New proposed law would allow courts to dismantle any NGO for physically or verbally attacking the IDF or any of its active soldiers.

T. Belman. Israel has a law which criminalizes the slander of MK’s. This Bill proposes similar protection of the IDF or soldiers. As such I welcome it.

By Heski Ezra, ARUTZ SHEVA

Jewish Home Faction Leader Shuli Mualem-Refaeli is taking the fight against extremist left-wing organizations to the next level.

On Wednesday, Mualem submitted a proposed bill to the Knesset that would increase the authority of the courts to dismantle NGOs that attack Israel and basic Israeli institutions such as the IDF.

According to the proposed bill, organizations that work to slander the IDF or its soldiers while they are fulfilling their duties and assault them either physically or verbally, will be dismantled.

The new law will allow the courts to dismantle organizations such as Machsom Watch, or any future organization that may arise on the right-wing that would do the same thing.

In the section for the reasoning behind the proposed law, Mualem illustrated how extremist left-wing organizations confront soldiers at checkpoints or along the separation barrier and antagonize them. These actions often end with physical assaults against soldiers.

Often, “these attacks on soldiers occur while the event is being filmed by the left-wing organizations to capture any response by the soldier so that they can portray it as the soldier abusing the civilian and how justified their work is since the soldiers are violent.

“These same organizations portray themselves as working to help the community at large and even enlist donations from within Israel as well as internationally in order to pay for this work.”

The current law allows the courts to dismantle an NGO that negate the existence of the state of Israel, or if it attacks the Israeli government or its ministers. The new law will aim to include to that list any NGO that attacks the IDF and its soldiers.

Mualem-Refaeli told Arutz Sheva that “as soon as an NGO in a democratic country functions in ways that are illegal and are illegitimate in order to push forward a certain agenda, it itself becomes an illegitimate body.

“We cannot allow the situation in which left-wing NGOs continue to attack and antagonize soldiers in targeted attacks to try to get a rise out of them so they can portray them as evil. This antagonization includes any physical or verbal abuse. We need to expand the authority of the courts to allow them to order the dismantling of any NGO that harms the foundations of the state, of which the IDF is one of them.”