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Background Paper of November 14, 2004 (Longer version of Press Release)
Israeli Authorities Seek to Dismantle WAC–MAAN (Workers Advice Center)
Let WAC get on with its work! The right to organize workers is fundamental and inviolable!
The Registrar of Non-Profit Associations (NPA's) in Israel, Attorney Yaron Kedar, has decided to begin procedures toward dismantling the Workers Advice Center (WAC, referred to as Ma'an in Arabic and Hebrew). The decision, dated October 25, 2004, comes as a severe blow to freedom of organization in Israel.
The Registrar claims that WAC has not been acting in accordance with its stated goals: to defend workers' rights. Rather, he says, "The NPA acted in cooperation with other NPA's to advance the interests of the political party known as the ODA" (the Organization for Democratic Action – or Da'am in Arabic). He states, in particular, that WAC has served as a conduit of funds to the ODA.
WAC rejects these claims. It has been devoting all its energy and resources, ever since its registration as an NPA in the year 2000, to advance the interests of under-represented workers, especially Arabs, by organizing them into work teams, finding them jobs with construction companies, and representing them in their battles with Israeli bureaucracy. For this there is abundant evidence, some of which will be cited below. All of WAC's administrative and financial records were provided to the Registrar. He did not find a single shekel that went from WAC, or through WAC, to the ODA.
Why then has he decided to dismantle WAC?
In order to answer this question, we shall dip briefly into the history of the relationship between the Registrar and WAC.
The former Registrar, Amiram Boget, attempted to deny registration to WAC. In May 2000 a Jerusalem court forced him to go through with it. One year later, however, Boget undertook an investigation on the pretext that "WAC is not fulfilling the goals for which it was established, and it is serving as camouflage for political activity." The spur was a complaint, but Boget refused to divulge who made it. With the release of the investigative report, the source has at last been revealed. The complaint stemmed from a disgruntled former employee who had lost a personal lawsuit against WAC. After giving false testimony, he received permission from the Registrar to found a rival NPA.
The Registrar's investigation of WAC was conducted by an accountant named Yomtov Bilu. In the course of it, WAC provided Mr. Bilu with thousands of documents, including all its account books, and allowed him to interview its personnel. His report was presented to the new Registrar, Adv. Kedar, in July 2004. It forms the basis for the decision to begin procedures for dismantling WAC. Yet in all our documents, Mr. Bilu cannot find a single piece of evidence that WAC acted for purposes other than those for which it was founded. The Registrar decided, nonetheless, to accept Mr. Bilu's recommendations and, in addition, to charge WAC 30,000 shekels to cover costs of the investigation.
Mr. Bilu's report is a series of innuendoes lacking substance. Some border on sheer ignorance, like one that deals with defense of illegal migrant workers: "A suspicion arises that the NPA's activity concerning aid to illegal foreign workers is against the law." In fact, international labor laws and conventions oblige the state to defend every worker, legal or illegal. The Registrar's "suspicion" allows a glimpse into the frame of mind underlying the bureaucratic vendetta against WAC.
Mr. Bilu cannot help but acknowledge, in his report, that WAC carried on "energetic activity in the field of job placement," but he goes on to say that the hidden purpose of this activity has been to advance the ODA. The hidden purpose? If it is hidden, then how does Mr. Bilu know about it? Or is it no longer hidden? Has he brought the hidden purpose to light? But if so, why does he show no evidence? Apparently, WAC's purpose is still hidden, like the WMD in Iraq! On this basis of innuendo and suspicion and hidden purposes, the Registrar wishes to break up an organization that has done more for the cause of organized labor in the last four years than any other in Israel.
The vendetta against WAC has nothing to do, in fact, with any departure from our declared objectives. The vendetta is against the objectives themselves. It is against their oppositional character, which we do not hesitate to declare. And here we get to the nub of the matter: In the investigative report we read that WAC, as well as other NPA's it cooperates with, "were established and operated by central activists in the ODA party." On the face of it, there is nothing wrong with that. The law permits a person to be active both in a political party and in an NPA. The ODA is a legal political party. Why then does Mr. Bilu make this remark?
Mr. Bilu and the Registrar have certain people in mind: people who, in the 1980's, were members of "Derekh Hanitzotz." These people were accused of contact with the PLO (such contact was then illegal), and some sat in prison as a result. That is the nub of the vendetta. Because of their past, these people are to be deprived of their basic civil rights. In the investigative report we read the following sentence: "As communicated to me, these activists stem from 'Derekh Hanitzotz…" The investigator then mentions them by name: "Assaf Adiv, Yacov Ben Efrat, Roni Ben Efrat, Hadas Lahav, Tsipora Freedman and Michal Schwartz." The investigator does not say who communicated the information or what possible relevance it can have. Rather, he conveys a subliminal message: such people ought not to have the right to take part in, operate or lead an NPA.
