Btselem joins uncivil society

Civil society is an important sector in a liberal democracy, helping to keep governments in check. However, what happens when the human rights NGOs that populate this sector ceases to be civil to society? On January 12th, Btselem released a position paper entitled “This is apartheid: The Israeli regime promotes and perpetuates Jewish supremacy between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.” The paper serves as a drastic policy shift for the human rights NGO, in which they take an antagonistic position to Israel and its society, and establish their audience as being an external rather than an internal one. By embracing extremist positions that frame Israel as an evil enemy, Btselem has chosen to harm Israeli society, rather than improve it.

The premise of Btselem’s paper is that Israel as a whole operates on a principle of “Jewish Supremacy.” The paper references the concept repeatedly. The term has long been used in radical lexicons prior to Btselem, usually by white supremacists and Neo-Nazis. These extremists argue that there is a Jewish Supremacist movement to oppress white peoples, commit genocide against them, and commit all other sorts of imagined crimes in order to place Jews at the top of the social hierarchy. The rhetoric has been adopted by anti-zionists, who link it to Zionism and apply it to their hobby-cause.

Now, Btselem has adopted the term “Jewish Supremacy”, asserting it defines Israel, and that all policies and actions from the state’s creation until now have been guided by it. Gone are security concerns, personal interests, and the vast array of politics that befuddle the Israeli system. “The Regime,” as Btselem calls it, is a single-minded evil devoted to the oppression of others. Aliyah, the right of Jews to immigrate to their historic homeland, is part of this evil framework, and of course, the lazy application of Israel as a non-democratic apartheid state is made as well. Btselem makes sure that readers of the Guardian and CNN know that Israel is not just evil, it is the evil of all evils.

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/btselem-joins-uncivil-society/