Suppressing book bolsters settlers

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The decision by an Israeli book chain to stop selling a pamphlet criticising settlers undermines the nation's democratic credentials


Seth Freedman
guardian.co.uk
Wednesday 14 April 2010 12.07 BST

Targeting Israeli businesses via the threat of boycotts is usually the preserve of radical forces from abroad, but the latest sanctions storm to hit the country is very much an internal affair. Tzomet Sefarim, one of the nation's largest booksellers, this week bowed to intense pressure from rightwing critics to stop selling The National Left, a political pamphlet which heavily criticises the settler movement.

According to a Tzomet Sefarim spokesman, the extraordinary decision to withdraw the book was taken despite the company being "a chain for all of the people of Israel no political affiliation". Instead, the company acted "because we received many complaints that the book hurts the feelings of some of our customers, we decided to stop selling it".

That the authors are bitterly opposed to the settlement enterprise is indisputable: settlers are referred to as "messianic madmen" and their children branded "brainwashed zombies"; elsewhere, the settler movement is accused of being "an industry that produces nothing but apartheid and destroys the Israel that we knew and loved". However, such language is far from unusual in the political cauldron that is modern-day Israel, and given the scathing abuse routinely levelled at the Israeli left by settler leaders, the campaign to ban the pamphlet appears a hugely hypocritical endeavour.

In response to the chain's decision, a raft of Israeli academics have called for a boycott of the company, describing Tzomet Sefarim's behaviour as "a serious threat to the foundations of Israeli democracy". The protesters "urge anyone who holds democracy dear to go out and condemn the Tzomet Sfarim chain, and to apply pressure on it to return the book to its shelves. In addition, the chain's management should be demanded to apologise and commit that it will not remove books from its shelves due to ideological political pressure in the future."

Shulamit Aloni, the former chairman of the leftwing Meretz party, says the incident proves that Israel has become an anti-democratic state where settlers wield undue influence at every level of society and government: "Tzomet Sfarim succumbed to the pressure because everyone is afraid of the settlers. They are savages, racists and hate all those who do not support them."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/14/israel-palestinian-territories

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1. Article continued....

During the research for my book on Israeli settlements, my co-author's and my own cards were marked from the off when our project attracted the attention of suspicious settlers. One produced a "wanted"-style poster which was distributed to a number of settlement councils, with the caption "Beware of the Freedman cousins" emblazoned above our Cif photos. "Lying, slander and cynicism – all tools of the trade for the Freedman Cousins," it continued, in response to articles we had previously published in which we criticised certain aspects of the settlement enterprise.

Another incensed settler warned me to "be careful next time you set foot in a yeshuv ", after rabidly objecting to my political opinions. During our research we had an interview with rightwing radical Nadia Matar, part of which I published in a Cif article. We were told her reaction was to send out a furious missive to her acolytes, denouncing us as traitors bent on playing into the hands of Israel's enemies. While such attacks carry little weight when mounted on comment threads and elsewhere in cyberspace, when they emanated in the real world we had to take them far more seriously.

Their threats ultimately proved no real impediment to our work or safety, but the message we received was loud and clear: some settlers think nothing of intimidating and bullying their opponents as a means to silence criticism of their actions. Benny Raz, founder of the Bayit Echad campaign calling for settlers to be returned to Israel proper, told us of his own experiences at the hands of settler zealots:

They call me "Arab", "fascist", and worse. On one occasion a mob tried to tip over my car with my son and me inside, and on election day I even received a death threat from an opponent.

Such vicious behaviour is rarely dealt with by the Israeli authorities, who show even less desire to act when settlers routinely attack Palestinian civilians and rampage through their towns. The settlers' sense that they are above the law grows with every passing year, especially since the election of Binyamin Netanyahu and his hard-right government; the capitulation of Tzomet Sefarim to the extremists' coercion will only bolster the resolve of those in the settler camp.

However, according to Eldad Yaniv, one of the authors of the pamphlet, the recent setback will not stop them in their quest to rally the Israeli left: "We intend to print another few thousand, and distribute them in all sorts of places for free, throughout the country. If the settlers think they can shut people up, they're confused. They don't really understand who they're dealing with.

"I think that today they proved that what the book says about them is justified. For many years they have held Israeli society and the state by the balls, and it's time to put them in their place, and say that we are Zionist and Israeli and want to stop the occupation."

Whether he and his supporters are successful in their mission remains to be seen, though given the recent apathy of the bulk of Israel's leftwing camp it seems they have a daunting task ahead of them. In the meantime, this week's furore is yet another revealing sign that all is far from well underneath the façade of Israel's claim to be a fully functional bastion of democracy.

[rpannier]

2. Thanks for sharing

Very interesting story

I guess there are some among the settlers who believe that freedom of expression extends only to those who hold their views