Israel Censoring Bloggers
DISPATCHES FROM STEPHEN LENDMAN
Israel is like other fascist police states, wanting criticisms of its ruthless policies suppressed. Its new military censor, Col. Ariela Ben-Avraham, demanded bloggers and social media users submit their material for screening before posting.
Failure will be considered a crime. Regime critics risk prosecution, censorship now elevated to a higher level. Israel wants control over pre-published material relating to its policies – vetted so anything it disapproves of gets trashed, the right of free expression abolished.
Blogger Yossi Gurvitz revealed Israel’s new policy. He was notified to submit written material before publishing, showing democracy is more farcical than already. Until now, Israel’s military censor monitored Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites for material considered objectionable.
Ben-Avraham’s predecessor, Sima Vaknin-Gil, said “censorship cannot control the internet through prevention.”
“If the censorship will require that each journalist who just opened a Twitter would provide it everything in advance, we would be stopping their processes. One of the changes we have inserted was the decision to simply tail them.”
He called the policy “post-facto surveillance,” saying “(w)ith Facebook and Twitter, as bodies, we have no communication. We address the users directly.”
“The moment you pass a certain threshold, we identify you, initiate contact with you, explain to you the censorship and learn to work with you,” expecting compliance with regime-imposed rules. After receiving notice from Israel’s new military censor, Gurvitz published a Facebook comment, saying he wouldn’t comply. (See Appendix for a sample of Gurvitz’ work.)
“The meaning of this demand is an extermination of the new media in Israel, the spirit of which is in the speed of response”, he wrote. “I am surveying the legal procedures available for me.”
“I don’t intend to provide them with anything. As far as I’m concerned, I’m taking this to court.” Other Israeli bloggers and social media users were informed of the new pre-publication rules. Meretz party MK Ilan Gilon commented, saying:
“Under the cover of darkness, there is no limit to the expansion of Big Brother…I’ve asked for a debate to understand what the boundaries of censorship are and how far they can go. Am I also subject to censorship (in public comments)? This is totally unacceptable.”
In 2012, Israel recognized bloggers as journalists. Now they’re being treated as possible fifth column threats. New censorship rules accompany heightened Israeli persecution of Palestinians, brutalizing them, killing them extrajudicially in cold blood.
Regime critics and human rights defenders are targeted, called traitors, recklessly accused of incitement, Israel’s latest catch phrase, labeling defenders of fundamental freedoms enemies of the state.
STEPHEN LENDMAN lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III." ( http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html ) Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
ADDENDUM
Jewish Orthodox publication openly calls for death camps
Orthodox rabbis long for the day when they’ll wipe out Amalekites, and two more notes
(First Published January 15, 2011) on 972mag.com
GURVITZ
Rabbis for Death Camps: One of the popular genres of media generally unfamiliar to the Israeli secular public is that of synagogue pamphlets. There are quite a few of them, and they are distributed on Fridays to thousands of synagogue. Almost every sect has its own pamphlet, mostly of rather inferior quality.
One of the most successful ones is “Ma’yanei Ha’yeshua’” (“Fonts of Salvation”), which is well-made and recently expanded to 16 pages, instead of the usual four. It is published by the Ma’yanei Ha’yeshua’ movement, among whose founders we find the recently-expired Mordechai Aviner; his son, Shmuel Eliyahu, is a frequent contributor, as is Shlomo Aviner, one of the most important settler rabbis. In short, it is one of the pillars of the media of the “Emunnit movement”, i.e. those national-Orthodox whose goal is a religious takeover of Israel.
The 117th pamphlet of Ma’yanei Ha’yeshua’, published some three weeks ago (careful, Hebrew PDF) contains an unsigned editorial, protesting against those rabbis who attacked the “rabbis’ letter”. It bemoans the possibility that “the Torah would be put in a private, religious, small corner, and will not direct our public, general, national life […] Yes, there also such [rabbis], clerkish, who don’t want to cause trouble, who explain “this is not precisely the Halachic law” […] in short, those for whom political correctness is their daily bread […] we wonder whether they will leave the concentration of Amalekites in death camps to others, or may decide that the wiping out of Amalek is no longer relevant. Time will tell.” My emphasis.
Where they burn bread, there they shall burn people? (Yossi Gurvitz)
In other words, a central religious media outlet announces, to all it may concern, that in time we will have “death camps for Amalekites”. The Amalekites were a people who bothered the Sons of Israel as they left Egypt, and God ordered their destruction. King Saul came close, but his clemency prevented him from finishing the job, for which he was punished by God. Jewish law contains a mitzvh to wipe out Amalek, which is supposed to take place sometime at the end of days. It is unclear how one recognizes Amalekites – but many believers, especially those who make Kaballah a mainstay of their beliefs, think even Jews may be Amalekites. It is a good place to note that Kaballah is the most virulent of Jewish literature in its loathing of non-Jews. So, the pamphlet most identified with the instigator of the “rabbis letter”, Shmuel Eliahu, insists on its right to create death camps, and that people who will not participate in this Final Solution are cowardly and unworthy of the title of rabbis.
Of course, this is direct Nazi influence. Without Himmler, Heidrich and the rest, one doubts the rabbis would come up with the idea of a death camp. They would have to make do with the rather disorganized ethnic cleansing carried out by Saul – though, of course, without making his error of showing pity. It turns out that sixty and more years after “never again”, there are rabbis – publicly funded rabbis, at that – who think it’s time for another round, only this time good Jews should do the killing. And like the murderers in black and silver, they openly claim that unlike some wusses, they would have no problem bashing the skull of a baby at a rock, and they will be tough enough to “watch a hundred, or five hundred, or a thousand bodies side by side”.
It’s not particularly surprising; Orthodox Judaism always contained proto-Nazi elements. It’s just that they’re no longer hiding. They think their time has come. And the frightening thing is, they may be right.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I am Yossi Gurvitz, a 47-year old journalist, blogger and photographer. I write for several Israeli publications, including the influential financial daily Calcalist and the Nana portal. In the past, I’ve been deputy editor of Nana News, and with Itamar Shaaltiel edited its 2006 Knesset elections section.