Free Israel Now!

Prof. Steven E. Plaut's letter to friends of Israel's democracy

Forwarded from Ms. Gabrielle Goldwater

Prof. Steven E. Plaut
Graduate School of Business
University of Haifa
Haifa 31905 Israel
Fax: 04-824-9194
Email: Splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il

June 7, 2006


Dear Friend of Israeli Democracy:

I am writing to you to ask for your help in defending free speech in Israel from the malicious assault upon it by Israel's far-Leftist extremists in league with Arab anti-Israel radicals.

Free speech in Israel is inadequately protected in law, and it is defended with increasing political selectiveness. Under selective free speech, the most seditious behavior and activities of Far Leftists and Arab militants is always protected speech, but any criticism of these same extremists is "libelous".

Recently there have been malicious attempts by anti-Israel extremists in Israel to conscript the Israeli court system as a political bludgeon to suppress the free speech rights of critics of the radical Left. I attach below the detailed description of the most important of such court cases. I would like to ask for your help in fighting the court battle against this anti-democratic campaign and on behalf of the defense of free speech and Israeli democracy.

Israeli democracy and free speech are being threatened, and it is essential for Israel's future that they be defended from the malicious anti-democratic assault!

Please read the attached document carefully. Please consider lending assistance in this crucial battle.

Thank you.

Prof. Steven Plaut
University of Haifa Appeal for your Help – Please Assist me in Defending Freedom of Speech and Democracy in Israel!!


Protection of freedom of speech in Israel has a long record of shoddiness. Protection of free speech is selective and discriminatory. The most outrageous, treasonous, and openly pro-terrorism statements by far-leftist Jews or Arab radicals in Israel are always protected speech, but dissident speech by non-leftists is not.

Anti-Oslo dissidents are routinely investigated and prosecuted for "incitement", "racism", and other "crimes" related to their speech. There has not been a single case in which a Jewish leftists or Arab anti-Israel extremist was convicted of "incitement": not for inciting to violence, justifying terror, or anti-Jewish racism.

Moreover, after Moshe Feiglin, a Jewish anti-Oslo activist, blocked a road during a protest, he was indicted and convicted of "sedition". Blocking roads is a common protest tactic in Israel but no one else has been prosecuted for it! In part, the selective enforcement of free speech protection is consistent with the "judicial activism" ideology long promoted in Israel by its Supreme Court justices.

Political biases permeate the judicial system, including the Prosecutor's Offices. Freedom of speech is now under assault in Israel by anti-democratic leftist extremists, in some cases in league with nationalist radical Arabs.

A tactic being used against freedom of speech is the filing by leftists of malicious "libel suits" as harassment, designed to penalize those who dissent from the political ideas of the radical Left and criticize them. This is a clear and present threat to Israeli democracy and to its inadequately-protected freedom of speech. Because Israel has no formal constitution, it also has no "First Amendment" that can be used to strike down such assaults against free expression.

Over the past few years, an Israeli extremist professor has been attempting to recruit the court system as a tool for suppressing freedom of speech. Neve Gordon is politically the Ben Gurion University equivalent of Ilan Pappe, although in some ways he is more anti-Israel even than Pappe.

A far-leftist extremist, Gordon has devoted his energies to denouncing Israel as a fascist, apartheid state, one practicing "state terrorism", in every forum imaginable. He accepted funding from the Kroc Institute to write a manuscript about supposed Israeli "terrorism";

Kroc is the extremist institute that tried to host Taraq Ramadan in the US before the INS nixed the idea due to Ramadan's ties with al-Qaeda. Gordon is so extremist that his anti-Israel articles have been reprinted on nazi web sites, including that of deported Canadian nazi Ernst Zundel, as well as on Islamist web sites and other anti-Semitic magazines and web sites.

They were cited with approval on David Irving's web site. Gordon led a campaign of defamation against his own army officer, Gen Aviv Kohavi, accusing him falsely of being a "war criminal". Those actions by Gordon formed the basis for an attempt in the UK to indict Kohavi, forcing Kohavi to abandon plans to study in the UK as a private person. Gordon has also justified terrorist violence against Jews.

