[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: With thanks to Amnon Lord who quoted part this
article in passing in his 28 January 2011 column in Makor Rishon without
naming the person who wrote it or the title and thanks to Google for making
it possible to track down an item simply by searching for a string of words
bracketed by quotation marks]

Movement for activist rights (and the person)
By guest writer Yotam Feldman [AL: see description of below]
http://haemori.wordpress.com/2011/01/17/feldman3/
[translation of excerpt]

The development of human civil rights movement in Israel was pretty central
in my childhood. As the son of one of the fathers of this movement, I found
a pretty active interest in ISA torture techniques as well as the mysterious
paths of stray rubber bullets that insisted to go ever higher to the vital
organs instead of staying at the level of extremities which they were
designed to crush. I even exchanged some letters with Mordechai Vanunu in
prison ...

But the more obvious manifestations of the growth of the human rights
community in Israel, was embodied in the material reality of my life. In the
eighties and nineties, a human rights community not only grew, but its
members began to make a reasonable and higher living from it. My father's
worn down Subaru was switched to a Peugeot, and the Peugeot to Honda, Honda
to BMW. Also the rented apartment in Jaffa that predated gentrification was
replaced by a quite spacious house in Tel Aviv (where I live now.) No doubt
that the relatively naive group authentically committed to the principles of
justice and democracy, began to see the financial compensation coming.

When it came time to support myself, I applied as well to areas that are
linked one way or another to Israeli democracy. I wrote articles and
investigations in Haaretz that dealt in the field that may be defined in
general terms as human rights - something that gave me something fun and and
not a bad salary. So I began to understand that there was something
irreversible in belonging to this community. It seemed to me that those who
tied their fate - as a result of family ties or private decision - to the
fate of Israeli NGOs promised to himself a livelihood, even minimal, but at
least sufficient, for most of my adult life.

In recent years, I discovered my family's and my case is not entirely
unusual. It is a known fact, but not talked about much, that very many of
the left-wing activists in Tel - Aviv make a living in various forms of the
human rights sector. Many of the prominent activists and sometimes the most
noisy ones at demonstrations, are paid spokespeople, public relations
people, producers and coordinators and, of course, lawyers who head the top
of these organizations. This is a rather confusing situation, as you stand
in a demonstration, or even in small talk, it is not clear if the person at
your side expresses his views as a result of internal mobilization or as an
integral part of his job, like the smart phone, the distribution list for
press releases or the corporate Twitter account.
...
Therein lies perhaps one of the more authentic motives that led people to
protest about the state of democracy. The demand to investigate the
financing of human rights organizations, and the threat within it to affect
their supply lines hit a very sensitive point.

...
===================================

Feldman, Yotam
Journalist and independent filmmaker

http://www.sscqueens.org/node/198/

Biography:

Yotam Feldman is a journalist and activist. In the past three years he has
been a regular writer for the weekend magazine of Haaretz. He has brought
exclusive reporting and footage materiasl from the recent political uprising
in Burma and conducted several investigative reports and interviews in
Israel - including with high-ranking IDF officers. He is currently working
on a documentary film about the global export of Israeli security technology
and know-how. He participates in "Anarchists Against Walls" demonstrations
and activities in the West Bank and is also completing his Masters thesis in
Philosophy at Tel-Aviv University