Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked on Wednesday spoke in the Knesset regarding the Channel 2 TV “Uvda” program exposé of left-wing activists who plot to turn in to the Palestinian Authority Arab land brokers who sell to Jews, knowing full well that the PA would torture and even execute them. “Before relating to the real implications of the Uvda report, I’d like to speak from this podium to the organizations that a small part of whose activities was exposed to public view last Thursday. I refer to Breaking the Silence, Rabbis for Human Rights, B’Tselem and Ta’ayush, whose members and people acting in whose name were involved in the heinous acts recorded by the camera.
“You accuse soldiers who tied a strip of flannel around the eyes of someone arrested on suspicion of terrorism while at the same time you shut your eyes and lend your support to the killing of an innocent man. Like a camel who is unable to detect its own hump, you, too, are unable to glimpse the moral hump that has grown on your back, and which everyone in your vicinity notices immediately.
“For all the repeated, irrelevant statements you’ve made about action that reminds you of ‘dark periods in history,’ you are unable to detect the darkness that has overtaken you, the eclipse you are in today, the moral plague of darkness that has befallen you.
“For all the daily comparisons you’ve been making between Israeli society and the worst of societies, you have failed to take your own stock.
“Did you ever consider checking what parallel organizations in the world you resemble? And what the fact that you are collaborating with the Palestinian Preventive Security says about you? Were you always familiar with the words ‘Gazanga’ and ‘Zubur’ (both words were used by left-wing activist Ezra Nawi in the secret recording to describe humiliating torture and killing respectively) your activists are using now, or would these be the latest addition to the unabridged Human Rights lexicon?
“For years you’ve described the Jewish people’s return to parts of its historic homeland as ‘colonialism’ and meant to criticize Israel that way, but with the same breath you had no problem describing a pedophile convicted of sodomizing a 15-year-old minor as ‘an empire.’ His ever-growing activities must have seemed more legitimate to you.
“Your organizations’ names seem like they’ve been taken out of a George Orwell Newspeak dictionary. Not only is there no connection between the name and the activities; usually your activities are the opposite of the name you’ve taken for your organization:
“B’Tselem — you carry the image of God in vain in your organization’s name. You try to use this image for political ends, but you simply fail to condemn your activist who is suspected of helping to harm an innocent man who was also born in the image of God. And why? What was the sin of that Palestinian? Does the fact that he traded in land with Jews makes it impossible for you to define him as a human being? Is that how full of hate you are?
“Rabbis for Human Rights — have you learned the prohibition of Do Not Murder in the Ten Commandments? Or is it a halachic problem you’re still debating? I obviously don’t have to tell you that when Cain murdered his brother, no one in the world spoke about it, and still, the entire world was in a tumult because the blood of Abel was screaming from the earth.
“A world that keeps silent about a murder is inhuman. An organization whose leader comes to court to support a man suspected of aiding a killing and conspiring to commit murder is an organization that in no way can define itself either as a rabbinic or as a human rights organization.