In addition to the six Palestinian NGOs, Israeli officials branded my neighbor, my life partner and an ice cream company as terrorists. No evidence needed.
Job Interview
In 2017, a few weeks after I gave birth to Adam, I had a job interview, by video call, for a U.S.-based position in the field of human rights. I nursed Adam, hoping he would sleep, and tried to clear the fog in my head, a consequence of overflowing hormones and lack of sleep. The interview with five members of the selection committee was to last a half-hour. One of the interviewers dedicated ten of our thirty minutes to questions designed to determine whether I’m a terrorist. He read from a file in front of him, apparently sent by one of the right-wing NGOs that work closely with the Israeli government. I’m the co-founder of Gisha, an Israeli human rights organization that promotes the right to freedom of movement for Gaza residents. Gisha works in cooperation with Palestinian human rights groups, including some of the six organizations that Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz last month designated as terrorist organizations, following years in which Israeli officials publicly maligned them.
The American interviewer believed that one of the organizations with which Gisha works, among the six that would be placed on Gantz’s blacklist, is a terrorist organization. According to his logic, Gisha was therefore also a terrorist organization. He wanted to understand the extent of my association with Gisha, in order to determine the nature and scope of my involvement in terrorist activity. In answer to my question, he said he based his information on statements by the Government of Israel, none of which contained any evidence.
I didn’t get the job.
Dispute with a neighbor
Almost a year ago, my partner, Osama, and I left our apartment in the Ramallah area temporarily, for his sabbatical in North Carolina. A few months later, our neighbors told us that Israeli soldiers had stormed our building in the middle of the night and arrested the neighbor from upstairs, a round, 40-something man with glasses who works in one of the organizations that Gantz designated. I had a tense relationship with him, ever since his wife parked their car in front of mine and left it there all night, preventing me from getting to a meeting.
He’s still in Israeli detention.
The Shin Bet and our newborn children
I met Osama because the Israel Security Agency, the Shin Bet, accused him of terrorism. Sixteen years ago, Osama was accepted to a PhD program at Tel Aviv University, but the Israeli authorities refused to allow him to leave Ramallah and reach the campus for a variety of reasons, including the Shin Bet’s allegation that he was an activist in a terrorist organization. At that time, we were lawyer and client. I submitted a petition on his behalf to the Israeli High Court of Justice, and we won a partial victory: the state’s attorney agreed to let him leave Ramallah to travel to Europe, but not to Israel, to do a PhD program there. I was a young lawyer but already practiced in the ritual: I was asked to leave the courtroom. Shin Bet officials presented, behind closed doors, secret information showing that Osama’s entry into Israel would endanger state security and public safety. I returned to the courtroom to hear the familiar decision: the justices accepted the Shin Bet’s claim. In the car, on my way back to the office, I updated Osama on the results of the hearing:
“I can’t do anything,” I told him then. “If the Shin Bet insists, no one will intervene.”
Years later, after I had stopped being Osama’s lawyer and became his life partner, that same claim of dangerousness contributed to the delay in Osama meeting our daughter, Forat. She was born preterm and spent the first month of her life in a Tel Aviv hospital. Osama wasn’t allowed to enter Israel. We made do with Skype calls, in which I pressed the telephone against her incubator and inserted my hand into the frame, so that Osama would understand how small she was.
Three and a half years later, the Shin Bet displayed more flexibility by allowing Osama to enter Israel, in order to accompany me for the birth of our son in a Jerusalem hospital. Osama cut the umbilical cord that bound me to Adam, a gift from the Shin Bet. But its generosity was limited. The secret information about Osama remained in the Shin Bet file, and it’s non-rebuttable. Other requests –for Osama to join the children and me for a Jewish new year’s dinner at my cousins’ in a Tel Aviv suburb or a Passover seder at my aunt’s – were denied. The basis for the allegations against Osama, like those against the six Palestinian civil society groups, will remain secret and thus impossible to shake off.
Terrorist ice cream
Israeli President Isaac Herzog, a darling of the Zionist left, also participated in the official Israeli project to identify terrorist activity when he declared in July that a decision by Ben & Jerry’s to stop selling ice cream in Israeli settlements in the West Bank is “a new form of terrorism.”
