The black flag over Israel's democracy
Israelis are relinquishing their democracy through their silence and actions.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the massacre carried out by soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces against the Arab Israeli village of Kafr Qasim, during which 49 residents died, including women and children, who were making their way home from their fields. In anticipation of the 1956 military campaign over the Sinai Peninsula, Israel had declared a curfew for Arab villages on that day. The villagers were returning from the fields half an hour after the declaration, unaware of the curfew.
Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Halevy, in his famous ruling concerning the massacre, determined that the order to shoot the villagers had been “patently unlawful.” He said, “The hallmark of manifest illegality is that it must wave like a black flag over the given order, a warning that says: forbidden!" Halevy added, “Illegality that pierces the eye and revolts the heart, if the eye is not blind and the heart is not impenetrable or corrupt — this is the measure of manifest illegality needed to override the soldier's duty to obey and to impose on him criminal liability for his action.” Eleven officers and soldiers were sentenced to jail terms of 3-14 years, eventually downgraded by reduced sentences and clemency.
When the State of Israel was established, it imposed military administration over areas populated by Palestinians. Military rule, which was discriminatory and cruel, was repealed in 1966. A year later, in 1967, Israel established discriminatory and cruel military rule over the West Bank and Gaza after capturing them in the June war that year. These days, the black flag is once again flying in the evil wind blowing across Israel: Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan, also a member of the diplomatic-security Cabinet, declared in October, “Every terrorist must know that he will not survive the attack he is about to carry out.” The leader of a political party, Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid, announced that same week, “Anyone taking out a knife or screwdriver — [by a directive] should be shot with intent to kill.” Israel Police Deputy Commissioner Moshe Edri, until recently commander of the Jerusalem District Police, was even more emphatic, stating, “Anyone stabbing Jews or harming innocents is as good as dead.” Too often, injured attackers or people suspected of planning a car ramming, and even unlucky passersby, are shot to death by the security forces.
The foreign minister of a European Union state has been added to the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s blacklist after daring to demand that Israel investigate these lethal shootings by security officers. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is also foreign minister, described the demand by Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom as “absurd and stupid” and refused to respond when asked if the Swede had been motivated by anti-Semitism, instead of rejecting the premise. These days, Israeli diplomats save their growing concern over the deterioration of Israel’s international standing for private conversations. They open up only when they are being personally insulted. The Foreign Ministry’s labor union flexed its muscles at Education Minister Naftali Bennett when he dared cast aspersions on ministry employees because of the active support of Alon Liel, former director general of the ministry, for European pressure on Israel to end the occupation.
