Friday, February 06, 2009

The Underhanded Slime of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel

http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2009/02/underhanded-slime-of-association-for.html
The Underhanded Slime of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI)
by Steven Plaut


Israel is plagued by a leftist "civil rights" organization named the
Association for Civil Rights in Israel. It is a far-left anti-Israel
advocacy group. Like most "civil rights" groups these days, it is
terribly concerned about the human rights of genocidal Islamist terrorists
but not very concerned about the human rights of the children of Sderot
and Ashdod.

Anyway, the ACRI is in the news today because it tried to pull an
underhanded dirty trick on 37 prominent law professors, including deans of
law schools, in Israel. Haaretz Feb 6, 09 reports that the ACRI
approached 37 law dons and announced that it was planning to add their
names to a statement denouncing Israel for its "war crimes" in Gaza and
its murdering innocent Palestinian civilians . UNLESS the law professor
explicitly requested that his or her name NOT be included.

In other words, the ACRI has sunk to the level of those junk email
spammers who claim they have the right to flood you with spam and use your
name UNLESS you have explicitly told them not to.

According to the news story in Haaretz, which is not on their web site
(yet?), evidently all of the 37 deans and professors who got the
"invitation/announcement" from the ACRI asked that their names be removed
from the anti-Israel statement. The "invitation" was the initiative of
ACRI's own house shyster, one Dan Yakir, and a second shysterette, one
Debby Giller-Chio, who heads the ACRI's department on legislation. The
statement these two people wrote, and upon which they added the names of
the 37 others without bothering to get their permission, called for an
investigation into Israeli war crimes against Gazan civilians in the
recent Cast Lead operation. In a letter to the 37, the ACRI's lawyers
pontificated that "You have the moral and legal responsibility to demand
an investigation of these events that led to the developments (deaths of
civilians)."

This is a bit like demanding an official investigation into the violation
of the human rights of Germans by anti-Nazi partisans in World War II.
How would the shysters of ACRI like it if someone added their names to
petitions to support Avigdor Lieberman, or to impose capital punishment on
traitors and terrorists, or to expel Arab politicians from Israel, unless
the lawyers explicitly ask not to have their names added to the list?

Among those going public in demanding that their names be removed from the
bash-Israel letter were Prof. Yoav Dotan, Dean of Law at the Hebrew
University, the Dean of Law from Bar Ilan University Arie Reich, and the
Dean of Law from the Academic College of Kiryat Ono Dodi Schwartz.

Dotan complained that ACRI has a long track record of falsely claiming to
be the automatic representative of academic legal opinion.

Lest anyone be misled by its harmless sounding name, the ACRI is a
pro-terror anti-Israel extremist group. Here are some older postings
about the ACRI:


Bias at the "Association for Civil Rights in Israel"
by Steven Plaut

INN today carries a news report on yet another one-sided biased "report"
coming out of the misnamed Association for Civil Rights in Israel or ACRI.
The "Association" is for Civil Rights for everyone except Jews. The
Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) is an anti-democratic
extremist group that does not endorse free speech. ACRI, like B'tselem,
Physicians for Human Rights and many other assorted splinter far-left,
anti-Israel, pro-PLO groups in Israel, pretends it is nothing more than a
neutral human rights watchdog but this is an Orwellian lie. (B'tselem by
the way distributed a special brochure this week via Haaretz in which it
claims to prove that Gaza is still "occupied" by Israel because Israel
refuses to let the Hamas import weapons freely at the entrance points into
the Gaza Strip. Importing explosives - now THERE is a human right
B'tselem can get all indignant over.) Its latest "report" is a one-sided
attack on the Jews in Hebron. As usual. the ACRI just can't seem to locate
any acts of violence against Jews by Arabs. And self-defense is definitely
not a civil right of Jews in the eyes of ACRI.

ACRI is an extremist anti-Israel group that only cares about "human
rights" when "defending them" is part of delegitimizing Israel (such as in
this case). It has never heard of a human right for Jews not to be
murdered by terrorists.

Think I am exaggerating? The president of ACRI, Sami Michael, best known
for romanticizing communism, was cited in Haaretz (Oct 21, 2004) as
justifying Palestinian terror attacks against Jewish Israelis. Here are
his words as quoted by Haaretz:

Michael understands the Hamas members who are fighting these Jews, who
stuck a wedge down their throats. In an interview published in the latest
issue of New Horizons, a monthly on society and the state published by the
Berl Katznelson Foundation, Michael rejects the definition of Hamas
fighters as "terrorists."
"Imagine the feeling if I woke up tomorrow and saw this neighborhood,
which we inhabit, forcibly conquered by the Syrians, and they established
settlements here, and in order to go to the bus station, I needed
permission from the Syrian army. How would I feel?" the author from Haifa
asked. "If I fight them, I will be considered a terrorist. Why am I a
terrorist? Why do we call Hezbollah or Hamasniks terrorists? Why? Because
he fights on his own territory? Suddenly, aliens, occupiers, land on him
and tell him: "Your house is ours. It's his land, he and his forefathers
were born here, and the settlers say: We will never leave ... How would
you respond to this?"

