News Brief

(IsraelNN.com) An opinion piece in Israel's most popular news website, Ynet, compares protests against the Disengagement to illegal activities by Adolf Hitler during the Weimar Republic era, and draws a parallel between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's call for a pardoning of the protesters and the decision by German Chancellor von Papen to pardon five Nazis who murdered a communist on the eve of Hitler's rise to power.

The op-ed, signed by Gilad Natan, a Ph.D student at Tel Aviv University's School of History, laments the fact that right-wing Disengagement protesters were not shot when they blocked roads in the same way that Arab rioters were shot in 2000 [when they joined the enemy attack on Israel, burning cars, firing guns and trying to lynch motorists - ed.].  Natan notes that the Weimar Republic of Germany was lenient towards right-wing crimes, and cites the example of Adolf Hitler's light sentence after the failed 1923 putsch in Bavaria.

Last Thursday, the Jerusalem District Court decided that Nadia Matar, co-chairwoman of Women in Green, will face charges of insulting a public servant after calling Disengagement Authority (Sela) head Yonaton Bassi “a modern-day version of the Judenrat,” the Jewish councils appointed by the Nazis to lead the Jews during the Holocaust.

Ynet is owned by Yediot Acharonot, Israel's largest daily newspaper.