New Israeli Law Makes Consuming ‘Terrorist’ Content A Criminal Offense
from the well-that's-a-mess dept
It’s amazing just how much war and conflict can change a country. On October 7th, Hamas blitzed Israel with an attack that was plainly barbaric. Yes, this is a conflict that has been simmering with occasional flashpoints for decades. No, neither side can even begin to claim it has entirely clean hands as a result of those decades of conflict. We can get the equivocating out of the way. October 7th was different, the worst single day of murder of the Jewish community since the Holocaust. And even in the immediate aftermath, those outside of Israel and those within knew that the attack was going to result in both an immediate reaction from Israel and longstanding changes within its borders. And those of us from America, or those that witnessed how our country reacted to 9/11, knew precisely how much danger this period of change represented.
It’s already started. First, Israel loosened the reins to allow once-blacklisted spyware companies to use their tools to help Israel find the hundreds of hostages Hamas claims to have taken. While that goal is perfectly noble, of course, the willingness to engage with more nefarious tools to achieve that end had begun. And now we learn that Israel’s government has taken the next step in amending its counterterrorism laws to make the consumption of “terrorist” content a criminal offense, punishable with jail time.
The bill, which was approved by a 13-4 majority in the Knesset, is a temporary two-year measure that amends Article 24 of the counterterrorism law to ban the “systematic and continuous consumption of publications of a terrorist organization under circumstances that indicate identification with the terrorist organization”.
It identifies the Palestinian group Hamas and the ISIL (ISIS) group as the “terrorist” organisations to which the offence applies. It grants the justice minister the authority to add more organisations to the list, in agreement with the Ministry of Defence and with the approval of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee.
Make no mistake, this is the institution of thought crime. Read those two paragraphs one more time and realize just how much the criminalization of consumption of materials relies on the judgement and interpretation of those enforcing it. What is systematic in terms of this law? What is a publication? What constitutes a “terrorist organization,” not in the case of Hamas and ISIL, but in that ominous bit at the end of the second paragraph, where more organizations can — and will — be added to this list?
And most importantly, how in the world is the Israeli government going to determine “circumstances that indicate identification with the terrorist organization?”
“This law is one of the most intrusive and draconian legislative measures ever passed by the Israeli Knesset since it makes thoughts subject to criminal punishment,” said Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. It warned that the amendment would criminalise “even passive social media use” amid a climate of surveillance and curtailment of free speech targeting Palestinian citizens of Israel.
“This legislation encroaches upon the sacred realm of an individual’s personal thoughts and beliefs and significantly amplifies state surveillance of social media use,” the statement added. Adalah is sending a petition to the Supreme Court to challenge the bill.
This has all the hallmarks of America’s overreaction to the 9/11 attacks. We still haven’t unwound, not even close, all of the harm that was done in the aftermath of those attacks, all in the name of safety. We are still at a net-negative value in terms of our civil liberties due to that overreaction. President Biden even reportedly warned Israel not to ignore our own mistakes, but they’re doing it anyway.
And circling back to the first quotation and the claim that this law is temporary over a 2 year period, that’s just not how this works. If this law is allowed to continue to exist, it will be extended, and then extended again. The United States is still operating under the Authorization for Use of Military Force of 2001 and used it in order to conduct strikes in Somalia under the Biden administration, two decades later.
The right to speech and thought is as bedrock a thing as exists for a democracy. If we accept that premise, then it is simply impossible to “protect a democracy” by limiting the rights of speech and thought. And that’s precisely what this new law in Israel does: it chips away at the democracy of the state in order to protect it.
That’s not how Israel wins this war, if that is in fact the goal.
thought crime
Filed Under: hamas, israel, palestine, terrorism, terrorist content
Comments on “New Israeli Law Makes Consuming ‘Terrorist’ Content A Criminal Offense”
dont listen to them
Basically once someone is put on a list its a crime to listen to what they have to say.
Re: I've got a little list, I've got a little list...
Also once any given sentiment is given the terrorist label, it’s criminal to say it or listen to it.
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It’s criminal to listen to it?
Does the nightly news count?
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Does Haaretz count?
Re: How long before calls for peace count?
Asking for a friend
Many Types of Harm Cannot Be Undone
Even with the best intentions of fixing the harm, there would be lots of scar tissue gumming up the works in the future.
Unfortunately, we have a segment of the political spectrum that is actually trying to double down on some of the worst harms. Because, apparently we need this to Make Amerika Great Again.
So, while many of us might like to unwind the harms of the aftermath of 9/11, we are very much hamstrung in those efforts by all the opportunists and politicians with agendas.
