The Israeli parliamentarian Yoav Kisch, from the ruling Likud party, recently announced he would attempt to introduce a foreign “plants” bill. Should the bill succeed, Israeli NGOs in receipt of funding from foreign governments will be labelled as foreign agents or “plants” of that entity. They will be banned from having contact with Israeli state institutions, including the Israeli Defense Forces, unless an exception is made by the justice minister. Any NGO that does not comply with the law could be fined 100,000 shekels (around £17,000).

The bill is not yet law and may not become law. But it is nothing new. This proposed legislation comes in the wake of various attempts in the Knesset in recent years to undermine the NGO community. The current justice minister has a bill drafted that would result in the staff of NGOs that receive significant funds from foreign state entities being required to wear a tag when in the Knesset, identifying them as lobbyists of foreign entities. That prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu received 90% of his entire re-election campaign funding from the US is deemed irrelevant, as is the $200m donated to settler organisations from US organisations over the past five years. These pieces of legislation are aimed specifically at human rights organisations that shine a spotlight on the policy of occupation.

This discourse is not confined to parliamentary legislation or NGOs. Two weeks ago, Reuven Rivlin, the president of Israel, participated in a Ha’aretz-New Israel conference in New York. Ha’aretz is an Israeli paper, known to be on the left of the political spectrum, and the New Israel Fund is a diaspora-based organisation that funds many Israeli human rights organisations. Since his participation, Rivlin has been labelled a traitor. So bad is the incitement against him that the opposition leader, Yitzhak Herzog, felt the need to stand up in the Knesset and implore Netanyahu to speak out against it. Activists took to the streets outside Rivlin’s residence to support him against incitement.

Last week, the nationalist group Im Tirtzu released a short film aimed at winning support for the “plant” bill. It named and “shamed” four Israeli human rights activists as “plants”. So shocking was the film that Yuval Diskin, former head of Israel’s internal security service, spoke out against it. But Im Tirtzu is not the only organisation adopting measures of this kind.

Yoav Kisch, the parliamentarian behind the latest bill, distanced himself from the Im Tirtzu film. Netanyahu raised his objections to it. But, in the same breath, Kisch says he will pursue the bill with full force, and Netanyahu’s own party tries to outlaw the human rights community. The signals it sends to those baying for the president’s blood, and to the extremists inciting violence against NGO staffers, is not that shutting down debate is wholly unacceptable in a country that takes pride in its democratic character, but that if as elected leaders they can’t support the tactics, they certainly support the endgame.

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The danger this poses cannot be underestimated. It is impossible not to draw comparisons to the atmosphere that existed in Israel before the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 by rightwing Israeli extremist Yigal Amir. Concerns are now being expressed that Rivlin is a potential target. Rabin’s assassination shocked Israel into a rare moment of political unity against extremism, but in some quarters the lesson is seemingly lost 20 years later.

And what of Israel’s allies and supporters? The proposed Knesset bills make indirect, deeply troubling accusations about the intention of European governments towards Israel. This is the same Europe that gives Israel unprecedented access to European trade markets and to European funding of scientific and academic research and development. The Israeli government is surely taking a gamble when its cabinet members treat its primary trading partner with such contempt?

It also leaves many diaspora Jews and other supporters of Israel, who proudly and regularly stand up to defend Israel and its democratic character, between a rock and a hard place. These loyal and committed allies have time and again pointed out that one of the reasons the spotlight is disproportionately shone on Israel’s behaviour, when that of so many other countries is ignored despite being so much worse, is because Israel is a democracy that allows a free press and NGOs that can bring abuses to light. But if there is no NGO community, or those that support that free press are vilified, what democracy will these allies defend?

Parliamentarians and extremists within Israeli civil society may win the battle they are waging against the human rights community. But when they create an atmosphere where civil society turns on itself and its elected leadership, and alienates its allies to such a great extent, whose war are they fighting?