FREE SPEECH, JUSTICE DENIED FOR ZIONISTS IN ISRAEL by Steven Plaut It would be hard to find a better illustration of the politicization and the anti-democratic character of Israel’s dual judicial system. The story begins with a woman named Yifat Alkobi, a married woman from Kiryat Arba. She was arrested in 2007 for spitting and throwing stones at a Palestinian she claims was harassing her, the accusations against Alkobi being based on “testimony” from the radical anti-Israel NGO Yesh Din. She has been in the news before, accused of spitting on and cursing a Palestinian neighbor (http://exmypar.wordpress.com/2007/01/22/yifat-alkobi/ ). She first got sentenced to a fine and probation and was later acquitted of the charges (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4042311,00.html). But while being transported to prison she asked a Jewish policeman conducting her there not to leave her alone with Arab policemen. The Arab policemen were probably actually Druse or Bedouin border patrolmen. When word of her comment reached the Deputy Attorney General Shai Nitzan, he ordered that she be charged with “insulting a public servant,” the favorite bludgeon of Nitzan to suppress the freedom of speech of non-leftists. Shai Nitzan, you recall, is essentially a Soviet-style official in charge of using the judicial system to persecute the Israeli Right and suppress freedom of speech. He is behind the campaign to arrest and indict anyone who recommends that people read a controversial book that Nitzan considers to be racist. He persecutes and harasses rabbis. He ordered a faculty member at the University of Haifa to report to the police, KGB style, about comments he made in his classroom, comments Nitzan considered bigoted but the University administration did not. This is the same Shai Nitzan who has never gotten around to indicting any of the Israel far leftists who call for murdering non-leftists This is the same Nitzan who never indicts Arab public figures in Israel for endorsing terrorism and murder. But when a Jewish woman asks not to be left alone with Arab policemen, this was a transgression about which Nitzan leapt into action. Had an Arab woman asked not to be left alone in the company of Jewish men, Nitzan would never have done anything at all.Alkobi never said she would object to being left alone with Arab police WOMEN. But the affair did not end there. It turns out that a young conscientious judge in the Jerusalem magistrate’s court named Dov Pollack spoke out against Nitzan’s behavior. When the Alkobi case came before him, Pollack ordered the police to explain in court how it arrived at this charge against her. The police opposed the demand to explain and demanded that Pollack recuse himself from sitting in the case, claiming he was “biased” and had “expressed political opinions.” In addition, the police claimed that Pollack commented that Nitzan’s behavior was due to the fact that he enjoyed the backing of the current Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, Dorit Beinisch. Allegedly Pollack said that since Beinisch is due to retire in February he would schedule the trial for March in order for objectivity to be maintained. He also is alleged to have said that this was hardly the first case of one-sided biased prosecution by Shai Nitzan. In response, the Attorney General Moshe Lador, the leftist boss of Shai Nitzan, decided to file an official complaint against Judge Pollack with the “Commissioner for Complaints against Judges.” The commissioner actually cannot fire a judge and the complaint is mainly a nuisance tactic. Pollack fired back his own letter of response, accusing Lador of improperly attempting to influence court procedures and decisions. (Alkobi was acquitted of the charges by a different judge, not Pollack.) So here we have the spectacle of a biased leftist State Prosecutor refusing to fire his own biased politicized deputy for his years of anti-democratic actions and his assaults against freedom of speech. And this same State Prosecutor is now attempting to suppress the freedom of speech of a judge and harass that judge for daring to question the political motives of Shai Nitzan in an obviously absurd indictment of a woman for doing nothing more than ask not to be left alone with Arab policemen. Shai Nitzan should have been indicted for bigotry, not Mrs. Alkobi. ============= Please contribute to The Freeman Center's essential educational activities. Mail check to address above or by paypal: http://www.freeman.org/paypal.htm --------------------------------------------------- |
When terrorists kill a Jew in Erets Israel , there are two responsible parties:
the terrorists and the government that allows it. -
....... Rabbi Meir Kahana, ZTUQ"L, HI"D
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"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.
Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"
-Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790) U.S. Founding Father.
Signatory of the Declaration of Independence and of the U.S. Constitution
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Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil. (Isaiah 5,20)
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"At a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
(George Orwell)
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"Lots of bad editorials are better than a beautiful obituary."
-an old Israeli saying from the times before "Lemmings Disease" and
"Osloporosis" struck most of the country-
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"The strength of the prophets of Israel lay in the fact that they proclaimed the
Truth when everything was against it." - Andre Malraux -
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Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense.
If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the
other.
(George Orwell, Partisan Review, 1942)
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