Some cups of tea should be sipped even if one is not thirsty: "They don't admit that they're investigating you. They just say that they're friends and they want to chat [over a cup of tea]. I say that since they're just friends, I can accept their invitation or not."
No, this is not the description of an Israeli citizen summoned to a "friendly conversation" by Israel's General Security Service (GSS). In Israel invitations for tea are not the costume. The above quote is from a Chinese human rights lawyer, as recently reported by NPR. Israel, contrary to China, self identifies as a democracy. So in Israel, one may receive a phone call from a "Rona" from the Shin Bet, or summoned by police for an "investigation." Later, it turns out to be "just a conversation." One is assured that he is not a suspect, yet is prohibited from documenting what is taking place: we're just talking, we're here to help you.
Such "invitations to converse" with GSS agents in which law-abiding political activists are illegally harassed, or worse, are recently becoming more and more common in Israel. Headline-making examples include Yonatan Shapira and Jawad Siam, but there are many other cases documented by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).
So, what is discussed in these conversations, over a cup tea or without? Alongside crude attempts to gather information, the essence of these Shin Bet "conversations" appears to be a touching effort to assist well-meaning, if naïve, citizens not to mistakenly stray from the straight and narrow path. The Shin Bet somehow succeeds in pre-identifying that an Israeli citizen is approaching the threshold of illegal activity, and therefore seeks to assist the citizen before she or he may end up getting themselves in trouble.
George Orwell himself could not have framed this better. Newspeak specialists could not have done a better job than "Rona" and her associates in providing such a wonderfully positive pretext for what is really happening here: the attempt to illegally restrict both freedom of thought and political activity, through threat talks delivered by GSS agents.
Of course no one, political activists as well as GSS agents, is above the law. Yet, it is completely unclear under which legal authority does the Shin Bet operate in the initiation of these "conversations". Even more dubious is the police's part in these. What is perfectly clear is that we are dealing with Israeli activists who are receiving a clear message from the authorities: your activism is on our radar; be warned. In an appeal to the Attorney General, ACRI's Attorney Lila Margalit restated what apparently needs urgent refreshing: that in a democracy an individual is not summoned by the security authorities to discuss demonstrations in which he participated, and is not required to report on his political views or to justify them with the State's secret agents. These grave attempts at limiting political expression seriously endanger Israel's democratic attributes.
China is not alone. In Russia, another democratic superpower, the Lower House recently approved a bill allowing the country's intelligence service to "officially warn citizens that their activities could lead to a future violation of the law" (The New York Times, July 16). Human rights activists in Russia view this law as a comeback of the bad-old-days of KGB anti-dissidents practices.
Israel is not China nor Russia. In order to ensure that it does not end up resembling them, the time has come for the Israeli public to summon the Shin Bet for a conversation over a cup of tea. It is not the activists, abiding by the law, who are in need of such a conversation -- but rather the Security Service who violates it. These GSS violations of democratic norms are not caused by naivety. Unlike the Shin Bet's secretive threat talks, this conversation -- of the proper norms in a democracy -- should be conducted openly and in the most transparent manner, exactly as behooves a democracy. As long as free citizens will keep a watchful eye on the Security Service and articulate openly that threat talks by secret agents are simply not our cup of tea, we will be able to safeguard our basic freedoms of thought and expression, and continue to have this essential democratic discourse. In Israel of 2010, this should not be taken for granted.
This is the English version of a Hebrew op-ed originally published earlier in Israel on Ynet.
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My two cents worth.
During WWII I went to a concentration camp to get my family out with legal (or falsified) documentation. My uncle, an interior decorator, and graphic artists, apparently provided this *documentation*. I only found out about it this year. After the effort succeeded and my family was released, I was the only family member to have to report, monthly, to the SS Ortskommandant in Amsterdam. It was still wartime.
In the early sixties I worked at a bank, and just around the corner was a storefront with photos of the Soviet Republic.I had some spare time and was curious. This was in Amsterdam. I was immediately approached and told not to do that, because my interest could interfere with a number of things, a.o. future plans to emigrate to the U.S. Cameras were then already in some place. They are now everywhere.
Defenders of Shin Bet, or organizations like them, are best reminded of the bias approach to security they provide. Amir Oren, a security analyst for the Haaretz newspaper, accused the Shin Bet of having “chains on its feet and weights around its neck” when it investigated Jewish terror. Meaning they are not there to defend peace and security for Israel, they are focused on weakening Palestinian support and discourse on Israeli policies.
I did have one invitation from Lady Gaga and that was distrubing, so I said no.
"This morning, in a second day of violence in the village of Al-Buwayra, near Hebron, two international peace activists were attacked by three Israeli settlers wearing black masks.
Both were left seriously injured and have been hospitalized following the unprovoked attack.
The settlers knocked Canadian Peter Cunliffe, 26, to the ground then beat him in the face and body using metal poles and wooden sticks. He is being treated for a probable broken nose and serious back injuries."
http://palsolidarity.org/2010/08/13592/
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=137728§ionid=351020202
Adversaries of Israel do not answer questions. Exceptions occur but are rare. (I answer questions, almost all of them). At first I thought this might just be a simple matter of festering animosity but recently I have concluded that additional reasons exist which are more complex and less innocent. For one thing, opponents of Israel often see themselves as 'unbiased mediators', a.k.a. judges (rather than proverbial lawyers). They do not perceive themselves as advocating any position. They often disassociate themselves from either side, which is why we also so often hear "you people" or, 'you better make peace', as if the advocate of Israel must be Israeli or, may be American but is being accused of siding with Israel "first" [read: treason]. Just today I was accused of being a "Hasbara agent". I don't even know what "Hasbara" is, except that it sounds Hebrew and this was about the 20th time someone has alleged this. Given that judges do NOT answer questions in their own court, the anti-Israeli blogger is simply using the judicial "we" attitude. (They also love to speak on behalf of countless others). The final reason they refrain from answering questions is the simplest one of all. They can't--because the question is interlocutory. It reveals the weakness of their argument and creates an intractable dilemma. No intelligent conversation can occur without question and answer session.
I'm just trying to figure out why after being accused of being a "hasbara" 20 times you didn't even try to search for what it means?