By Azmi Bishara

But now, in an ironic twist reminiscent of France’s Dreyfus affair — in which a French Jew was accused of disloyalty to the state — the government of Israel is accusing me of aiding the enemy during Israel’s failed war against Lebanon in July.

Israeli police apparently suspect me of passing information to a foreign agent and of receiving money in return. Under Israeli law, anyone — a journalist or a personal friend — can be defined as a “foreign agent” by the Israeli security apparatus. Such charges can lead to life imprisonment or even the death penalty.

The allegations are ridiculous. Needless to say, Hezbollah — Israel’s enemy in Lebanon — has independently gathered more security information about Israel than any Arab Knesset member could possibly provide. What’s more, unlike those in Israel’s parliament who have been involved in acts of violence, I have never used violence or participated in wars. My instruments of persuasion, in contrast, are simply words in books, articles and speeches.

These trumped-up charges, which I firmly reject and deny, are only the latest in a series of attempts to silence me and others involved in the struggle of the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel to live in a state of all its citizens, not one that grants rights and privileges to Jews that it denies to non-Jews.

When Israel was established in 1948, more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled in fear. My family was among the minority that escaped that fate, remaining instead on the land where we had long lived. The Israeli state, established exclusively for Jews, embarked immediately on transforming us into foreigners in our own country.

For the first 18 years of Israeli statehood, we, as Israeli citizens, lived under military rule with pass laws that controlled our every movement. We watched Jewish Israeli towns spring up over destroyed Palestinian villages.

Today we make up 20% of Israel’s population. We do not drink at separate water fountains or sit at the back of the bus. We vote and can serve in the parliament. But we face legal, institutional and informal discrimination in all spheres of life.

More than 20 Israeli laws explicitly privilege Jews over non-Jews. The Law of Return, for example, grants automatic citizenship to Jews from anywhere in the world. Yet Palestinian refugees are denied the right to return to the country they were forced to leave in 1948. The Basic Law of Human Dignity and Liberty — Israel’s “Bill of Rights” — defines the state as “Jewish” rather than a state for all its citizens. Thus Israel is more for Jews living in Los Angeles or Paris than it is for native Palestinians.

Israel acknowledges itself to be a state of one particular religious group. Anyone committed to democracy will readily admit that equal citizenship cannot exist under such conditions.

Most of our children attend schools that are separate but unequal. According to recent polls, two-thirds of Israeli Jews would refuse to live next to an Arab and nearly half would not allow a Palestinian into their home.

I have certainly ruffled feathers in Israel. In addition to speaking out on the subjects above, I have also asserted the right of the Lebanese people, and of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to resist Israel’s illegal military occupation. I do not see those who fight for freedom as my enemies.

This may discomfort Jewish Israelis, but they cannot deny us our history and identity any more than we can negate the ties that bind them to world Jewry. After all, it is not we, but Israeli Jews who immigrated to this land. Immigrants might be asked to give up their former identity in exchange for equal citizenship, but we are not immigrants.

During my years in the Knesset, the attorney general indicted me for voicing my political opinions (the charges were dropped), lobbied to have my parliamentary immunity revoked and sought unsuccessfully to disqualify my political party from participating in elections — all because I believe Israel should be a state for all its citizens and because I have spoken out against Israeli military occupation. Last year, Cabinet member Avigdor Lieberman — an immigrant from Moldova — declared that Palestinian citizens of Israel “have no place here,” that we should “take our bundles and get lost.” After I met with a leader of the Palestinian Authority from Hamas, Lieberman called for my execution.

The Israeli authorities are trying to intimidate not just me but all Palestinian citizens of Israel. But we will not be intimidated. We will not bow to permanent servitude in the land of our ancestors or to being severed from our natural connections to the Arab world. Our community leaders joined together recently to issue a blueprint for a state free of ethnic and religious discrimination in all spheres. If we turn back from our path to freedom now, we will consign future generations to the discrimination we have faced for six decades.

Americans know from their own history of institutional discrimination the tactics that have been used against civil rights leaders. These include telephone bugging, police surveillance, political delegitimization and criminalization of dissent through false accusations. Israel is continuing to use these tactics at a time when the world no longer tolerates such practices as compatible with democracy.

Why then does the U.S. government continue to fully support a country whose very identity and institutions are based on ethnic and religious discrimination that victimize its own citizens?

The Case of Azmi Bishara
Political Immunity and Freedom in Israel

Gad Barzilai

(Gad Barzilai teaches political science and law at Tel Aviv University. His book, Communities and Law: Politics, and Cultures of Legal Identities, is forthcoming from University of Michigan Press.)

