ISRAELI DEMOCRACY (Continued from p.4) Israeli public increasingly skeptical of the prospects of the Oslo "peace process." Week after week, there have occurred nonstop violations of every single clause of the Oslo Accords by the PLO. There have been calls by Arafat for a jihad; repeated failure by the PLO to change its "National Covenant" calling for Israel's destruction, repeated statements by senior PLO officials declaring that "Oslo" is an integral part of the "plan of stages," according to which liberated areas in the "West Bank" and Gaza would be later used to launch a military assault that would destroy all of Israel. And after each PLO declaration of war under the dissimulation of peace, the leaders of the Israeli Labor Party and the Israeli left have dismissed these How speech, even incendiary speech, in Brooklyn or the Bronx could have "incited" extremists sitting in Tel Aviv was never explained. statements as "meaningless rhetoric." They assert that Arab words count for nothing, weigh nothing, mean nothing. In what may be the greatest instance of cognitive dissonance in Jewish history, these are the very same people who have rationalized their wholesale assault on the freedom of expression and dissent for Jews in Israel and abroad* by relying on the completely fanciful and totally unsupported hypothesis that unrestrained speech by Jews caused the assassination of Rabin, that words are more dangerous than bullets and bombs. As part of their cognitive dissonance, it has never occurred to the leaders of the Labor-Meretz alliance that they could well become the future targets of the same anti-democratic speech codes and criminalization of dissent, if and when the opposition should return to office. Since mankind has yet to create a political party that stayed in power forever, such a turnaround is simply a question of time. The assault on dissent and democracy was launched by people whom many considered the very least likely to do any such thing. The calls to pupils and parents to inform the police about teachers engaging in "incitement" came from the Minister of Education, Professor Amnon Rubinstein. Rubinstein is a well-known * The assault on free speech transcended Israel's boundaries and spread to the Jewish community in the United States, where there were also attacks and attempts to suppress "incitement" by Jews, including rabbis, against the government and policies of Israel. How speech, even incendiary speech, in Brooklyn or the Bronx could have "incited" extremists sitting in Tel Aviv was never explained.

expert on constitutional law, which he taught for many years at Tel Aviv University. He is also author of many scholarly books and papers on the subject. For years, he had been the principal spokesman in Israel for liberalism (in the pre-60's sense of that term) and toleration, as well as constitutional protections for basic freedoms. He had even displayed sympathy for free-market economic liberalization. But now, here was this same person leading the McCarthyist hysteria, calling for people to turn teachers over to the "thought police." It apparently never dawned on Professor Rubinstein that as a result of his calls for Stasi-like informants, teachers throughout Israel now have to fear handing out detentions or C-minuses, lest disgruntled pupils turn them in to the police as "inciters." In most democracies, "incitement and agitation" are not even defined as criminal activities. The Prime Minister's body was not yet cold when an anti-democratic theory of the assassination was invented. In the following days, not only was this theory repeated endlessly, but it assumed the status of sacred revealed gospel. The theory holds that the assassination was caused by irresponsible speech, by calls of "Rabin is a murderer/traitor," by incitement and agitation. In response to this new orthodoxy, there have been calls in Israel for new legislation to suppress "verbal violence" and "incitement." Minister of Justice David Libai is preparing a new law that would institute a sort of a national "speech code," delineating the boundaries of acceptable speech. The government approved a decision to make a growing list of organizations on the Israeli far-right illegal. A series of aggressive measures designed to prosecute those engaging in "incitement and agitation" have been proposed. All of this is no less frightening and alarming than the assassination itself. In particular, it is a deeply troubling development because the new orthodoxy is itself patently false. It is also dangerous because the criminalizing and prosecution of those extremists on the far-right could in fact lead to an upsurge in violence, far worse than anything Israel has yet undergone. First, despite the shock that we all feel, it behooves us to recall that Rabin was not killed by free speech, but a murderer with a gun. Second, is there anyone who seriously believes that the murderer would not have carried out this crime if every single demonstrator at every single demonstration had spoken with restraint and expressed his or her criticism of the government in eloquent and civilized words? Third, if "vile speech" causes assassination, then Israel should have had an endless carnage of its political leaders ever since independence (if not beforehand). Israeli political discourse is and has always been characterized by rhetorical overkill, ad hominem slander, and unrestrained high-decibel shrieking. Anyone with any doubts should go read the Protocols of the Knesset from the 1950's, when even back then--in the pre-television (Continued on p.6)

February 1996               - 5 -               Outpost