محمد عزام

dear Mr. Kornblu No formal indictment was ever filed against Azmi Bishara; he was merely subjected to an investigation that was never brought to a conclusion. He left the country before any charges could be leveled, viewing the investigation against him as political persecution. After various accusations—and attempts to bar him from running for election—failed in the civil courts, the Israeli authorities shifted toward allegations of a security-related nature. Bishara, for his part, concluded that Israeli courts could not be impartial when it came to security charged were evidence is mostly covert. As an opposition member of parliament, he represented the Arab population in Israel with great effectiveness; he was—and remains—a well-known and influential liberal-democratic intellectual and writer. While it is true that he maintained open ties in various Arab states that he visited (in this case he broke the law openly), he believed in civil and political struggle and as a radical well known opposition figure he also possessed no security-related information to pass on to anyone. He categorically denied the suspicions against him and still denies them —even though, in the context of the Arab world, he could have easily boasted about such Israeli accusations after he left.