Someone needs to change the light bulb on Israeli freedom

I have a real fondness for Israel, in spite of the Israeli electorate’s decidedly socialist bent. In recent years, there has been increasingly alarming trends by successive Israeli administrations to stifle speech or expression that dissents from the official government party line. Under the Sharon Administration there was the introduction of the Nazi expression or speech bills in the Knesset. Call someone a Nazi, go to jail for a minimum of seven years.

Ironically, as Barak at Iris points out, David ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of the modern state of Israel “frequently described the Zionist statesman Zev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky as "Vladimir Hitler." Leading up to the Gaza disengagement fiasco the Israeli state attempted to unjustly prosecute and incarcerate figures such as Avri Ran, a rather charismatic man who is also known as the Father of the Hilltop movement rather than allow him, and like minded others, freedom of movement, expression or speech when it means dissenting from the disastrous disengagement policy of the Sharon government.

Now via Iris comes another stunning blow to free speech and expression in Israel:

When it was first announced that Nadia Matter of Women in Green was being prosecuted for "insulting a public servant" via a sharp letter she sent to Yonatan Basis (see the bottom of this page for text) it was generally expected that this was simply another ploy by overzealous officials to try to silence opponents to their policies.

After all, in the early years of Oslo it took months for Israeli legal officials to finally reach the conclusion that a protestor who held a sign reading "There are 120 idiots in the Knesset" should not be charged for the same crime.

But it appears that Attorney General Mazes has decided to make an example out of Matter and her trial has been set to open on 14 June 2006 at 10 AM at the Magistrates Court in Jerusalem.

Who would have thought that any western-style democracy would possess a criminal code offence on the books for “insulting a public servant” - let alone, in 2006, attempting to prosecute anyone under such a nefarious and infamous law?

If this were my native Canada, the only souls (out of a population base of approximately 33 million) walking around freely would be CUPE members (Canadian Union for Public Employees). It makes me question how long before the Olmert government decides that Nathan Sharansky needs to re-visit the gulag – this time Israeli style.

Read the letter that has the potential to send a woman to jail.