Netanyahu nixes senior IDF officer’s participation at left-wing event

“This is a body that has long ago became a political organization in every way,” Netanyahu said of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. 

By Jack Gold, World Israel News

The head of the IDF’s Legislative Affairs Department in Judea and Samaria was invited to lecture at a training program conducted by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, an extreme left-wing organization, Israel National News reported.

His appearance and lecture at the event were subsequently canceled by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The program will combine theoretical knowledge, case studies from the world and a broad familiarity with issues in Israel and the Occupied Territories,” the Association for Civil Rights in Israel wrote about the course.

“Humanitarian law imposes restrictions on the conduct of the parties to the conflict in order to reduce the human suffering caused by the fighting and to ensure that even in times of war the basic humanitarian values are preserved,” it said.

The participation of the senior officer in a meeting of the association requires the approval of the defense minister, a position currently filled by Netanyahu.

The parents of female soldier Orel Azouri, who was critically wounded in a car-ramming terror attack and survived, petitioned Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot and requested that he prevent the legal adviser from participating in the course.

“The knowledge that the terrorist who tried to harm her is an Israeli Arab citizen is upsetting to her. The entity that has accompanied the terrorist all along is the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which is fighting the state’s attempt to revoke his citizenship. The Association defends him free. On the other hand, no one is defending Orel’s rights, and certainly not the Association for Civil Rights in Israel,” the victim’s parents wrote.

Netanyahu on Tuesday instructed the IDF not to take part in the training program. “This is a body that has long ago became a political organization in every way,” he said.

Last year, the IDF legal adviser participated in a similar training conducted by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. According to Arutz-7, then-Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman had chosen to ignore bereaved families who requested that he forbid the participation of the senior officer in the event.