Dr Mordechai Kedar
Dr Mordechai KedarHayamin bHadash

Thousands of people, including hundreds of students from Bar Ilan University, signed a petition supporting Dr. Mordechai Kedar following the decision by university management to summon him to a disciplinary committee for exercising his democratic right of free speech.

The summons comes after the university felt heat in consequence of a speech given by Kedar at a rally in Goren Square in Petah Tikva where he stated that Yigal Amir was not the one who murdered Rabin.

The petition, entitled "Citizens of Israel Support Dr. Mordechai Kedar, the State of Israel's Information Fighter," was initiated by Im Tirtzu members among the student body at the university.

"Dr. Kedar constantly devotes his time and energy to defending the State of Israel, fighting falsehood, incitement, and propaganda against the State and its citizens, all in his own time, with his whole heart and a genuine sense of mission for the people of Israel," the petition reads.

They added: "While Israeli academics are infested with professors and doctors acting on their own behalf, whose salaries are paid by citizens of the State of Israel and who are busy devoting their time to defaming the State of Israel, supporting BDS from within, and giving succor to the state's haters and promoting anti- and post-Zionism, Bar-Ilan University has chosen specifically to discipline Dr. Kedar, and to suspend him from representing the university."

The petition says the attitude towards Kedar is also tainted with discrimination: "Bar-Ilan University President Prof. Aryeh Zaban and University Rector Prof. Miriam Faust have chosen the wrong target. When Dr. Uri Weiss of Bar Ilan said after a terror attack in Kiryat Arba that 'when parents choose in the name of fanatical theology to live in a place that endangers their children, it is a collective psychosis,' he was not reprimanded nor subjected to a disciplinary committee.

"When Prof. Orna Sasson-Levy, a professor from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and from the Gender Studies Program at Bar-Ilan University, signed petitions and participated in events by the extreme propaganda organization Breaking the Silence, Bar-Ilan did not consider it inappropriate."

At the conclusion of the petition it reads: "It is permissible to criticize Dr. Kedar as he criticizes others. It is fair to say that his words are in error or that they are unworthy. That is why the State of Israel is a free state with freedom of opinion and expression. But from here to the serious injury to his name and livelihood, and his silencing by summonses to disciplinary committees, is going a long way."