Radio3 World | S2024 | The IDF Netzah Yehuda Battalion | Tunisia, Police State | Rai Radio 3

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to reject any sanctions on the country’s army, after reports that the US intends to cut aid to the ultra-Orthodox and far-right IDF unit “Netzah Yehuda” over alleged human rights abuses in the West Bank busy. In the wake of reports that the United States is planning to sanction the battalion, National Security Minister Ben Gvir said he expected “Defense Minister Yoav Gallant not to submit to American dictates,” adding that “if there is no ‘There is someone in the Ministry of Defense who will support the battalion as requested, I will ask to absorb them into the Israeli Police and the Ministry of National Security.’ We talk about it with Maria Gianniti, RAI correspondent from Jerusalem, and with Ariel David, journalist from Haaretz. | Police aggression and violence are perhaps the leitmotif that have accompanied Tunisia from before the so-called Revolution of Freedom and Dignity in 2011 to today. Despite a process of democratic transition that lasted almost ten years and the attempt to reform the security and justice sectors in a country that has never managed to guarantee fair trials for all, today what is whispered in the streets is that Tunisia was and remains “a police state”. The President of the Republic Kais Saied has taken a new authoritarian turn with the freezing of parliament, the imposition of a new presidential-style constitution and the dissolution of the Superior Council of the Judiciary. Today the security apparatus makes itself felt more and more heavily and also affects the political sphere of a country that after 2011 thought that some rights could no longer be questioned. In Tunisian prisons, in fact, there are dozens of activists, political leaders and journalists accused of plotting against state security who risk several years of prison sentences. In a historical moment in which Giorgia Meloni’s government and the European Commission have established an increasingly close collaboration with Tunisia to establish, at least at a rhetorical level, a non-predatory and anti-colonial logic towards the southern shore of the Mediterranean, it is not can help but notice how the support of Rome and Brussels could prove fundamental in strengthening the intervention capabilities of this security apparatus. We talk about it with Matteo Garavoglia, a freelance journalist who is part of the Permanent Journalism Center and covers Tunisia and North Africa for Italian and international newspapers. Giulia De Luca at the microphones.

22 Apr 2024