Free speech in Israel suffered yet another defeat this week. Left-wing McCarthyism enjoyed yet another victory.
The latest assault on free speech took the form of a decision by Israel's Attorney General to prosecute Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzberg under Israel's ridiculous "anti-racism" laws.
Ginzberg is a Kahanist and a right-wing extremist. You may strongly dislike his views. But meaningful tests of free speech are never performed with moderates, only with extremists.
Ginzberg has a long track record of supporting Kahanist "population transfer" solutions with respect to Palestinian and Israeli Arabs. He wrote a book praising, or at least justifying, the murderer Baruch Goldstein, after Goldstein killed 29 Arabs in the Machpela Cave's mosque in Hebron, one of the very few actual cases where a Jew murdered Arabs. And Ginzberg has said other things that are generally not acceptable in polite company or repeatable before young children.
However, the issue at hand is not whether or not you agree with Ginzberg's extremist views and style of rhetoric, but rather whether you believe in freedom of speech. Nothing Ginzberg has said or written goes anywhere near the level of venomous hatred and support for violence that is expressed every day by Israel's Arab politicians and Islamic movement leaders. Yet, the political establishment has long insisted that those Arab oral atrocities are all protected speech. The same Attorney General who has decided to prosecute Ginzberg and who has already prosecuted other far-rightists in Israel, has never prosecuted far-leftist Israelis, nor Israeli Arabs, for the countless expressions of support for Arab terrorism, for calls to Saddam to annihilate Israel, for calls to see Israel destroyed, for cheering on the murders of "settlers", etc. So why is sauce for the goose not sauce for the lemmings?
The position of the Attorney General has always been that mere praise for terrorist atrocities and mass murders that have already taken place does not constitute criminal incitement, only direct calls to perpetrate new atrocities. That is the fig leaf used by the Attorney General to justify his refusal to prosecute leftists and Arabs for incitement and speech endorsing terrorism and murder. But, at the worst, this is precisely the same thing that Ginzberg did. He praised Baruch Goldstein's murders after they had been perpetrated.
Actually, the Attorney General is technically not even prosecuting Ginzberg for praising violence, but for being a "racist". But "racism" in Israeli Newspeak has always been a term restricted to Kahanists saying negative things about Arabs or calling for "transfer", and has never applied to far-leftists cheering when "settlers" are murdered, nor Arabs denouncing Jews in blood-curdling terms and chanting "Massacre the Jews". Not a single Arab or Israeli Jewish Leftist has ever been prosecuted under the Israeli "anti-racism" laws. So, why is Ginzberg being prosecuted while the far-leftist traitors are not?
The prosecution of Ginzberg is part of the broader assault on the free expression and speech of right-wingers in Israel by the Left, following the Rabin assassination. The Left has always preached the ridiculous canon that holds that free speech by rightists somehow caused the Rabin assassination. Moreover, leftist McCarthyists have always insisted that some mysterious rabbis were behind Yigal Amir's assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. No one, of course, has ever produced any evidence that any rabbi anywhere called for Rabin to be killed, or even justified the assassination after it took place. As far as I know, even Ginzberg never called for, nor justified, that assassination. If he had, it would have been the main clause in the Attorney General's writ of indictment (but it is not there, reinforcing my contention). Rather, the indictment of Ginzberg, in my opinion, actually has nothing to do with his words of praise for Goldstein's 1994 atrocity. If it had, he would have been indicted years ago. His book praising Goldstein came out in 1995.
Instead, Ginzberg is to be indicted because of the desperation of the Israeli Left to invent fanatic pro-violence rabbis who can be blamed for Yigal Amir and for Baruch Goldstein. Beyond those two, the Left has a great difficulty identifying any other violent "byproducts of the rhetoric" of the Right.
A no-less-important reason is that the current Attorney General, Eliakim Rubinstein, desperately wants to get himself appointed to the Supreme Court and he needs the support of the Left for that to happen. So poor Rabbi Ginzberg may do some hard prison time to help Rubinstein get that robe.
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Steven Plaut teaches at the University of Haifa and is author of The Scout (available from Gefen Publishing House: http://161.58.167.199/shop/indi_scout.htm). More of his writings can be seen on the New Plaut Blog.