And now Israel is merrily following us down that same path.
I believe that’s called progress.
/s
Different land, different law.
TL;DR – the first three paragraphs summarize my points.
The State of Israel does not have the US bill of rights. It has “Basic Laws” which — to some extent — serve as the US Constitution does here. That’s too offtopic here so if you like read more at https://openyls.law.yale.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.13051/3114/A_Constitutional_Revolution_Israel_s_Basic_Laws.pdf
Most of the current inhabitants of the Gaza Strip have lived their entire lives under the terrorist rule of Hamas. Hamas came to power by having an election, and after kneecapping and shooting anyone who opposed them, were handily elected as the only party standing (as it were).
To people who have been subject to this rule for 20 years (Israel left in 2005) this is all they know. This is all they preach. Those who seek out their “messages” and adhere to them are an existential threat to Israel. Worse, they are a stone’s throw away. Worse yet, they also have rockets and IEDs and bombs and rapacious thug animals.
Israel is in a perpetual state of readiness for war. Each was is fought on its home soil with the existential threat of genocide and extinction a factor in all such conflicts. It’s not like they put troops on planes and carriers and send them to go fight somewhere else around the world. The kind of “force projection” the US does, which keeps civilians out of harm’s way, has been attempted by others and not very successfully.
As part of its modus operandi, the Israeli government and the military have censors whose sole job is to enforce confidentiality in the media. The “Pentagon Papers”, WikiLeaks, etc. would not survive in such a State.
When we seek to say that neither side has clean hands, we try and wash the barbaric savagery of rapist baby murdering terrorists with the ill-fated restraint shown by a military that could destroy millions of inhabitants of the Gaza Strip and yet doesn’t. Donald Trump famously said about Charlotte that there were “good people on both sides.” No, there were not. Nor are there in this conflict.
OB DISC: I am an Israeli citizen. I have had my life threatened because of this, the last time being at a Vegas casino where I was attacked in a casino. Cameras everywhere do not stop blind hatred. Security staff trained to escort money carts are not trained to handle hand to hand combat expertise. I carry. I hope one day there will be peace, but I don’t expect it in my lifetime so long as Hamas, Daesh (ISIS/ISIL), Putin, Kim Jong Un, and others do what they please and nobody stops them.
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Thank you for pointing out that different countries have different laws, I’d hate to think of all the people that might have been confused without such an important reminder.
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Hate to rain (or is it reign, or rein?) on your parade, Ehud Gavron, but from what I have gathered over the years, the Suez Crisis was fought on Egyptian soil, not Israel’s, and was a collaboration with Britain and France. The Lebanon War of 1982 was fought on Lebanese soil, not Israel’s (unless you’re claiming Beirut as Israel’s land?). The Occupied Palestinian Territories are militarily occupied, and as such are covered by the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and cannot be considered to be Israel’s “own soil”, unless you wish to throw the Geneva Conventions, the Atlantic Charter, the UN Charter (based on the Atlantic charter) etc, out the window. (That would include the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which might not be such a good idea … )
And gathering from the PLO books (published in Beirut c. 1970s) on the Nakba I read, giving the Palestinians’ stories, all they wanted to do was to get back home and take up their lives again. All my life I’ve been reading claims that to allow the Palestinian refugees to return would be tantamount to genocide. When all it would do would be to change Israel from a Jewish-majority to something more-or-less equal. The vibes those claims now give off to me, resemble unpleasantly the “blood libel” of “Mediaeval Christian Europe”.
Re: Re: PLO "books"
You might ask yourself why the offers of 97% of the land plus east Jerusalem as its capitol was rejected in 1947, 2000, 2008 by such PLO “leaders” (terrorists) like Arafat and Abbas. There are other less formal occasions at which “no” was still the operative answer.
When one abandons one’s “home” so the combined Arab countries surrounding it can erase the Jews from the river to the sea… and one loses that fight… one has no “home” to “return to.” Further, unlike every other [self]displaced peoples, these people claim 100% right of return not just for themselves, but for all their offspring.
The UN is complicit in this “right of return for all offspring” scheme. It’s not done for anyone else. It has no basis in law or history. Yet these are the bedtime stories told to each other as they huddle in camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and long to one day somehow take over all of Israel… and have a true one-state solution.
The PLO was always and will always be a terrorist organization. That you can read their manifestos doesn’t mean the words are anything more than part of a long-standing PR campaign that has now been taken over by Hammas. The offers of peace, land, East Jerusalem, etc. were made in public by Israeli leaders and were soundly rejected in public. You can add as much sugar as you like, but this lemonade is sour.
