When we went out to fight for our right to freedom, we were called racists, and when we revolted against abandonment and renunciation, we were called fascists • Now, the right to protest has been taken away from us • Opinion
"We were innocent."
Shefi Paz
Photography:
Gideon Markovich
When the Basic Law of Human Dignity and Liberty was enacted, I was glad
that I was innocent enough to believe that the purpose of the law was to protect me, my dignity and liberty from the arbitrariness of the government.
Years later I sat stunned in the ivory hall of the High Court of Justice, and saw how the law is used time and time again against the battered and bruised residents of South Tel Aviv.
From the moment the first infiltrator crossed the border into Sinai, we, the residents of the neighborhoods, were deprived of the right to dignity and freedom.
For years we have seen how the High Court repeatedly defends the rights of infiltrators and ignores the rights of citizens, repeatedly ignores the right of the state to determine who will come through its gates, and defends the right of border thieves to destroy communities, increase polarization and set its agenda. Of Israeli society.
When we went out to fight for our right to dignity and freedom, we were called racists.
When we revolted against abandonment and renunciation, we were called fascists.
When the media blocked the way for us to explain and persuade, and we had to take the right to speak with the power of megaphones and graffiti, we were called criminals.
Archive // Right-wing activist Shefi Paz spray-painted graffiti on the walls of EU offices
Because there is another right that has been stolen from us, and that is the right to protest.
Not just because once we revolt - we are called derogatory names.
But because of the fear.
The fear of violence.
The fear of labeling.
The fear of layoffs.
And especially the fear of the police, the arrests and the indictments.
So now, after the system recognized an escalation and threat to its sacred silence, the incompetence of the police and the disgraceful treatment of the judiciary, the reconciliation with the existence of the slave quarter and the reconciliation with the constant erosion of the Zionist vision, the system panicked, set up an investigation team and seized the tax target. '1 in south Tel Aviv.
Because we were innocent.
Because we thought it was our right to have private conversations, because we thought it was our right to protest in color in a neighborhood where all the walls are sprayed with dirt and urine stains, because we thought it was our right to protest in front of the High Court judges, because we thought it was our right to document every aspect of our robbed lives. .
The indictment that the state has filed against us consists of 14 sections and more sub-sections.
Nine of them for vandalizing real estate (three in front of the houses of High Court judges), five for conspiracy, three for violating public peace, two for trespassing, one for Facebook posts.
The bulk of the indictment is built on intrusion into privacy and private WhatsApp conversations.
But the country is not shaking, because for years we have been demonized, and the demon has no human rights and no civil rights and no right to dignity and no right to liberty.
The daemon can be detained in front of his children, dragged handcuffed to court in the dead of night, restricted from house arrest until the end of the proceedings, portrayed in the media as dangerous and threatening.
And to reinforce the image of the demon, the bulk of the indictment focuses on conversations and protests involving educational institutions of foreign children.
All the rest, all the protests against the associations and authorities we were questioned about, dissipated when the prosecution came to formulate the indictment.
And even after five detention extension hearings in various courts, I have not yet received an answer to the much-asked question: Who am I dangerous to?
Shefi Paz, the front for the liberation of South Tel Aviv, 40 days under house arrest and under supervision