Our own Hana Levi Julian reported last week, "Peace Now Head Goes to War Over Rabbi's Sabbath Message."  It seems that Peace Now Secretary-General Yariv Oppenheimer plans to submit a petition to the Attorney General asking that charges be filed against Rabbi Yisrael Rosen for "incitement and calls to murder." The rabbi referred to members of Peace Now as "informers," who may well be subject to the death penalty in a Torah-based justice system.

Aside from the issue of free speech, the right to hold forth on theoretical legal issues, and the law of the State of Israel that mandates the death penalty for "actions intended to remove territory from the sovereignty of the State of Israel" - aside from all that, there is the following.

Well-known writer Amos Oz, a founder of Peace Now, wrote that the pro-settlement movement is "a messianic junta, insular and cruel, a bunch of armed gangsters, criminals against humanity, sadists, pogromists and murderers, that exited out from some dark corner of Judaism... from out of cellars of bestiality and defilement... in order to cause a thirsty and insane blood worship to rule." (June 8, 1989, Yediot Aharonot, based on Oz's speech the previous night before a crowd of Peace Now demonstrators in Tel Aviv)

Prof. Zeev Sternhal called for tanks to crush the Jewish town of Ofra as part of a civil war initiated by the anti-settlement forces (in Maariv 1988).

Now, we can't hold Peace Now responsible for Sternhal's mishugas, but another Peace Now veteran, artist Yigal Tumarkin, said of Sternhal's suggestion: "My true contribution would be if I grabbed a sub-machine-gun, instead of a pen and pencil and killed them." (Hadashot, September 28, 1988)

I assume that by "them" Tumarkin was not referring to Sternhal and his supporters.

Then there is prominent Peace Now activist and Meretz party MK Naomi Chazan. At a 1992 convention of the Humanist Judaism Federation, she said: "Only if we succeed to get rid of this terrible bad thing, the taking over of our life by the black devil, can we nurture all that is good in the state."

I assume that by "black devil" she did not mean the black-robed justices of the Supreme Court.

And until Ariel Sharon became a contractor for part of Peace Now's policies, he was called a "murderer" for his role as Defense Minister directing the 1982 Peace for Galilee War in Lebanon.

Far be it from me to whine about name calling (unlike our friends at MEND), but perhaps the latest Peace Now threat to sue is a case of the pot calling the kettle "black devil".

Researched, compiled and presented by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz

PS - Readers are invited and encouraged to add more examples of Peace Now incitement in the talkbacks below.