Menu
We addressed the legal implications and the violations of international law resulting from the murderous war crimes committed by Hamas, and published a petition calling for the immediate release of the hostages.
It is not easy to summarize the outgoing year when war is still raging in Gaza, the hostages have yet to come home, and the government remains dysfunctional. 2023, the most difficult year in the history of the State of Israel, started out with the government declaring war on Israeli democracy. The regime revolution promoted by Justice Minister Levin was followed by Communications Minister Karhi’s attempt to overtake the free media, an onslaught on civil society, and Finance Minister Smotrich’s corrupt budget allocations. All these impelled Zulat to set out in earnest to thwart the plan to destroy the country. On 7 October, the disastrous year took an even more tragic turn upon the heinous surprise attack on Israel’s southern border communities, the massacre of civilians and war crimes, and the kidnapping of nearly 250 people into Gaza’s hell perpetrated by Hamas’s murderous terrorists.
Even this calamity did not spur the Israeli government to behave properly. It totally abandoned the home front to fend for itself, it relinquished the hostages in Gaza, and it approved a corrupt budget that allocated more unnecessary funds to the settlers and the ultra-Orthodox, further harming civil and human rights.
Zulat worked to curb corrupt initiatives and pointed out the need to establish a civil emergency cabinet to care for the home front. We also acted to protect the Israeli media from an attempted takeover by Netanyahu and Karhi and forwarded our analyses and findings to Zulat’s half-a-million-strong mailing list.
We have summarized for you our main efforts in the past year. It was a busy year, and it is our hope that the next one will see the emergence of a new government under which we will not only fight injustices but also promote equality and human rights and lead Israel to become a better place for everyone.
We addressed the legal implications and the violations of international law resulting from the murderous war crimes committed by Hamas, and published a petition calling for the immediate release of the hostages.
During the war in Gaza, the Israeli home front was left to fend for itself and hundreds of thousands of citizens became refugees in their own country. We promoted a series of programs, including the establishment of a civil emergency cabinet, and laid bare the Israeli government’s shortcomings and injustices
We launched ‘Emergency Call-Up Order’, a project in which dozens of former MKs and government ministers organized on our behalf to fight the regime revolution in the Knesset’s committees, in the media, and in demonstrations.
We submitted objections to Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi’s legislative initiatives aimed at harming the free media in Israel and the Public Broadcasting Corporation. We petitioned the Supreme Court against the Second Authority for Television and Radio, which allows Channel 14 to serve as a propaganda station.
We probed, fought, and opposed Minister Ben-Gvir’s attempted hostile takeover of the Israel Police and his policy of issuing guns en masse. We also compiled rules for regulating the operation of community emergency squads, based on the understanding that they must be under close supervision and undergo careful training, and that in any case the state bears the primary responsibility to protect the lives, bodies, and property of the population.
For the first time, a human rights index (compiled in collaboration with Reichman University’s Institute for Freedom and Responsibility) continuously surveys public attitudes toward human rights in Israel. This year, we also surveyed public perceptions about the regime revolution.
We held virtual events and conferences attended by thousands, as well as many appearances in Knesset committees on the various issues that featured on Israel’s agenda in the past year.
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Tel Aviv University (2015), a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Gender Studies, SOAS, University of London (2015-2016), a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Sociology at Tel Aviv University (2016-2017), and a postdoctoral fellowship Ph.D. at the Humphrey Institute for Social Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (2018-2020).
Dr. Maha Karbahi’s areas of interest focus on the connection between social change, family behavior, and gender inequality in societies in the process of change and specifically in Palestinian Arab society in Israel. Her research draws attention to the study of family life and employment, using a combined “ethnic lens” and “gender lens” and paying attention to the perspective of Palestinian Arab women, a group characterized by intersections between multiple marginal locations, which over the years has remained hidden from the research eye. Dr. Karkabi-Sabah’s research is published in professional journals and chapters in scientific books that are considered pioneers in family research, work, and gender equality.
Professor Emeritus in the Lieberman Chair in Labor Law, in the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University and serves as a full professor in the College of Management’s academic track, where she also serves as chair of the graduate program and as honorary president of the Concord Center for International Law Absorption. Radai was a member of a working group of the UN Human Rights Council on discrimination against women. In addition, she is a prominent and feminist human rights activist.
Dr. Rawia Aburabia
Faculty member of Sapir Academic College’s School of Law, received her PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research deals with the interface between law, gender, minorities, and human rights. Has published in leading journals on the subject of the matrimonial laws pertaining to Muslim women in Israel. Her book Under the Law, Outside Justice: Polygamy, Gendered Citizenship, and Colonialism in Israeli Law is expected to be published as part of the Gender Series of Kibbutz Meuhad Publishing House.
Dr. Aburabia has extensive experience in international human rights and public law. She has worked as a jurist for the Association for Civil Right and has been invited as a specialist to address such international forums as the United Nations and the European Parliament on the subject of indigenous communities and minority rights. She has interned with Human Rights Watch in Washington DC, and has been a member of the executive board of Amnesty International. In 2018, she was selected by the magazine Globes as one of the 40 most promising young persons in Israel under the age of 40.
Ron Kessler
With over two decades of experience in the field of digital content, Ron has participated in numerous political and social campaigns. He helped run the digital activity of senior public officials, and worked in various NGOs. Ron is a fundamentally optimistic man, who believes that Israel can be changed and so can people. Lives in Tel Aviv.
