Recently, a remnant of the Kastner case came before the Supreme Court of Israel. In his docudrama Mishpat Kastner [The Kastner Trial] (Tel-Aviv: Or ve'tzel, 1994), Motti Lerner made Kastner throw at Hanah Senesh's mother that her daughter broke down during the course of being interrogated and handed over her two comrades to the Hungarian police. There was no factual basis for this accusation. Moreover, Kastner never raised this allegation in court. Giora Senesh, Hannah's brother, petitioned the Supreme Court sitting as the High Court of Justice to order the Israeli Broadcast Authority to remove this scene from the play that it intended to screen on Israel's state television (H.C. 6124, 6143/94, Senesh v. The Israel Broadcast Authority, forthcoming). For the parachutists episode, see Maoz, "Historical Adjudication," 590, n. 93. The Court rejected the petition. President Barak, writing for the majority, stated: "The controversial paragraph does not reflect historical truth. It has no historical foundation whatsoever. It is not true." Nevertheless, stated Barak, "a democratic society which loves freedom does not make its protection of expression and art contingent on them reflecting the truth.... A democratic society does not protect a legend by harming freedom of expression and art. The legend must stem from the free exchange of opinions and views. It must not be a result of governmental restrictions on freedom of expression and art. Hannah Senesh's legend will exist and flourish thanks to the freedom of the truth, not following the silencing of the untruth." Barak quoted another president of the Supreme Court, Justice Moshe Landau, who stated: "The distortion of historical facts does not justify the disqualification, because its creators could argue that there is no single historical truth; rather each historian has his own truth. And, anyway, since when does untruth disqualify a movie or a play from being screened or performed in a state which guarantees freedom of expression to the citizen"; H.C. 807/78, Ein Gal v. The Board for Supervision of Films and Plays, 33(1) P.D. 274, 277. (Censorship on films exists in Israel under the Cinematograph Films Ordinance, 1927; R. H. Drayton, The Laws of Palestine [London: Waterlow and Sons, 1934], vol. 1, ch. 16, p. 135. See, generally, Daniel More, "Film and Theatre Censorship in Israel," Israel Yearbook on Human Rights 9 [1979]: 225.)
29 Ιανουαρίου 2016
02 Ιανουαρίου 2016
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