Anyway, the ACRI is in the news today because it tried to pull an underhanded dirty trick on 37 prominent law professors, including deans of law schools, in Israel. Haaretz Feb 6, 09 reports that the ACRI approached 37 law dons and announced that it was planning to add their names to a statement denouncing Israel for its "war crimes" in Gaza and its murdering innocent Palestinian civilians – UNLESS the law professor explicitly requested that his or her name NOT be included.
In other words, the ACRI has sunk to the level of those junk email spammers who claim they have the right to flood you with spam and use your name UNLESS you have explicitly told them not to.
According to the news story in Haaretz, which is not on their web site (yet?), evidently all of the 37 deans and professors who got the "invitation/announcement" from the ACRI asked that their names be removed from the anti-Israel statement. The "invitation" was the initiative of ACRI's own house shyster, one Dan Yakir, and a second shysterette, one Debby Giller-Chio, who heads the ACRI's department on legislation. The statement these two people wrote, and upon which they added the names of the 37 others without bothering to get their permission, called for an investigation into Israeli war crimes against Gazan civilians in the recent Cast Lead operation. In a letter to the 37, the ACRI's lawyers pontificated that "You have the moral and legal responsibility to demand an investigation of these events that led to the developments (deaths of civilians)."
This is a bit like demanding an official investigation into the violation of the human rights of Germans by anti-Nazi partisans in World War II. How would the shysters of ACRI like it if someone added their names to petitions to support Avigdor Lieberman, or to impose capital punishment on traitors and terrorists, or to expel Arab politicians from Israel, unless the lawyers explicitly ask not to have their names added to the list?
Among those going public in demanding that their names be removed from the bash-Israel letter were Prof. Yoav Dotan, Dean of Law at the Hebrew University, the Dean of Law from Bar Ilan University Arie Reich, and the Dean of Law from the Academic College of Kiryat Ono Dodi Schwartz.
Dotan complained that ACRI has a long track record of falsely claiming to be the automatic representative of academic legal opinion.
Lest anyone be misled by its harmless sounding name, the ACRI is a pro-terror anti-Israel extremist group. Here are some older postings about the ACRI:
Bias at the "Association for Civil Rights in Israel"
by Steven Plaut
INN today carries a news report on yet another one-sided biased "report" coming out of the misnamed Association for Civil Rights in Israel or ACRI. The "Association" is for Civil Rights for everyone except Jews. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) is an anti-democratic extremist group that does not endorse free speech. ACRI, like B'tselem, Physicians for Human Rights and many other assorted splinter far-left, anti-Israel, pro-PLO groups in Israel, pretends it is nothing more than a neutral human rights watchdog but this is an Orwellian lie. (B'tselem by the way distributed a special brochure this week via Haaretz in which it claims to prove that Gaza is still "occupied" by Israel because Israel refuses to let the Hamas import weapons freely at the entrance points into the Gaza Strip. Importing explosives - now THERE is a human right B'tselem can get all indignant over.) Its latest "report" is a one-sided attack on the Jews in Hebron. As usual. the ACRI just can't seem to locate any acts of violence against Jews by Arabs. And self-defense is definitely not a civil right of Jews in the eyes of ACRI.
ACRI is an extremist anti-Israel group that only cares about "human rights" when "defending them" is part of delegitimizing Israel (such as in this case). It has never heard of a human right for Jews not to be murdered by terrorists.
Think I am exaggerating? The president of ACRI, Sami Michael, best known for romanticizing communism, was cited in Haaretz (Oct 21, 2004) as justifying Palestinian terror attacks against Jewish Israelis. Here are his words as quoted by Haaretz:
Michael understands the Hamas members who are fighting these Jews, who stuck a wedge down their throats. In an interview published in the latest issue of New Horizons, a monthly on society and the state published by the Berl Katznelson Foundation, Michael rejects the definition of Hamas fighters as "terrorists."
"Imagine the feeling if I woke up tomorrow and saw this neighborhood, which we inhabit, forcibly conquered by the Syrians, and they established settlements here, and in order to go to the bus station, I needed permission from the Syrian army. How would I feel?" the author from Haifa asked. "If I fight them, I will be considered a terrorist. Why am I a terrorist? Why do we call Hezbollah or Hamasniks terrorists? Why? Because he fights on his own territory? Suddenly, aliens, occupiers, land on him and tell him: "Your house is ours. It's his land, he and his forefathers were born here, and the settlers say: We will never leave ... How would you respond to this?"