MIDDLE EAST REPORT

Two months ago, Israel's attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein formally accused Azmi Bishara, a prominent Arab-Palestinian member of the Knesset, of endangering the security of the Israeli state. Rubinstein's charges led the large majority of the Knesset, in a potentially historic vote, to lift Bishara's parliamentary immunity from prosecution. In specific, Bishara is charged with organizing an illegal delegation to visit Syria -- a state with which Israel is still officially at war -- and for calling upon other Arab countries to intensify their conflict with the state of Israel. Prosecutors are expected to proceed with a court case next month.

Bishara's parliamentary privileges allow him to travel to Syria, but he did indeed aid several Palestinian citizens of Israel, many of them seeking brief reunions with refugee relatives living in Syria, to visit Damascus. In June 2000, Bishara spoke of the "sweet taste of victory" when referring to Hizballah's long guerrilla campaign prompting Israel to withdraw from south Lebanon earlier that year. Then, during a June 2001 memorial gathering for Syria's late President Hafez al-Asad, the MK asked other Arabs for "wider support" for Palestinians' ongoing resistance to Israeli occupation. Though the Knesset has previously lifted immunity of members facing criminal charges, Bishara's case represents the first time in Israeli history that a member is so sanctioned because of political expression. The lifting of Azmi Bishara's immunity is a dangerous and unjustified act of censorship.

VIGOROUS CRITIC

Azmi Bishara is a vigorous intellectual and a well-known critic of the Israeli state. In numerous writings and public appearances, he has protested that the Israeli state's self-definition as "Jewish and democratic" is unrealistic and discriminatory. Leader of the National Democratic Assembly (NDA), a party advocating cultural autonomy and civil rights for Palestinians in Israel, Bishara calls for a binational Israel that would be a "state of all its citizens." This program has mobilized significant support among the NDA's electoral constituency: the Arab-Palestinian minority that has faced economic and social discrimination for generations. Bishara has never asserted that he is part of the Israeli political consensus; to the contrary, he has openly pointed to a direct conflict between the Jewish majority and the Palestinian minority over the definition of nationality in Israel. He articulates a trend among the Arab-Palestinian minority that poses a demand for socioeconomic and political equality not only in formal law, but in civic citizenship and nationality. Such demands make the MK a likely target of hatred from the Jewish majority, which almost invariably conceives him as a peril to the "Jewish state."

PARLIAMENTARY IMMUNITY

In a democracy, parliamentary immunity, and other types of political immunity granted to elected representatives, are crucial for protecting a plurality of attitudes and practices. Without such immunity, however controversial the protected practices are, political representatives might be paralyzed, since the government or majority party might severely curtail political opposition by sanctioning dissent and protest. As political theories invariably underscore, a democracy cannot exist as an open fabric without vibrant opposition.

While in a democracy the majority rules, or (as in Israel's case) a coalition of minorities rules, the non-ruling minority should enjoy special privileges of protections and political immunity. Since the majority rules, the minority is left with no option but to dissent and oppose the central government, to challenge its policies and to seriously question state ideology and its ramifications for public policy. The representatives of the minority relish immunity as a source of political empowerment in their possibly unrewarding struggles against the majority, especially under conditions in which the minority conceives itself as being systematically discriminated against by the state and its ruling elite. Absolute political immunity, like absolute power, may corrupt, but tolerance toward very controversial practices protected by political immunity is crucial to freedom in multicultural societies.

MINORITY UNDER PRESSURE

Israeli law grants immunity concerning political attitudes and political activities to all members of the Knesset, without any distinction between political affiliations, for life. The purpose of that constitutional protection, traditionally criticized for being too liberal, is to protect the MK from the tyranny of the majority and from dangerous political intolerance. Originally, this constitutional arrangement was justified in Israel when the dominant political party of Mapai ruled and endangered various minorities in a country where no entrenched bill of civil rights was in existence. Today, in a much more fragmented and polarized political setting, political immunity is still a crucial arrangement due to the predicament of the Palestinian minority in the Jewish state.

