Full report of the death knell of freedom of speech in Israel from the Likud
by Steven Plaut + Arutz Sheva News Article Below
It sounds ironic but the record of Likud governments on freedom of speech in Israel is probably even worse than that of Labor governments. Freedom of speech is something leftists and Arabs enjoy in Israel, even when they cheer on terrorism and insist that Israel be exterminated, but not something that non-leftists may exercise. The exercise of freedom of speech by non-leftists in Israel constitutes “incitement.” Scores of people have been indicted for it.
As part of the crackdown on the exercise of freedom of speech by non-leftists, the police in Israel have orders to arrest people sporting politically incorrect tee shirts and bumper stickers. Not a single person with an anti-Israel leftist bumper sticker or tee shirt has been arrested nor have those spray painting leftist or pro-Arab graffiti on walls.
On Friday freedom of speech in post-democratic Israel took yet another crippling blow, and once again it comes when the Likud is in office. A religious man in Tel Aviv was arrested for having on an insensitive tee shirt. It said in Hebrew “Homosexuals, we are tired of you.”
You may well disagree with that slogan and you may well regard that tee shirt as being in poor taste. But it is not the job of the police in a civilized society to enforce good taste. That is the job of the police in totalitarian societies. Moreover, any country that criminalizes insensitive speech is in effect suppressing freedom of speech altogether. So here we have a Likud-led Israel in which denying that there was a Holocaust or insisting that Jews are racially inferior deserving of being mass murdered is all protected speech but insensitive tee shirts are criminalized. In the past people have been arrested for having bumper stickers or tee shirts that read “Where there are no Arabs there is no terrorism.”
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(Israelnationalnews.com) Police arrested a hareidi man, Aryeh Yerushalmi, for wearing a T-shirt that said “Homos, We are Tired of You” to a rally by homosexuals at Tel Aviv’s main square Saturday night.
It is not known what law Yerushalmi is suspected of breaking.
According to NRG, police asked him to leave the area and when he refused, arrested him. “They arrest people here because you cannot express yourself in this country,” Yerushalmi said before being forced into a squad car.
Yerushalmi, 27, is known for two earlier provocative one-man demonstrations that he held at branches of the Tiv Ta’am supermarket chain. For two years in a row, he took off almost all of his clothes near the bread shelves in the store during Pesach (Passover) to protest a court ruling that allowed the store to sell chametz (leavened, and therefore unkosher for Pesach) products during the holiday.
Yerushalmi explained that the protest was meant to highlight the absurdity of the ruling which determined that the store was not a public place and could therefore stock chametz without breaking the Chametz Law. Yerushalmi reasoned that if the store was not a public place, he should be allowed to take off his clothes there. To drive home the point, he wrote “it’s not public” on his body.
Those protests received much media attention, but Yerushalmi admitted he could be kicked out of his yeshiva for the indecent act. After the second demonstration he was brought before a judge, but was not charged.
Thousands attend rally
Thousands of people flooded into Tel Aviv's Rabin Square Saturday night in memory of two people murdered in a shooting spree at a club for homosexual youth exactly one week ago. The mass gathering was accompanied by well-known Israeli musicians and was addressed by President Shimon Peres, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai as well as a young man wounded in the shooting and a sister of one of the murder victims.
In his comments, Peres said that the shooter was aiming at all the citizens of Israel, even though he physically attacked the gay youth organization. "Preventing murder is our uncompromising duty," Peres declared. "We have no right to rummage around in the lives of others, as long as they obey the law and maintain order. Only tyrants in dictatorships give themselves permission to do so."
The president added that the security services would not rest until the perpetrator was captured
As part of the crackdown on the exercise of freedom of speech by non-leftists, the police in Israel have orders to arrest people sporting politically incorrect tee shirts and bumper stickers. Not a single person with an anti-Israel leftist bumper sticker or tee shirt has been arrested nor have those spray painting leftist or pro-Arab graffiti on walls.
On Friday freedom of speech in post-democratic Israel took yet another crippling blow, and once again it comes when the Likud is in office. A religious man in Tel Aviv was arrested for having on an insensitive tee shirt. It said in Hebrew “Homosexuals, we are tired of you.”
You may well disagree with that slogan and you may well regard that tee shirt as being in poor taste. But it is not the job of the police in a civilized society to enforce good taste. That is the job of the police in totalitarian societies. Moreover, any country that criminalizes insensitive speech is in effect suppressing freedom of speech altogether. So here we have a Likud-led Israel in which denying that there was a Holocaust or insisting that Jews are racially inferior deserving of being mass murdered is all protected speech but insensitive tee shirts are criminalized. In the past people have been arrested for having bumper stickers or tee shirts that read “Where there are no Arabs there is no terrorism.”
==============
Here is the full report of the death knell of freedom of speech in Israel from http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/132791
Hareidi Man Arrested for ‘Tired of Gays’ T-Shirt
Av 18, 5769, 08 August 09 11:48
by Gil Ronen and Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
(Israelnationalnews.com) Police arrested a hareidi man, Aryeh Yerushalmi, for wearing a T-shirt that said “Homos, We are Tired of You” to a rally by homosexuals at Tel Aviv’s main square Saturday night.
It is not known what law Yerushalmi is suspected of breaking.
According to NRG, police asked him to leave the area and when he refused, arrested him. “They arrest people here because you cannot express yourself in this country,” Yerushalmi said before being forced into a squad car.
Yerushalmi, 27, is known for two earlier provocative one-man demonstrations that he held at branches of the Tiv Ta’am supermarket chain. For two years in a row, he took off almost all of his clothes near the bread shelves in the store during Pesach (Passover) to protest a court ruling that allowed the store to sell chametz (leavened, and therefore unkosher for Pesach) products during the holiday.
Yerushalmi explained that the protest was meant to highlight the absurdity of the ruling which determined that the store was not a public place and could therefore stock chametz without breaking the Chametz Law. Yerushalmi reasoned that if the store was not a public place, he should be allowed to take off his clothes there. To drive home the point, he wrote “it’s not public” on his body.
Those protests received much media attention, but Yerushalmi admitted he could be kicked out of his yeshiva for the indecent act. After the second demonstration he was brought before a judge, but was not charged.
Thousands attend rally
Thousands of people flooded into Tel Aviv's Rabin Square Saturday night in memory of two people murdered in a shooting spree at a club for homosexual youth exactly one week ago. The mass gathering was accompanied by well-known Israeli musicians and was addressed by President Shimon Peres, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai as well as a young man wounded in the shooting and a sister of one of the murder victims.
In his comments, Peres said that the shooter was aiming at all the citizens of Israel, even though he physically attacked the gay youth organization. "Preventing murder is our uncompromising duty," Peres declared. "We have no right to rummage around in the lives of others, as long as they obey the law and maintain order. Only tyrants in dictatorships give themselves permission to do so."
The president added that the security services would not rest until the perpetrator was captured
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