B’Tselem fires back at national service director

After national service at the B’Tselem rights group was canceled amid the NGO’s criticism of the IDF and Israel, the organization’s director calls for Pensioner Affairs Minister Uri Orbach, who’s responsible for national service, to take action against Sar-Shalom Jerby, the official who initiated the move.

“In a democracy,” writes B’Tselem director Hagai El-Ad, “clerks don’t have decisive authority in political arguments. Make Jerby’s authority clear to him, or replace him with a man or woman who is able to internalize the idea that democracy is a system in which public debates are held openly, and government employees remember their responsibilities to the public, and don’t use their jobs as a hatchet for advancing themselves politically.”

El-Ad calls Jerby “an administrative clerk” who “was confused and forgot his role.”

Jerby, head of the National Service Administration, had sent El-Ad a strongly worded letter in which he announced that national service in the organization would no longer be permitted.

Jerby writes that “in light of the organization’s activities against the State of Israel and IDF soldiers in Israel and abroad, I have decided to revoke your status as an operational body permitted to accept national service volunteers.”

He says the decision was made “during a period in which the State of Israel is coping with the threat of thousands of rockets and missiles on millions of its citizens, and is conducting an extensive operation to remove the threat over all the residents of Israel.”