9-20-2016 How Israel is turning one Arab party into a security threat – Orly Noy +972

http://972mag.com/how-israel-is-turning-one-arab-party-into-a-security-threat/122047/

Balad isn't the first political party in Israel to be suspected of violating campaign finance laws. But it is the first one to have its members arrested in overnight, commando-style raids…Orly Noy argues, "Israel simply does not have the tools to deal with a non-violent national-civil struggle by Israel's Palestinian citizens. Therefore it prefers to mark them as struggles that threaten state security and escalate them. When the state deems nonviolent actions, such as the Gaza flotillas or the BDS movement, as terrorism that subvert the state's existence, it moves them from the civil sphere into one in where it writes all the rules: the security sphere. Defining Balad as a security threat exempts Israel from the need to deal with the party's legitimate national and civil demands. In this way, Sunday's arrests achieved their goals, even if they are only making a mountain out of a molehill."

Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member