Moshe Negbi, the legal affairs reporter for Israel Radio, is being targeted in a lawsuit and police complaint for incitement against the religious public.
The lawsuit was initiated by Attorney Aviad Visoly, who has had a long history of activism as a media watchdog.
Visoly’s lawsuit is based on a broadcast Negbi made on his weekly show last week discussing legal affairs. The topic was the 20th anniversary of the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was killed by Yigal Amir.
Connecting Rabin’s murder with the issue if incitement – which has become a major topic in recent days, as Prime Minister Netanyahu demands that Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas stop inciting to violence against Israel – Hegbi blamed Rabin’s death on the “incitement of the rabbis.”
The current issue of incitement, he said, “reflects the issue we faced back then, and the fact that 20 years after the murder of Yitzhak Rabin we have not learned to deal with it. We have not learned the lessons.”
“I don’t need to return and remind all of us of the situation 20 years ago, when if not for the terrible incitement against Rabin, especially the religious incitement by religious leaders, and the rabbis, it is almost a given that the murder would not have taken place.”
Today, Negbi said, the problem has revisited Israel, from the Muslim side of the dispute – and just as Israel could not deal with incitement then, it cannot now.
“Clearly I am equating incitement by all religious figures, whether by rabbis or by fanatic sheikhs. We have failed to deal with either,” he added.
According to Visoly, Negbi’s remarks violate numerous laws against incitement. “This incitement was broadcast to hundreds of thousands of listeners on state-funded radio,” he said. “Negbi blames ‘the rabbis’ – all of them – without naming any specific individuals, as being responsible for the murder of Rabin. He also equates them with Muslim religious fanatics who call for the deaths of Jews.”
Visoly intends to sue Negbi in a class-action suit on behalf of the religious public, and to file criminal charges against him for violating laws against incitement.
In a statement, Negbi argued that his comments “speak for themselves.”
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