The parliamentary investigative panel to examine organizations' funding sources actually have no interest in questions of legality and constitutionality. All they want is to delegitimize protest and political opinions, and to scare us.
On Tuesday, a Knesset committee is due to approve on second and third readings the bill combating boycotts against Israel - another hysterical proposal by the right wing and Kadima MK Dalia Itzik designed to protect our weak and tiny country, which is being attacked from within and without.
"This law," explain the architects of the proposal, "is designed to protect the State of Israel in general and its citizens in particular from academic, economic and other boycotts that are imposed on the country, its citizens and corporations, due to their connection to the State of Israel." The law is designed to protect "the area under Israeli control, including Judea and Samaria." According to the bill, "It is forbidden to initiate a boycott against the State of Israel, to encourage participation in it or to provide assistance or information in order to promote it."
There is no problem, therefore, with a boycott by ultra-Orthodox consumers against supermarkets that open on Shabbat, or against a merchant whose sons serve in the Israel Defense Forces, even if it leads to their economic collapse. There might also not be a problem in boycotting fur exporters, for example. The only offense is "a boycott against the State of Israel," and in effect against the settlements, whose products are the object of most boycotts in Israel and the world over.
