MK Miri Regev (Likud) launched a new Knesset caucus Teusday intended
to combat attempts to delegitimize Israel in the international arena.
Regev collaborated with the Diaspora Affairs and Public Diplomacy
Ministry to create the new caucus and celebrated its launch with an
afternoon session focusing on strategies for coping with
delegitimization. The creation of the new caucus comes shortly after
the annual Israel Apartheid Week events that pro-Arab groups stage
each years to undermind Israel.
“In an age in which the threat of delegitimization against Israel has
turned from a false threat to a real one, of an increase in the
delegitimization of Israel as the national home of the Jewish people,
and the activities directed against the state turn slowly but surely
into actual threats, we must plan accordingly for these challenges,”
Regev told those who attended the caucus´ first meeting.
“This is a new sort of threat and danger. The threats that we knew
before were of a certain kind of ‘hard’ force, but the threat of
delegitimization utilizes ‘soft’ force.”
Prof. Asa Kasher, who drafted the IDF’s ethical code, was asked to
aid the caucus and the ministry in establishing a public advisory
committee that would “define what is legitimate criticism of the
state and its institutions and what is illegitimate criticism,
designed to generate delegitimization, and which crosses the
boundaries of appropriate democratic dialogue.”
