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Is Israel Today
Going To Extremes?
INA FRIEDMAN ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
E
ver since Yitzhak Rabin's
assassination, life in Israel
has been reminiscent, in a
way, to the heyday of Wa-
tergate, when Americans could
hardly wait to read the latest un-
raveling of the cover-up.
Israelis are experiencing a sim-
ilar sense of an unfolding plot,
with each new revelation raising
new political, legal, and moral
questions.
The latest fallout from the as-
sassination is a budding debate
about some of the more difficult
questions any democracy in cri-
sis must face: Where does free-
dom of speech end and sedition
begin? When must a democracy
take steps to defend itself against
enemies of its political system?
And how far can it go in that
cause without resorting to unde-
mocratic means?
Citizens who commented fa-
vorably on the assassination (or
so they were understood) faced
punishment. A blunt remark by
a factory worker in Bet Shean
cost him his job. A teacher in
Petach Tikvah was suspended for
expressing a similar sentiment.
David Balahsan of Kiryat Arba
was arrested after telling a
Reuters' TV team that he was
glad "tyrant Rabin" was dead.
While Kach and Kahane Chai
were outlawed after the 1994 He-
bron massacre, little has been
done to suppress them and oth-
er groups such as Eyal (Jewish
Fighting Organization), whose
members were filmed at an in-
duction ceremony just weeks be-
fore the assassination with no
subsequent police action taken.
The result of such leniency or
negligence, conventional wisdom
now goes, was the overheated at-
mosphere that peaked in the
prime minister's murder.
Yet in the murder's aftermath,
some citizens are wondering
whether these same legal and
law-enforcement agencies — in
a fit of remorse, perhaps — are
going to the opposite extreme. On
the day after Mr. Rabin's funer-
al, undoubtedly influenced by the
angry reaction to Mr. Balahsan's
tasteless statement, Attorney
General Michael Ben-Yair for-
bade the Israeli media to direct-
ly quote any statements of
incitement or sedition.
In another time or place, the
draconian move might have been
accepted as a temporary measure
to maintain a sense of national
dignity, at least during the week
of mourning, and later be nego-
tiated or challenged in court.
Instead, at the height of the
national trauma, it sparked a
storm of protest and an ill-timed
debate over freedom of speech,
freedom of the press, and the
public's right to know. Writing
last week in Maariv, , legal com-
mentator Moshe Negbi even
scolded the attorney general for
failing to do his homework. The
High Court of Justice, it turns
out, had ruled on this very issue
a decade ago in striking down a
ban by the Israel Broadcasting
Authority against Rabbi Meir Ka-
hane.
After the week of mourning,
the government shifted its focus
from the press to where it be-
longed — the extremists — in re-
solving to outlaw all "extremist,
violent, racist, and terrorist or-
ganizations" as a "grave threat to
Israel's democratic regime, the
security of the state and public
order."
No organizations were cited by
name. On precisely whom would
the government crack down?
Mr. Raviv, a friend of confessed
assassin Yigal Amir, was arrest-
ed after the assassination but
was released after nine days and
placed under the relatively mod-
erate restriction of house arrest.
Why was he alone let off so
lightly? Hardly was that question
asked than a "high-ranking se-
curity source" leaked the in-
triguing fact that Mr. Raviv not
just the country's leading right-
wing extremist; he was also was
an informer for the Shabak. It
soon came out that he had like-
wise been responsible for the in-
famous handbill portraying Mr.
Rabin in an S.S. uniform, which
became the emblem of right-wing
incitement.
The result of this mix of reve-
lations was yet another national
uproar, this time with the oppo-
sition on the offensive. Both the
prime minister's spokeswoman
and Mr. Raviv strongly denied he
had been reporting to the
Shabak. But their protests were
wholly ignored. Instead, the op-
position pounced on the leak to
charge that the Shabak (which
takes its orders from the prime
minister) had been used in the
most cynical fashion to suppress
political dissent by effectively cre-
ating Eyal and fielding Mr. Ra-
viv as an agent provocateur to
discredit the right as a whole.
Though a potential can of
worms (which will surely be -;-
plored by the special inquiry
commission on the assasr ;na-
tion), the Raviv flap initial y de-
flected attention from the even
more serious and sensitive ques-
tions poised over Israel today:
Whether and how, as part of its
defense of the democratic system,
the new government will address
the phenomenon of rabbinical au-
thorities ruling that soldiers
should disobey orders; that cer-
tain elected leaders pose a mor-
tal threat to the Jews and may
thus justifiably be eliminated;
that as a general rule of thumb
(as former Chief
Rabbi Avraham Shapira reit-
erated last week), in any conflict
between religious law and the
law of the land, Halacha takes
precedence.
It's hard to imagine that, short
of being faced with a full-fledged
civil uprising, any Israeli gov-
ernment would opt for a head-on
clash with even the most fanatic
members of the country's reli-
gious establishment.
Reasoning that any directly
punitive move against even the
most radical of rabbis would
bring such plans to grief, the gov-
ernment has decided on a more
subtle tack: To sap their strength
by threatening to cut off govern-
ment funding to the ultra-Or-
thodox institutions. Meretz
Ministers Yossi Sarid and Yair
Tsaban have already cited two
rabbis in the news — Nahum Ra-
binowitz of Ma'aleh Adumim and
Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba — who,
in their view, have no business
being on the public payroll. "Any-
one who proposes planting ex-
plosive devices [to stop] IDF
soldiers [on their way to evacu-
ate settlements] and compares
them to Nazis," Mr. Sarid said of
Rabbi Rabinowitz, "should not be
a rabbi and the head of a yeshi-
va, should not receive financial
aid from the state and should not
be walking about freely."
Whether the government will
pursue this course successfully
remains to be seen. It seems
plain, however, that Mr. Peres
will be walking a particularly pre-
carious path in the coming year:
Unable, after the trauma of a po-
litical assassination, to dismiss
fanaticism as merely a marginal
phenomenon and equally pre-
vented (by the rules of democra-
tic government and by sheer
political good sense) from at-
tacking it.
Contrary to earlier expecta-
tions, however, the meaning and
strength of Israel's democracy
may turn into the issue that dom-
inates public attention in this up-
coming election year. El