Nawi-Gate: the self-immolation of the Israeli far-left
Israeli TV broadcast extraordinary claims by a far-left Israeli activist: that he had delivered to the Palestinian Authority the names of Arabs who wished to sell land to Jews and that he anticipated they would be tortured and killed. What happened next poses profound questions for a much broader segment of the Left.
When the human rights community is confronted with inconvenient facts, there develops cognitive dissonance between these facts and the desire to end the Occupation. When the dissonance is resolved in favour of the latter, this discomfort is suppressed through resort to the coping mechanisms so embarrassingly displayed here: deflection, apologism and denial.
Whistleblowers and watchdog groups play an irreplaceable role in free societies. They test the openness of an open society, exposing to sunlight what some may wish to sweep under the rug. Liberal democracies need them. And so when they give an easy ride to perpetrators of human rights abuses for reasons of political expediency, they do not just shoot themselves in the foot – they injure the polity to which they belong.
As the Israeli left digests the consequences of these revelations, there are flares of clarity through the moral smoke. If the Left is to meet Shavit’s demands of becoming ‘realistic, moral, democratic, liberal and decent,’ it will have to examine where it went wrong as the start of a conversation of where it can go right. Its prophets will have to devise credible solutions for engaging with the Israeli public that exists – not the one that they would prefer exist. As ‘Nawi-gate’ suggests, however, that is going to require picking up the broken pieces and rebuilding atop the ashes.
Eugene Kontorovich: Boycotting Israel isn’t free speech
Gov. Cuomo’s recent executive order requiring state agencies to divest from companies that boycott Israel has led boycott proponents to claim he’s violating the First Amendment, which safeguards free expression, and particularly political speech.
Cuomo’s order comes as numerous states have passed anti-boycott legislation in the past year. As these legislators understand, there is no free speech problem here. States have a right to refuse to spend their money on what they view as bigoted or improper conduct.
The First Amendment protects speech, not conduct. The Supreme Court unanimously held, in a case called Rumsfeld vs. FAIR, that the government can deny federal funding to universities that boycott military recruiters. Even though that boycott was based on political considerations, that did not make it protected speech.
Similarly, the act of boycotting Israel does not in and of itself express any political viewpoint. Companies may boycott Israel to prevent further harassment from the BDS movement, to curry favor with Arab states or out of mere anti-Semitism. Unless the company or institution explains its actions , those actions have no message. That is why refusals to do business are not speech.
Indeed, federal law already bans participation in certain kinds of boycotts of Israel — those sponsored by foreign countries — and no one has ever doubted the constitutionality of these measures.