Burden of proof
There are terrorists in the world. Osama, our neighbor, and I are not among them, and the six Palestinian organizations and Ben & Jerry’s are not terrorist organizations.
I can’t prove that. But who should bear the burden of proof?
This post was also published on haaretz.com on November 1, 2021:
https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-under-israel-s-rule-any-palestinian-bears-burden-of-proof-on-terrorist-activity-1.10343698
תודה על כתיבה ממצה ומעניינת העוזרת להבין את המציאות שמאחורי הכותרות.
And the Nassar family that owns the West Bank farm that hosts Tent of Nations. They own the land legally by the same purchase (100 years ago and re-registered with all government changes) and documentation that Israeli courts recognized for houses in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. And yet roads have been built thru the farm, olive trees have been burned. No houses, not even a dog house, can be built. Still the Nassar family says say “We refuse to be enemies”.
Thank you, Miri. Yes, they are an admirable family. I had the privilege of visiting their cave.
”מי שאינו לומד ההיסטוריה, יאלץ בדיעבד לחוות אותה שנית״ – אמירה חכמה!
במבט אחורנית בהיסטוריה האנושית נגלה כי הרבה עמים כבשו עמים אחרים, הרבה שלטונות עריצים מררו את חייהם של אנשים פשוטים חפים מכל עוון, הרבה מנגנוני חושך הפכו את חייהם של רבים לגיהנום… א ף א ח ד מהם לא שרד! בסופו של דבר יקוב הדין את ההר וייעשה צדק.
עם שמאבד את המצפן המוסרי שלו , ששוכח את כללי האתיקה האנושית הבסיסית –
א י ן ל ו ק י ו ם.
צר לי על אותם ישראלים שבבוא היום יאמרו ״לא ידענו״ כשהכל היה כתוב באותיות ענק על החומות (ראה גדעון לוי, עמירה האס, אילנה האמרמן, עמוס גבירץ, טליה ששון ועוד ועוד, הכל כתוב ומתועד)
צר לי שרי יקרה, אין לי מילות נחמה (הסברים יש לי) אני מקווה שתמצאו את הכח לעמוד מול הרוע הצרוף הזה.
יום אחד השמש תזרח גם בשבילכם!
בידידות
יהודה שרל
תודה, יהודה.
מכירה את הכל מקרוב וכל כך חבל לי שזאת רוח המדינה בה אני חיה.
רק לשתף סיפור אישי. משנת 2000 עד 2004 הייתי חשודה בנתב”ג בגלל קשרי עם פלסטינים. בכל נסיעה שלי לחו”ל הייתי חייבת להקדים מאוד כי חיפשו בחפצי ובגופי בחדר צדדי ואח”כ הובילו אותי אחר כבוד בליווי אישי עד לשער העליה למטוס. השב”כ חשד בי בהעברת חפצים מסוכנים לפי בקשת פלסטינים דבר שלא היה ולא נברא. אחרי 4 שנים פתאום נפסק הנוהל והפכתי נוסעת רגילה מן המניין. אוכל לצרף את המכתב שהשב”כ שלח לבקשת חברת הכנסת אז זהבה גלאון.
אוי. אני שמחה שלפחות זה נפסק. תודה שאת חושפת את החוויה הזו.
There are no words. As a Jew, I am completely ashamed of what Israel has done to you and Osama. Thank you for sharing this.
Thank you, Jan.
Umm Forat
As usual, your posts are a great joy.
May the winds of good fortune be always at your back.
Much love to you and yours,
Ipruk.
Thank you!
Like Jan, I am incredibly ashamed of the country I live in, not only for what it does to yourself and Osama, but what it does to all those less able to defend themselves from the terrorist settlers, who do whatever they like and are protected by the Government, and to all those abused by the army and are ignored by Israeli ‘justice’.
Thank you, Jennifer.
כייף לקרוא את הבלוג שלך. אמנם התוכן מייאש, אבל נפלא לשמוע את קולך צלול ואמיץ.
תודה, טפי!