Israel’s War Against Palestine: Documenting the Military Occupation of Palestinian and Arab Lands

Israeli who disrupted Netanyahu’s speech: We were raised on human rights

8 November 2010

Matan Cohen, Israeli who disrupted PM’s speech: We were raised on human rights. Youngster who heckled Netanyahu during GA address in New Orleans says US Jews distancing themselves from community due to “expectation of blind loyalty to Israel.”

IOA Editor: “Raised on human rights” is well intentioned, and an understandable comment when facing the likes of Netanyahu and Lieberman, but it is misleading. Although plenty of individual Israeli (Jewish) families raised their children “on human rights,” Labor Zionism was racist from the very start but, unlike today, mostly below the surface: instituting land laws designed to deprive Arab citizens of most natural and national resources; putting activists under administrative detention without trial, and much more.

Now things are far more out in the open: raiding people’s homes in the middle of the night and putting them away — via trials without the standard rules of evidence that would be required in the West (e.g., most recently, Ameer Makhoul); the ability to legally exclude any Arab citizen from living in much of Israel that is, in effect, designated as Jewish-only; and an “informal,” but well organized and sanctioned by “Higher Authority,” terror campaign against renting to Palestinians when they venture into Jewish towns (even when those had been mostly-Arab towns before 1948), lest their sort mix with our precious daughters (see Jonathan Cook’s Rabbis’ edict bars renting to Arabs). Today’s conditions are far more blatant, and outright scary, but they evolved over a long period of time, starting from the political foundation put in place by Labor Zionism.


By Yitzhak Benhorin, Ynet News – 8 Nov 2010
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3981697,00.html

“When I got up to disrupt the prime minister’s speech, he was speaking of the de-legitimization of Israel, and I yelled out that I am an Israeli and that it is the occupation, the Gaza blockade and the loyalty oath which delegitimize Israel,” said Matan Cohen, one of five protestors who heckled Benjamin Netanyahu during his keynote address to the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly in New Orleans on Monday.

“We (protestors) decided every five-six minutes one of us would get up and yell. We were detained and later transferred to the custody of the Secret Service,” he told Ynet.

Cohen is a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, an organization that works to achieve a “lasting peace that recognizes the rights of both Israelis and Palestinians for security and self-determination.”

Cohen, 21, was one of the founders of Anarchists Against the Wall, an Israeli group supporting the Palestinian campaign against the construction of the West Bank security barrier. Four years ago, he was injured from a rubber bullet fired by security forces during an anti-fence rally in the West Bank.

He is currently enrolled at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, which became the first of any college or university in the US to divest from companies due to their involvement in the “Israeli occupation of Palestine.”

“Israel’s actions are the cause of its deteriorating status in the international community,” Cohen said. “Many young Jewish Americans are distancing themselves from the community, which expects their blind loyalty to Israel.

“Netanyahu was expecting a supportive audience, but as Jews and Israelis we will not remain silent. An entire community that was raised on human rights will not turn a blind eye.”

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