High Court Drops Terror Support Charges Against MK Azmi Bishara

The High Court of Justice yesterday dropped terror support charges against MK Azmi Bishara ?(Balad?), and restored his parliamentary immunity. The court ruled in favor of a petition submitted by Bishara against a bid to revoke his parliamentary immunity and indict him for supporting a terror organization.

Bishara?s trial began in 2002 after speeches he gave in Umm al-Fahm in 2000 and in Damascus in 2002, where he allegedly praised Hezbollah and the armed struggle against Israel.

"Bishara made harsh statements," the court ruled. "But they were made as part of his job as a Kneset member. We must protect and defend Knesset members' ability to do their duty without fear."

Bishara was charged with saying at a party gathering in Umm al-Fahm, shortly after the IDF's pullout from Lebanon, that "the Hezbollah won, and for the first time since 1967, we have tasted victory. It's the Hezbollah?s right to be proud of its achievement and humiliate Israel."

A year later, he said similar things in Damascus, the charges said.

Following these statements, Bishara's immunity was removed, and former attorney general Elyakim Rubistein filed an indictment against him for supporting a terror organization.

Bishara petitioned the High Court claiming that his speeches were "expressing views on purely political issues, and therefore, protected by legal immunity, which is granted to all Knesset members in order to allow them to fulfill their duties."

He also said that the considerations to bring him to trial were motivated by political considerations.

Justice Aharon Barak ruled that the state failed to prove that Bishara's statements constituted support in the armed struggle of a terror organization, as required by law, unlike supporting a terror organization by praising it or expressing sympathy.

He said he was not convinced that the statements "cross the 'red lines' beyond which the immunity does not apply. The immunity is not given to MKs for their personal convenience but to ensure vital public interests."

Barak said the immunity was intended to ensure all citizens' the right to full political representation, to ensure the free market of ideas and opinions and the government's democratic character. "Bishara's statements and the circumstances in which he said them come close to the border, yet political expression the speech, the essay, the interview are the MK?s main work tools. Protecting his immunity is essential to the existence of basic political rights and vital to the existence of Israeli democracy." Justice Eliezer Rivlin, another member in the three-judge panel, agreed with Barak, while Justice Esther Hayut disagreed. Hayut wrote in the minority opinion that the severity of Bishara's statements is not protected by parliamentary immunity. "it is difficult not to see in Bishara's statements support in the armed struggle of a terror organization," she wrote.