The Hadash national council had planned to convene this coming Saturday for a discussion of “challenges and action plans for the forces of peace, equality and democracy in the struggle against war and fascism.” This was the text on the invitation which, when it made its way to the Israeli intelligence services, made them decide to prevent the event from taking place.
Hadash Secretary General Amjad Shbita during the Jewish-Arab demonstration against the occupation in Dizengoff square in Central Tel-Aviv to mark more than half a century of Israeli rule of the Palestinian territories, June 2, 2023 (Photo: Zo Haderech)
They threatened the event hall owner, who has been hosting Hadash council conventions for years, saying that if he hosts us his business will be shut down for 30 days. Again: a place that would host the state council of the oldest running Jewish-Arab movement in Israel, and the only left-wing movement in the Knesset, will be closed. A hall that would host the state council of a political party running 30 local election campaigns will be shuttered.
As in previous cases, it seems that the agents of the law kept to verbal threats and furnished no documents that could be dealt with through legal channels. We are nevertheless considering legal steps against this bullying, and in any case, we understand this as a continuation of a political and public campaign that Hadash has been dealing with in recent months.
Here are some examples: MK Ofer Cassif has only just returned to the Knesset after being suspended for 45 days for a statement against the war that members of the Knesset’s Ethics Committee did not like. MK Aida Touma-Sliman was expelled from the Knesset too, for two months, because of a journalistic post she shared.
Over the weekend, two prominent right-wing journalists, Amit Segal and Kalman Liebskind, used their weekly opinion columns to incite against Arab society and its leadership, including attacks on Hadash. Segal accused us of normalizing the massacre, and Liebskind of immortalizing the murderers. They both based their theses on my social media shares and likes, among other “evidence.” Last month, a large police force broke into a Hadash club in Nazareth to pull down posters and, most importantly, to erase a drawing of the Palestinian flag and draw the Israeli flag in its place.
This political persecution is not random. The establishment understands that Hadash is among the last remaining political forces with the backbone, political courage and organizational capacity to lead protests against the war, against McCarthyism and against the turn to fascism that the establishment has accelerated under the heavy smokescreen of the war in Gaza.
We are shocked and devastated by Hamas’ attack on the Gaza region on October 7. We denounced them from day one and sounded a humane, responsible voice as well as empathy for the victims in Israeli society. But in the same breath, we opposed Israel’s criminal attack on the Gaza Strip.
Arabs and Jews alike, we have not lost our moral compass for a moment. It was clear to us that this was not only a war of revenge or a war to destroy Hamas, but a strategic beatdown whose goals, as we understand them, are to extend Benjamin Netanyahu’s days in office, perpetuate the occupation and eliminate the possibility of a two-state solution.
Our position against the war is first and foremost an ethical, humanistic one: There is no justification for killing the civilian population in Gaza which has been ongoing for two months now. The number of victims, the dead, the wounded and the evacuated is a human tragedy against which every person should rebel. The scale of destruction sows nothing but hatred and frustration. And all this does not guarantee the return of the hostages, nor the destruction of Hamas.
Hamas is a fundamentalist organization that has been cultivated, among other elements, by right-wing Israeli governments, for the chief purpose of weakening the two-state solution. This government knows that wars only strengthen Hamas, even if they temporarily harm its military capabilities. The only body with the right and the power to neutralize Hamas is the Palestinian people, and this will be possible when the occupation gets out of its way and lets it led a normal democratic life. This will become possible when the Palestinian people have a serious partner on the Israeli side, someone to enable a hopeful political horizon. When there is hope, the peace camp on both sides gets stronger. When there is none, the peace camp collapses. On both sides.
We are convinced that our positions serve the real interests of Israeli society, just as they serve the real interests of the Palestinians. True interests are necessarily the common interests of the two peoples on this land.
The right does not have good answers to the challenges that we pose, and therefore sees Hadash as a threat. The right also understands that Hadash has the almost exclusive ability to recruit masses from Arab society and Jewish left-wing activists for a joint struggle against it.
Only recently, we applied to the High Court twice to approve demonstrations, and after much pressure we successfully brought Arabs and Jews to demonstrate together in both Tel Aviv and Umm al-Fahm. In the past two months, we have made significant progress in making the protest visible, and the establishment has been forced time and again to withdraw its attempts to suppress it.
The right wants to see Hadash outside the law, or at least outside the Knesset, not only out of anger at our political positions and the “insensitivity” we supposedly demonstrated during the fighting. It is using the current public atmosphere to advance one of the judicial coup’s strategic goals: a political transfer of Israel’s Arab citizens, or at least Hadash’s supposedly “extremist” voters. The far right in power has a clear political interest in attacking Hadash: Our defeat would allow it to remain in power.
We will not surrender in the face of this right-wing design. Those who until recently chanted “de-moc-ra-cy!” in demonstrations against the judicial coup are now facing a critical test: Do they have the courage to join us and fight for true democracy, one that accepts voices that oppose the regime and stands up to attempts to silence and intimidate.
This is a time for Jewish-Arab solidarity. Our arms are open to all who fight for true democracy, without occupation, discrimination and supremacy. A democracy where everyone is equal. Democracy for all.
Amjad Shbita is Hadash secretary general, the op-ed was published by Haaretz, Dec. 11, 2023.
Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=31422
