• A Hollow Democracy
    Israel has never extended democratic liberties to Palestinians. Now it is beginning to deny them to its Jewish citizens as well.
    by Matan Kaminer
    https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/04/israel-democracy-knesset-palestine-occupation-bds

    But the democratic public sphere available to Jews in Israel has been under attack in recent years, and in recent months it has been shrinking rapidly.

    At the head of the offensive stands Im Tirtzu, a non-governmental organization which began operations in 2008 with a campaign for censoring critical academics, before moving in 2010 to target Israeli NGOs which had provided evidence on human rights violations in Gaza for the United Nation’s Goldstone Report.

    Im Tirtzu and other right-wing NGOs funded by wealthy American donors live in close symbiosis with politicians in both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and its ally, the religious-nationalist Jewish Home.