Sunday, June 21, 2009

There's Free Speech and There's Responsible Speech

Wait, what exactly does this JPost editorial mean?

Nevertheless, if we genuinely believe in free speech, Israeli society must protect the right of demagogues like Salah to spout away.

Israel is the only country in this region that protects a speaker hostile not merely to this or that government policy, but to the legitimacy of the regime itself. Salah delivered his Haifa speech under the protective umbrella of Israel's police and courts as guardians of his civil liberties.

When we say Israel is a Jewish state and the only democracy in the Middle East, that's what we mean.

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