ISRAELI COURT ORDERS INSULTED PUBLIC OFFICIAL TO TESTIFY IN CASE AGAINST JEWISH DISSIDENT

Israeljustice.com

  JERUSALEM -- An Israeli court has ordered the main prosecution witness to testify in the case of a Jewish dissident convicted of insulting a public servant to protest the government's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank.  
    Jerusalem Magistrate David Mintz ordered the state prosecution to present the main witness in the case against Jewish dissident Nadia Matar, convicted of insulting a senior official responsible for the relocation of 10,000 Jews in the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank in August 2005.  
    "He [Defense Attorney Yoram Sheftel] wants to question Bassi. Maybe he [Bassi] is insulted," Mintz said at a hearing in the Jerusalem Magistrates Court on Feb. 19.  
    In September 2006, Mintz acquitted Nadia Matar, head of the Women in Green right-wing group, of insulting a public official after she wrote a letter to Disengagement Authority director Jonathan Bassi, referring to him as "a modern version of the Judenrat." which compared him to the Nazi-appointed Jewish administration during World War II.  
    In her September 2004 letter to Bassi, Ms. Matar said Bassi represented "a modern version of the Judenrat."  
    In September 2006, Mintz acquitted Matar of insulting a public official [based on a 1936 British mandate law] on the basis of selective enforcement of the law.  
    "Any time we are dealing with freedom of speech, criminal law does not present the correct and effective tool," Mintz said in dismissing the indictment. "I am therefore ordering the erasing of the charge."  
    The State Prosecution appealed the acquittal and the Jerusalem District Court overturned the acquittal and returned the case to the Magistrates Court.  
    State Prosecutor Erez Padan asked the court to convict Matar but Mintz rejected the plea.  
    "We agree to the facts in the indictment but reject the part that is insulting a public servant," Sheftel said. "This is a clearly political indictment that results from clearly left-wing views of the State Prosecution."  
    Sheftel said he would also request that Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz and former State Attorney Eren Shendar testify.  
    The State Prosecution has relentlessly appealed every acquittal of Jewish dissidents charged with protesting the government's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank.  
    Sheftel requested that the court schedule the next hearing in the case at the end of 2009 to allow time for the new Knesset to enact a law to pardon all non-violent anti-Disengagement protesters. The law was drafted by Sheftel and passed the first of three readings in 2008.  
    The next hearing when Bassi will be called to testify is scheduled for June 16.