basis.
Israel is a functioning democracy. It has a Supreme Court, it has a court system. It has a legislature. The legislature enacts bills. The courts determine whether these bills meet various criteria. This is an internal Israeli matter to be settled by Israeli law and practices. Recently the European Union issued a statement negative to this specific law. All of Israel should unite in rejecting external declarations and pressures on Israel since Israel should be offended by “foreigners” interfering in domestic Israeli democratic/court issues.
Economic boycott is meant to destroy. It is an act of war.
B’tselem recently urged that the Arab residents of East Jerusalem not cooperate with the Israeli authorities (boycott is the correct word). They use the words “occupied East Jerusalem”. Meantime, the Palestinian Authority calls for East Jerusalem to be a Jew-free ( not Israeli free, but Jew-free).
This was my response to B’tselem (based on other persons responses):
Jews have indisputably been the majority in Jerusalem since at least 1853. It was a Jew-free area only during the brief period between 1948 to 1967, when Jordan ethnically cleansed East Jerusalem of Jews to interrupt a continuous 1,000-year Jewish presence.
Colonel Abdullah el Tell, local commander of the Jordanian Arab Legion,described the destruction of the Jewish Quarter, in his Memoirs: “The operations of calculated destruction were set in motion. . . . I knew that the Jewish Quarter was densely populated with Jews . . . I embarked, therefore, on the shelling of the Quarter with mortars, creating harassment and destruction. . . . Only four days after our entry into Jerusalem the Jewish Quarter had become their graveyard. Death and destruction reigned over it. . . . As the dawn of Friday, May 28, 1948, was about to break, the Jewish Quarter emerged convulsed in a black cloud—a cloud of death and agony. . . .” The Jordanian commander who led the operation is reported to have told his superiors: “For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews’ return here impossible.”
The Jordanians then went on to destroy 34 out of the 35 ancient synagogues in the Jewish Quarter and to use them as hen-houses, to desecrate the ancient cemetery on the Mount of Olives and to use the gravestones as latrines, and to deny Jews access to the Western Wall and to turn the courtyard into a garbage dump.
T o consider East Jerusalem “Palestinian” an atypical 18-year historical blip as the baseline for negotiations.means rewarding Israel’s Arab enemies, who aimed for exactly this goal when they leveled the Jewish Quarter.
Despite revisionist attempts to rewrite what happened in 1948 and1967, the fact remains that Israel was not looking to expand her borders but to live.
In 1967. Gamal Nasser committed an act of war by blockading the Straits of Tiran. He asked the United Nations to remove its peacekeeping force from the Sinai so that he could invade Israel and drive the Jews into the Sea. The U.N. complied instantly without batting an eyelash. Syria joined him. King Hussein of Jordan sent his armies to join them, too, creating a three-front war–. attempting to drive the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea. Israel fought to survive.
Thus I ask you what would be the appropriate action of the state of Israel when B’tselem actively calls the residents of East Jerusalem to boycott cooperation with the Israeli government and boycott the purchase of Israeli goods.
Lieut. Col. Howard