Gordon served as a "human shield" for Arafat and for the wanted terrorist murderers being hidden in Arafat's offices a few years back, including those who had assassinated an Israeli cabinet minister.

Gordon entered Ramallah illegally with the "international anarchists" from ISM and similar groups to try to prevent Israeli anti-terror operations after a number of terrorist atrocities, to interfere with attempts by the IDF at apprehending those wanted murderers, and was arrested at least once for this.

He was photographed in the Israeli media embracing Arafat while Arafat was refusing to turn over the murderers of an cabinet minister, after illegally infiltrating an army cordon to serve as human shield for the murderers. Israel's Maariv denounced the "human shields" groups to which Gordon belonged as "traitors" (Maariv's term).

Gordon also has a long track record of endorsing Norman Finkelstein. The ADL has declared Finkelstein to be a Holocaust Denier, as have many others. Gordon has largely endorsed Finkelstein's political views, including Finkelstein's horrific book on the Holocaust, and Gordon's articles praising Finkelstein have appeared on Zundel's nazi web site, on the anti-Semitic Counterpunch magazine, and elsewhere.

Gordon's pro-Finkelstein article is proudly displayed by Finkelstein on his own personal web site. Finkelstein, by the way, also denounces the very existence of Israel as a crime to be erased, endorses Hizbollah and other anti-Israel terror, endorses the Hamas, and at UCI recently declared publicly that Israel had perpetrated genocide against Arabs. In his articles, Gordon praises Finkelstein and compares Finkelstein ethically to the Prophets of the Bible.

Gordon has also issued statements openly endorsing and identifying with the "heroic" nuclear spy and traitor Mordecai Vanunu. He has endorsed countless anti-Israel petitions and statements, including one claiming Israel was planning to conduct nazi-like atrocities against Arabs the moment that American troops entered Iraq to topple Saddam.

Three years ago, Gordon decided to launch a malicious legal assault against free speech and democracy in Israel. He filed a SLAPP-style "libel suit" against me because I had criticized his political behavior and opinions. SLAPP suits are malicious anti-speech suits filed for purposes of suppressing free speech and are illegal in most states in the US. But, in Israel, where free speech is inadequately protected, they are not.

Specifically, I had earlier harshly denounced Gordon's endorsements of Finkelstein in some sentences of mine published on the internet, and I had labeled the group to which Gordon belonged – the one that served as "human shields" for the terrorists - as "Judenrat wannabes". That was because – like the Judenrat – they were self-appointed "representatives" of Jews serving as "liaisons" and supporters for those seeking to murder Jews.

Gordon's suit claimed these criticisms of his political activities were "libelous". That is right, he claimed that denouncing his illegally interfering with Israeli military anti-terror operations and serving as a human shield for terrorists was "libelous". Given his own track record of libeling people (he routinely labels all Israeli politicians he does not like from Left and Right "murderers" and "war criminals"), including his campaign against Kohavi and given the nature of what he writes about Israel and where he publishes it, such a complaint coming from Gordon was ludicrous.

Gordon decided to go "venue shopping" in Israel for a court where he expected to find judges biased towards his own political opinions and behavior.

While neither he nor I live in the jurisdiction of the Nazareth court, Gordon filed his suit there, knowing full-well that nearly most of the judges in that court are Arabs, including judges with extremist anti-Israel political positions.

Gordon hired an Arab lawyer with radical political positions, and filed his suit in the Nazareth court, hoping to get a radical Arab judge who would be sympathetic to his anti-Israel political extremism and hostile to my own conservative Zionism.

The venue shopping tactic partly worked for Gordon. The case was assigned to an Arab woman judge.

Meanwhile the Gordon suit gained a lot of public attention in Israel and abroad, since it was clearly an attempt to suppress harsh criticism of leftist extremists by misusing the court. Gordon's position is basically that freedom of speech is an entitlement for him, regardless of how obscenely anti-Israel his writings and statements are, but not an entitlement at all for those who criticize his own extremism. In the press, the suit has been referred to as the "David Irving Trial of Israel", because of the parallels with Irving's tactics in suing Deborah Lipstadt for "libel" for calling him a Holocaust Denier. Many consider it the most important court trial over free speech in recent Israeli history.

