Really, Yuli Edelstein. Really?

In 1971, a small group of British women were incensed to learn that Raisa Palatnik, a 35-year-old Jewish librarian from Odessa, had been arrested for distributing ‘samizdat’ (banned literature).  Her crime was not disseminating pornography or spreading sedition against the state; she was actually providing information about Israel.  A small band of intrepid young mothers gathered outside the Soviet embassy in London to protest, and soon this snowballed into a full-blown campaign to free Soviet refusniks.

The core members of the group were approximately 35 women, mostly also around the age of 35.  They called themselves the 35s (Women’s Campaign for Soviet Jewry), and they were everywhere.  Doreen Gainsford, one of the founding members and a huge activist in the movement, who has lived in Israel for many years, recalls that their mission was to ensure that the Soviet Union stuck to the Helsinki Agreement which they had ratified, and grant freedom of movement to everyone, including Jews.  A kind of ‘bring them home’ idea, Soviet style.

The women chained themselves to the railings outside the Houses of Parliament, lay on the street in a cul-de-sac in front of the Soviet Ambassador’s car, released white doves in front of the Soviet Embassy, ran onto a football pitch during a football match between the Soviet Union and England, jumped onto the stage where the visiting Bolshoi Ballet was performing, and demonstrated vocally at Helsinki Agreement meetings in Switzerland, Yugoslavia and Helsinki.

At every demonstration Yuli Edelstein’s name was prominently splashed over banners; he was one of the key players for whom they were protesting.

The 35s stopped at nothing to get their message across, and eventually they freed their people: Anatoly Sharansky came home to Jerusalem, morphed into Natan and a human rights activist, and became a politician and chairman of the Executive for the Jewish Agency.  Yuli Edelstein came home and joined the Likud, presently serving as a Knesset member in the Coalition of Shame.

It was in his synagogue that three young women, also possibly aged around 35, placed pamphlets on Friday afternoon, calling for the release of our hostages being brutally held in the tunnels of Gaza. The women were arrested once they got home, handcuffed and later put into leg irons, and taken into police custody for 8 hours, as if they were dangerous criminals.  They were charged with breaking and entering, although security footage clearly shows that the doors to the shul were open; it’s not normally a crime to enter an open Beit Knesset in Israel.

We are watching in slack-jawed horror as Ben Gvir decimates everything that we hold dear: only last week he had a woman arrested for allegedly throwing sand at him while he cavorted on the beach.  Let’s not forget that this is the man who ripped a symbol off Yitzchak Rabin’s car, and swore that ‘we got to the car, next we’ll get to him.’  This is the man who joined protesters storming a prison in Israel where they disagreed with disciplining soldiers who’d abused prisoners; no-one has been arrested for breaking and entering there .

We know Ben Gvir – we are appalled, but not surprised, by anything he does.

But Edelstein? On Sunday afternoon, Edelstein appeared at the door of his luxury home in Herzliya Pituach, where he lives in leafy, swanky suburban bliss, and delivered this astonishing message:

He gives his “full backing” to the police who arrested the three women for placing leaflets on the seats in the shul, he understands the community who complained to the police about the ‘break-in,’ and he is grateful to the police who, in addition to all their tasks, came to ‘guard’ him and the synagogue ‘against all kinds of rioters, and allow prayers to take place,” he announced, on TV, to Am Yisrael – or what is left of us.

I asked Liz Harris, one of the original 35s who had protested for Edelstein’s release, if she regretted doing so, in light of this astonishing declaration, and Edelstein’s strange silence throughout the judicial reform disaster and this unspeakable war.

“I am more than happy that I demonstrated for the release of our Soviet people, including him,” answered Harris, who now lives in Tel Aviv.  “I wouldn’t even have been upset to be arrested if that had helped our cause.  But it’s a great shame that he doesn’t feel the same way about people protesting for the release of the hostages.”

Doreen Gainsford goes one step further.  “I am utterly horrified by him,” she declared.  “He comes from a police state and knows that we demonstrated and risked imprisonment to get him and other Prisoners of Zion released.  And now he wants to turn Israel into a police state too?  Really??  It beggars belief.”  The police in England, she recalls, were unfailingly polite to the women protesting to free Edelstein.

Edelstein did not stop with extolling the police for their heroic arrest of three young women.  He added: “We are on a slippery slope.  If we don’t set very clear boundaries for what is a demonstration and what is a protest – we will end up in bad places.  I firmly ask that we all remember that in the end there is one country and one nation.”

Yes, MK Edelstein.  We are on a very slippery slope.  And you and your shameful, depraved Coalition of Cowards and Cultists and Crazies are hurtling us over the abyss.

How do you sleep at night?