This week's postings on JfJfP.com

Threats to freedom of speech in the USA, UK and Israel make up the dominant theme this week, February 15-21, 2016. Investigative journalists Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman have discovered that a large number of states and universities in the USA have passed, or are planning to introduce, legislation banning any corporate body from supporting or dealing with any other body which support boycotting Israel or the settlements. Compounding this egregious censorship are also administrative actions to ban any advocacy of Palestinian rights on the grounds this constitutes ‘hate speech’ and threatens Jews’ sense of safety. This is the death of informed debate and argument:
Lose the argument, ban free speech

A new NGO, Palestine Legal, has been keeping a tally of which institutions use the law to silence discussion:
Not a word about Palestine

The Foreign Press Association, initially set up by Israelis to help foreign journalists, is not usually a troublesome body. But faced with Knesset charges that the foreign press reveals anti-Israel bias and with the border police, who frequently man-handle and interrogate them, the FPA has become restive. In one paragraph in a long memo to the Knesset committee the FPA says:

Efforts to clamp down on the media, including sweeping allegations of media bias, state censorship and the detaining of members of the press, are the sort of actions usually associated with authoritarian governments in places such as Russia, Turkey or Saudi Arabia. It is unbecoming of a country like Israel, which likes to describe itself as the only democracy in the Middle East

Foreign press accuse police of violent attacks

Palestinian journalist Mohammad al-Qiq has contacts with Hamas as do many of the FPA. But a Palestinian with these contacts is obviously a terrorist and must be held in administrative detention. Al-Qiq has been on hunger strike for three months at the injustice of this. He is near death which is causing panic in the high command:
Palestinian journalist nears death on hunger strike

There is something unknown, underhand, about the speed with which the UK’s Cabinet Office and the Crown Commercial Office have issued decrees forbidding local councils and public bodies from supporting any form of boycott of Israeli goods.  Who knew these shadowy groups plus Israel had the power?:
UK should stand for the law – not appease Israel
and
Cabinet to limit council power in order to win Israeli favour

While many question whether the World Trade Organization does prohibit choosing not to buy from illegal settlements, there is a serious downside for Israel in this dispute. If the debate is about trade rules, local council powers and Israel’s opposition to free speech, Israel’s control of its narrative – a little country at permanent risk of annihilation unless security is put above all else – is sinking into oblivion:
Israel in danger of losing the plot

A documentary by Israel’s Channel 2 reveals that Netanyahu’s apparent last-minute, spontaneous appeal to voters to unite in their support for Likud as the only means of keeping out Arabs and their dangerous friends on the left was neither spontaneous nor last-minute. Focus groups had long before shown that this was the winning argument to be used at the last minute so no-one had a chance to refute this ‘security’ drive.
Likud long-planned last-minute scare tactic

Not that most Israelis seem that bothered. A new survey by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University show that there is little public concern about the state of Israeli democracy or about Palestinians. Every political position seems to be hyper-protected against change or curiosity:
Israelis safe in their knowledge

The same lack of curiosity is a factor in the Israel’s poor track record on corruption. In rankings, it sits down among the former Soviet bloc countries rather than the more functional democracies of north west Europe:
Corruption? Par for the course say Israelis

That’s familiar. So is the vulnerability of Palestinian children to security forces of Israel and of the PNA.  CRIN, Child Rights International Network, has looked at the access of Palestinian children to justice and due process. In their assessment, this access comes right at the bottom, 195th out of 197.
Palestinian children outside the rule of law

More shocking is the allegation by Gideon Levy and Alex Levac that the IDF has been entering refugee camps, thus provoking children to throw stones at them, and then shooting the stone-throwers dead.
They shoot children, don’t they?

Lastly, a new name that is likely to become familiar is Nickolay Mladenov, Ban Ki-Moon’s appointment of the Special Coordinator for the MEPP. He lays out his concerns in a report to the UN Security Council. He is critical of the PNA, not least for its failure to protect Palestinians but will have won no friends in the Israeli government by pointing out that the rate of demolition of Palestinian homes and building of settlement homes have increased rapidly this year.
Rate of Israeli demolitions trebles in 2016