On October 23, 2008, in Tel Aviv, Grigori (Gershon) Trestman and Sergei Podrazhanski went to trial. They are under indictment for incitement on the basis of racism, fanning the flames of inter-ethnic tensions, the demonization of the Arabs, etc. The accused, Grigori Trestman, is one of the most distinguished Israeli and 
This trial, ludicrous to the point of unseemliness, has a political undertone.
Jewish poets writing today in Russian, and his reputation as a poet is irreproachable both in Russia and in Russian-speaking Israel. As far as the case’s co-defendant is concerned, Podrazhanski, editor of the newspaper Vesti, is accused as the publisher of the criminally-punishable text.
The text in question is a quotation (a few ironic-sarcastic stanzas) from the parody poem “Lieberman’s Paradigm”:
“And the full fruition is a nightmare: the number of Israeli Arabs has gotten to above a million, and is still rising quite a bit. Look at them - everything goes dark before your eyes! I will say with all due respect to the Jews - Arabs work hard at nights in the name of replenishing the species. An eclipse of the moon ray, a breath of death, a trace of a plague? A (female) hare, a cat, a locust does not know such passion! And no matter that some prophecy happiness for us - the road to our grave is being paved for us every night, every night, by the womb of the Arab woman.”
This trial, ludicrous to the point of unseemliness, has a political undertone (which is the overtone as well) obvious to everyone in Israel. In the current situation, with the possibility of early elections and the unusually intensified issue of impending territorial and political concessions - which, in the view of a sufficiently representative number of Israelis and foreign commentators, are incompatible with Israel’s continued existence - the reigning establishment is ready to do anything to suppress possible resistance.
The widely recognized leader of that resistance is Avigdor Lieberman. No one doubts that this entire shameful action is directed precisely at him. But it’s even more shameful that a poet is being used as the means of delegitimizing this political figure.
Irony is not an obstacle - indeed, has never been an obstacle - to seeing the seriousness of a text. Even setting aside the fact that in the criminally punishable stanzas Grigori Trestman simply translates into a poetic register a well-known statement by Yasser Arafat (to the effect that an Arab woman’s womb is more threatening to the Jews than an atomic bomb), it is shameful and insane to have to pose the following question: So, Trestman as a poet and a Jew doesn’t have the right to hate those who hate us and crave our destruction?
The popular left-wing figure Yossi Sarid (and not only him), when he was minister of culture and education, proposed introducing into the curriculum for Israeli schoolchildren the work of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who called for the murder of Jews and the destruction of the Jewish State. This author regrets that Sarid’s desire has not so far been realized. The coming generation of Israelis should know about those who hate them, instead of the childish, rosy rhetoric that’s crammed into them.
Precisely at the time when this comical case against was brought against Trestman for a poetic parody, a wave of Islamic anger washed across the world in response to the classic Western parody genre of the caricature. Western governments defended their culture, but the Israeli government (through its jurisdiction and at the direction of the Arab organization Mosawwa) was prepared to show yet again its dedication to the “peace process” and make its latest sacrifice at the altar of “Israeli-Islamic brotherhood.” Apparently, the Israeli government does not consider its culture to be Western.
This shameful case has been going on since 2005. One would like to look in the face the government’s judicial advisor Menachem Mazuz, on whose initiative this case was brought, and in the faces of the police officers who, for more then three years concocted the case against the poet, and talk with them about poetry, freedom of creation and the right of every individual person to hatred. 
I am accusing the Israeli establishment of political sordidness and cultural blindness.
There is a limit to loyalty for Russian-speaking Jews in regard to Israel. That boundary ends where harming a person’s honor and dignity are involved. The honor and dignity of the poet, of his readers and admirers, indeed, of free-thinking, independent citizens in general, have been dealt a blow.
And therefore, I am not asking for the defense of Grigori Trestman. I am accusing the Israeli establishment of political sordidness and cultural blindness.
In the view of this author, after the Trestman case, Aliyah to Israel will - agonizing as it is - turn into a mass outflow of Jews from Israel. And there will be no way to object to that.
Regardless of the court’s decision - guilty or innocent - the very fact that this judicial farce is happening is shameful and disgraceful.