Israel Takes Cues From Ben Ali Thugs In Tunisia

The Tunisian 'republic''s founding president Habib Bourguiba was for a while ostracized in the Arab world for advocating Arab acceptance of Israel and he met with Zionist leaders.

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His equally aging tyrannical successor Ben Ali is subservient to the Zionists. The Ben Ali regime never makes a peep about Palestine and has in the past opened up a mission office in Tel Aviv and allowed Israel to do likewise, and even after the closure (during the Second Intifada) the regime still provided some visas for Israelis. And all this even though Israel has bombed Tunisia in the past and killed innocent Tunisians and Palestinians (Israel bombed the then PLO headquarters in Tunis after a Palestinian, but not PLO, organization attacked Israelis and an American Jew. But Israel has always been indiscriminate in attacking all Palestinians and all Arabs).

If Tunisian dictators have been so kind to the Zionists perhaps it should not surprise us that Zionists would be inspired by them. By this I am referring to illiberal, undemocratic and authoritarian measures recently passed/proposed by both regimes but which the Tunisians were the first to enact.

The Tunisian rubber stamp parliament recently passed a law punishing Tunisians who seeks to employ foreign institutions in the name of domestic rights and freedom:

A law passed by the Tunisian parliament this week is designed to silence government critics and human rights activists, Amnesty International has warned.

The organization said that amendment to Tunisia’s penal code, which deals with violations of “external security,” is intended to target human rights activists who lobby foreign bodies such as the European Union (EU), to put pressure on the government over its human rights record.

“Instead of cleaning up their dismal human rights record, the Tunisian authorities have elected to further criminalize human rights advocacy and to undermine the courageous work done by human rights defenders and others seeking to expose the violations that take place in Tunisia on a daily basis,” said Amnesty International.

The amendment to Article 61bis of the Penal Code criminalizes contacting “agents of a foreign power to undermine the military or diplomatic situation in Tunisia”. Those convicted of this crime face up to 20 years in prison, with a minimum sentence of five years.

The new legislation also criminalizes those who contact foreign organisations in order to harm Tunisia’s vital interests, including “economic security”.

This law appears to be a direct response to meetings held in May by Tunisian human rights activists with EU parliamentarians and officials, in Madrid and Brussels.

During the meetings, the Tunisian activists urged them to pressure the government to uphold its international human rights obligations.

The Tunisian government wants to undercut its opposition so it has now criminalized the freedom to speak abroad and ask Western governments to use their leverage to push for liberalization.

Israel also is irritated by its citizens who do the same thing: fed up at home they seek to formulate an international structure (in this case, a boycott) to push for domestic changes. And now Israel is following the Tunisian example of seeking to punish the right to freely protest and encourage redress of grievances, a proposed law that is egregious still since it applies to foreign activities which should be outside the remit of the state:

A new "anti-boycott bill", the third in a series of proposed laws that aim to curtail the ability of civil society to criticise Israeli government policy, will punish Israelis or foreign nationals who initiate or promote a boycott of Israel.

Both thuggish regimes which will see their end, the former will see a new democratic order while the latter will give way to a one-state solution.