Lawyers Urge Israeli Rights

Two civil rights lawyers working for minorities in Israel spoke to Harvard’s Progressive Jewish Alliance at Hillel yesterday about the plight of the Bedouin minority in Israel.

Morad El-Sana and Gil Gan-Mor, both law fellows at the Israeli human rights foundation New Israel Fund (NIF), told the group of 14 people at the event that having studied the American civil rights movement will be instructive when they return to advocate minority rights in Israel.

“NIF has beliefs that are similar to ours,” said Jaclyn B. Granick ’08, Chair of the Operating Committee of the Progressive Jewish Alliance.

“We support LGBT rights and we also support a truly democratic state in Israel which includes rights for both Israelis and Palestinians,” she said.

A two percent minority in Israel, Bedouins often inhabit villages in the Negev area that are not officially recognized by Israeli government, said El-Sana.

He said that the absence of recognition causes many problems in local infrastructure, including lack of tap-water, electricity, health centers and education facilities, as well as the risk of house demolition by the state.

At home in Israel, El-Sana has represented the Bedouins in front of the Israeli Supreme Court and has petitioned the government to improve facilities for Bedouins.

Gan-Mor has mostly advocated gay rights in Israel, according to Granick, who introduced the speakers.

Both are currently enrolled in NIF’s Israel-U.S. Civil Liberties Law Program, which annually provides professional and academic experience in the U.S. to two lawyers focusing on civil rights, one Israeli, the other Palestinian. Gan-Mor is Israeli while El-Sana is a Palestinian living in Israel.

El-Sana said that his year-long stay was “very important since some of the human theories against discrimination, especially racist discrimination, were brought from the U.S., especially from groups like Afro-American groups.”

Since its beginning in 1979, the NIF has distributed over $200 million to 800 organizations in Israel and provided training in related areas, according to the fund’s Web site.

“In the 27 years that we’ve been promoting liberal ideas in social change in Israel, the center has moved to us, because people recognized the importance of advocating for human and civil rights,” said Monica R. Brettler, the NIF’s Regional Director for Boston, after the event.

“It was a very different perspective to hear from highly-educated people who have worked through the legal system,” said Alexander G. Bick ’10 of the event.