U.S.-Born Kahane Goes on Trial for Sedition in Israel

U.S.-born Rabbi Meir Kahane went on trial today on charges of sedition for calling Arabs a “cancer spreading in our midst” at a rally protesting a bloody attack on Israelis last year.

Defense lawyers called the trial a test case for free expression, and Kahane has won unexpected support from civil libertarians who argue that the sedition law is too broad and vague.

Kahane, head of the anti-Arab Kach movement and former member of Parliament, said he did not regret his July 7 speech.

“I admit to the words, and I would say them again at another rally,” the 57-year-old Brooklyn-born leader said in an interview outside the courtroom in Israeli-annexed Arab East Jerusalem.

Defense attorney Zvi Hadar and prosecutor Uzi Hasson did not address the charges. They instead debated a defense motion that the trial be dropped because the prosecution forgot to sign the indictment within six months of the alleged offense, as required by law.

Judge Ruth Or reserved her decision and did not set a date for the next hearing. Kahane is free on his own recognizance.

At issue is a Kahane rally in Jerusalem on July 7, a day after a Palestinian from the occupied Gaza Strip grabbed the wheel of an Israeli bus, plunging it into a steep ravine on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway. Sixteen people were killed in the attack.

Kahane is the first Israeli to be prosecuted under the sedition law in civil court. In military court, the charge was brought three times in the 1950s.

The law, which stems from the time of the British Mandate, defines sedition as including speech that promotes “feelings of ill will and enmity among different sectors of the population.”

The sedition law has been criticized by civil rights advocates, including the Assn. for Civil Rights in Israel.