A few years back, I approached ACRI and offered them an opportunity to defend free speech in Israel and prove they support human rights for all, even for those who might disagree with their leftist extremist ideology. As you may know, I am being sued in a harassment SLAPP** "libel suit" by a leftist extremist lecturer at Ben-Gurion University because I dared to criticize his political opinions and his public political behavior. The lecturer in question (Neve Gordon) served, for example, as a human shield for Yasser Arafat while Arafat was hiding in his offices the murderers of an Israeli cabinet minister and other terrorists, all this in order to interfere illegally with an Israeli anti-terror military operation. The suit is clearly nothing more than an anti-democratic assault on free speech by a leftist extremist who thinks it is a crime to criticize him.
So, I contacted ACRI and asked them to take up my case and denounce the Ben-Gurion extremists' tactic of trying to use SLAPP litigation as a bludgeon to suppress free speech for non-leftists. There can be no clearer opportunity for those who value free speech as a human right to denounce such misuse of the courts as this case. I invited ACRI to help defeat this cynical move by the leftist extremist in question, Neve Gordon of the political science department at Ben-Gurion University. The liberal Prof. Alan Dershowitz that "Neve Gordon has gotten into bed with neo-Nazis, Holocaust justice deniers, and anti-Semites. He is a despicable example of a self-hating Jew and a self-hating Israeli."
In response, I got a peremptory refusal from a spokesperson for ACRI. They are not interested in defending free speech for Zionists.
** SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. SLAPP suits are anti-democratic libel suits designed to suppress the free speech of one's critics.
Association for Civil Rights in Israel - Isn't
Adar 28, 5764, 21 March 04 09:21
by Steven Plaut
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) is an anti-democratic extremist group that does not endorse free speech.
ACRI, like B'tselem, Physicians for Human Rights and many other assorted splinter far-left, anti-Israel, pro-PLO groups in Israel, pretends it is nothing more than a neutral human rights watchdog. This is an Orwellian lie. ACRI is an extremist anti-Israel group that only cares about "human rights" when "defending them" is part of delegitimizing Israel (such as in this case). It has never heard of a human right for Jews it wishes to defend, such as their right not to be murdered by terrorists.
Think I am exaggerating?
So when exactly does ACRI protect free speech?
Well, I will tell you when.
This past November saw a quiet but significant victory in Israel over the treasonous far-left. Some Israeli extremists were operating an Israeli branch of the "Indymedia" web network, which is a network of dozens of Marxist-anarchist web sites all over the world who devote their days to the singing of praises for communism, terrorism, the International Solidarity Movement, violence and anti-Semitism. The one operating out of Israel was famous for its posting messages praising suicide bombers, denying the Holocaust, posting messages mocking Judaism and the Bible and otherwise anti-Semitic harangues, not mere anti-Israel pieces. Its managers claimed they did not pick the pieces and that it is open web publishing where anyone can post trash; but the fact of the matter is that they regularly censored anything on the site that was pro-Israel and deleted it, leaving up the Nazi screeds (at www.indymedia.org.il).
In November they ran, alongside their other filth, a cartoon showing Ariel Sharon French-kissing Hitler. Some people were outraged and filed a petition with the Attorney General to shut the site down. It has been successfully shut down ever since, evidently thanks to a court order; although recently, a new substitute site just opened at israel.indymedia.org (you might want to stop in to post some pro-Israel material there to annoy them).
For months, ever since the original Israel Indymedia web site was shut down, its URL carried a message in English and Hebrew from this same ACRI protesting the shutting down of this suicide-bombing-cheerleader web site.
I guess ACRI supports free speech only for leftist traitors...
* SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. SLAPP suits are anti-democratic libel suits designed to suppress the free speech of one's critics.
The ACRI also has a track record of rallying to support Neo-Nazi Norman Finkelstein.
See the reports on the ACRI carried on the NGO Monitor web site.
The ACRI has never spoken out against Israel's arbitrary "anti-racist" laws, that criminalize speech for far-Right Kahanist groups but have never been used against Arab or Far Leftist anti-Semitic groups or individuals. The ACRI represents routinely participate in anti-Israel pro-jihad conferences and demonstrations. For details, see NGO Monitor.
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