By Palestine Center Interns — Mirvat Salameh and Abby Massell
In many parts of the globe today, there is a wave of extremist rhetoric used by right-wing politicians to harness the fear and anger of constituents. Israel is no exception. The recent right-wing takeover of Israel’s parliament followed a contentious and moral debate sparked by the extrajudicial killing of Palestinian Abdel Fattah al-Sharif in the city of Hebron. Nation-wide polling in Israel indicated that a majority of Israelis believed the IDF soldier who killed al-Sharif was morally justified in his actions. Benjamin Netanyahu claimed the IDF acted in self-defense and with the highest moral conduct against “blood thirsty murderers” (referring to Palestinians) — illuminating the stark reality of the dehumanization of Palestinian life in the name of state security interests. This debate has left little room for the Israeli left to express its concerns about Israel’s military occupation and the volatile situation it has created. The resignation of former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon followed several weeks after his comments on the released footage of al-Sharif’s execution. He stated that the IDF soldier was a “transgressor” who must be brought to justice. Ya’alon’s resignation speech boldly stated that he is “fearful for Israel’s future” and that he found himself “in deep disagreement over professional and ethical issues with the Prime Minister.” Netanyahu replaced Ya’alon with previous political rival and ultra-nationalist Avigdor Lieberman as Minister of Defense — a well calculated political move on Netanyahu’s part to achieve a conservative legislative majority. Both Lieberman and Netanyahu have supported the IDF soldier’s extrajudicial killing of al-Sharif. Netanyahu’s alliance with Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Is Our Home) strengthens the conservative agenda by enlarging its constituent base.1
Netanyahu’s recent re-election has obstructed progress toward a two-state solution and has arrested any advances in humanizing Palestinian lives. The prime minister has established the most conservative government in Israeli history that is responsible for launching multiple and brutal military assaults on Gaza, expanding illegal settlements, and pushing the declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Furthermore, the current government calls on Palestinians to accept the Zionist narrative while denying exiled Palestinians their legal right to return. As leader and long-term member of Israel’s Likud party, Netanyahu has positioned the party away from its formerly secular and centrist position and toward hard-line right-wing policies.
With the consolidation of a majority right-wing Knesset came increasingly draconian policies that negatively impact Palestinians and Israelis alike. Aside from the surge in settler-violence in the last year, a recent decision to restrict access to Israel’s National Archives has created controversy among Israeli historians and human rights activists. Israeli Archive Law stipulates that “any person may consult the archival materials deposited in the [Israel State] Archive” as these archives are fully funded by taxpayers. Further, Restricted Access Periods (RAPs) are not tantamount to “prohibition of access” periods, meaning when a citizen requests to consult “restricted” material, it is within their right to receive access so long as it does not prove to be a threat to state security, foreign relations, and the right of privacy.2 Still, this new policy allows for a mere one percent of four million archived documents to be open to the public. One wonders, what are they trying to hide?
The Akevot Institute released a report entitled “Point of Access,” which analyzes the Israeli military decision to withhold records of the 1948 “transfer” of Palestinians, among other events.3 As a group of Israeli human rights activists, lawyers, and researchers, Akevot is concerned with these new restrictions, which were imposed after the appointment of Lieberman as Minister of Defense. The pivotal years 1948 and 1967 are known to be documented in these unreachable archives. The report found that this reactionary Israeli government has gone beyond acceptable security measures to reclassify documents that were nearing their RAP expiration. Archive access has also been denied without reason, which is considered a breach in Archive Law.
Menachem Klein of Bar Ilan University in Israel stated, “The entire history of Israeli society and its conflict with Palestinians is to be found in those archives.” Indeed, the records in reference to the 1967 War and Israel’s military occupation of the Sinai Peninsula, West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights are highly significant to academics seeking to gain a full picture of events. Jonathan Cook points to one example of the hidden content in which a central commander of the Israeli Army stated his aim to drive all Arabs out of the West Bank in “seventy-two hours” — crude rhetoric indicating a goal to ethnically cleanse Israel of Palestinians. A handful of Israeli historians, most notably Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, and Avi Shlaim, have revealed that much of Israel’s official history of the state’s founding was based on misinformation. These “new historians” unearthed evidence of wide-scale massacres of Palestinians, rapes, and forced expulsions.They also showed that common assumptions about the war — for example, that Palestinians had been ordered to flee by their leaders — were later inventions by Israel to minimize international criticism. These examples suggest that the picture of Israel’s history painted by the right wing contradicts the violence revealed by the archives.
The main concern for Israeli human rights activists, expressed in the Akevot report, is that without access to these documents, it is almost impossible to understand history and the extent of current injustice against Palestinians living in both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. The actual events leading to the establishment of the Israeli state exist not only in Palestinian accounts (which are often silenced by Israeli and American media and politicians) but also in these “protected” documents. The movement to uncover the atrocities committed in 1948, including by Israeli soldier whistle-blowing, has pushed beyond demanding the opening of the archives to exposing mass violations of human rights. For Israel to withhold records on such state-perpetrated violations, particularly those associated with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is a direct result of Israeli exceptionalism, an agenda pushed by Netanyahu’s conservative coalition.
The right-wing takeover reflects a general disregard of the heightened militarization of Israeli society. This can be linked to Israel’s censored history and founding, which hide the realities of the Palestinian Nakba and the 1967 War and therefore the accountability for their consequences. Policies enacted by the Likud and conservative factions are responsible for the continuation of Israeli occupation not only through the separation wall, military assaults on Gaza, and restriction of mobility but also through censoring the truth from the Israeli population. This allows the right-wing to normalize its agenda and instill its own sanitized version of Israeli history.
1. Lieberman’s party attracted a unique portion of the Israeli right, representative mainly of Russian-Israelis who have long built and inhabited illegal West Bank settlements.
2. Noam Hofstadter and Lior Yavne “Point of Access: Barriers for Public Access to Israeli Government Archives.” Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research, April 2016.
3. The recent restriction on archives was mandated by the Shin Bet (Central Intelligence of the Israeli government) and Israeli military, though the Shin Bet had previously agreed to allow parts of its archives accessible after fifty years of operations. The prime minister’s office is responsible for activity of the Shin Bet.
Mirvat Salameh and Abby Massell are Summer 2016 Interns at The Jerusalem Fund and Palestine Center.
The views in this brief are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.
