28 Mar 2024
Saturday 16 August 2014 - 14:44
Story Code : 111628

Gaza war critics face witch hunt in Israel: Report

Gaza war critics face witch hunt in Israel: Report
[caption id="attachment_111629" align="alignright" width="282"] A Palestinian father holds the body of his son killed in an Israeli air raid on Gaza. (File photo)[/caption]
The critics of war on the Gaza Strip are facing an escalating wave of harassment and intimidation inside Israel, a report says.
Some Israelis who have criticized the war, even on their Facebook pages, complained of being ostracized, suspended from their jobs or even being fired.

On Friday, Israeli newspaper Haaretz warned against a "witch hunt" against Israeli civil rights organizations after Sar-Shalom Jerbi, the director of the national service administration, blacklisted rights group B'Tselem for its criticism of the Gaza war.

Jerbi accused B'Tselem of disseminating lies, jeopardizing the regime and publishing information that emboldens Israel's enemies and incites anti-Jewish sensations across the globe.

B'Tselem slammed the decision and initiated an online petition for supporting freedom of expression.

Yizhar Beer from the Keshev Centre for the Protection of Democracy has described the ongoing suppression of voices of dissent as unprecedented in Israel.

"Pressure from the inside and pressure from the outside makes our society very broken," Beer pointed out.

Haaretz had to hire bodyguards for its commentator Gideon Levy after he accused air force pilots of perpetrating "the cruelest [and] most despicable deeds" against Gaza's weakest and most helpless."

Readers cancelled their subscriptions, people began insulting him in the street and Yariv Levin of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party denounced him as a liar, a "mouthpiece of the enemy" who should be put on trial for treason.

The Palestinian death figure from more than a month of war on Gaza has risen to 1,980, as a fragile truce persists between the Israeli and Palestinian sides.

Sources in the besieged Gaza Strip said on Friday that some 10,200 Palestinians have also been injured by the Israeli aggression.

By Press TV

 

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