34,000 in Facebook Group Against 'Big Brother' Pacifist | Machsomwatch
אורנית, מהצד הזה של הגדר

34,000 in Facebook Group Against 'Big Brother' Pacifist

34,000 in Facebook Group Against 'Big Brother' Pacifist

source: 
Arutz Sheva
author: 
Gil Ronen

(IsraelNN.com) Edna Kaneti, 56, a self-styled professional storyteller and an activist in all-female pacifist group Machsom Watch, is one of the most hated people in Israel at this moment. Kaneti was an anonymous figure until she became a participant in The Big Brother, a television show in which viewers follow the interaction among a group of people who are holed up with each other inside a house.

She now has the dubious honor of having a Facebook group dedicated to the idea of exchanging her for Gilad Shalit, who was abducted by Hamas and is assumed to be in Gaza. Over 34,000 Israelis have joined the group in just one week's time and the group grew by 1,000 members in just one hour Wednesday evening, after it was discussed on Channel 2 news. Bearing in mind that Israel's population is about 1/40 of the United States', this would be equivalent to an American group numbering close to 1.5 million Americans.   

Kaneti has also aroused the ire of Knesset Member Michael Ben-Ari of the National Union, who wants her investigated for incitement to rebellion. Ben-Ari wrote a letter to Deputy State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan demanding that Kaneti be investigated and, quoting a lecture she gave to Futna Jaabari, an Arab participant in The Big Brother, in which she spelled out a vision for a mass Arab insurrection:

'The occupation is over'
"I go to the checkpoints and I see all the thousands of people who go where they are told and show their ID cards... doing exactly what they are told and they will never go into the Jews' roads... and I say: 'I do not care about your rules, we do not want to show you ID cards and we will not pass through the checkpoint, we will pass through here... we will drive wherever we want. Two million people who would get up, wear white clothes and say 'we walk wherever we want, this is our land – that's it, the occupation is over.”   

On other occasions she called for disobeying orders which she said were “retarded.”

The Big Brother producers said that they may have to step up security around the house from where the program is broadcast if Kaneti is removed from the program, as has been demanded. They are concerned that someone may try to hurt her when she leaves the building. Her husband told reporters that the family is receiving numerous phone threats and that their 15-year-old daughter is being harassed in school, but added that he hopes his wife is not taken off The Big Brother because "she bears a message."

Machsom Watch volunteers monitor IDF soldiers' behavior towards Arabs at security checkpoints in Judea and Samaria.Both Jews and Arabs wait in the same lines. Many soldiers and Jewish drivers have complained that they harass the soldiers who are there to prevent terrorists from entering Jewish population centers, demoralize them, file complaints against them and besmirch them in interviews to foreign media.