A few years back, I approached ACRI and offered them an opportunity to
defend free speech in Israel and prove they support human rights for all,
even for those who might disagree with their leftist extremist ideology.
As you may know, I am being sued in a harassment SLAPP** "libel suit" by a
leftist extremist lecturer at Ben-Gurion University because I dared to
criticize his political opinions and his public political behavior. The
lecturer in question (Neve Gordon) served, for example, as a human shield
for Yasser Arafat while Arafat was hiding in his offices the murderers of
an Israeli cabinet minister and other terrorists, all this in order to
interfere illegally with an Israeli anti-terror military operation. The
suit is clearly nothing more than an anti-democratic assault on free
speech by a leftist extremist who thinks it is a crime to criticize him.

So, I contacted ACRI and asked them to take up my case and denounce the
Ben-Gurion extremists' tactic of trying to use SLAPP litigation as a
bludgeon to suppress free speech for non-leftists. There can be no clearer
opportunity for those who value free speech as a human right to denounce
such misuse of the courts as this case. I invited ACRI to help defeat this
cynical move by the leftist extremist in question, Neve Gordon of the
political science department at Ben-Gurion University. The liberal Prof.
Alan Dershowitz that "Neve Gordon has gotten into bed with neo-Nazis,
Holocaust justice deniers, and anti-Semites. He is a despicable example of
a self-hating Jew and a self-hating Israeli."

In response, I got a peremptory refusal from a spokesperson for ACRI. They
are not interested in defending free speech for Zionists.

** SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. SLAPP
suits are anti-democratic libel suits designed to suppress the free speech
of one's critics.

Association for Civil Rights in Israel - Isn't
Adar 28, 5764, 21 March 04 09:21
by Steven Plaut
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) is an
anti-democratic extremist group that does not endorse free speech.

ACRI, like B'tselem, Physicians for Human Rights and many other assorted
splinter far-left, anti-Israel, pro-PLO groups in Israel, pretends it is
nothing more than a neutral human rights watchdog. This is an Orwellian
lie. ACRI is an extremist anti-Israel group that only cares about "human
rights" when "defending them" is part of delegitimizing Israel (such as in
this case). It has never heard of a human right for Jews it wishes to
defend, such as their right not to be murdered by terrorists.

Think I am exaggerating?

A few months back, I approached ACRI and offered them an opportunity to
defend free speech in Israel and prove they support human rights for all,
even for those who might disagree with their leftist extremist ideology.
As you know, I am being sued in a harassment SLAPP* "libel suit" by a
leftist extremist lecturer at Ben-Gurion University because I dared to
criticize his political opinions and his public political behavior. The
lecturer in question served, for example, as a human shield for Yasser
Arafat while Arafat was hiding in his offices the murderers of an Israeli
cabinet minister and other terrorists, all this to illegally interfere
with an Israeli military operation. The suit is clearly nothing more than
an anti-democratic assault on free speech by a leftist extremist who
thinks it is a crime to criticize him.

So, I contacted ACRI and asked them to take up my case and denounce the
Ben-Gurion extremists' tactic of trying to use SLAPP litigation as a
bludgeon to suppress free speech for non-leftists. There can be no clearer
opportunity for those who value free speech as a human right to denounce
such misuse of the courts as this case. I invited ACRI to help defeat this
cynical move by the leftist extremist in question, Neve Gordon of the
political science department at Ben-Gurion University.

In response, I got a peremptory refusal from a spokesperson for ACRI.

So when exactly does ACRI protect free speech?

Well, I will tell you when.

This past November saw a quiet but significant victory in Israel over the
treasonous far-left. Some Israeli extremists were operating an Israeli
branch of the "Indymedia" web network, which is a network of dozens of
Marxist-anarchist web sites all over the world who devote their days to
the singing of praises for communism, terrorism, the International
Solidarity Movement, violence and anti-Semitism. The one operating out of
Israel was famous for its posting messages praising suicide bombers,
denying the Holocaust, posting messages mocking Judaism and the Bible and
otherwise anti-Semitic harangues, not mere anti-Israel pieces. Its
managers claimed they did not pick the pieces and that it is open web
publishing where anyone can post trash; but the fact of the matter is that
they regularly censored anything on the site that was pro-Israel and
deleted it, leaving up the Nazi screeds (at www.indymedia.org.il).