As for the ideational connection between WAC and the ODA, no one has ever denied its existence. Such a connection in no way contravenes the Law of NPA's. The law makes no qualification or condition restraining activists or members of an NPA from taking part in political activity. In fact, all the political parties in Israel maintain ideational connections, if not more, with NPA's. These provide one of the chief ways by which political parties can act in the spheres of society, health and welfare.
The function of the Registrar of NPA's is to ensure that the borders between the NPA's and the parties should be upheld and that the parties should not misuse the NPA's, as happened in the case known as "the NPA's of Barak." Here certain NPA's were set up by persons close to Ehud Barak, nominally in order to raise money for advancing democracy, whereas the funds were actually channeled to Barak's election campaign.
The case of WAC is utterly different. Because the Registrar was unable to bring any evidence to show misuse of funds, he took refuge in the metaphysical claim of "hidden purposes."
Precisely today, at a time when the life of Israeli officialdom has been exposed in its ugliness, those institutions whose task it is to ensure proper administration must consider their steps with care. The present prime minister's family has been the benefactor of shady deals, while the previous prime minister is suspected of having received millions from donations raised by fictive NPA's. These cases, however, have been closed, and the suspects continue to act without impediment. The tolerance toward such high public officials stands in stark contrast with the dedication and perseverance of the authorities in their campaign to dismantle WAC.
As a public body, WAC belongs to its hundreds of members, and they alone have the right to determine the makeup of its institutions.
WAC's members today include more than 600 workers. It is open to all, without regard to nationality, gender, religious belief or political tendency. It is run by the workers together with its field coordinators in a spirit of cooperation and equality between Arab and Jewish members. The leaders are chosen in democratic elections. Some of them are identified indeed with a socialist orientation, but this fact is subject to the will of the membership. The members, and only they, have the right to determine who will serve in the leadership. They and only they have the right to determine WAC's policies and agenda. When the Registrar attempts to interfere with this process, he violates the basic rights of all WAC members.
In the last four years, WAC has signed wage agreements with fifteen construction companies, among them the largest in Israel. It has ensured jobs for hundreds of Israeli citizens. It is represented on a regular basis in the discussions of the Knesset Committee on Migrant Workers. It is recognized as a representative body by the Employment Service and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Lately it was invited to appear before the Committee on the Labor Force in the Construction Industry, headed by the Director of the Employment Service, Esther Dominisini.
There is, then, a contradiction between the public status enjoyed by WAC and the vendetta carried out by the Registrar. This contradiction has a broader context, as revealed in a study by the Israeli Center for Third Sector Research (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), headed by Professor Yitzhak Galnoor. It deals with the problematic relations that obtained, in the year 2003, between governmental institutions and NPA's like WAC. It warns against over-interference on the part of the authorities, especially the Registrar of NPA's, in the affairs of those NPA's that work for social change – NPA's that often find themselves in confrontation with the government. Galnoor devotes a chapter to the relation between the Registrar and NPA's that work in the Arab sector. He finds a clear negative bias in comparison with the Registrar's relation to NPA's that deal with similar problems in the Jewish sector.
WAC's harassment should also be seen against the background of the socio-economic situation in Israel today. The government has slashed social welfare in recent years, pushing tens of thousands outside the network of social security. The towns of the periphery, and especially the Arab villages, have undergone social and economic devastation. Given this neo-liberal agenda, it is only to be expected that the government would pursue organizations like WAC, which demand justice for the deprived and neglected.
WAC has opened a public campaign in Israel and abroad, insisting on its right to organize workers
WAC has no intention of rolling over backwards and yielding to the Registrar's decree. He offers a "program of recuperation," including the appointment of an official to "accompany" WAC, but WAC has no illness from which it needs to recuperate, and the workers need no chaperone to instruct them on how to run their organization. The workers of WAC will mobilize to defend their right to organize.
WAC has relations of solidarity and cooperation with labor unions throughout the world. We shall turn to these unions, including the International Labor Organization (ILO), in order to compel the Israeli government to stand by its commitments under the international conventions it has signed. The "Convention concerning Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise, Convention:C087," effective since 1950 – which Israel joined in 1957 – obliges all member states to grant freedom of organization to their workers, including the freedom to determine the internal regulations of their organizations, their plan of operations, and the choice of their leadership, as they see fit, without interference from the government.
WAC calls on all human-rights organizations, and on all who care about freedom of organization and freedom of speech in Israel, to join its struggle against the vendetta of the Registrar of NPA's.
See the e-mail addresses of the relevant Israeli authorities.
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