The indictment of former MK Michael Ben Ari opens with Rabbi Meir Kahane Hy’d, whose party, Kach, was banned from participating in Israel’s elections in 1998, and in 1994 was declared a terrorist organization. Then, after acknowledging that “Rabbi Kahane was murdered on November 5, 1990, in the United States by a Muslim assassin” (in the spirit of Joseph Heller’s “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.”), the indictment reaches its first attempt at guilt by association: The accused was a teacher at the Jewish Idea Yeshiva that was founded by Rabbi Kahane.”
In 2009, Dr. Ben Ari. 62, became the first outspoken disciple of Rabbi Meir Kahane to be elected to the Knesset. Unlike his mentor, who was marginalized and isolated during his stint as an MK, to be eventually banned by the right-wing Knesset factions who viewed him as an electoral threat, Ben Ari integrated himself and his views into Israel’s right-wing – probably because his stint came twenty years after the shameful Kahane bashing of the “patriotic right.”
Ben Ari became popular enough to become a target of the Israeli Supreme Court, which accepted an appeal by the Meretz party and banned him from running for the Knesset because of his “extremist political views.” Mind you, the same court rejected several decisions of the Knesset election committee to ban declared anti-Israel Arab politicians from running, some of whom turned out to spy for enemies of the Jewish State.
Under Israel’s penal code, incitement to racism (Section 144b) is “Publishing something with the purpose of inciting persecution, humiliation, contempt, hostility, or violence, or causing hatred toward a sector or parts of the population, all because of color or belonging to a race or national-ethnic origin. There is a proviso that says that publishing a quote from religious writings and prayer books or maintaining the worship of a religion will not be perceived as incitement if the quote is not made with the aim of inciting racism.
Nevertheless, in September 2012, a court in Nazareth sentenced Sunni Muslim imam Nazem Abu Salim to three years in prison after he was convicted of inciting violence and terrorism and supporting a terrorist organization. The court ruled that his words of support for al-Qaeda, the global jihad, and the use of violence – “directly caused the adoption of calls for support for the terrorist organization and incitement to violence by any of those who were exposed to them, in a way that led them to carry out severe acts of violence to the point of murdering a Jew, kidnapping and robbing Another Jew as well as attacks by Christians.”
In 2015, the secretary general of the Fatah movement in Jerusalem, Omar Shelbi, was sentenced to nine months in prison and another five months probation for incitement on Facebook.
YOU BE THE JUDGE
The indictment against Ben Ari is chock full of citations from his tweets and other public comments. While six years ago, when the mission to indict him for racism was launched, there may have been many Israelis who disagreed with those citations, it is highly doubtful that one could find a minyan of Israeli Jews who would disagree with them after October 7. I took the liberty to translate two of those items at random:
54. On October 23, 2014, in the afternoon, a Palestinian Arab terrorist, a resident of Silwad, carried out a ramming attack at the light rail station in Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem, in which he killed an Israeli toddler of several months (the late Haya Zissel Brown) and a new olah (the late Keren Yamima Muskara ), and wounded other. The attacker was shot and killed as part of the activities of the security forces during the attack.
On February 2, 2023, the accused posted the tweet: “I just want to remind you this morning that Haya Zissel Brown Hy’d was murdered by an Arab murderer in a ramming attack. She was only three months old. A murderous nation!”
This post received 616 likes, 58 shares, and several favorable reactions, including one that was hostile and condemning the Arab public.
According to the indictment, Ben Ari repeated the term “murderous nation” to describe the Arabs in general and Israeli Arabs in particular, with broad support from his readers on social networks.
Here’s the thing: on Sunday this week, four IDF soldiers were injured in a ramming terror attack at the Nir Zvi junction in central Israel, outside the IDF Tzrifin base near Ramle. The terrorist, 27-year-old Mohammed Shehab, a resident of Kafr Aqab, a neighborhood of eastern Jerusalem, was an Israeli Arab. Terrorist attacks by Arabs who carry the blue ID card have become commonplace. Arab-on-Arab killings have risen to the level of a state emergency. Under these circumstances, it would be difficult to find many Israeli Jews who don’t identify with calling the Arabs a murderous nation, even without the harrowing mass murder event of October 7.
45. In November 1980, two Israeli Arab terrorists, residents of Aara, carried out an attack of kidnapping and shooting near Pardes Hana, where they murdered an Israeli soldier (the late Avi Bromberg). They were arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment. On January 5, 2023, one of the aforementioned perpetrators finished serving his prison term (40 years) and was released to his home in Kfar Aara.
On the same day, January 5, 2023, on Twitter, the accused posted a video in which he is seen and heard addressing his followers, saying the following among other things:“The abominable murderer Karim Younes, who murdered the soldier Avi Blumberg forty years ago – by the way, he was not alone, it was a squad of Israeli Arabs who captured an IDF soldier – they abused him, shot him in the neck with a weapon, yes? They shot him in the neck, leaving him on the side of the road to bleed to death for long hours if not days.
“He went home this morning. So, the prison service let him out early in the morning so he wouldn’t receive a celebrative greeting. You must have been sure, like me, that Israeli Arabs were against terrorism. After all, they enjoy affirmative action, they are admitted to universities without psychometrics, or social security payments, they get permit-free construction, and no one does them any harm. So, they must be against whoever murders Jews.
“But then, surprise, when Karim Younes arrives in Aara – such receptions, they all come to congratulate him, praise him, and he himself is so proud – ‘I am ready to give another 40 years for the motherland…’ So, when I say they are a murderous nation, that is what I mean. They support murder, they encourage murder, they turn murderers into heroes…
“So, what I’m asking for: you’ve seen what I said, only you can make more and more people see it, please Share.”
This post received 2,500 views, 84 likes, 8 shares, and two sympathetic reactions.
Finally, in 2018, on a day when a demonstration of Arab citizens was held in Haifa, Ben Ari posted a video on his Facebook account in which he said that “the Arabs in Haifa are not different in any way from the Arabs in Gaza. How are they different? In the fact that they are here, enemies from within.”
He added that “they launch here a war against us inside the country.”
In another case in 2018, on the day a demonstration took place in Tel Aviv, Ben Ari posted a video in which he read: “You say this is not our country! You can’t be here.” Ben Ari added: “The Arab has national aspirations, he shouts them, he is ready to die for them. ‘Thousands of martyrs are on the way to Al-Quds,’ that’s what they shout, so let’s send these thousands of martyrs to Syria. That’s where they should be.”
You realize that none of this nonsense could take place in a democracy where freedom of speech is respected.
