Likud MK launches Knesset lobby to fight delegitimization

Nobel Laureate Prof. Yisrael Aumann attends first session of new caucus.

By REBBECA ANNA STOIL
With Israeli Apartheid Week making headlines on college campuses in Europe and North America, MK Miri Regev (Likud) launched a new Knesset caucus Tuesday that seeks to fight the delegitimization of Israel.
Regev’s caucus was created in collaboration with the Diaspora Affairs and Public Diplomacy Ministry, and celebrated its launch with an afternoon session focusing on strategies for coping with delegitimization.
Among the participants in the discussion was Nobel Laureate Prof. Yisrael Aumann.
“In an age in which the threat of delegitimization against Israel has turned from a false threat to a real one, of an increase in the delegitimization of Israel as the national home of the Jewish people, and the activities directed against the state turn slowly but surely into actual threats, we must plan accordingly for these challenges,” said Regev.
“This is a new sort of threat and danger. The threats that we knew before were of a certain kind of ‘hard’ force, but the threat of delegitimization utilizes ‘soft’ force.”
Diaspora Affairs and Public Diplomacy Minister Yuli Edelstein asked Prof. Asa Kasher, who drafted the IDF’s ethical code, to aid the caucus and the ministry in establishing a public advisory committee that would “define what is legitimate criticism of the state and its institutions and what is illegitimate criticism, designed to generate delegitimization, and which crosses the boundaries of appropriate democratic dialogue.”