The sixth Netanyahu government is beginning to look like a totalitarian caricature. There is almost no move associated with totalitarianism that has not been proposed by one of its extremist members and adopted by the rest of the incompetents it comprises, in their competition to see who can be more fully full fascist.
The Ministerial Committee for Legislation is slated to discuss Sunday a bill sponsored by Otzma Yehudit MK Limor Son Har-Melech that would require an academic institution to suspend a student who waves the Palestinian flag or expresses support for terrorism. The virtually unknown lawmaker sought to gain publicity on the backs of Arab students, because what’s easier than persecuting members of a minority?
Son Har-Melech wants to press-gang Israel’s institutions of higher education, turning academics into political police officers and students into outright snitches. The preamble to the bill states that “academic institutions have become a main stage for incitement in the past year,” and that Israeli Independence Day has become “a day for flying the flags of the PLO terrorist organization in academic institutions.” It further states that “it is unreasonable for students to be forced to learn alongside those who expressed explicit support for terrorist attacks, in the face of complete silence from the institutions’ administration.”
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It is in fact the government that in recent years has become the main stage of incitement in the spirit of the national inciter, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Knesset plenum a hothouse for stupidity. The attempt to equate waving the Palestinian flag with supporting terrorism is in itself incitement.
The Palestinian Authority is neither an enemy state nor a terrorist organization. Israel has signed agreements with the PLO and the flag has been flown in the Knesset and at every possible diplomatic platform. Moreover, Israel has cooperated with the Palestinian Authority for 30 years and enjoys the fruits of security coordination with it. The fight against the Palestinian flag is therefore aberrant, ungrateful and detached from Israeli and international reality.
Fortunately for Israel, not everyone has been infected with the fascist epidemic. The Committee of University Heads in Israel published a letter of objection Thursday. “This is politicization and deep and unreasonable interference in campus activities. An attempt to use academia for criminal enforcement, turning the administration of the institutions into police officers, judges and even executioners – and for offenses that have nothing to do with academia.” The president of Tel Aviv University, Prof. Ariel Porat, warned in a separate letter that if the bill is passed, “actual McCarthyism will be created on campus: Students will follow one another to determine whether some word or another justifies suspension.”
The mere act of debating this fascistic proposal is a stain on the Ministerial Committee for Legislation and on Israel. Its proper place is in the trash can, and the place of those who propose it is outside of the Knesset. Not a day goes by without this government reminding us why it is important to continue the protest with full vigor.