How one professor poked Israeli establishment in the eye

When professor David Dean Shulman won the Israel Prize, his admirers called his decision to donate the 75,000-shekel ($20,000) prize to anti-occupation organization Ta’ayush "sweet revenge." Other anti-occupation activists contend that the leading researcher of religion and philosophy chose a creative and intelligent form of protest to reconcile the ethical dilemma the prize presented him. On the one hand, as an opponent of the occupation, accepting the prize at all might be construed as reneging on his worldview in front of the Israeli establishment. On the other hand, rejecting the prize and refusing to shake the hands of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Education Minister Naftali Bennett on Independence Day would look as if he were making himself a pariah.

Established jointly by Shulman and his colleague Gadi Elgazi during the start of the second intifada in 2000, Ta'ayush — "living together" in Arabic — set a goal of protecting the basic rights of Arabs in the territories and Israel. The organization is very active in dealing with the appropriation of Palestinian lands by the state as well as the displacement of the Bedouin.

Over the past several months, the radical right-wing movement Ad Kan has waged a much-ballyhooed campaign against Ta'ayush. Disguised as leftist activists, some of the movement's members allegedly joined Ta'ayush to expose its methods of operation. One of Ta'ayush's most prominent activists, Ezra Nawi, was portrayed in the material Ad Kan provided to the media as someone who exposed Arabs who sold lands to Jews and handed that information over to Palestinian Preventive Security. Ad Kan alleged that some of the Palestinians whose identities were revealed to the Palestinian security forces were later executed, though those allegations were proven to be baseless.

In his 2007 book "Dark Hope, Journal of a Ta’ayush Activist," Shulman describes his activity within the organization between 2002 and 2006. Though he describes the settlers as violent and brutal, he lays most of the blame on the state's leaders, the ones whose hands he shook upon receiving the prize. He describes an elaborate overarching system that benefits the settlers and corrupts the speech and even the thoughts of Israelis.

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/05/israel-prof-david-shulman-israel-prize-ngo-taayush.html#ixzz48nsxPsGQ