Published: 23 November 2018
Last updated: 4 March 2024
ON ANY GIVEN DAY, Gaby Lasky she ping-pongs between the Ofer Military Court in the West Bank, district courts throughout Israel, her law firm in Tel Aviv and her office in the Tel Aviv Municipality, where she is a member of the City Council representing the Zionist left Meretz Party.
Lasky, who was born in Mexico City in 1967, the year the occupation began, has long, dirty-blonde hair that contrasts sharply with the black attorney gown she wears in court. Drinking black coffee in her modest Tel Aviv law office, where we met, she has a positive but nervous energy about her, as if anticipating another court ruling at any moment. Yet she spoke with me for almost two hours without looking at her phone once.
Above her desk is a print of street artist Banksy’s piece on the West Bank separation wall—a girl being lifted by balloons—and a framed section of the fence in Budrus, where in 2003, Palestinian residents along with Israeli and international activists were detained for protesting the barrier Israel built on village lands. Lasky represented the activists, arguing over and over again in court for their right to protest military occupation.
“My goal is to make peace, but all I do is make war. When I go to court, it’s a war zone,” she said. The protestors ultimately forced Israel to change the route of the barrier.
When people are arrested, she responds immediately. Since many of her clients are Palestinians or Israeli activists with little money, Lasky doesn’t charge much. To keep her practice afloat, she works on dozens of cases at once. She says she only remembers to charge later, if at all.
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Photo: Gaby Lasky with Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour in a Nazareth courtroom, November 2017 (Oren Ziv/Activestills)
