July 17, 2024
JAKARTA – Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) chairman Yahya Cholil Staquf has apologized on behalf of Indonesia’s largest Muslim organization following the recent meeting of its activists with Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Jerusalem, claiming that the visit was unbeknownst to them and broke NU regulations on event permission.
In a press conference at NU headquarters in Central Jakarta on Tuesday, Yahya apologized to the public and described the visit of the five young activists as “inappropriate” and “tone-deaf”.
“We understand that this is something that crossed the line in the context of the current situation [between Israel and Palestine],” Yahya said.
He said the visit was made without the endorsement of either the NU executive board (PBNU) or other NU institutions, of which the activists are members.
“The actions these kids took were their own responsibility and not those of the PBNU nor the institutions under that office,” Yahya said, noting that every collaboration between NU members and any entities outside of the organization, domestic or international, has to go through the executive board.
Over the weekend, a post shared by an NU activist Zainul Maarif, also a lecturer at an NU university, on his now-private Instagram account made the rounds on the internet after it showed him and several Indonesian citizens posing with Herzog at his official residence in Jerusalem.
The post was met with outrage, prompting NU headquarters to publish a statement on Sunday condemning the visit as being “ignorant of the organization’s collective sentiment”.
Read also: NU activists’ visit to Israel does not represent government stance: Foreign Ministry
According to NU, the other four activists were Sukron Makmun, a member of NU’s Banten branch; Munawir Aziz, the secretary of NU’s pencak silat (traditional martial art) organization Pagar Nusa; as well as Nurul Bahrul Ulum and Izza Annafisah Dania, executive members of NU’s young women’s organization Fatayat.
Yahya said the NU Jakarta branch would impose sanctions on the five activists accordingly.
Israeli lobby?
Yahya revealed that the activists were invited by a nongovernmental organization that advocates for Israel, though he refrained from revealing its name.
He said that each activist was invited for an “interfaith dialogue” program but they were unaware of a sudden meeting with Herzog as it was not on the schedule.
“Perhaps this Israeli lobbyist believed that these kids could help them share Israel’s message [in Indonesia], but in reality, what can they do now with the backlash that followed?” Yahya said, claiming that they had no substantial dialogue with the Israeli president.
The NU chairman added that there would be attempts such as this “to drag NU into various political agendas, even internationally,” hence his plea for NU members to be more careful.
Founded in East Java in 1926, NU is the country’s largest Islamic organization with significant political clout through its figures in the government. Currently, the biggest NU figure in the government is Vice President Ma’ruf Amin, who won the 2019 election as President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s running mate.
Late president Abdurrahman Wahid, popularly known as “Gus Dur”, a grandson of NU founder Hasyim Asy’ari, was also a prominent NU chairman. Gus Dur championed his neutrality regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict, contrary to the national sentiment. He visited Israel several times for interfaith dialogues throughout the 1990s, which prompted a backlash from Muslim groups in the country.
Yahya restated NU’s stance on Tuesday on the need for a ceasefire in Gaza, which has seen thousands of fatalities resulting from Israeli’s retaliatory offensive following the attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israeli territory on Oct. 7 of last year, which reignited the decades-long Israel-Palestine conflict.
Read also: Indonesia decries Israel’s West Bank settlement plans
Former NU executive and law lecturer at Monash University in Australia Nadirsyah Hosen said that Israel’s invitation to the activists clearly targeted their status as NU members.
“If they were just ‘activists and intellectuals’, I’m sure they wouldn’t be on the radar to be invited to meet the Israeli president. It was precisely because they were NU members that they were invited,” Nadirsyah said in a statement on Tuesday.
Nadirsyah said that the activists, according to his online conversation with one of them, were invited via an alumni group of the United States-based Harvard University in the country. The invitation stated that the visit would concern matters related to “academia and start-ups”.
He suggested that all public figures or activists refrain from taking on such invitations while the Gaza conflict is still ongoing, saying these programs “have been running for years and always sparked controversy”.