Yet another IDF Spokesman lie

By Yossi Gurvitz December 10, 2011 | Edit

An IDF Spokesman officer tries to mislead the public on the issue of freedom of assembly in the West Bank

“The IDF Spokesman is lying, as usual” – these immortal words were not uttered by yours truly or any other backstabbing, well-poisoning and self-hating leftist, but rather by Major General (Aluf) Uri Sagi. And as a rule, Sagi is right on the money.

We had another one today: Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich (you may remember her from that classic piece of reasoning, “They had AK-47s, ergo they came from Gaza”) wrote on Twitter that “Today- legal march for human rights in Tel-Aviv.people holding signs etc. In #Nabisaleh there was illegal violent riot just like every week!”

Sneaky. Lt. Col. Leibovich would have you believe there are legal demonstrations in the West Bank, just as anywhere else, and that those dastardly Palestinians just can’t demonstrate peacefully like other people, but must riot.

There are no legal demonstrations in the West Bank.  Act 101 of the Military Acts in power in the West Bank says that any ten people “walking around, or gathering in order to move around from place to place, for a political purpose, or for any issue which may be considered political, whether they’re actually moving or not” is an illegal assembly. An illegal assembly is also any “ten people or more, who gathered together in a place where a speech is made on a political issue, or an issue which may be considered political, or to debate such an issue.”

So, now we have to decide whether Lt. Col. Leibovich is blissfully ignorant of the legal situation in the West Bank, or whether she was knowingly selling the public a load of bullshit.

Me, I’ll go with General Sagi.

I am Yossi Gurvitz, a 40-year old journalist, blogger and photographer. I write for several Israeli publications, including the influential financial daily Calcalist and the Nana portal. In the past, I’ve been deputy editor of Nana News, and with Itamar Shaaltiel edited its 2006 Knesset elections section. I was raised as an Orthodox Jew, graduated from a Yeshiva (Nehalim), but saw the light and turned atheist at about the age of 17. After the mandatory three years in the military, much more strictly enforced in 1988 than now, I studied history and classics, earning a BA degree, and studying three additional years towards an MA, but abandoned the project in favor of earning my living as a journalist. [It seemed a good idea at the time.]

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