AG should not support GSS interference in Arab political activity
The Attorney General (AG) of Israel, Menachem Mazuz, responded to a letter sent by Adalah on 10 April 2008 in which the organization demanded that directives be issued to the General Security Services (GSS or the Shabak) to cease summoning political activists from the National Democratic Assembly (NDA) – Balad political party to GSS investigations and harassing them. In his response, dated 12 May 2008 but received by Adalah on 2 June 2008, the AG stated that GSS sources consider that fears exist that “relationships between individuals from Israel with [former NDA-Balad leader MK] Azmi Bishara will be exploited for purposes hostile [to the State of Israel], including the recruitment of those individuals to Hizbullah or encouraging them to undertake illegal activities, and that they will be misled over the true aims behind these activities.”
Regarding the AG’s response, Adalah emphasizes that, “The Attorney General (AG) has once again supported the position of the GSS and lent legitimacy to the GSS’s interference in the legal political activities of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel. He considers the intimidation of Arab citizens to be one of the responsibilities of the GSS. These illegal interrogations constitute a blatant violation of freedom of expression and freedom of association.”
In Adalah’s letter, Attorney Orna Kohn argued that the dangerous phenomenon of the persecution of NDA activists is one of the repeated attempts made by the GSS to interfere in the legitimate activities of Arab political parties and other institutions of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, and to deter them from engaging political activity in general. In the letter, Adalah demanded, as it has demanded in previous legal letters sent to the GSS following its politically-motivated interference in the affairs of Arab citizens, that clear directives be put in place to prevent such interference.
In all recent cases NDA political activists were invited to interrogations via letters summoning them to interrogation or investigation in a police station. These letters were delivered to them by police officers who came to their homes and informed them that they were duty-bound to attend. It was only once they arrived at the police station did they discover the fact that they had been summoned to a meeting with GSS officers and that the impression that they were invited to an interrogation by the police and that they were under was legal duty to attend the meeting was false.