The latest assault on free speech took the form of a decision by Israel's Attorney General to prosecute Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzberg under Israel's ridiculous "anti-racism" laws.
Ginzberg is a Kahanist and a right-wing extremist. You may strongly dislike his views. But meaningful tests of free speech are never performed with moderates, only with extremists.
Ginzberg has a long track record of supporting Kahanist "population transfer" solutions with respect to Palestinian and Israeli Arabs. He wrote a book praising, or at least justifying, the murderer Baruch Goldstein, after Goldstein killed 29 Arabs in the Machpela Cave's mosque in Hebron, one of the very few actual cases where a Jew murdered Arabs. And Ginzberg has said other things that are generally not acceptable in polite company or repeatable before young children.
However, the issue at hand is not whether or not you agree with Ginzberg's extremist views and style of rhetoric, but rather whether you believe in freedom of speech. Nothing Ginzberg has said or written goes anywhere near the level of venomous hatred and support for violence that is expressed every day by Israel's Arab politicians and Islamic movement leaders. Yet, the political establishment has long insisted that those Arab oral atrocities are all protected speech. The same Attorney General who has decided to prosecute Ginzberg and who has already prosecuted other far-rightists in Israel, has never prosecuted far-leftist Israelis, nor Israeli Arabs, for the countless expressions of support for Arab terrorism, for calls to Saddam to annihilate Israel, for calls to see Israel destroyed, for cheering on the murders of "settlers", etc. So why is sauce for the goose not sauce for the lemmings?
The position of the Attorney General has always been that mere praise for terrorist atrocities and mass murders that have already taken place does not constitute criminal incitement, only direct calls to perpetrate new atrocities. That is the fig leaf used by the Attorney General to justify his refusal to prosecute leftists and Arabs for incitement and speech endorsing terrorism and murder. But, at the worst, this is precisely the same thing that Ginzberg did. He praised Baruch Goldstein's murders after they had been perpetrated.
Actually, the Attorney General is technically not even prosecuting Ginzberg for praising violence, but for being a "racist". But "racism" in Israeli Newspeak has always been a term restricted to Kahanists saying negative things about Arabs or calling for "transfer", and has never applied to far-leftists cheering when "settlers" are murdered, nor Arabs denouncing Jews in blood-curdling terms and chanting "Massacre the Jews". Not a single Arab or Israeli Jewish Leftist has ever been prosecuted under the Israeli "anti-racism" laws. So, why is Ginzberg being prosecuted while the far-leftist traitors are not?
The prosecution of Ginzberg is part of the broader assault on the free expression and speech of right-wingers in Israel by the Left, following the Rabin assassination. The Left has always preached the ridiculous canon that holds that free speech by rightists somehow caused the Rabin assassination. Moreover, leftist McCarthyists have always insisted that some mysterious rabbis were behind Yigal Amir's assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. No one, of course, has ever produced any evidence that any rabbi anywhere called for Rabin to be killed, or even justified the assassination after it took place. As far as I know, even Ginzberg never called for, nor justified, that assassination. If he had, it would have been the main clause in the Attorney General's writ of indictment (but it is not there, reinforcing my contention). Rather, the indictment of Ginzberg, in my opinion, actually has nothing to do with his words of praise for Goldstein's 1994 atrocity. If it had, he would have been indicted years ago. His book praising Goldstein came out in 1995.
Instead, Ginzberg is to be indicted because of the desperation of the Israeli Left to invent fanatic pro-violence rabbis who can be blamed for Yigal Amir and for Baruch Goldstein. Beyond those two, the Left has a great difficulty identifying any other violent "byproducts of the rhetoric" of the Right.
A no-less-important reason is that the current Attorney General, Eliakim Rubinstein, desperately wants to get himself appointed to the Supreme Court and he needs the support of the Left for that to happen. So poor Rabbi Ginzberg may do some hard prison time to help Rubinstein get that robe.
--------------------------------------------------------
Steven Plaut teaches at the University of Haifa and is author of The Scout (available from Gefen Publishing House: http://161.58.167.199/shop/indi_scout.htm). More of his writings can be seen on the New Plaut Blog.