The Leftist version of free speech prevails in Israel too

We read:

"Freedom of speech in Israel just took another bullet. The Leftist First Amendment, under which anti-Israel leftists and Arabs are entitled to the protection of freedom of speech for everything they say but no one else is, made a comeback this week. The Israeli dual court system also struck back.

Neria Ofan was convicted this week of racism by a Jerusalem Magistrate's Court. He was convicted of driving with an insensitive bumper sticker on his car. This is not a spoof. It really happened. Ofan's felony? Ofan, who lives in the West Bank, had a bumper sticker on his car that reads, "Where there are No Arabs, there is No Terror." That, fatwa-ed the court's judge Shulamit Dotan, constitutes racism. Another Jew was similar convicted in criminal court six months back for wearing a Tee shirt containing the same slogan.

Now what does NOT constitute racism or incitement in post-democratic Israel? Arab students chanting "Death to the Jews" does not. Waving PLO and Hamas banners on campuses does not. We know that merely calling for Jews to be exterminated and for Israel to be annihilated also does not.

Dotan was one of the judges who had earlier "convicted" Moshe Feiglin of "sedition" because he had blocked a traffic intersection in the 1990s with a group of protesters against Oslo. Blocking traffic intersections for other things, such as for the demands of the Histadrut or when students want lower tuition, is democratic and permitted.

As for that slogan, "Where there are no Arabs, there is no Terror," it is very close to being an empirically verifiable statement, although one can, I suppose, find terror here and there in places where there are no Arabs, like in Sri Lanka. But racism? I mean, if the court had accused the driver of perpetrating a slight empirical exaggeration, perhaps it might have a case.

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