ABSTRACT
I do not agree with your opinion, but I w ill defend your right to express it with m y life , said Voltaire.2 And John Stuart M ill, in his essay On L ib e r ty ,3 added: ‘I f all o f humanity, except one man, holds one opinion, and that man holds another opinion, humanity shall be no more justified in silencing that man any more than he would be in silencing all o f humanity, i f he had the pow er’. Thus these and other thinkers,4 and many democratic countries, including Israel, in their aftermath, established the freedom o f expression as a ‘higher right’5 o f ‘pre-em inence’.6 Justice Agranat regarded the freedom o f expression as the ‘heart and sou l’ o f dem ocracy,7 and said that it holds ‘a place o f honour in the palace o f the fundamental rights o f m an’.8 W hat is this right, and what makes it central to our lives? And m ost o f all, what limitations on this right are justified and proper in a democratic society?
