A right-wing NGO has demanded that the Knesset Research and Information Center
(RIC) remove documents written by a researcher transferred for publishing
left-wing opinion articles.
The demand came in a letter to Knesset legal
adviser Eyal Yinon.
Dr. Gilad Natan was removed from his job as an RIC
researcher and made an archivist instead earlier this month, after his employers
found harsh political opinion pieces he wrote while working in the Knesset,
where he is supposed to be objective.
Despite protests from MKs and
columnists in several newspapers, including his former colleague Susan Hattis
Rolef in The Jerusalem Post, Yinon upheld Natan’s demotion, saying it was for
professional – not political – reasons, because his articles were not
appropriate for a Knesset worker.
Natan’s paper on illegal African
migrants was sent to an external consultant, who found that “the research is not
biased or tendentious, and is up to accepted professional standards,” Yinon
added.
Eitan – The Israeli Immigration Policy Center found, however, the
methodology and conclusions of Natan’s research on illegal African migrants to
be problematic, and is demanding that it be removed and replaced by a new
report.
One example the NGO gave is that Natan wrote: “Despite the
recognizable increase in the number of people who immigrated to Israel in recent
years and the increase in people seeking refuge, the State of Israel is not one
of the principle target countries for this type of immigration.”
Eitan’s
researchers found that Israel took in more illegal migrants than any European
Union country in the years 2010 to 2011.
The NGO quoted the report by the
external researcher hired by the RIC to examine Natan’s work, Dr. Anabelle
Leipzig- Friedlander, as writing, “The criticism of the RIC report, that Israel
was not presented in a sharp enough way as one of the important countries for
absorbing refugees, and refuge-seekers, as compared to Europe specifically and
Western countries in general, is justified.”
“We do not have the ability
or the tools to determine if [Natan’s report] was written with an intention to
mislead, or just out of a lack of professionalism, but in any case, this is a
false presentation that represents the opposite of reality,” Eitan wrote. “In
light of this, we do not understand the RIC’s insistence in standing behind the
findings in the research.”
The story of Natan’s demotion begins in
October, when, at the request of MKs, he prepared a research paper on illegal
African migrants. The right-wing news blog Midah found what it said were several
factual errors that showed the report was poorly researched. For example, Natan
wrote that the crime rate among migrants is lower than that of Israelis, which
Midah disputed.
Soon thereafter, Midah published an investigation of
Natan, finding columns he wrote in 2009, while he was working at the Knesset,
for news site Ynet, in which he compared religious-Zionists to Nazis and called
Jewish residents of Hebron “circumcised Cossacks” and
“Judeo-pogromists.”
In December, Ma’ariv columnist Kalman Liebskind wrote
a scathing article about Natan, saying the RIC’s reports are not reliable. Three
weeks later, the researcher was demoted and moved to work in the Knesset
archive, but his salary was not cut.
At the time, the Knesset Spokesman’s
Office said that no problems were found with his research, but that his
articles, which refer to specific parties in the Knesset, made it impossible to
leave him in “a sensitive position like RIC researcher, who is supposed to
supply research to all MKs.”
The spokesman added that, had Natan remained
a researcher, MKs and the public might doubt the veracity of the RIC’s work,
because the institution is supposed to be neural and apolitical.
Natan
responded on his Facebook page that, as a government worker, he is limited in
what he can say, and “it seems like [his] basic right of freedom of speech has
been violated.”
He added that he never hid his columns, and was only told
not to write them three years after they were published.
“In the over
seven years of my work at the RIC of the Knesset, presenting facts in a thorough
and clear way without bias to this side or the other has been the basis of my
work. Despite all those who attack my research, I don’t serve any agenda
or write on behalf of anyone,” he wrote, in reference to Midah and
others.
MK Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz), among other lawmakers, wrote a
letter to Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin protesting Natan’s
demotion.
“Throughout my work in the Knesset Committee on Foreign Workers
– as a member and chairman – Dr. Natan showed impressive diligence and
extraordinary professionalism, to the last detail,” Horowitz wrote. “Therefore,
I was shocked to hear he was removed from his job as a researcher because of
political pressures due to positions he expressed in the past.”
Horowitz
added that Natan has a right to be left-wing, and that his positions do not
influence his work.
“Tomorrow, someone will say a religious person or a
settler or an Arab or a right-wing person cannot have a certain job. Stop this,
Ruby [Rivlin], and let him keep his job,” the Meretz lawmaker
concluded.
Yinon responded in a letter to MKs, in which he wrote that
Natan’s opinion columns showed “sharp, vitriolic criticism of MKs and factions,
which, in my opinion, deviated from the acceptable level when it comes to
Knesset employees in general and RIC workers specifically.”
The Knesset
legal adviser brought several examples of such criticism, such as an article in
which Natan wrote that the National Union members are fascists who incite to
violence against Arabs, and another in which he described Defense Minister Ehud
Barak as “the Israeli version of Napoleon.”
“The reason the professional
departments of the Knesset exist is to give neutral, apolitical service to MKs
from across the political spectrum,” Yinon wrote. “As such, I recommended to the
Knesset director-general to move Dr. Natan to a different job in the Knesset
that does not involve giving direct services to MKs and writing content for
them, while preserving his rights, status and salary.”
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