In condemning the right-wing campaign against Israeli cultural figures on Thursday, Likud MK Binyamin (Ze'ev) Begin upheld the national-liberal values of his father, the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky. The right-wing group Im Tirtzu, inspired by Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev's attack on intellectuals, launched its own crude assault on a list of artists and others whose love of the country and concern for its future are indisputable. Begin condemned this as fascism. We may have major disagreements with those artists and intellectuals, but these debates should never be personal. They should always be about substance. In a sense, they should be a modern version of debates between the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel. Those wise sages knew how to keep things civil despite their vociferous debates, to the point that people from both camps married each other. But the atmosphere today is that of total separation. The radicals on the Right (and on the Left) no longer have sound judgment. They let their hostility trump civility and common sense. Using threatening language is de facto incitement that could eventually combust into physical violence. Where is all this heading? Will we see people fighting it out on the streets or see a new kind of political violence? Will the "Hunting Season," the period of heightened intra-Jewish animosity in pre-state Israel, repeat itself in 2016? The street thugs must be restrained. If we let people cast others as "traitors" and "foreign agents," we will eventually see someone take action. Eventually people will hit others with clubs or go even further and use daggers, like the Jewish Zealots in ancient times. If, God forbid, a tragedy takes place, they will claim their innocence and shed crocodile tears. They will insist that they did not incite, that they only wanted to debate, not to murder. But this scenario may nevertheless unfold. The campaign's targets put two leading names from my generation at the top of the list. The first is the world-renowned author Amos Oz, whose immortal works include "A Tale of Love and Darkness," "My Michael," "Black Box," "In the Land of Israel" and "Judas." The other is A.B. Yehoshua, who wrote "Facing the Forests," "Mr. Mani" and "Five Seasons," among others. Both are the salt of the earth from Hebrew academia, one from Jerusalem and the other from a kibbutz. Those who have been depicting them as traitors are blind and drunk with power. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Interior Minister Aryeh Deri and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked know full well that things have spun out of control. As I was reading the materials published by Im Tirtzu, I was gripped by jealousy. If such distinguished people are foreign agents, then add my name to the list of calumny by the Im Tirtzu tribunal. To borrow from Haim Nahman Bialik's poem: Let me be with you.