Since the second intifada and the breakdown of the Oslo agreement in the fall of 2000, the Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel has come under heavy political pressure. Many among the Jewish majority have considered the minority to be loyal to Yasser Arafat. The civil revolt in many Arab towns in Israel in October 2000 has been perceived by many Israeli Jews as evidence of the "Palestinization" of the minority and a danger to Israel's national security. Palestinian citizens' large-scale abstention from the prime minister's election in February 2001 (turnout plummeted from an average of 75 percent to 25 percent) has symbolized the increasing division between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel. Ariel Sharon's rise to power in 2001 and the defeat of Ehud Barak have encouraged right-wing ultra-nationalistic Jews, both secular and religious, to publicly label Arab-Palestinian MKs as potential enemies of the state. Expressions of sympathy with Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, both inside and outside the Knesset, have been stigmatized as acts of treason. Several MKs, like Muhammad Barakeh, were questioned by police about their political speeches.

GIVING VOICE TO RESISTANCE

The debate in Israel over Azmi Bishara's case has revolved around two questions: should he enjoy immunity for his speech in Syria in which he allegedly called for a struggle against Israel? Is he protected under the veil of immunity while making such statements in Syria, regarded as an "enemy state"? Presuming that Bishara did indeed call for a struggle against Israel, focusing on its government, and not excluding a military campaign against it, these questions might seem redundant. Why should a democracy not defend itself? Defenders of Bishara point out that his comments in Syria encouraged resistance to the occupation of Palestinian lands, not to Israel as defined by its pre-1967 borders. Yet the decision of the Knesset to strip Bishara of his immunity has also been justly criticized by several leading Israeli legal scholars, including scholars who define themselves as Zionist in their worldview, based on purely normative arguments.

Bishara's speech in Syria severely criticized Israeli government policy in the territories occupied by Israel during the 1967 war. This occupation is the subject of fervent contention among Jewish Israelis as well, but Bishara's comments were taken in Israel as a justification for resistance to occupation by violent means. As a political representative of a national minority, the MK has given voice to a significant trend that conceives civil disobedience and even violence as a means for resisting oppressive majority rule.

DANGERS TO DEMOCRACY

But it is hardly conceivable to argue seriously that Bishara's speech has endangered Israel's national security, or that it has spurred violence against the state. Bishara's immunity was canceled for neither purely legal nor constitutional reasons. Rather, the proclivity of the Jewish public and most of the ruling elite has been to censor the critical and radical attitudes of the Palestinian minority as a national community. Stripping Bishara of his immunity was an act of censorship against a radical viewpoint, but not a prevention of a tangible peril to the state's existence or security. Therefore, legal scholars attest, stripping Bishara of his immunity was illegal by any normative conception of democracy as a fabric that should encourage plurality of voices and practices. Freedom of speech of representatives of the people should be almost absolute unless the tangible danger that they constitute to state security is immediate and indubitable.

Most legal scholars in Israel are fearful that criminal procedures against a politician for expressions of his/her opinions might pave the way to similar procedures against other opposition figures. As Bishara is the first MK to face criminal charges for his political outlook, and not personal or partisan corruption, these scholars may indeed be justified in fearing wider consequences. The Bishara affair has shown that the limits of intolerance in Israel have become more fragile, and that the space for dissent that questions state ideology and even state policy has become more confined. The lifting of Azmi Bishara's immunity, and the planned court proceedings against him, are dangerous developments for democracy in Israel.

What the persecution of Azmi Bishara means for Palestine
Ali Abunimah, 16 April 2007

The Israeli state and the Zionist movement have begun their latest assault in their century-long struggle to rid Palestine of its indigenous people and transform their country into a Jewish supremacist enclave: the persecution of Azmi Bishara, one of the most important Palestinian national leaders and thinkers working today. This case has enormous significance for the Palestinian solidarity movement.

Bishara is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, one of more than one million who live inside the Jewish state, who are survivors or their descendants of the Zionist ethnic cleansing that forced most Palestinians to leave in 1947-48. Elected to the Knesset in 1996, Bishara is a founder of the National Democratic Assembly, a party which calls for Israel to be transformed from a sectarian ethnocracy into a democratic state of all its citizens.

On Sunday, Bishara appeared on Al-Jazeera, after weeks of press speculation that he had gone into exile and would resign from the Knesset. He revealed that in fact he is the target of a very high level probe by Israeli state security services who apparently plan to bring serious "security" related charges against him. Censorship on this matter is so tight in "democratic" Israel that until a few days ago Israeli newspapers were prohibited from even mentioning the existence of the probe. They are still forbidden from reporting anything about the substance of the investigation, and Ha'aretz admitted that due to official censorship it could not even reprint much of what Bishara said to millions of viewers on television.

