Haaretz writer Amira Hess’ inflammatory article last year in which she wrote “throwing rocks is a right of the ‘resistance'” is not incitement, the State Prosecutor ruled on Tuesday.
The Legal Forum for Israel had asked the Prosecutor to charge Hess with incitement for her statement last April, “Throwing rocks is the right and obligation of anyone who is under a foreign ruler,” referring to Israel and Palestinian Authority Arabs.
It took the State Prosecutor eight months to finally decide that Hess’ remarks were “grave” but not incitement because “she did not directly call for actions of violence.”
Law Forum attorney Hila Cohen had argued that Hess’s published statement “gives legitimacy to acts of terror and encourages them…. Throwing rocks at Israelis is an act of terror and treating it as something else is liable to cause an escalation [in violence] under the definition of justifying it.”
She noted that Hamas posted Hess’s article on its website.
Following the State Prosecutor’s ruling, the Law Forum stated, “If saying that throwing rocks is a right and obligation is not incitement to violence, we do not know what is.”
The answer is that encouraging rock throwing is incitement when it comes from Jews.