At the threshold of criminalisation: repression of ‘oppositional’ civil society organisations in the Israeli settler state

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ABSTRACT This article discusses the processes of criminalisation of oppositional political activism of Jewish-Israeli citizens. Israel strives to maintain Jewish supremacy, providing a privileged position to Jewish-Israelis while treating Palestinians by default as a threat. The article focuses on the sustained campaign waged against Breaking the Silence, an organisation established by veterans of the Israeli army that attempts to use a moral critique to campaign to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Since 2009, the organisation has become a target of a right-wing campaign of delegitimisation intended to silence it. The article discusses the process through which oppositional civil society groups are transformed from a position of privilege to a threat to be neutralised. Such processes of criminalisation involve multiple informal and formal tools, and actors from ‘civil society’ and ‘the state’. I argue that the distinction between the two spheres is artificial as both are part of the same hegemonic system. I contend that understanding the nature of the threat and those that pose it opens a window into the vulnerability of the system. The states’ coercive side, which was previously geared against Palestinians, turns towards its privileged citizens, thus rendering its vulnerability more visible.