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Photo: Yariv Katz
Is Azmi Bishara following in the footsteps of his predecessors ?
Photo: Yariv Katz

Azmi Bishara's teachers

Is history of outlawed Arab party being repeated with Azmi Bishara?

What happens when an Arab movement plans to runs for the Knesset and its manifesto includes negating Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State?

 

No, I am not referring to the contemporary National Democratic Assembly (Balad) party, but rather, to its parent movement "al-Ard" (The Land.) The resemblance between the fate of the founders of al-Ard and Azmi Bishara is astonishing. What is very different is the Supreme Court's approach to the two cases in point.

 

During 1950-1965, a pan-Arab national movement calling itself al-Ard operated within the Israeli Arab community. It advocated a novel idea: To fight the Jewish State by legitimate democratic means in general and via the Supreme Court in particular. The group sought to unite as a political body, and later to run for the Knesset as a party while its manifesto negated Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State.

 

The movement's primary leaders were Christian Arabs - this scenario resembles the current situation: Habib Qahwaji and Sabri Jiryis. They were joined by Salih Baransi, Ali Rafah, Mohammad Abdul Hamid Mi'ari and Mansur Kardosh.

 

Three giants sat on the panel litigating the petition filed by al-Ard following the decision to ban the movement from the Knesset: President Shimon Agranat, Yoel Sussman and Haim Cohn: The Supreme Court handed down a historic ruling, premised on the words one of its greatest judges, Justice Alfred Witkon, who said: "No free regime will assist or recognize a movement that is seeking to undermine the very same regime."

 

Defensive democracy

That's how "defensive democracy" was born in Israel. The al-Ard list was banned from running for the Knesset and became an illegal association. During the 1960s several of its members signed agreements with the Shin Bet to leave the country and never to return.

 

Sabri Jiryis was deported and immediately joined the PLO ranks in Beirut. He later went on to head the PLO's renowned research institute in the Lebanese capital where he was captured by the IDF in August 1982 and transferred to Israel for investigation until being returned in a prisoner exchange deal. In time, after his wife was killed in a car bomb, Jiryis relocated to Cyprus. With Yasser Arafat's return to the Territories, he returned along with him and currently resides in the Territories and in the Galilee.

 

Habib Qahwaji was deported in 1968, served as an agent for Syrian intelligence, and through this organization activated the Jewish-Arab spy ring in Israel uncovered in 1972 (one of its Israeli activists was Udi Adiv from Kibbutz Gan Shmuel.) Qahwaji currently resides in Damascus and is active on the Palestinian anti-Israel issue.

 

Today the makeup of the Supreme Court is different, and ostensibly more "enlightened." Under Aharon Barak the approach was reversed, "defensive democracy" was pushed to the sidelines, and a series of Arab parties were permitted to enter the Knesset while openly declaring their support for the abolishment of Israel as a Jewish state. Heading these lists is Balad, led by an Arab (Christian,) Dr. Azmi Bishara.

 

Is history as well as the fate of Jiryis and Qahwaji's successor - Azmi Bishara - repeating itself?  Is the lesson drawn from the Bishara affair first and foremost aimed at the Jewish majority, which shouldn’t take democracy and Israel's existence for granted? Indeed. This is a warning from our founding judicial fathers that mustn't go unheeded.  

 


פרסום ראשון: 04.12.07, 11:18
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