In November they ran, alongside their other filth, a cartoon showing Ariel
Sharon French-kissing Hitler. Some people were outraged and filed a
petition with the Attorney General to shut the site down. It has been
successfully shut down ever since, evidently thanks to a court order;
although recently, a new substitute site just opened at
israel.indymedia.org (you might want to stop in to post some pro-Israel
material there to annoy them).

For months, ever since the original Israel Indymedia web site was shut
down, its URL carried a message in English and Hebrew from this same ACRI
protesting the shutting down of this suicide-bombing-cheerleader web site.

I guess ACRI supports free speech only for leftist traitors...

* SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. SLAPP
suits are anti-democratic libel suits designed to suppress the free speech
of one's critics.


FAR LEFT GROUP 'DOCUMENTS' ISRAELI RACISM

By: Steven Plaut

Date: Wednesday, December 12 2007
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) is a far
leftist propaganda group that has just released a report allegedly
documenting a skyrocketing rate of "racism" among Israeli Jews against
Arabs, in addition to discovering that Israel is a generally oppressive
society.

The first point to be made is that nothing coming from
ACRI is credible and everything from it should be dismissed as misleading
and skewed. ACRI is not a reliable source about anything. The second point
is that the same survey supposedly collected for ACRI asked no questions
about Arab racism against Jews. How curious. The third point is that none
of the questions supposedly indicating growing Jewish "racism" have
anything at all to do with racism or bigotry.

ACRI claims to discern an increase of 26% in anti-Arab
"incidents" in Israel, although it offers no evidence that any of these
"incidents" are really racist. It claims a 100% increase in anti-Arab
"hatred" among Jews but does not say how it measures this "hatred."

From the mediareports about the study, ACRI evidently
measures this alleged racism based on the proportion of Jews who want to
condition welfare benefits, social perks (like tuition vouchers), and
income subsidies on army service. This is racist, insists the ACRI. Never
mind that every other nation on earth gives its army vets such benefits,
or that no one is stopping any Arabs from serving in the Israeli army and
getting the same veteran benefits, or that in any case such a policy would
"penalize" Orthodox yeshiva students no less than Arabs.

Many of the indicators of "oppression" used in the ACRI
study are meaningless, political biased, and have even less to do with
ethnic disparities. For example, the report bewails a drop in the number
of hospital beds in Israel per 1,000 population (still among the world's
highest rates), a drop having nothing to do with racism and everything to
do with fiscal cuts and budgetary constraints.

ACRI also finds evidence of "oppression" in the structural
reforms that Israel's minister of justice is pursuing. It would be
"repressive," believes ACRI, for an elected cabinet minister to prevent
unelected judges from just making up laws and "rights" as they go along in
court. The report cries crocodile tears about the hiring of workers via
employment agencies rather than as direct employees of companies and
business. But there is nothing at all "oppressive" in this; in fact, it's
downright beneficial, as thousands of unemployed people are able to find
jobs through manpower agencies.

The ACRI study finds that fully half the Jewish public
takes a negative view of exact equality between Jews and Arabs. This is
amusing, of course, because the left opposes exact equality for Arabs when
it comes to things like conscription or national service for Arabs.

In any case, the wording of the question could be
interpreted to mean not legal equality or equal opportunity but equality
of results (such as in income homogeneity), a cause beloved by the left
and opposed by everyone else.

Fifty-five percent of Jews endorse subsidizing Arabs who
want to emigrate from Israel, finds the ACRI report, which labels such
sentiment racist. Except that 100% of the Israeli Labor Party and the left
supports subsidizing Jews to move out of the West Bank, which evidently is
not racist.

Here's yet another example of Jewish anti-Arab racism in
the ACRI report: It turns out Arabs are searched for weapons and
explosives at airports more so than Jews. ACRI would prefer a "non-racist
non-discriminator" set of security procedures.

In short, the ACRI report is a very useful tool for
identifying what is not racism, though it will be picked up by every
anti-Semitic organization and website on earth to prove that Israel is an
"apartheid entity."


The ACRI also has a track record of rallying to support Neo-Nazi Norman
Finkelstein:
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=94D46D9E-C1E5-4CE9-99BF-7C1EF803CADA

See the reports on the ACRI carried on the NGO Monitor web site:
http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/association_for_civil_rights_in_israel_acri_

The ACRI has never spoken out against Israel's arbitrary "anti-racist"
laws, that criminalize speech for far-Right Kahanist groups but have never
been used against Arab or Far Leftist anti-Semitic groups or individuals.
The ACRI represents routinely participate in anti-Israel pro-jihad
conferences and demonstrations. For details, see NGO Monitor.






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