An Arab Israeli pushes Israel's free-speech limit

At first Israeli Arab leader Azmi Bishara, sipping cappuccino and quoting John Stuart Mill, seems more like an ivory tower intellectual than a challenge to the powerful Israeli state.

But to many right-wing Israelis, Mr. Bishara is a danger to their country. Bishara, a political philosopher and member of parliament (the Knesset), was banned Tuesday from running for reelection upon the recommendation of Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein, who cited statements Bishara allegedly made in support of armed struggle against Israel.

For some, the banning of Bishara and another Arab Israeli lawmaker has intensified the question hovering over the country since 1948: Can Israel be both a democracy and a Jewish state?

Bishara, the only representative in the last Knesset of his Balad (Homeland) party, which was also banned, is certain the answer is no.

He says of his Jewish critics: "Their problem with me is that I do not agree to live like a guest and accept conditions for being a citizen. I do not derive my citizenship from the Zionist project and the Law of Return," a statute that gives automatic citizenship to Jewish immigrants.

"We are an indigenous people here," he adds, drawing a parallel between American Indians and Arab Israelis. "I do not think they are doing me any favor. I did not choose this relationship. I'm not a Mexican who immigrated to the US.. I'm the Indian, not the Mexican. You gave me citizenship instead of my homeland you took over. It had better be equal citizenship."

In pushing the legal attack against Bishara, Mr. Rubinstein stressed what he termed Bishara's "negating of Israel's character as a Jewish state." The attorney general says that behind closed doors, Bishara and his activists aim for the destruction of Israel and that his espousal of a "state of all its citizens" camouflages plans for eventually deporting Jews and thereby bringing about an Arab majority.

Bishara says Rubinstein is engaged in "lies, distortions, and misinterpretations as tools to achieve his real goal, removing the ideological issue I raise." The Supreme Court is due to make a final decision on Bishara's candidacy.

For Israeli Arabs and Jewish liberals, the banning of Bishara and of another Arab MK, Ahmed Tibi, has translated the campaign for the Jan. 28 elections into heightened alienation between the Jewish majority and Arab minority in Israel, the remnant of the Arab community that was mostly expelled or encouraged to leave, or that fled during the 1948 Arab-Israeli fighting. Arab Israeli leaders are divided over whether Arabs should boycott the election if Bishara and Mr. Tibi are not reinstated.

Even right-wingers concede that Israeli Arabs, who number a fifth of the population, have faced severe discrimination in land use, building rights, social services, and education since then. Voting and running for the Knesset have been among the few spheres in which they enjoyed equality. But the experiences of Tibi and Bishara have jeopardized that equality, Arabs and liberal Jews say.

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