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