Date: Thu, 07 Mar 2002 20:54:45 -0700
From: yalamoodi@hotmail.com ("yaser alamoodi")
Subject: [aiarizona] NYTimes:Israel Tries Arab Legislator
To: aelgaili@law.harvard.edu, Amy.Campbell2@asu.edu, amychamplin@hotmail.com, carl.zaragoza@asu.edu, hassan_alrefae@hotmail.com, rwahdan@du.edu, notoriousbaz@hotmail.com, imtiazv@bu.edu, sibrahim@gwu.edu, kurzlenny@hotmail.com, aiarizona@yahoogroups.com, ydsphoenix@topica.com, suave77@aol.com, markus.roznowski@asu.edu, nfiala@fialaphotography.com, little_nasrin@yahoo.com, nazeefe@aol.com, alhuda80@hotmail.com, will92114@yahoo.com
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Israel Tries Legislator for Praising Hezbollah </P></DIV>
February 28, 2002
By JOEL GREENBERG
JERUSALEM, Feb. 27 - An Israeli Arab lawmaker went on trial
today on charges of voicing support for a terrorist
organization, the first time a member of the Israeli
Parliament has been prosecuted for remarks made in office.
The trial of the legislator, Azmi Bishara, leader of the
pan-Arabist Balad Party, focused attention on the civil
rights and loyalties of Israel's million Arab citizens, as
well as on the limits of free speech in Israel.
Greeted outside the Nazareth Magistrate's Court by chanting
supporters waving Palestinian flags, Mr. Bishara said the
trial was a rightist attempt to discredit Israeli Arab
political views.
"The trial is clearly a political trial," Mr. Bishara told
reporters as the hearings began before a three- judge
panel. The proceedings were attended by several members of
the European Parliament and representatives of human rights
groups.
The case has aggravated a sense of grievance among many
Israeli Arabs, who have long complained of official
discrimination in budgets, land allocation, education and
other government services, and whose communities have high
levels of poverty and unemployment. Alienation has deepened
since October 2000, when the police killed 13 people during
violent protests in Israeli Arab communities sympathetic to
the Palestinian uprising.
According to an indictment submitted by Attorney General
Elyakim Rubinstein, Mr. Bishara, 45, praised the Lebanese
guerrilla group Hezbollah in two speeches and urged that
its tactics be adopted by the Palestinians in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip. He will face up to one year in jail if he
is convicted.
Hezbollah waged a guerrilla war against Israeli forces in
southern Lebanon before they withdrew in May 2000; its
campaign was widely seen in the Arab world as a model of
successful resistance to occupation. Israel and the United
States regard Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran,
as a terrorist organization.
Mr. Bishara's lawyer, Hassan Jabarin, asked the court to
dismiss the indictment, arguing that it was a politically
motivated attempt to delegitimize his client's views. He
asserted that the remarks in quetion did not amount to a
criminal offense and fell within the limits of free speech.
According to the indictment, Mr. Bishara praised Hezbollah
and encouraged violence in speeches at the Israeli Arab
town of Umm al-Fahm in August 2000 and at a memorial
gathering in Syria for President Hafez al-Assad last June.
At the gathering in Syria, Mr. Bishara said that "the
option of resistance" could only be maintained by "widening
this domain again, so that people can struggle and resist."
Among the Arab dignitaries in the audience were Sheik
Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, and heads of
militant Palestinian groups based in Damascus.
Mr. Bishara asserts that he was talking about resistance to
Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, not
encouraging aggression toward Israel proper, and that
"resistance" in any case did not necessarily mean violence,
which he says he opposes.
Mr. Jabarin said that in prosecuting Mr. Bishara - who
advocates turning Israel from a Jewish state into "a state
of all its citizens" - the Israeli political establishment
was trying to discredit his opinions.
"Because Azmi Bishara challenges the Zionist ideology," Mr.
Jabarin said, "this was the way to criminalize him and
remove him from the public debate. The trial is not about
the indictment, but about what he symbolizes regarding the
status of Arab citizens in Israel."
In a separate trial, Mr. Bishara has been charged with
organizing family visits by Israeli Arabs to relatives in
Syria, with which Israel is technically at war. The Israeli
Legislature voted in November to strip him of his
parliamentary immunity, clearing the way for his
prosecution on both counts.
Before the trial began today, Mr. Bishara promised to use
the courtroom as a forum for his ideas. "They can't try me
for my political positions without the trial becoming a
platform for the question of whether resistance to
occupation is a legitimate right or not," he said.
Arguments will also be heard about "why an Arab member of
Parliament is being tried for what he says, and whether we
can be Israeli patriots at all, and whether I am loyal to
the rights of my Palestinian people to self-determination.
"I think they will regret every
minute."