THE ASSAULT ON
ISRAELI DEMOCRACY
Steven Plaut
Consider a country in which the Minister of Justice prepares an official "speech code" that delineates the boundaries of permissible speech, and where violators may be sent to prison.
Consider a country in which people are arrested for expressing criticism or dissent, even if it is in a casual conversation in a cafe, a bank or a barber shop.
Consider a country in which the Minister of Education calls upon school pupils and their parents to report to the police the names of teachers who make "incendiary statements" or engage in "incitement."
Consider a country where people are afraid to express their political opinions for fear of being overheard by informants and where people look over their shoulders before daring to speak candidly.
Consider a country in which rabbis are villified openly by the leaders of the state, where politicians, journalists and professors call for the wholesale arrest of rabbis and religious dissidents, where scores of rabbis are interrogated by the police for "inciting."
Consider a country where religious Jews cannot walk down the street without being insulted and called "murderers" and other foul names by passersby.
Consider a country where a popular radio host calls for a law that would require that all dissidents either recant their views and endorse government policies or go to prison; or where a newspaper columnist closely identified with the ruling party declares that Voltaire's famous statements (that he would die for the right to free speech for those with whom he disagrees) represents the most absurd and ridiculous idea imaginable.
Consider a country where virtually all the electronic media are controlled by the government and are used and manipulated in order to prevent open discussion of a major scandal involving the misuse and misbehavior of the security forces; and where government leaders stonewall all questions about that scandal in Nixonian manner.
Consider a country in which secret police agents are employed as agents provocateur in a campaign of Watergate-style "dirty tricks" designed to discredit the leaders of the political opposition and dissidents.
Consider a country in which members of the government coalition constantly and openly accuse dissidents and the leaders of the democratic opposition of being the worst sort of criminals, including murderers--with immunity from being sued for slander or libel; where government cabinet ministers demand that the leaders of the democratic opposition be stripped of their democratic rights and their freedom of speech and expression.
Imagine a country where government leaders increasingly demand censorship of the media.
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Imagine a country where teenagers are imprisoned for making statements and posters that are in poor taste, or where an old man can be arrested for losing his temper and shouting at a policeman, "What do you think this is here, a police state?"
Imagine a country in which a university is subject to vilification and government retaliatory sanctions because it contains a large number of dissidents who disagree with governmental policies.
Imagine a country where people can be arrested for making jokes that some might regard as being in poor taste.
Imagine a country in which dissidents quoting old statements by the Prime Minister himself or who quote from the Bible could be arrested on charges of engaging in incitement or rebellion.
Does all the above describe the Habsburg Empire during the worst Franciscan repressions of the early 19th century? Or maybe some totalitarian country before the fall of communism? Perhaps some Orwellian-style fictional political novel?
The above is an exact description of Israel one month after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Every single sentence refers to actual events that
Imagine a country in which dissidents quoting old statements by the Prime Minister himself or who quote from the Bible could be arrested on charges of engaging in incitement or rebellion.
have occurred in Israel in the aftermath of that murder.
Granted, this is also an Israel undergoing one of its worst national traumas since its rebirth in 1948. A certain transient loss of perspective and rationality is perhaps inevitable under such circumstances. But other countries have experienced political assassination,
including the United States, without also experiencing a wholesale assault on fundamental democratic freedoms. So why has the Rabin assassination produced such a broad assault on Israeli democracy, endorsed by such a large section of the Israeli political spectrum?
On the surface, the McCarthyite anti-dissident assault by the Labor-Meretz government is a by-product of what has become the new official Orthodoxy with respect to the assassination, namely, the conjecture that it was caused by irresponsible speech.
The great irony of the new Orthodoxy is that it was invented and recited obsessively by the very same people who have been defending the Oslo "peace process" over the past two years through the argument that words and rhetoric are unimportant, irrelevant, and count for nothing.
For the past two years, the leaders of the Labor-Meretz government of Israel have sought to reassure an
(Continued on p.5)
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