From: heb_roots_chr@mail.geocities.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 1, 1997 2:14 AM
To: Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup
Subject: R&B NEWS SERVICE - "CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE VERSUS SEDITION:
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From: "Root & Branch Association, Ltd." <rb@rb.org.il>
Subject: R&B NEWS SERVICE - "CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE VERSUS SEDITION: THE
CASE OF MOSHE FEIGLIN AND SHMUEL SACKETT" by Prof. Paul Eidelberg
R&B NEWS SERVICE - "CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE VERSUS SEDITION: THE CASE OF MOSHE
FEIGLIN AND SHMUEL SACKETT"
by Prof. Paul Eidelberg
JERUSALEM, September 30, Root & Branch: On September 2, 1997 a Jerusalem
Magistrate Court handed down a verdict of guilty of sedition to Moshe
Feiglin and Shmuel Sackett, Co-Chairmen of Zo Artzeinu (This is Our Land).
A pre-sentencing hearing has been set for October 27, 1997. This is the
first time in the history of the state when a Jew was convicted of
sedition. Feiglin and Sackett could face stiff jail terms.
The verdict was based on actions taken by Feiglin and Sackett in 1995
during the Rabin-Peres regime. Their crime was organizing thousands of
demonstrators across Israel and blocking main intersections in protest
against the Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles. Since these principles
require Israel to withdraw from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, their
implementation, Feiglin and Sackett believed, endanges Israel's existence.
Now it should be borne in mind that the Israel-PLO Declaration of
Principles were ratified on the White House lawn and virtually imposed on
the people of Israel in September 1993. This agreement was never subject
to public debate nor even to serious Knesset debate, something unheard of
in any genuine democracy. It should also be borne in mind that this
agreement required Israel to surrender Jewish land to the PLO,
a terrorist organization still specified as such in Israel's criminal code.
Let us reflect on this case seriously. There are two basic issues here.
The first is whether Israel is a democracy. If Israel is a democracy,
then organizing a non-violent mass demonstration against implementation of
the Israel-PLO Declaration
of Principles is not a matter of sedition but of civil disobedience.
The second issue concerns the nature of those principles: were they
consistent with the laws of the state, and were they consistent with the
known convictions of the Jewish people? Twenty-six prominent citizens of
Israel submitted a scholarly petition
to Israel's Supreme Court challenging the legality of the Israel-PLO
Agreement. The Court refused to consider the petition on the merits,
claiming it involved a political and not a justiciable issue. This was a
questionable decision since the petition clearly stipulated that members of
the Government, by negotiating that agreement, had violated Israel's
criminal code.
The question of legality aside, it may well be argued that the Israel-PLO
Agreement also violated the convictions of a large majority of the Jewish
people. It cannot be said too often that the Labor-led Government that
concluded that agreement came to power as a result of deception. Its
leaders had promised the electorate there would No
recognition of the PLO, No Palestinian state, No negotiation over Jerusalem
(and, most emphatically, No withdrawal from the Golan Heights). Those
campaign pledges affirmed the profound beliefs of large majorities of the
Jewish people attested to by professional polls prior to the June 1992
elections -- the elections that brought Labor to power.
Accordingly, Feiglin's and Sackett's protest against implementation of the
Israel-PLO Agreement was, in effect, a protest against the Government's
betrayal of its pledges to the nation on matters involving the very borders
and capital of the state. Theirs was a non-violent protest against a
Government that did not truly represent the Jewish
people, which is why that Government was rejected by the people in May
1996. That the Netanyahu Government has adhered to the policy of its
predecessor only proves that periodic multiparty elections alone do not
provide an adequate foundation for democracy or popular sovereignty.
Feiglin and Sackett are learning this the hard way. Indeed, these two
patriotic Jews -- who should not spend a single day in prison --
misconceived the nature of their protest in relation to the nature of
Israel's political system. They engaged in non-violent acts which they and
many others believed to be acts of civil disobedience
comparable to those associated with the civil rights movement of Martin
Luther King. Like many others, these decent Jews suffer from a basic
fallacy: they applied certain principles of American democracy to the
State of Israel, a state which is not and never has been a genuine
democracy, as the present writer has so often demonstrated.
As is well known, Martin Luther King engaged in civil disobedience
vis-à-vis the segregation laws of various American state legislatures. But
he justified his acts of civil disobedience by arguing that those laws
violated the American Constitution, the supreme law of the land. Israel has
no constitution. The supreme law of the land consists of the statutes
enacted by the Knesset. But the Knesset is virtually
impotent: it has never toppled a Labor- or Likud-led Government by a vote
of no-confidence. Political power in Israel is concentrated in the
Government, in its party leaders, whose WILL or policies may be quite
contrary to the will or convictions of the people.
And woe be it to any judicial body that condones acts protesting the
implementation of the Government's policy of "territory for peace" -- whose
implementation is precisely what Feiglin and Sackett, as patriotic Jews,
were trying to prevent. It needs to be emphasize that the same act, which
in a democracy may be classified as "civil disobedience," may be classified
as "sedition" in an oligarchy. In a democracy, an act of civil
disobedience is directed not against the existence of the government but
against a particular law. In an oligarchy, however, that same act will be
treated by the government as an attack against itself. This is why civil
disobedience in a democratic America may constitute sedition in
undemocratic Israel.
And by the way, this is why Israeli governments have sometimes placed
people under "administration detention" for months at a time without trial
and without informing them of the charges, something unheard of in a
democracy.
At this point it may be asked: "What about the many Arab citizens of
Israel who are known to have aided terrorists and have even committed
terrorist acts against the state?" "What about Arab Knesset Member Hashim
Mahmeed who, in 1991, said this to Arabs in Gaza: 'By the Intifada we mean
not only the stone but the war ... Palestinians must fight the conquerors
with all the means they have.'" "Why weren't these Arabs indicted for
sedition?" The reason is painfully simple. Neither Labor nor even the
Likud wants to alienate Arab voters!
The truth is that Feiglin and Sackett were indicted for sedition for
political reasons. As for the Court that convicted them, I will say only
this. What prevails in Israel is not the rule of law but the rule of men.
This is inevitable in a country that lacks a written Constitution, a
country, moreover, in which sovereignty is located in the State, not in the
People.
Shana Tova,
Paul Eidelberg
Jerusalem, Israel
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Prof. Paul Eidelberg is Founder and President of the Foundation for
Constitutional Democracy in the Middle East, Prof. Emeritus of Political
Science at Bar-Ilan University, a columnist for the Jewish Press and a
member of the International Council of the Root & Branch Association.
The Root & Branch Assocation, Ltd.
P.O.B. 8672
German Colony, 91086
Jerusalem, Israel
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