The suit dragged on for well over three years. In the judgment, while dismissing many of Gordon's claims and fabrications, the Arab woman judge nevertheless issued a ruling claiming that two or three of the statements I had published about Gordon's politics constitute "libel".

Never mind that Gordon is clearly a "public figure" and harsh denunciation of public figures, esp regarding their political opinions, is supposed to be protected speech in Israel, as has been well established in case law.

In the trial Gordon's Arab lawyer even attempted to submit Finkelstein's obscene book on "The Holocaust Industry" as reliable and legitimate "evidence" and as "historic truth." (The judge blocked that attempt.)

Even worse, the entire ruling by the judge reads like a political Op-Ed. The judge laid out her own political opinions, openly endorsing Gordon's behavior and politics, defending his illegal pro-terror antics as "legitimate protest".

Then in paragraph 24 of the ruling, the judge openly endorsed "alternative" views of the Holocaust, clearly meaning Finkelstein's. Here we have the spectacle of an Arab judge in Israel openly endorsing "alternative theories about the Holocaust," meaning Holcoast revisionism.

The supposedly libelous statements of mine were my use of the pejorative "Judenrat wannabe" to describe the group of extremists that were engaged in the criminally illegal entrance into Ramallah followed by their serving as "human shields", and also my denunciation of Gordon's endorsements of Finkelstein's positions. (Gordon had earlier tried to mistranslate "Groupie of the world's leading Jewish Holocaust Denier Norman Finkelstein," which is how I in fact described Gordon, as if I had written that Gordon himself "walks in the tracks of Holocaust Deniers". He was later forced to admit he lied and that part of the suit was dismissed.

The politicized judge ignored the fact that the supposed "hurtful characterization" of mine, "Judenrat-wannabe", was in fact referring to illegal actions by anti-Israel extremists trying to protect terrorists. The judge complete ignored the context of all comments I had published. In another statement, my denunciation of Gordon's endorsements of Finkelstein had run on an internet magazine whose editor had assigned the headline "Haaretz Supports Jews for Hitler" to my piece, referring to Haaretz' running the endorsement of Finkelstein written by Gordon (the same one run on Ernst Zundel's nazi web site).

The Haaretz Support for Jews for Hitler in the heading, a heading not even composed by me but added by the editor, referred of course to Finkelstein and to those Jews who join him in denying the Holocaust, such as Noam Chomsky. The judge claimed that it could be interpreted as also referring to Gordon because of the plural in "Jews for Hitler".

Noam Chomsky and the editors of Tikkun magazine were all mentioned in the same original article and so the plural could clearly have been referring to them with Finkelstein, rather than to Gordon. (Incidentally, there is case law in Israel by which even calling a political extremist a "nazi" is supposed to be protected speech, esp if it is regarding his extremist politics.)

Finally, I had written that at the time of the "human shield" incident, Gordon's publication record consisted largely of populist political propaganda in extremist magazines, which was factually correct at the time the article I wrote about Gordon appeared (in 2001 – with date of article appearing on that page).

Gordon's professional resume had been published on the Ben Gurion University web site and I simply reviewed its contents. All these statements constituted "libel" according to the judge.

The judge's political orientation was made clear in the ruling, where she wrote that illegal interference with military anti-terror operations by anti-Israel protesters is "a legitimate form of protest," but denouncing such pro-terror activists as "Judenrat wannabe" is libelous. That indeed was the main theme of the entire ruling.

The judge dismissed other Gordon tactics and claims, such as his attempt to link me to assorted other articles and letters I did not write, and she dismissed his attempt to draw Dan Pipes' journal Middle East Quarterly into the suit because it once ran a piece denouncing Gordon (and because I am on the Board of Editors of the journal). Nevertheless, while totally ignoring all of Gordon's own political extremism, anti-Israel fanaticism, ties with anti-Semites, and illegal interference with the Israeli army's anti-terror operations, the judge declared that all of Gordon's actions, writings, and behavior are protected speech, but harsh denunciation of them and criticism of his political behavior by me constitutes "libel". I was reminded of some Soviet court rulings.