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As for the question of why the Partition “offer” was rejected, the Arab population of the “Jewish state” as defined by the Partition Resolution was almost 50%. The leaders of the Arab states felt the Partition Resolution was asking rather too much of those Arabs.
And I see you’re relying on that claim that the Arab population abandoned their homes and lands on the radioed command of the Arab League … I don’t think most Palestinian villages were that financial that they could afford that many radios. According to most of the “new historians” the Palestinians were either forced from their land by terrorist actions by Lehi, EZL, or the Palmach, or they fled to save their families. I’ve read some of Menachem Begin’s The Revolt (frankly self-serving, if ever a politician’s memoirs were … ) and he’s of the opinion that Lehi and Irgun’s unprovoked massacre of the Deir Yassin village, led to many of the Palestinians fleeing for their lives. It takes a particular sort of mind to claim that the folk of Lod and Ramle, brutally forced from their homes by some Palmach unit or other, are [self]displaced. Besides, most of the Arab League states’ military leaders had been trained in either French or British military academies, and they would’ve known that you don’t want refugees clogging up communications, control and supply anywhere near a battlefield.
As far as the refugees’ right of return, Israel entered the United Nations having agreed to allow them to return. Break one agreement gratuitously, and nobody’ll trust you with any further agreements – if you want to know why Arab League states have been so slow in making peace agreements with Israel, that’ll be one of the major reasons.
And lastly, your opinion that the PLO and all other Palestinian political organizations are “terrorist” – that’s one of the things this article was about. Congratulations, you’ve just proved its point. Access to history is necessary to solve this sort of ongoing crisis, so you can break free of such constraints to face the causes of it, and work out solutions, but if you define everything said by such-and-such an organization, as “terrorist”, you have locked yourself away from any such solution.
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Thank you so much for your posts, which do an excellent job of demonstrating the sophistry needed to justify committing genocide and still feel good about oneself afterward.
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Lol. What derangement. The Palestinians are just getting what they deserve. And it’s not from the river to the sea!
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You sound a little incoherent, Matthew. Did your mom forget to restock your Cheetos supply?
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“getting what they deserve”
What does that even mean? Is it like an eye for an eye type of thing? Because I doubt any of those infants were engaged in nefarious activities, many of the poor peasants in that hell hole had nothing to do with any of the bullshit going on there ….
but they deserve it – not sure why but many think this way.
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How many Palestinians—including children—have to die by the hand of the Israeli military for you to be happy?
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Very simple answer and I’m glad you asked: as many as it takes for Hamas to release all surviving hostages and surrender unconditionally and be tried in Israeli military courts.
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Trick question, pal! Any number other than “zero” automatically paints you as a sociopath because no reasonable person with a working sense of empathy would want other people to die for the sake of one’s own happiness.
And by the by: The fact that you’re being so outlandish with your posts tells me you’re trying to act like you’re a sociopath for the sake of trolling these comments. We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful of what we pretend to be—and continually pretending to be an asshole whose opinions only get worse over time will only ever turn you into that. Stop posting, touch grass, and seek therapy.
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At some point progressive thought left reality. clearly the op is delusional but you’re wrong as well here.
Humans are animals and self preservation is a natural premise. One developed over 2.5 million years of our progression from other high apes. But don’t pretend we’re not still apes.
I , like many apes, most apes, out the clan first. That is, in human terms, family, friends, then neighbours. But the self, for most, comes before the populace. You can moralise that all you want, but it violates the very reason for life, to produce more offspring.
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“Most of the current inhabitants of the Gaza Strip have lived their entire lives under the terrorist rule of the Israel Defense Forces.”
FTFY. YW. 😊
Re: Re: BKFY
In 2005 the IDF left the Gaza Strip. As per NPR, Most of today’s Gaza Strip inhabitants are at the age where all they’ve known is after 2005.
You didn’t “FTFY”. You just have no knowledge of the facts and history. I get you want to call a lawfully structured army protecting its border a terrorist rule, but then I’m sure you’re marching off to Texas to tell Governor Abbott and Attorney General Paxton they are equal terrorists for protecting TX’s southern border.
If you want to be clever, that’s great. If you want to be wrong but try to appear clever — congratulations — you’ve accomplished your goal.
Re: Re: Re: It’s not a border if the Palestinians don’t have sovereignty!!
Again Israelis talk out of both sides of their mouth. You aren’t just “protecting your border” you are actively restricting the goods, materials, and even the kind of work. It’s a border alright, but not an international one, more like the wall of a prison.
