Gush Shalom, the Israeli Peace Bloc, considers lodging a libel suit against Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who in an interview to the First Channel TV attacked the movement's members (as well as those of “Yesh Gvul”) and called them “Nazi Capos”.

Gush Shalom immediately checked the matter with its legal advisers. “There can be little doubt that such words constitute libel of the most severe and malignant form - not to mention the desecration of the Holocaust victims’ memory - and Liberman would find it difficult to defend such words at a court of law. What makes is worse is that these things were said by a man who built his whole career on acerbating conflicts and the spreading of hatred, and in spite of that became cabinet minister.

Lieberman’s special anger was aroused by Gush Shalom’s boycott campaign against the artists Idan Reichal, Ehud Banai, Ety Ankary, who performed at a "festival" organized by the Gush Etzion settlers (in the Bethlehem Region of the West Bank). Among other things, Idan Reichel performed on the "central stage" erected at the settlement of Nokdim - Avigdor Lieberman’s own home.

“It is clear that the boycott campaign which we initiated has touched a sensitive and painful spot for Lieberman and his fellow settlers, namely the illegitimacy of the settlements. Lieberman claims that in the Israeli public “there is a complete concensus about the Gush Etzion settllements”, which is simply not true.

"Gush Etzion" was the name of a cluster of four small kibbutzim which stubbornly resisted Arab forces in 1948 until being destroyed and around which a heroic myth developed in Israel. There might have been a legitimate claim for recreating them (had Israel been willing to recreate in exchange some Palestinian villages destroyed in the same war). However, nowadays this name is applied to dozens of small and big settlements which take up enormous territory all around the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, and bear no connection or resemblance to the pre-1948 "Gush Etzion", including the ever-expanding settlement-city of Efrat.

In such a situation there can be no chance of peace.

Contact: Adam Keller, Gush Shalom Spokesperson adam@gush-shalom.org