IsraCampus.Org.il

Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 08:43:32 +0300
From: Alon Harel <msalon@mscc.huji.ac.il>
To: Steven Plaut <splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il>
Subject: Re: [Social Science- IL]: A Challenge to Israeli Law Professors – Speak out on Behalf of Freedom of Speech

You Professor Plaut defending freedom of speech? This is a great revolution! The case sounds indeed horrible, but alas after having read some of the issues of the rag you publish I have become somewhat skeptical about its reliability.

On Sun, 10 May 2009 19:16:54 +0300 (IDT), Steven Plaut wrote
>>From
> http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Israeli%20extremism
%20challenge%20to%20Israeli%20Law%20Profs%20-%20%20Rabbi%20Shiran.htm

>
> The Isracampus challenge to Israeli Law Professors
>
> Isracampus hereby challenges the professors and lecturers in law
> schools in Israel to speak out against the McCarthyist suppression
> of freedom of speech and the anti-democratic firing and political
> persecution, in the case of Rabbi Israel Shiran at the Moriah-Barkai
> high school in Haifa, Israel. He was fired and demonized by Minster
> of Education Yuli Tamir because he dared to express a political
> opinion of which she disapproved, namely, his belief that Yitzhak
> Rabin's political ideology should not be a matter for indoctrination
> in Israeli schools.
>
> We call upon professors of law to defend democracy and freedom of
> speech in Israel by speaking out against the persecution and
> repression of Rabbi Shiran.
>
> Here is an update on the case:
>
> 'One of Israel's most famous victims of leftist McCarthyism is the
> young rabbi Israel Shiran, who was fired and persecuted by Israel's
> Leftist Minister of Education, Yuli Tamir, because he dared to
> express the opinion that schools should not teach Yitzhak Rabin's
> political ideology as unchallengeable dogma and theology.
>
> For his sin of expressing a politically incorrect opinion, the rabbi
> was fired from his job as a teacher in a religious high school in
> Haifa. He was fired nine years ago, and has been pursuing his case
> in the courts. One local rep of the Ministry of Education had
> ordered that he be reinstated as far back as 2001. But other pointy-
> headed education bureaucrats vetoed that. The Rabbi then tried a
> series of different courts. After a Haifa appeals court found in his
> favor, while sharply denouncing the Ministry of Education for having
> fired him in the first place, the school still did not rehire him.
> Now the parents in the school from which he was fired are suing the
> school and the Ministry for contempt of court, because they have
> ignored the court order to reinstate the rabbi-teacher. One of
> Israel's Supreme Court justices, David Cheshin, expressed
> astonishment that the parents had to take such action.
>
> Meanwhile, the case drags on, the Ministry of Education is still
> refusing to allow the rabbi to return to work, and freedom of speech
> in Israel remains the kidnapped bound hostage of Israel's anti-
> democratic Far Left.'
>
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> All you want to know on Social Science-IL: