As Israel heads towards its election, bereaved families can be found across almost every part of the political spectrum. Their grief has become fertile ground for a particularly cruel form of political exploitation: the misuse of their loved ones’ memory.
A recent example of this troubling phenomenon is the case of Laly Derai. “They have dragged my son out of his grave dozens of times,” she said.
Her son, Saadia, was killed while serving in the Israeli army. Now she is standing for election with Ofer Winter’s People of Israel party, and, she says, people are invoking Saadia’s memory to accuse her of betraying him.
The attacks come amid pressure from Israel’s political right for Derai’s party to withdraw. The fear is that it will fail to cross the electoral threshold, wasting votes that could otherwise help other right-wing parties. That is a legitimate subject for political argument.
What Saadia would have wanted his mother to do is something no stranger can know.
Britain has seen where that distinction leads when it is ignored. In the 2014 European elections, Britain First put “Remember Lee Rigby” on ballot papers in Wales.
Lee’s mother, Lyn Rigby, has repeatedly asked people to stop using his name and image for political ends.
This year, his family and foundation again appealed to those using his memory to promote political agendas. A mother should not have to keep making the same request.
The temptation is obvious. A fallen soldier lends a cause something its slogans cannot supply: sacrifice, grief and moral authority. The person whose name gives the message its force cannot object. His family can, but by then the ballot paper has been printed or the post has travelled.
This is not peculiar to Israel or Britain. Disputes over the political use of fallen service members’ identities have also surfaced in Russia, Ukraine and the US.
The causes and circumstances differ. The temptation to claim the dead for the living does not.
Israel has put a boundary into law. Its election-propaganda law restricts the use of the name or image of a security-service member killed in service without written consent from a close relative, so long as another close relative has not objected in writing.
The rule is not confined to material published by a party: a private individual can breach it too.
Yet a written rule is only a start. It concerns election propaganda, and its express protection is for a name or image. A family confronting an anonymous campaign may have to find the publication, establish who put it out and show that it falls within the law.
An attack can also put imagined words in a dead soldier’s mouth without displaying his photograph.
There is little public awareness of the protection Israel already has. Derai’s account shows how far the distance can be between a rule on the books and a family’s experience.
Britain should learn from that failure as well as from its own. It needs a clear mechanism requiring anyone who wants to make a fallen service member the face of a political or commercial campaign to notify the family and obtain consent.
It must cover parties, organisations and individuals, and give families a prompt way to challenge misuse before it becomes impossible to contain. It must protect journalism and ordinary political discussion; mentioning a death cannot, by itself, require permission.
The public has a part to play too. When a campaign claims to speak in a fallen soldier’s name, we should ask who gave it that authority. In wartime, when grief is widespread and political stakes are high, the incentive to borrow a soldier’s moral standing only grows.
Families who have lost someone in service to their country should not also lose their voice in how that person is remembered.
Idan Siboni is a lawyer and a researcher in memorialisation law with an MA in law, technology and business innovation from Reichman University.
Romi Waldman is a law and government student at Reichman University, and a member of the Rubinstein Center for Constitutional Challenges
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