Editor’s Note: The following messages were shared publicly on the author’s Facebook pages and are republished here with permission.
My friend Michael Sfard, one of the best human right lawyers in Israel and a very talented author, writes about the loss of hope among human rights practitioners. Please read his words, to which I add:
My professional path crossed that of Michael in similar practices many years ago. I was an articled lawyer at Lea Tzemel’s law firm in Jerusalem when he was legal correspondent for the Ha’aretz Group Jerusalem weekly Kol Ha’ir. Then he turned human rights lawyer, and I went into Journalism, becoming news Editor for the same weekly. My first news story ever was written in collaboration with Michael. It was about what then shocked us completely: it transpired that the then President of the association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), Ruth Gabizon, voiced support for practices of torture.
The loss of hope human rights practitioners are feeling was never a huge hope to begin with. And in retrospect we can probably both agree that moments like that above were during the good times. Or at least, they were more hopeful times. The very fact that we knew this was a story worthy of the front-page headline meant that we had some faith in the values a civil rights organization should stand for. We hoped Israeli society could be made better.
It was always, as Gandalf called it, “a fool’s hope,” but even in the very dark days of the first Intifada (1987-1993), you could get small remedies for your clients as a lawyer or make a dent by exposing some brutal wrongs. As a country, as a society, and for many individuals, there was still shame in being a senseless, brutal oppressor, in having murderers among you, in stealing the biblical “poor man’s sheep.”
This is no longer the case. Those days are over, Weimar is over. Appealing to the high court of justice is no longer a real threat against power; getting a journalist to expose evil, even when you find that rare brave one who had not turned into a mouthpiece of fascism, is no leverage, and there is no “world” out there that might sanction you for not understanding the limits of power, because there are none. It is very bleak indeed.
My heart and admiration are with Michael and with those who still fight the good fight, with fading hope, but I cannot imagine where it might come from. In this new world of the 21st century we will need to re-forge the mechanisms for making the world half decent again or at least re-install some checks and balances on the incredible brutality that enables the current genocide in Gaza.
Michael Sfard:
I want to say something about the West Bank.
Not about starvation, not about torture, not about extermination.
About simple, personal, small (relatively) evil.
I’ve been a lawyer for 26 years, in all of them I have been representing Palestinians living in the West Bank. I’ve represented individuals, families, and entire communities, and have dealt, cumulatively, with thousands of incidents in which the army, settlers, or both harmed, threatened to harm, or harassed my clients.
I have never felt as helpless as I do these days.
As law students we learn in law school about the dangers of arbitrary power—power that is unchecked, not constrained by legal norms, not subject to control by legal institutions that restrain it. When we think of this we picture distant countries and past eras. We imagine the feudal lord evicting a vassal on a whim; the king who seizes a poor man’s only lamb; the single-party official who, with a wink, has his annoying neighbor arrested. We think of places with no judiciary, certainly not one that is independent and guided by a professional ethos.
And now, in recent months in the West Bank, I stare straight into the eyes of raw, brutal, arbitrary power.
My office receives reports of arbitrary force being executed every week, every day—sometimes multiple times a day:
— Settlers invading private land, harassing the owners, scaring the children.
— Settlers uproot trees.
— A settler in military uniform searches a shepherd’s tent, breaks property, spills drinking water.
— Soldiers dismantle security cameras installed on Palestinian homes to document harassment and violence.
— Soldiers confiscate the servers where the footage is stored.
— Property is taken by police or soldiers who leave no documentation, no form confirming the seizure.
— Those who try to protest—are arrested.
— Settlers, backed by soldiers, prevent farmers from reaching their land. No reason is given.
— Police do not enforce restraining orders issued by Israeli courts against harassing settlers, do not investigate violations, do not arrest them even when threats continue.
— Police refuse to take complaints on-site or by phone—“Come to the station,” they say (and wait five hours outside in the heat).
None of this is legal.
None of this is legal.
None, none of this is legal—under the occupier’s own laws, under the military law applicable in the territory.
And none of this is new, except for the fact that now—there is no one to talk to.
There used to be a phone number, a commander, an officer, a prosecutor, a legal advisor—someone who showed a shred of shame.
Now, there is no one to talk to.
Either they don’t answer.
Or they respond with hostility.
Or they answer—and ignore.
Those who used to help, those whose job is to help, and who once understood that their mission was to enforce the law on Israeli civilians and soldiers—they disappear, change roles, retire, or fall in line with the ugly spirit of the times.
The police, the army, and the settlers have always been, to a large extent, one body—but there used to be cracks between them through which remedy could sometimes be secured, through which the Jewish supremacy monster could be restrained.
Today it is one solid mass of distilled evil.
And another client sends a WhatsApp message, and another one. And my team and I are losing our minds.
There is no one to talk to.
I find comfort only in the knowledge that the day will come when all of you, all who serve this machinery of evil—you will all have to explain to your children, to your grandchildren, and to yourselves how it was—that you failed to be human.
There will be museums that will tell your story—and the story of your victims.
Because this will not last forever.
Humanism will not lose this battle—in which I will always stand on the side of those whom you, in your minds and in your hearts, have already stripped of their humanity.