Think Again: Free Speech for Me, But Not for Thee, by Jonathan Rosenblum
For context, click here.
Excerpts;
WHILE AS a Torah Jew I attempt to maintain a degree of restraint in my own speech, I do not want the secular Israeli state to attempt to impose a regime of restraint through the law.
Nadia Matar’s current trial on charges of “insulting a public official” is a case in point of selective enforcement, as this paper pointed out this week (“Noxious speech,” editorial, June 12). No doubt Yonatan Bassi was insulted by a letter from Matar likening the Disengagement Authority to a modern day “Judenrat.”
But I suspect that Supreme Court President Aharon Barak was no less hurt to read his colleague Mishael Cheshin’s characterization of his legal position on the citizenship law in Haaretz: “Justice Aharon Barak is ready for 30, 50 people to be blown up, but we will have human rights.”
And doubtless IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz took umbrage at signs carried by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s daughter Dana and her fellow Machsom Watch demonstrators labeling him a “murderer,” at a demonstration protesting the deaths of Palestinian civilians on Gaza Beach last Friday afternoon.
Matar, Cheshin and Olmert were all making a political point, and as with much political speech, they chose the sharpest possible imagery to do so. (Only Olmert’s charge can be objectively refuted, if, as now appears clear, the IDF bore no responsibility for the explosion that killed six members of one family.) The only difference between them is that there is absolutely no chance that Cheshin or Olmert will ever stand trial.
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Commentary;
Freedom of speech is not the only issue here. National defense and security are ultimately affected by selective prosecution, selective dismissal, compelled resignation etc. of those expressing opposition to positions or policies seen as detrimental to the Nation. Taken to a higher level, that of government service, the prosecution of a Nadia Matar or a Stephen Plaut becomes the dismissal from position of Chief of Staff of General Ya’alon or the compelled resignation from the NSC of General Giora Eiland. When a regime harkens to but one agenda and refuses to hear dissent or criticism from those who care deeply for Jewish national survival, or acts through any and all venues to stifle anyone not in tandem with it [the regime], the national interest is NOT served. MB