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Call us. 11, ANIERICAN CANCER SOCIETY' • SPECIAL WINTER PRICES FOR SPRING DELIVERY • Save an extra 10% by placing your order now 'til Feb. 1, 1996 for April delivery • Free design service • Free delivery in Metro area • Servicing all cemeteries in the Metro area C 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