The balancing of rights

Editorial

Freedom is a simple word, but a complex idea. One person’s freedom of expression, for instance, can be another’s experience of antisemitism, racism, homophobia or other form of hatred. The balance between ensuring people’s freedom to do something, while also ensuring them freedom from harm is something with which most countries’ lawmakers continually grapple. Several recent cases from around the world illustrate this challenge in the different ways by which the people or organizations involved have acted and reacted.

Germany’s Left party, for example, recently passed a resolution that forbid members from participating in the Gaza flotilla. This was apparently an attempt to change the general public’s impression that the party is universally anti-Israel and a haven for antisemites. For all intents, this gambit by the party leadership appears to have failed. The Israel-haters in the party revolted and the party remains firmly in the Israel-hating camp.

Contrast this attempt to prohibit certain actions with the Dutch court decision in the case of Geert Wilders last week. Wilders is the leader of the Freedom party, the Netherlands’ third-largest parliamentary party, and one almost universally described as “far-right.” He was found not guilty of insulting and inciting discrimination against Muslims. Wilders has built a solid career raging against Koran-adhering Muslims (he claims to have no issue with those Muslims who reject the Koran, a book he routinely likens to Mein Kampf). The Dutch court, while not condoning some of Wilders’ inflammatory language, nonetheless fell strongly on the side of free expression and Wilders will continue, apparently unrestrained, in calling not only for a cessation of immigration to the Netherlands from Muslim countries, but the extradition of many of the Muslims already there.

Also in the Netherlands, the Dutch have just passed a bill in their lower house of parliament (it still must gain approval in the upper house) that requires animals to be stunned before being killed, something that goes against both kosher and halal laws.

“This way of killing causes unnecessary pain to animals. Religious freedom cannot be unlimited,” Marianne Thieme of the Animal Rights party is quoted in the Jerusalem Post as saying. “For us, religious freedom stops where human or animal suffering begins.” With a similar stated viewpoint (though with rumored ulterior motives), other countries have attempted such a ban or passed one.

Meanwhile, this week, Israel arrested, questioned and released Rabbi Dov Lior for refusing to attend an inquiry about the book Torat Hamelech (2009) by Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, which Lior (among other rabbis) endorsed, even though it condones the killing of non-Jews in certain circumstances during warfare. The treatment of Lior brought criticism on the government, both from his supporters, who contended that the police crossed a line – violating the “the freedom of expression of an intellectual” and “the freedom of halachic expression” – and from his detractors, who argued that the government should have done more to apprehend Lior, for whom the warrant was issued months ago.

Amid the protests that followed Lior’s detainment, the rabbi gave a lecture to his yeshivah students, in which, reported the Jerusalem Post, “Lior said that the reason he didn’t consent to be investigated was that he believed he had committed no crime. He told his students that all he did was express his opinion on a book and denied having incited violence.”

While it seems clear that Lior failed to obey a police summons – Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu responded to Lior’s arrest by saying that “the law includes everyone and I call on all Israel’s citizens to uphold it” – it remains to be shown whether he broke any of Israel’s anti-incitement laws.

In Canada, of course, there are also various laws that restrict the freedom of expression guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Among those are the restrictions on creating child pornography and committing perjury, which are considered criminal offences, as well as anti-hate laws. The latter have been particularly controversial here, in large part because human rights commissions have been more than happy to investigate complaints that do not involve the incitement, justification or threatening of violence against members of an identifiable group; as but one example, Ezra Levant having been brought before a tribunal to defend his publication in the Western Standard of the now-infamous cartoons depicting Muhammad.

As journalists, we obviously have an instinctive bias towards more, rather than less, freedom of expression. We have argued in this space many times for free speech, making several of the same points as Dr. Stefan Braun in his Opinion piece this week.

Our stance is not merely a question of habit or blind adherence to a principle for principle’s sake, but requires continual evaluation of the costs and benefits to community members and society at large from publishing certain stories, photographs, advertisements or other material in the paper or on the paper’s website or Facebook page.

In our daily lives, each of us has decisions to make regarding how we interact with others and how we participate in the world. As cliché as it might sound, with freedom comes great responsibility. The freedom to be and express ourselves should never be taken for granted.

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