Links
Israel clamps down on rights groups
The Israeli government and its right-wing supporters have been waging a "McCarthyite" campaign against human-rights groups by blaming them for the barrage of international criticism that has followed Israel's attack on Gaza a year ago, critics say.
In a sign of the growing backlash against the human-rights community, the cabinet backed a bill last week that, if passed, will jail senior officials from the country's peace-related organizations should they fail to meet tough new registration conditions.
The measure is a response to claims by right-wing lobbyists that Israel's human-rights advocates supplied much of the damaging evidence of war crimes cited by Judge Richard Goldstone in his UN-commissioned report into Israel's Operation Cast Lead.
Human-rights groups funded by foreign donors, such as the European Union, would be required to register as political bodies and meet other demands for "transparency".
Popular support for the clampdown was revealed in a poll published last week showing that 57 per cent of Israeli Jews believed "national-security" issues should trump human rights.