Public
Security Minister Gilad Erdan and Chief of Police Roni Alsheikh attend a
ceremony for Israeli police at the Police National College, Bet
Shemesh, September 22, 2016. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)
Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs is
carrying out a global propaganda campaign on behalf of the Israeli
government that violates human rights and is acting without authority to
do so, according to a lawsuit filed in the High Court of
Justice Monday. Attorney Schachar Ben Meir’s petition demands that the
High Court of Justice order a halt to the activities carried out by the
Ministry of Strategic Affairs, headed by Gilad Erdan.
The Ministry of Strategic Affairs, which Ben
Meir calls the “Ministry of Spying and Propaganda,” is, according to the
attorney, surveilling citizens and conducting illegal operations
intended to influence and manipulate public opinion.
The ministry has been at the center of a
series of articles published by the Seventh Eye over the past several
months. The articles revealed that one of the Ministry of Strategic
Affairs’ main activities is the funding and publication of government propaganda
on social networks and in newspapers, which is often carried out with
the help of private businesses and non-profit organizations operating in
Israel and abroad.
The Israeli government recently approved the
payment of NIS 128 million to a private organization called Kela-Shlomo
to carry out “mass consciousness activities” within the framework of
what the Ministry of Strategic Affairs calls “extra-governmental
discourse.” The organization was also said to have received a donation
of a similar sum from Jewish philanthropists whose names the Ministry of
Strategic Affairs refused to disclose. Kela-Shlomo’s starting budget,
as result, exceeds a quarter of a billion shekels. Attorney Ben-Meir is
demanding that the High Court of Justice stop these activities, too.
Kela-Shlomo is a non-profit organization
founded by former high-ranking government employees, including former
Director General of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs Yossi Kuperwasser.
Unlike a government agency, which must follow freedom of information
laws and actively publish information about its donors and formal ties,
Kela-Shlomo owes the public nothing – it does not even have a website (a
temporary website set-up by the organization just months ago has been
taken down).
Attorney Ben Meir argues that the relationship
with Kela-Shlomo is meant to enable activities that “the Israeli
government is prohibited from doing,” while obscuring the fact that
these activities are being carried out on behalf of the government.
“In the case before us, the ministry [of
Strategic Affairs] not only is ‘aided’ by private organizations in
carrying out in its activities, but also transfers much of its power –
draconian powers to surveil, spy on, and spread propaganda – to private
organizations that are not directly accountable to the government,” the
petition claims. “The ministry itself carries out radical activities
that are likely unfitting of a democracy, such as espionage and
propaganda, and is even transferring [the ability to carry out] these
radical activities to private bodies.”
If that were not enough, attorney Ben Meir
adds in the petition that the Ministry of Strategic Affairs is also
advancing legislation that would exempt it from freedom of information
laws and allow it to operate free from public scrutiny. Even now,
ministry officials are preventing access to information about the
ministry’s activities by claiming that doing so would harm Israel’s
national security and foreign relations.
Nevertheless, Ben Meir writes, from the
information that has been published so far it is clear that the
“espionage and propaganda activities” carried out by the ministry
include “information gathered from discussions between Israeli citizens
and other groups, on social media, and by other means.”
“What will [the ministry] do with this information?” Ben Meir asks. “We don’t know, because the ministry has never anything.”
“This is not just a question of information
gathering,” Ben-Meir adds, “but the direct influencing of public
discourse by intervention or the setting of a particular line
(‘narrative’).”