Buried in a 2007 decision by Israel’s high court is the key to understanding an important part of the Arab-Israeli conflict that has migrated to America and the rest of the West.
The case illuminates recent events at the New School and elsewhere.
A Palestinian connected to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist organization, was petitioning the Israeli courts to nullify a decision that would stop him from being able to travel abroad. Officials argued that he’d be a security threat. His attorneys argued that he was also running a “humanitarian” NGO, al-Haq, and thus had a right to continue that work abroad.
The infamously left-wing court agreed, through gritted teeth, that the security officials had presented a convincing case that the man was a threat: “Nevertheless, the current petitioner is apparently acting as a manner of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, acting some of the time as the CEO of a human rights organization, and at other times as an activist in a terror organization which has not shied away from murder and attempted murder, which have nothing to do with rights; rather, they violate the most basic right of them all, the most fundamental right that without which there are no other rights—the right to life.”
That description of al-Haq and its director—terror operatives masquerading as NGO directors and using their “human rights” group as a free pass to kill Jews—is a Rosetta Stone for our age. And why would an NGO director be the perfect job for a terror operative? The Israeli high court revealed this, too:
“A director of a human rights group has a special status similar to that of journalists or humanitarian workers; the security concerns must be concrete to justify hindering his freedom of movement.”
Today we are plagued by these “special status” holders.
Last week in New York, the student senate of the New School, a private university, voted to stop all funding of the local chapter of Hillel, the campus Jewish center. Though framed as some sort of stand against Israeli aggression, this move was obviously and undeniably anti-Semitic. Terror groups and their American public-relations pets tried to claim that Hillel was guilty of funding war crimes because it supports the IDF.
One of the sources of information for this claim? The Hind Rajab Foundation, a Hezbollah-linked Mr. Hyde dressed up as humanitarian Dr. Jekyll.
Again, there is no discussion here: Defunding a Jewish campus group out of “anti-Zionism” is discrimination. The New School flatly rejected the students’ attempt to codify anti-Semitism: “The New School’s University Student Senate does not have the authority to determine the recognition, funding eligibility, or official status of registered student organizations. Our Hillel chapter remains, as it always has been, in good standing, eligible for funding, and supporting Jewish life at The New School.”
The anti-Israel movement on campus has targeted not just Hillels but kosher restaurants and Chabad Houses and synagogues—there is no real attempt anymore to hide their true mission, which is to target Jews simply for being Jews.
That there is a terror-connected fake human-rights group involved is, sadly, quite typical of the current crusade against Jews. This is now an essential characteristic of the anti-Israel movement.
Indeed, al-Haq itself has resurfaced in this context. Several Canadian groups recently filed a tax claim against a bunch of Jewish religious institutions in Toronto, claiming their nonprofit status should be investigated by the government for “promoting the Israeli military and potentially aiding and abetting illegal military recruiting.”
The groups are working with a site created to dox Canadian Jews, which is serving as a clearinghouse for information regarding this Jew hunt. And what are some of the actual accusations against these institutions? One synagogue “hosted an event titled ‘Tzizis Tying for Chayalim,’ where congregants would tie religious tassels for lone soldiers.” Monsters!
Another school stands accused of “support[ing] the notion of our students continuing their Judaic studies at [yeshivot or seminaries] in Eretz Yisrael and in other institutions of higher Jewish learning.” My God, not yeshiva!
Another: “The synagogue’s annual memorial books published since Oct. 7, 2023, contain a communal prayer for ‘For Fallen Members of the Israel Defense Force and Victims of Terror’ to be recited on ‘Shavuot, Yom Kippur, Shemini Atzeret, and the last day of Pesach.’”
It is tempting to laugh at this until one realizes that these psychopaths are targeting Jews for praying and for studying Torah in yeshiva.
And by the way, one of the groups trying to criminalize Judaism in Canada? A Palestinian NGO on whose board sits the co-founder of al-Haq.
The West must wake up to the reality that its civic institutions have been heavily colonized by terror-linked zombie NGOs before those institutions have all been hollowed out and there’s nothing left to save.
Source:
www.commentary.org
