THIS WEEK'S TRIBUNE  THIS WEEK'S TRIBUNE A litmus test for opponents of the ‘Nakba Law’
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A litmus test for opponents of the ‘Nakba Law’ |
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Written by Steven Plaut
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Tuesday, 09 June 2009 |
The Israeli media and the Israeli left, which largely overlap, have been hysterical in recent days over a proposed bill that would make it illegal to hold anti-Israel “mourning” events on Israel’s Independence Day, events that would declare Israel’s very existence a Nakba (or catastrophe, in Arabic)
Nakba commemorations are in essence events in which Jewish leftist and Arab fascist haters of Israel call for Israel to be annihilated. The ‘Anti-Nakba’ bill, which is unlikely to pass the Knesset in any case, proposes to ban these and has triggered hysterical opposition.
There are two types of people posturing their outrage at the proposed ‘Anti-Nakba law.’ One consists of free speech absolutists. The other consists of anti-democratic haters of Israel, many of them people with a neo-fascist disdain for freedom of speech. The first group truly believes in freedom of speech, even for radicals, traitors and extremists. The second group consists of people who are fighting against the ‘Anti-Nakba law’ because they agree with the ‘Nakba nuts’ that Israel’s very existence is a catastrophe, something that should be corrected by means of exterminating Israel.
There is a very easy litmus test that distinguishes between these two groups. If the opponent of the ‘anti-Nakba law’ is someone who spoke out clearly in the 1990s against the anti-democratic campaign against ‘incitement’ in Israel, then that person is part of the first group, the free speech absolutists. If the person endorsed the 1990s Israeli campaign against ‘incitement’ or simply kept quiet and failed to speak up against it, then that person belongs to the second group, the people who agree that Israel’s very existence is a catastrophe.
Let me explain.
When Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was murdered by Yigal Amir in November 1995, his body was not yet cold when the Israeli political establishment, led by the Israeli Labour party, launched a broadside assault against freedom of speech in Israel. It repeated endlessly that Rabin had in fact been killed by the exercise of freedom of speech by anti-Oslo dissidents. It insisted that those who had disagreed with Rabin’s Oslo initiative were collectively guilty of murdering Rabin. Hundreds of people were investigated and interrogated for suspicion of ‘incitement.’ The ‘judicial activists’ in Israel’s legal system failed to protect the victims of the anti-democratic McCarthyism.
In any real democracy, ‘incitement’ is not a crime at all unless it is an added-on charge for someone actually engaged in violence or real crime. But in the aftermath of the Rabin assassination Israeli dissidents were hounded and prosecuted for expressing their opinions, including some rabbis.
In the anti-democratic hysteria after the assassination, Israelis were carted off by the bus load for interrogation for ‘incitement.’ In some cases the circumstances were comically absurd. A man was arrested for cracking a joke in a bank; when the clerk asked “Who’s next in line?” he had remarked “Peres.” A Zionist Federation employee named Moshe Cohen was arrested for ‘incitement’ when drinking at a cafÈ, because an eavesdropper claimed he was ‘inciting.’ Moshe Feiglin was convicted of ‘sedition’ because he dared to hold anti-Oslo protests that blocked a traffic artery.
In this atmosphere of hysteria countless examples of legitimate exercises of freedom of speech were persecuted and suppressed. A faculty member wearing a pro-settlement button at Weizmann Institute was threatened with expulsion. A Haifa teacher-rabbi was fired from his school teacher job for expressing the opinion that Rabin’s political ideology should not be taught as theology in schools. Youths peacefully holding up protest signs against the eviction of Jewish settlers from Gaza were jailed. Rabbis writing scholarly articles about Rabbinic law were arrested for ‘racism’ and ‘incitement.’ Police were ordered to tear down posters on public billboards placed by anti-Oslo protesters. People wearing t-shirts with politically incorrect slogans and people with rightist bumper stickers on their cars were harassed and interrogated by the authorities.
The criminalization of dissent continued even when the Labour party was not in power. Despite being initially the main target of the anti-speech McCarthyist demonization of ‘incitement’ in the 1990s, the Likud was just as capable of jumping on the anti-democratic bandwagon, no doubt as an attempt to “clear” suspicions about itself. The Likud closed down the rightist radio station Arutz 7. The Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told his cabinet on Feb. 13, 2005, “Anyone who speaks or writes against the Disengagement Plan is guilty of incitement.”
Many of the very same people now outraged at the idea of an ‘Anti-Nakba Law’ were the very same people cheering on the anti-democratic campaign of McCarthyism in the 1990s to suppress freedom of speech in Israel following the Rabin assassination. The very same far-leftist Israeli daily Ha’aretz that is now leading the campaign to defeat the proposed ‘Anti-Nakba Law’ was also the leading force promoting laws that suppress ‘incitement’ and the exercise of freedom of speech by those opposed to the political agenda of the left.
So here is their test: You do not like the proposed ‘Anti-Nakba Law’? Then prove to us that you are opposed to other infringements of freedom of speech in Israel. Show us what you have said or written against the 1990s McCarthyist campaign against ‘incitement’ and dissident freedom of expression. Prove to us that you have opposed attempts to suppress freedom of speech at Tel Aviv University and elsewhere in Israeli academia. Demonstrate for us your track record of opposition to the criminalization of the freedom of speech of the Kahanists. Let us know what you have done to fight other measures designed to suppress freedom of speech, including the infamous anti-democratic SLAPP suit filed by Neo-Fascist Neve Gordon.
The alternative is to fail the litmus test.
Steven Plaut is a professor on the faculty of the graduate school of business administration at the University of Haifa and a writer. |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 17 June 2009 )
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