Netanyahu blocks IDF officer from speaking at rights group’s event – report

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday reportedly barred a senior IDF officer from lecturing at an upcoming legal training course organized by a human rights group that is deeply critical of Israel’s West Bank policies.

Col. Eyal Toledano, the military’s legal adviser for the West Bank region, had been invited to speak at an event next Sunday organized by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) focusing on international humanitarian law and its application in the West Bank, the right-wing Israel National News website reported on Tuesday.

The NGO, which was founded in 1972 and claims to be nonpartisan, is viewed by many as staunchly left-wing and has been criticized for providing legal aid to at least one person accused of perpetrating a terror attack against Israelis.

Following the report, Netanyahu — who is also defense minister, and is thus in charge of approving the participation of army personnel in nonmilitary events — decided to prohibit Toledano and all IDF staff from participating, the report said.

“This is a body that has long become a political organization for all intents and purposes,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying of ACRI.

Toledano has in recent years participated in events organized by ACRI, angering terror victims and right-wing Israelis. In those cases, former defense minister Avigdor Liberman had approved his participation.

In recent days, the family of IDF soldier Orel Azuri — seriously wounded in a 2015 car-ramming attack near the entrance to Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, northeast of Hadera — asked Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot to thwart Toledano’s participation in the event, citing ACRI’s legal defense for the Arab Israeli man who committed the attack.

Alaa Raed Ahmad Zayoud was convicted of four counts of attempted murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison after he rammed Azuri, seriously injuring her, and then stepped out of the car to stab three others, causing them light to moderate wounds, on October 11, 2015.

Israel then moved to strip Zayoud of his Israeli citizenship, and the case became a legal precedent last year when the Haifa Magistrate’s Court ruled that his citizenship should be revoked.

ACRI had aided Zayoud in that case and filed an appeal against the ruling to the High Court of Justice — which hasn’t yet been decided — along with the Adalah NGO, which cautioned at the time that “Alaa Zayoud will be left stateless, in contravention of international law.”

Azuri’s parents, Yoram and Limor, wrote in their letter to Eisenkot that “the knowledge that the terrorist who tried to harm her is an Israeli citizen is troubling her. ACRI has accompanied him all the way and fought the state, which is trying to revoke his citizenship. It is defending him and representing him for free.”

“By contrast, nobody is protecting Orel Azuri’s rights, definitely not ACRI,” they added.