To grasp the enormity and the harmful significance of this ruling, imagine that the British court had actually found for David Irving and convicted Deborah Lipstadt of "libel" for denouncing him. This Nazareth ruling is arguably one of the most important cases in Israel concerning freedom of speech or its suppression.

The Nazareth ruling is an open assault against freedom of speech in Israel for non-leftists and will serve as precedent for any anti-Israel extremist in Israel who wishes to recruit a court to suppress freedom of speech for non-leftists. All such a person now need do is run to Nazareth and file a political SLAPP "libel suit" and hope for a biased judge. The full ruling of the Nazareth judge is available, by the way, but only in Hebrew. After the Nazareth judgment was issued, Gordon sent a letter of thanks to Ilan Pappe, thanking him for his assistance in the suit, which Pappe published.

In part of the judgment, the judge ordered me to pay Gordon damages because I had passed on a satiric sarcastic article written by someone else after it had been printed in the internet! The judge agreed that I had not written it and was simply citing it, yet declared this libelous anyway and the basis for ordering me to pay restitution to Gordon! This means that from now on in Israel sending an Efraim Kishon article to someone is "libel".

Because of the enormous implications of all this, it is crucial that the ruling now be overturned on appeal. That however is expensive and not simple. A first appeal would be heard at the same Nazareth court, before an appeals panel, and it is possible that politics could play a role there. If that appeal failed, the next appeal would go to Israel's Supreme Court, where my guess is that it would be summarily overturned. The Supreme Court has tended to defend free speech absolutism in recent years, and that would likely lead it to overturn the whole judgment.

The judgment against me issued by the Nazareth judge grants Gordon about $18,000 in "damages", even though Gordon was unable to show he had experienced any "damages" at all from my denunciations of his political behavior. This was twice the level of damges awared in Israel when libel really takes place.

In the ruling, the judge agreed that Gordon never showed he suffered any material damages from what I had written about him, but assigns damages to him anyway, and also hits me with an additional $3000 in court costs. All that of course is above and beyond my own legal costs borne.

At this point, the suit is only marginally about me personally and is mainly about whether or not freedom of speech can be suppressed in Israel using malicious prosecution and SLAPP tactics, or whether the court system will put a stop to such things once and for all.

That is why it is so important to fight this all the way through the appeals process. This however is quite expensive. I estimate that I need to raise about $35,000 to continue this battle for freedom of speech in Israel. My own personal resources were stretched by the first trial round (bear in mind that Israeli professors make about $2000 a month).

That is why I would like to appeal to you for assistance in helping me defer these costs. I wanted to ask if you might be willing to help raise funds from individuals concerned about Israeli democracy inclined to assist in the appeal, and perhaps agree yourself to cover some of them. If so, there are several ways in which any funds could be transferred.

The stakes at play in this suit are enormous and carry important implications for the future of Israeli democracy.

I would like to ask for your assistance in enabling me to continue this battle for freedom of speech and against attempts at its suppression by political extremists.

Thank you very much in advance.


Prof. Steven Plaut
University of Haifa
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Ms. G. GoldwaterSwitzerland, Genevaiii44@aol.comInternet Correspondent and Commentatorhttp://www.gabriellegoldwater.com <<>www.euFunding.org ]FPC REPORT EXPOSES MASSIVE CONTRADICTIONS IN EUROPEAN AID TO PALESTINIANS http://eufunding.org/FPC2004Report.pdfThe world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing. --Albert Einstein To paraphrase one of the greatest moral insights of the Talmud, those who show mercy to the cruel will be cruel to the merciful.You may pass articles, and/or any sections of our websites to your lists, under the condition that all Signatures and Links plus credits are incorporated in full. No excerpts can be used without permission. A History of Terrorism in Israelhttp://lindasog.com/public/terrorvictims.htm

posted by Free Israel @ 2:35 PM