FM workers hold rare protest in front of Shin Bet headquarters

Some 50 Foreign Ministry employees hold rare protest in the class struggle history in Israel. They protested in front of the Shin Bet security service headquarters in Ramat-Aviv, North Tel Aviv on Wednesday morning, charging that the service’s agents were assisting in breaking the diplomats’ strike, which has been going on for six months. “The Shin Bet is a collaborator,” read a sign held by one of the diplomats.

According to Yair Fromer, head of the ministry’s worker’s committee, the government is using the Shin Bet to deal with the visits of foreign dignitaries, something the ministry – as part of the sanctions – is refusing to do. Among the signs held at the protest were “Shin Bet instead of diplomacy = a danger for democracy!!!”


Foreign Ministry employees’ demonstration in
front of the Shin Bet security service headquarters in Ramat-Aviv, North Tel Aviv on Wednesday, July  3, 2013 (Photo: Foreign Ministry workers committee)


“The Shin Bet is used to break our strikes, a thing unacceptable and unworthy to occur in a law-abiding state,” said the chairman of the employees’ union, Fromer. During Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s last visit to Poland, the Shin Bet was used to make the necessary arrangements, usually handled by the ministry’s employees

In a related development, the refusal of the Foreign Ministry workers to process and deal with visits of Israeli diplomats and ministers abroad means that the government will not be sending a representative to Bulgaria on July 18 to participate in the ceremony marking a year since the terrorist attack there that killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian driver.

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