Last Friday, Jonathan Pollak, a long-time anti-occupation activist (and Haaretz employee) was arrested while he demonstrated with residents of the Palestinian village of Beita against the illegal Evyatar outpost that was erected on the Palestinian village’s land.
The pretext for the arrest, according to police, was that Pollak threw rocks at a Border Police patrol car during the demonstration. Pollak denied it. On Tuesday, he was formally charged, and he was ordered held in custody until the conclusion of legal proceedings.
This isn't the first arrest for Pollak, a self-described anarchist and anti-Zionist. He has a long history of protests, arrests and being subjected to political harassment from the government and its various arms, and is a good example of the fact that for a long time now, not only Palestinians are arrested, but also Jews who show true solidarity with them.
Up to this point, the story sounds quite unremarkable, certainly in the current political atmosphere. After all, what can one expect from a country whose actions run counter to every human rights charter and which keeps millions of Palestinians under a cruel apartheid regime?
From a country that sanctifies and creates an illegal and immoral reality?
It's only logical that someone like Pollak, who insists on holding on to morality and a sense of justice and acting accordingly would come to be seen as an enemy who must be arrested. Pollak is well aware of this and ready to pay the price.
But that isn't the main point, since Pollak has been arrested in the past and is under arrest now, and will likely be arrested again in the future.
The report of his arrest could have passed almost unnoticed were it not for the tweet on the Ad Kan organization’s Twitter account: “A few days ago, the police contacted us after the anarchist Jonathan Pollak was arrested again, on suspicion of throwing rocks at a Border Police jeep. We are well acquainted with Pollak, unfortunately. The collection of incriminating evidence we collected and the dozens of complaints we filed with the police until now led to his arrest, but he was very quickly released and continued to endanger civilians and soldiers.”
Assuming that Ad Kan didn't make this stuff up, it’s worth paying attention to the fact that the Israel Police is contacting a radical right-wing organization of informers in order to incriminate a citizen. The police could also have checked out Ad Kan’s website and read about the organization’s goals, and seen why it can't and shouldn't serve as a legitimate address for any of the country’s law enforcement agencies.
Ad Kan declares that it fights “anti-Israeli organizations that are largely funded by foreign governments and antisemitic elements,” when what it actually does is infiltrate human rights and civil rights organizations to destroy them from the inside.
What Ad Kan calls “organizations working to weaken the country by slandering it around the world” very often are organizations that courageously shine a light on the establishment’s discrimination and racism toward minorities. An examination of “the sources of funding and interested parties” is essentially an attempt to oversee the organizations that could convey to the world the twisted reality in Israel, and to punish them.
This organization’s entire manner of operating is twisted and dangerous and intended to reduce as much as possible the opportunity to describe to the world Israel’s moral decline as an occupying nation.
The fact that the Israel Police is cooperating with this organization ought to disturb every decent Israeli. Ought to. But when you think about who the national security minister is, and about the current government as a whole, which is bent on destroying the last shreds of democracy that still exist here, this whole thing isn't surprising. Just like Im Tirtzu before it, Ad Kan will have a significant role as informers in the service of the Israeli authorities.
The Israeli Police’s Far-right Informants
Last Friday, Jonathan Pollak, a long-time anti-occupation activist (and Haaretz employee) was arrested while he demonstrated with residents of the Palestinian village of Beita against the illegal Evyatar outpost that was erected on the Palestinian village’s land.
The pretext for the arrest, according to police, was that Pollak threw rocks at a Border Police patrol car during the demonstration. Pollak denied it. On Tuesday, he was formally charged, and he was ordered held in custody until the conclusion of legal proceedings.
This isn't the first arrest for Pollak, a self-described anarchist and anti-Zionist. He has a long history of protests, arrests and being subjected to political harassment from the government and its various arms, and is a good example of the fact that for a long time now, not only Palestinians are arrested, but also Jews who show true solidarity with them.
Up to this point, the story sounds quite unremarkable, certainly in the current political........
© Haaretz
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