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June 02, 2016

“Under the cover of darkness, there is no limit to the expansion of Big Brother.”

Ilan Gilon, Meretz Party (Israel), Times of Israel, Feb 4, 2016

While Israel’s central justification for its often reactionary policies is couched in hyper-exceptionalist rhetoric, current interest in censoring the Internet is far from exceptional.

Like a machine of justification against its critics and its enemies, Israel enlists various projects under the banner of the remarkable and precious, when it is simply accomplishing what other states have done before or since: the banal and ordinary. All states want to limit expression, control criticism and marginalise the sceptics. Some do it more savagely, and roughly, than others.

Israel’s military censor, Col. Ariella Ben Avraham, who is part of the IDF’s Directorate of Military Intelligence, gave a good example of this in February by insisting that social media activists and bloggers submit material relevant to security matters for approval prior to posting.[1] The move also revealed an increasing interest to police the digital realm, previously considered an anarchic jungle incapable of effective policing.

Up to 32 Israeli bloggers and social media activists were informed about the directive, one of the first being Yossi Gurvitz, a left-wing activist running the “Friends of George” Facebook page. In rather unceremonious fashion, he was informed via Ben Avraham’s private Facebook account that he was obligated to run future submissions by her office. To his credit, he promises to defy the order.

Internal censorship is but one aspect of this policy. Israel Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan has dipped into the discourse of censorship to convince others that limiting various social media platforms on a global scale is the way to go. In January, he revealed the inner ambition of Israel’s security establishment to internationalise the censorship effort.

To achieve that goal, Erdan speaks of an “international coalition” that would make limiting criticism of Israel its primary objective. The central aim is hardly imaginative: making such providers as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook face up to responsibility as to what they host on their sites.

The Erdan plan suggests that various countries would form a “loose coalition that would keep an eye on content and where it is being posted, and members of the coalition would work to demand that the platforms remove the content that was posted in any of their countries at the request of members.” The simple idea behind this collusion is extra-territorial cooperation, effectively circumventing the global nature of such platforms.

As for the scurrilous subject matter itself, the issues are universal fare for states keen to control matters that supposedly stimulate the darker side of human nature. (Read: contrary to state interests.) Erdan’s office gives the example of material from a Palestinian (of course) disclosing the best locations on the body to inflict fatal stab wounds.

This begs that grand question about how far such an effort goes: control the more sordidly violent sides of the Old Testament because it encourages various unsavoury practices? Limit suggestive literature being discussed in the whirl of social media, buzzing away with malicious promise? The mind is an untidy place filled with remarkable things, and not all of them necessarily make it to actual perpetration. This is a point that continues to elude the mighty warriors of the security state.

Another justification is being thrown in: they, the social media giants, rake in the proceeds, and should therefore man the barricades. “We are planning to put a stop to this irresponsibility,” claimed Erdan’s office, “and we are going to do it as part of an international coalition that has had enough of this behaviour as well.”

Other governments have also done their bit to limit the internet and content available to their citizens. Most famously, Beijing runs its own “Great Firewall of China”, overseen by the Ministry of Information Industry (MII), while the State Council Information Office and the Chinese Communist Party’s Propaganda Department examine content.

In recent times, countries of a supposedly democratic character have taken to the blinds and endeavoured to do what Erdan dreams about. Dangerous thoughts are seen as the reason for dangerous actions. To that end, the country that gave Europe the Enlightenment has been busy forging its own vision of global internet censorship, using a mixture of security and privacy concerns.

Some think I am anti Israel!

But this guy has really got a problem with them!

Come clean mate what is your beef about!

No need to go overboard!

Are you a holocaust denier?
You haven't answered that.

You continually link to sites which deny it happened and have a hatred of Israel.

Now is your chance to debunk that suspicion.

Jun 05, 2016

Sunday's Jerusalem Day march in the capital will pass through the Mulsim Quarter of the Old City, as planned, after the High Court rejected an urgent petition asking that the march be rerouted to avoid friction with the Old City's Arab population.

Jerusalem Day in an Israeli national holiday commemorating the establishment of Israeli control over the Old City in the 1967 Six-Day War.

The annual march, scheduled for the late afternoon, is typically attended by tens of thousands of religious Zionist youth and is usually a source of tension in the Old City. In previous marches, racist insults were hurled by marchers at Arabs and instances of vandalism were reported.

The court approved an agreement between the state and the parade's organizers that the march will start 15 minutes earlier than scheduled to ensure that no Jewish marchers are present in the Muslim Quarter if Ramadan begins on Sunday.

The start of Ramadan, a holiday during which Muslims fast during daylight hours for a month, is determined by Muslim clerics in Saudi Arabia.

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Oy vei!

We at Mossad have traced your IP address jmcare.
Please stay where you are and wait for our agents to collect you. Don't bother to pack, you won't be needing anything.

jmjcare wrote on Jun 7^th, 2016 at 10:32pm:

Mossad moderate the moderators already.
Sit tight please and you can turn on your mobile phone. It doesn't matter if it's on or off.

jmjcare wrote on Jun 7^th, 2016 at 10:32pm:


Good One!

I will pay that!