May 7, 2014
Eliraz Fein of Yitzhar arrested for personal opinion
Eliraz Fein is a 22 year old woman living in the community of Yitzhar. Yitzhar is concerned a hard-core settlement and has been at odds with the IDF for a long time, especially recently.
Fein sent out an email, internally on a forum of the yishuv, in a discussion of how to deal with the latest issues with the army. Eliraz stated in her email that she is in favor of throwing rocks at Jews, and for sure at Arabs, even if it were to cause the death of an Israeli soldier.
I would note here that this is not the position of the leadership of Yitzhar, and they removed her from the forum after she made that position clear, and they told her that some things, like what she suggested, are not even worthy of consideration as part of a discussion.
Back to Eliraz Fein.
The army became aware of her email and immediately went in and arrested her.
I am not going to defend her position, as she clearly has issues and it is an idiotic and dangerous position. However, she wrote it in a private email as part of a discussion, she wrote it as her opinion, not as orders - i.e. she was not giving orders to someone telling him he should go out and throw stones at soldiers. She did not put it up n a public bulletin board.
Where is the freedom of speech? That is incitement? It is idiotic, but incitement? She cannot talk about theoretically throwing stones without getting arrested, while some idiot on the radio can talk in front of an audience of tens of thousands of people about diluting and killing haredim and does not get arrested? Oh, he said it was satire. Maybe Eliraz Fein should explain that her email was satire and then they will let her go.
I am not in favor of Eliraz Fein's stated position. But I don't think she did anything to deserve being arrested.
Fein sent out an email, internally on a forum of the yishuv, in a discussion of how to deal with the latest issues with the army. Eliraz stated in her email that she is in favor of throwing rocks at Jews, and for sure at Arabs, even if it were to cause the death of an Israeli soldier.
I would note here that this is not the position of the leadership of Yitzhar, and they removed her from the forum after she made that position clear, and they told her that some things, like what she suggested, are not even worthy of consideration as part of a discussion.
Back to Eliraz Fein.
The army became aware of her email and immediately went in and arrested her.
I am not going to defend her position, as she clearly has issues and it is an idiotic and dangerous position. However, she wrote it in a private email as part of a discussion, she wrote it as her opinion, not as orders - i.e. she was not giving orders to someone telling him he should go out and throw stones at soldiers. She did not put it up n a public bulletin board.
Where is the freedom of speech? That is incitement? It is idiotic, but incitement? She cannot talk about theoretically throwing stones without getting arrested, while some idiot on the radio can talk in front of an audience of tens of thousands of people about diluting and killing haredim and does not get arrested? Oh, he said it was satire. Maybe Eliraz Fein should explain that her email was satire and then they will let her go.
I am not in favor of Eliraz Fein's stated position. But I don't think she did anything to deserve being arrested.
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I think advocating violence against the government would not be protected under free speech laws in the US. Even where there is a First Amendment.
ReplyDeletean email to a forum is not the same as private correspondence. A community forum is a public setting - even if not a national setting. Further, when taking into consideration the hate crimes and terrorist like violence coming from Yitzhar and other extreme settlements that have had clashes with both IDF and non-jews, public statements supporting violence can easily be seen as a call to action. The USA has ordered drone strikes on american citizens making similar proclamations on behalf of al quada and etc in places like Afghanistan. It might be a bit over the top here, but it's about time Israel started to do something about the extremist violent racist and terrorist like settlers. Not that all settlers are, but enough are that they need to be dealt with.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure why you write that this was not put on a public bulletin board. This was a forum open to all the membars of the yishuv, and they were discussing what their response should be in the event of an evacuation. She advised that the proper course of action would be to attack the soldiers. This was not a theortical discussion, but an attempt to formulate a group policy in the expectation that they would have to implement it.
ReplyDeleteJust one small clarification. She was not, as one might understand from the post, advocating attacking soldiers in general. If I understood correctly-she was referring to how to react to being expelled from one's home.
ReplyDeleteNot that that makes a difference. Being legally evicted is no justification for premeditated murder.
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