{"id":4533,"date":"2021-11-01T03:07:53","date_gmt":"2021-11-01T01:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ummforat.com\/?p=4533"},"modified":"2024-10-21T18:56:35","modified_gmt":"2024-10-21T18:56:35","slug":"intimate-acquaintance-with-terrorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ummforat.com\/en\/intimate-acquaintance-with-terrorism\/","title":{"rendered":"Intimate Acquaintance with Terrorism"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

Job Interview<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u2019m 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\u2019m the co-founder of Gisha<\/a>,<\/span> 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<\/a><\/span> as terrorist organizations, following years in which Israeli officials publicly maligned them.<\/p>\n

The American interviewer believed that one of the organizations with which Gisha works, among the six that would be placed on Gantz\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t get the job.<\/p>\n

Dispute with a neighbor<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s still in Israeli detention.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Residential neighborhood in Ramallah, November 2020. Credit: Umm Forat<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Shin Bet and our newborn children<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019s attorney agreed to let him leave Ramallah to travel to Europe, but not to Israel, to do a PhD program there.\u00a0 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\u2019s 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\u2019s claim. In the car, on my way back to the office, I updated Osama on the results of the hearing:<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t do anything,\u201d I told him then. \u201cIf the Shin Bet insists, no one will intervene.\u201d<\/p>\n

Years later, after I had stopped being Osama\u2019s 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s non-rebuttable. Other requests \u2013for Osama to join the children and me for a Jewish new year\u2019s dinner at my cousins\u2019 in a Tel Aviv suburb or a Passover seder at my aunt\u2019s \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

Terrorist ice cream<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u2019s to stop selling ice cream in Israeli settlements in the West Bank is \u201ca new form of terrorism<\/a><\/span>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burden of proof<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are terrorists in the world. Osama, our neighbor, and I are not among them, and the six Palestinian organizations and Ben & Jerry\u2019s are not terrorist organizations.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t prove that. But who should bear the burden of proof?<\/p>\n

This post was also published on haaretz.com on November 1, 2021:<\/em><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.haaretz.com\/.premium-under-israel-s-rule-any-palestinian-bears-burden-of-proof-on-terrorist-activity-1.10343698<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5091,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_crdt_document":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_bookmark_settings":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[10,26,37,52,55,70],"class_list":["post-4533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bureaucracy-of-control","category-military-force","tag-ben-jerrys","tag-family-reunification","tag-israel","tag-occupation","tag-palestine","tag-terrorism"],"yoast_head":"\nIntimate Acquaintance with Terrorism - Sari Bashi<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ummforat.com\/en\/intimate-acquaintance-with-terrorism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Intimate Acquaintance with Terrorism - Sari Bashi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In addition to the six Palestinian NGOs, Israeli officials branded my neighbor, my life partner and an ice cream company as terrorists. 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