Should a hated word be banned? A proposal in Israel to ban the word Nazi is raising questions about free speech and the legacy of the Holocaust.

• Author: Rudoren, Jodi
• Position: INTERNATIONAL

Are some words so hateful that it should be against the law to say them?

Some lawmakers in Israel so. Israel's parliament has given preliminary approval to a bill that would make it a crime to call someone a Nazi--or any other slur associated with the Holocaust--or to use Holocaust-related symbols in a noneducational way. The penalty would be a fine of as much as $29,000 and up to six months in jail.

The proposed law's backers say it's 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.

"We, in our land, can find enough Words and expressions and idioms to express our opinions," says Shimon Ohayon, one of the lawmakers sponsoring the bill. "What I'm asking is, please put away this special situation that has to do with our history."

But critics say the proposed law is a dangerous infringement on free 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. The controversy also reflects how Israel is grappling with the legacy of the Holocaust as the atrocity passes from living memory to history.

In 1941, Nazi Germany began carrying out the "Final Solution," a plan for the extermination of Europe's 9.5 million Jews. By the end of World War II in 1945, 6 million Jews had been killed, along with many Gypsies, homosexuals, and others the Nazis considered undesirable. Almost 70 years later, the number of living Holocaust survivors is falling fast. Fewer than 200,000 remain alive in Israel (and about 120,000 in the U.S.).

'Gestapo' as a Put-down

At least half a dozen European nations, along with Brazil, already prohibit the use of Nazi symbols and flags. Even more countries consider it a crime (as Israel has since 1986) to deny that the Holocaust took place. But none of these other countries ban the use of the word Nazi, as the proposed Israeli law would.

Supporters say the trivialization of Holocaust terms has forced their hand. Many Israeli teens take trips to former concentration camps in Europe. Yet young Israelis use the Hebrew word shoah--which literally means "catastrophe" but is generally reserved for the Holocaust-to describe a failed relationship or a messy kitchen. A satirical TV show compared Israel's interior minister to a concentration-camp supervisor for his...