Anti-arms sales activist arrested after outburst during minister’s speech
Eli Joseph heckles Israel Katz, says Jewish state shouldn’t be arming South Sudan, where alleged war crimes taking place
Judah Ari Gross is The Times of Israel's religions and Diaspora affairs correspondent.
An anti-weapons sales activist was arrested after he interrupted a speech by Transportation and Intelligence Minister Israel Katz to protest defense exports to South Sudan, during a conference in the southern town of Sderot on Tuesday.
As the minister began his speech, activist Eli Joseph accused the government of providing weapons to the African country, which has been accused of gross human rights violations.
“Who gave you the right to arm mass murderers in South Sudan?” Joseph shouted at the Likud minister.
He was escorted out of the Sderot Cinematheque, where the Sapir College conference was being held. He continued to rail against Israel’s policies of selling weapons to human rights abusers, as reporters asked him about the outburst.
“Why am I shouting? Because I can’t live with the fact that, in my name, we’re arming murderers to slaughter 50,000 women and children. I can’t live with that,” he said, clearly emotional.
“The president of South Sudan gets weapons from us. His troops enter villages, murder men, rape women and burn people alive. And we carry on like it’s nothing. That’s the worst corruption that there is,” he yelled, in the building’s entrance hall.
It was not clear how Joseph reached the figure of 50,000 women and children. Analysts and international organizations have estimated that between 50,000 and 300,000 people have been killed in the South Sudanese civil war, which began in 2013.
Israel, which was one of the first countries to recognize South Sudan when it declared independence in 2011, has been accused of selling a variety of weapons and military equipement to the war-torn country, including assault rifles, drones and surveillance technology.
Joseph was detained by police shortly after he made his comments and taken to the local police station, as officers took testimonies from eyewitnesses, a colleague of the activist told The Times of Israel.
He was accused of attacking a public figure — the mayor of Sderot, Alon Davidi — something Joseph vehemently denies.
“I never touched anybody,” he told The Times of Israel shortly after he was released from police custody.
“[The security guards] hurt me. I did not use force against anybody, in any way,” he said. He acknowledged that he “asked a question in a very direct way” and climbed over a row of seats to get closer to the stage, but denied that this was threatening.
Joseph accused Davidi and the conference organizer, Uzi Dayan, of trying to keep him away from the event by making up charges and “manufacturing a case” against him.
Though police released him from custody, Joseph said he was told the investigation against him is ongoing. In the meantime, he has been barred from entering Sderot’s city hall or contacting the mayor, the activist said.
This is not the first time the British-born Joseph has interrupted politicians during public appearances to protest arms sales to human rights abusers.
The activist noted that last month he interrupted a conference where Education Minister Naftali Bennett was speaking and before that did the same to Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked.
In those cases, he said, while he was removed from the event, no criminal charges were made against him.
“Bennett who doesn’t agree with me, still defended my right to protest. Same with Shaked two weeks ago,” he said.
In December, he and two other activists heckled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the annual national Bible Quiz over defense exports to Myanmar.
The demonstrators carried banners reading “Disgrace! We are supposed to be a light unto the nations, stop making money from the Burmese Holocaust” and “We are supposed to be a light unto the nations and not an armorer to murderers.”
