Friends,

I am currently preparing a coherent argument on this case (for a newspaper column) in support of the defendant. For now, I am already struck by the strange language of the pertinent statute, which states that the truth is immaterial? I can't imagine a penal statute in any civilized state that would contain such an assertion: The truth of an allegation simply does not matter? In this case the printed statement "No Arabs, No Terror Attack" is obviously true prima facie, whatever one's political persuasion. It must be as true to Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin as to others on the political Right. After all, does Israel now face relentless terror from any other group on the face of the earth?
Moreover, the printed statement is not by any means suggesting that violence or harms of any kind be done to Arabs; nor is there any reason why someone might properly deduce such untoward suggestions from it. The tee-shirt statement merely makes an absolutely incontestable observation, without any plausible evidence of bias and most assuredly without any hint of identifiable "racism."

One other immediate observation/question comes to mind - this one more pragmatic than jurisprudential: If Arab citizens of Israel were to begin parading down Israeli streets wearing tee-shirts stating "No Jews, No >Occupation," would this be a prosecutable offense under current Israeli law? Clearly the authorities in Israel would NOT deem such activity to be "racism" (even though, in contrast to the actual case now in question with a Jewish defendant, the charge here would almost certainly be true) because the whole world would predictably condemn Israel for being "tyrannical" and "cruel" and "anti-democratic." The world, as we all well know, will stand by comfortably (and with great delight) while a Jewish State prosecutes Jews for an utterly contrived offense while it will never tolerate a Jewish State prosecuting Arabs who expressly and unambiguously call for the murder of Jewish children.

The ironies are staggering; the prosecuting authorities in Israel in this matter may seek to hide behind a criminal statute, but the net effect of their jurisprudential masquerade will merely be the eventual slaughter of their own brothers and sisters. Botom line: The prosecution in this case is based upon an agonizingly twisted jurisprudence that lies more profoundly in age-old Jewish sentiments of self-loathing and self-destruction than in any reasonable concerns for justice. In its asymmetrical application against Jews, this prosecution is both inherently unjust and morally contemptible.

Louis Rene Beres, Ph.D. (Princeton 1971)
Professor of International Law
Purdue University

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