ACRI and Adalah: Civil behavior?
In the past few months, former head of the IDC-Herzilya and current member of Knesset, Professor Amnon Rubinstein, published two articles calling into question the intentions and legitimacy of claims made by the politicized NGOs the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and Adalah.
Rubinstein’s first article, published in the Jerusalem Post on April 17, 2007, took ACRI to task for failing to make serious calls for the release of abducted soldier Gilad Shalit, while continuing to mount heavy pressure on Israeli authorities for a variety of other concerns. Rubenstein noted that “ACRI has been fighting forcefully for the right of Palestinian spouses of Israeli Arabs to enter Israel and receive residency, and it attacked Justice Michael Cheshin’s ruling against this right with hard words, calling it ultra-nationalism. It accused Cheshin of “undermining the pillars of constitutional democratic government while turning a blind eyed to the abduction of soldiers from Israel’s sovereign territory.”
Then, on June 7, the Jerusalem Post published a second article by Rubenstein which noted that a UN anti-racism panel had made positive comments about Israel, in contrast to the almost uninterrupted stream of invective from the UN towards Israel. However, as Rubinstein stated, the UN “received a number of memoranda – in particular from Adalah and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) – that attacked Israel.” Rubenstein went on further to say that “the ACRI memorandum casts a negative light even on the disengagement from Gaza: The opposition to the disengagement says ACRI, is indicative of ‘significant racist tendencies in Israeli society.’”
In response to Rubinstein’s well-founded criticism, ACRI Director of International Relations, Gila Orkin, wrote an article in the Post asserting that Rubinstein made “a series of completely unfounded and highly misleading claims against ACRI.” Failing to respond to Rubinstein’s questioning of ACRI’s almost non-existent advocacy on behalf of Shalit, Orkin attempts to evade legitimate concerns regarding her organization’s advocacy.
More controversy involving ACRI and Adalah was stirred up when the two NGOs joined Amnesty International-Israel, B’Tselem, Gisha, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Rabbis for Human Rights, Ha-Moked, and Yesh Din in condemning statements made by two attorneys in the State Prosecutor’s Office. The two attorneys, Gilad Sherman and Yochi Gensin, stated that “[ACRI] and Adalah are comfortable with the possibility of a prime minister, cabinet minister or MP from Hamas ordering Qassam rockets launched at Sderot, [abducted Israeli soldier] Gilad Shalit not being released and as many Israeli citizens as possible killed, in the spirit of the Hamas charter, while at the same time being entitled to reside permanently in Israel and to enjoy National Insurance Institute allowances and complete freedom of movement in the country.”
In a Ha’aretz article, Asher Moaz, Tel Aviv University faculty member, questioned the activities of ACRI. Moaz quoted a statement made to the Ynet website in February 2007 by the President of ACRI, “‘I think that it is the most foolish thing that the Jewish people has done in the past 1,000 years. Putting down a stake in a permanent place is an invitation to a new Holocaust.’” And to this he added: ‘A Jewish state is a dream, a fiction, a journalist’s romance … to which we have related with excessive seriousness.’” Based on these sentiments, Moaz states that, “I am not prepared to hear any preaching from them. Not on the subject of the occupation and not on the subject of democracy.”
As established by detailed NGO Monitor reports, the advocacy of New Israel Fund-supported Adalah, which recently proposed a constitution that would essentially abolish the Jewish state, and ACRI, which has accused Israel of “collective punishment” and routinely ignores Israel’s security context, is highly problematic. NGO Monitor welcomes continued debate and scrutiny of these organizations.