Bishara himself was vague about the allegations. If he even knows all the details, he could place himself in greater jeopardy by talking about them. He said he is still thinking about his options, including when to return to Israel. While he questioned the value of spending years proving his innocence of things he does not consider illegal, such as maintaining broad contacts with the Arab world of which he feels a part, he poignantly reflected that ultimately he faced a choice between prison, exile or martyrdom. These indeed are the only choices Israel has ever placed before Palestinians who refuse to submit to the racist rule of Zionism.

What he was clear about was that he is the target of a campaign, coordinated at the highest levels of the Israeli state to destroy him and his movement politically. He is undoubtedly right about this and there is long precedent. In 2001, Israel's attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein charged Bishara with "endangering the state" because of comments he made during a visit to Syria, and the Knesset voted for the first time in its history to lift the immunity of one of its members so Bishara could be prosecuted. In 2003, the Israeli Central Elections Committee attempted to disqualify Bishara and his party from standing in national elections, on the grounds that the party did not adhere to the dogma that Israel must remain a "Jewish state." Under Israeli law all parties are required to espouse the dogma that Israel must always grant special and better rights to Jews, meaning truly democratic parties are always flirting with illegality. That decision was eventually overturned by the courts. (Though it should be noted that the ban was supported by former attorney general Rubinstein, who is now a Supreme Court judge!). Such persecution against Palestinians in Israel has been the norm since the state was founded. Until 1966, they lived under "military government," a form of internal military occupation similar to that experienced by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza today. Laws, practices and policies that continue to deny their fundamental human rights are well described in Jonathan Cook's recent book Blood and Religion: Unmasking the Jewish and Democratic State. In recent years opinion polls show that a majority of Israeli Jews consistently support government efforts to force Palestinian citizens out of the country. (In recent weeks, former Israeli prime minister and current Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu declared that it would be best if Bishara never returned).

Bishara sees Israel's latest gambit as signalling a change in the "rules of the game." If he, an elected official, a well-known public figure can face such tactics, what will the rest of the community face? Indeed, the recent publication by leading Palestinians in Israel of a report calling for mild reforms to the Israeli state prompted Israel's secret police, the Shin Bet (which operates torture and death squads in the occupied territories) to warn that it would "disrupt the activities of any groups that seek to change the Jewish or democratic character of Israel, even if they use democratic means" ("Arab leaders air public relations campaign against Shin Bet," Ha'aretz, 6 April 2007). (There is precedent for such disruption not only against Palestinians, but even against Israel's Mizrahi Jews whose attempts to organize against Ashkenazi discrimination were destroyed by the Shin Bet -- see Joseph Massad's book The Persistence of the Palestinian Question.)

Palestinian solidarity activists must understand and act on the signal Israel is sending by persecuting Bishara. For years, the mainstream Palestinian movement and its allies have buried their heads in the slogan "end the occupation." If it ever was, this vision is no longer broad enough. We must recognize that Israel's war against Palestinians does not discriminate among Palestinians, sparing some and condemning others. It does however take different forms, depending on where Palestinians are. Those in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip live under an extreme form of military tyranny now often called "apartheid," though it is increasingly apparent that it is something even worse. Palestinians inside Israel's 1948 borders live under a system of laws, policies and practices that exclude them politically and oppress them economically and socially. Millions of Palestinians outside the country are victimized by racist laws that forbid their return for the sole reason that they are not Jews.

In practice this means that the Palestinian solidarity movement needs to fashion a new message that breaks with the failed fantasy of hermetic separation in nationalist states. It means we have to focus on fighting Israeli racism and colonialism in all its forms against those under occupation, against those inside, and against those in exile. We need to educate ourselves about what is happening all over Palestine, not just in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. We need to stand and act in solidarity with Azmi Bishara and all Palestinians inside the 1948 lines who have for too long been marginalized and abandoned by mainstream Palestinian politics. Support for the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions is particularly urgent (see http://www.pacbi.org/). In practice we need to start building a vision of life after Israeli apartheid, an inclusive life in which Israelis and Palestinians can live in equality sharing the whole country. If Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams and hardline Northern Ireland Unionist leader Ian Paisley can sit down to form a government together, as they are, and if Nelson Mandela and apartheid's National Party could do the same, nothing is beyond the realm of possibility in Palestine if we imagine it and work for it.

Azmi Bishara is the only Palestinian leader of international stature expressing a vision and strategy that is relevant to all Palestinians and can effectively challenge Zionism. That is why he is in fear for his life, safety and future while the quisling "president" Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah receives money and weapons from the United States and tea and cakes from Ehud Olmert.
 

Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006)

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