What would you say if I told you that the most recent right-wing initiative to stifle progressive organizations in Israel is a Knesset bill that would compel members of such organizations to wear a special badge, “visibly, on their clothing,” when they are in the Knesset?

You’d probably tell me that it’s an ugly joke, and that even satire shouldn’t use such loaded symbols for the sake of ridicule. And I would completely agree with you.

The problem, you see, is that this is not a joke. This is not The Onion. It’s yet another example of grotesque legislative overreach by right-wing Knesset members – in this case the Jewish Home’s Bezalel Smotrich – intended to delegitimize progressive Israeli organizations, to humiliate them and to stifle them. That, of course, includes representatives of our Israeli sister-organization, Israel’s Peace Now movement, the nemesis of extremist West Bank settlers who are chiefly represented in the Knesset by Smotrich’s party.