Should a Hated Word Be Banned

Josef Reuther

            The article “Should a Hated Word Be Banned?” by Jodi Rudoren focuses on the ever pressing and controversial issue of passing a bill “that would make it a crime to call someone a Nazi or any other slur associated with the Holocaust.” However the passing of such a bill would infringe on peoples right of free speech, making a decision on this bill a complicated one. It is wrong for a certain group of people to ban the use of a word for an entire nation and population.

            One piece of evidence that substantiates this claim is that by banning a word for an entire people you are infringing on their basic right of the freedom of speech. “The bill is the latest clash involving Israel’s insistence on being both a Jewish state and a democratic one, where free speech is a guiding principle and minority views are protected,” as the article stated. Banning these words would contradict many of the teachings and laws that Israel stands for. Additionally using the word Nazi or words related to it, as a synonym for something else would also become a crime an example of this would be Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be put in jail for the way that he compares Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the former Iranian president, to Hitler. Infringing the right of freedom of speech for an entire people is not write for the Israeli Government to do.

            Another piece of evidence that corroborates this claim about the new bill, which would ban the public use of the word Nazi and other words related to the Holocaust in Israel is that simply it has become “a response to the increasingly casual use of such terms in everything from Israeli politics to teenage trash talk as well as what they see as a rising tide of anti-Semitism around the world.” Many Israelis have become upset with the careless of Nazi related terms and feel the need to act against it. It is wrong for some Israelis to ban the use of the word for an entire population because they feel that people have become to flexible with how they use these Nazi associated terms.

            The banning of Holocaust related terms for an entire nation would be wrong for the way that it infringes on the right of the people to have freedom of speech. As can be seen there is a select group of Israelis who believe that words such as Nazi are being used in too far a “casual” way. By making the use of such words a Federal crime the government is getting awfully close to denying the Israeli people their right to the freedom of speech. This highly controversial issue will continue to become an ever-pressing topic in Israel.