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“If you want to be clever, that’s great. If you want to be wrong but try to appear clever — congratulations — you’ve accomplished your goal.”
Strong in this one the projection is. Hmmm, yes.
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I don’t suppose you have a final solution to the Palestine question then, hmm?
Re: Re: Final solution to the Palestine question
I’m without information or belief to answer as to your lack of supposition.
Re: Existential threat
A threat to many people in Israel, but not necessarily a threat to the nation.
Quoting Gumshoe on Know Your Meme (yes, memes are not all frivolous, and violent events often become memes):
Re: Sounds like a justification to murder all palestinians
Israel is not a democracy if Palestinians don’t get to vote. Israel cannot have its cake and eat it too. Israeli lives are not more important than palestinian lives. There’s something inherently inhumane about kicking people out of homes they’ve lived in their whole lives. Israel has a right to exist. I don’t personally believe that a religious state can ever be truly democratic, but I won’t deny the right of Israel to exist. However, if the only way Israel finds to exist is to effectively ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people (either through death or forced migration) then I can’t agree with that.
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Yes, they are. Especially to the Israelis. Kill ’em all and let their fake god sort ’em out.
Does it count as abusing the law if it's the entire intent?
Well I can’t see how enshrining thought crime into law as a criminal offense could possibly be abused to silence anything or anyone that the government would rather people not hear or talk about…
Its Run the Jewels song “Walkin in the Snow” made reality.
I hear Netanyahu has a "final solution" to the Palestinian question...
I guess “never again” just meant to them, and not in general…
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It’s not only a staggering blindness to their own history, it’s also utterly doomed to fail.
Re: I hear Netanyahu has a "final solution" to the Palestinian question...
He has a solution to the Hamas problem. The people living in the Gaza Strip are not all Hamas, not all terrorists or sympathizers, and are now suffering the fate of those who elected the terrorists to “rule” with an iron fist.
Netanyahu has not called for genocide or even mass murders. What he did say is that Hamas will not be in power when this war is over, and that they will not be able to wage war on Israel.
This is not at all equivalent to either “Never again but for the Pals” nor “From the river to the sea.” Israel faces an existential threat one wall over. That’s not quite the same as US troops fighting halfway across the world with no risk to the CONUS civilian populace.
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“The Hamas problem” apparently originated in Khan Yunis on the 3rd of December 1956, when the IDF allegedly ran into militants … one of the younger witnesses apparently started it in response. And looking at the IDF MO in the Qibya massacre of 1953, I’d say they learned how to massacre unarmed civilians from the IDF.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Yunis_massacre
No, Netanyahu says he has a solution to “the Hamas problem”, but judging from the IDF “solution” to the “infiltrators problem” of the 1950s – unarmed Palestinians going back to check on their stolen property shot dead in cold blood, later armed relatives taking vengeance, then IDF raids to stop them and massacring civilians – I’d say it looks like the problem various police departments have with gangs, when neutral observers can’t tell the difference, nor can the gangs themselves …
Many Israelis want Netanyahu gone. I don’t know how many want him dead. But he doesn’t have any solutions to any problems, least of all the ones to do with his notorious corruption.
Re: Re: Re: Stolen property
That old dog whistle again. Irrelevant to the topic but hard to ignore slurs like this. When the British said yes to emigration and the Europeans and Brits came by the thousands, they also came with millions raised from the rich, and those millions were used to BUY the land. The Arabs were eager to sell, thinking they would out-jew the Jews.
Unlike the Arabs the Jews had the written word on their side, including real-estate contracts, deeds, and recordation. The land wasn’t stolen.
Second, nobody “goes to check on [their] stolen property.” Imagine if that made any sense. Analogy: “That guy stole my truck and he drove it to his yard across the street. I’m going to go over there and check on it.”
This is a well-worne trope, long debunbked, brought up only as yet another anti-semitic anti-Zionist dog whistle. Don’t say “they’re just Jews being Jews,” and instead say they “stole the land” and the innocent land-loving Arabs were “just a goin’ on over there to “check up on it”.”
In any case, Israeli law is based on Israel’s Basic Laws which don’t enshrine our (oft violated) Bill of Rights, but rather Israel’s right. Military and civilian censors exist and are accepted as are news embargoes. Laws preventing the creation of terrorist ideation, adherence, and allegiance to are also there for that same reason: not to give up the existential fight.
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Firstly, I call you out, Ehud Gavron, on your claim:
“This is a well-worne trope, long debunbked, brought up only as yet another anti-semitic anti-Zionist dog whistle. Don’t say “they’re just Jews being Jews,” and instead say they “stole the land” and the innocent land-loving Arabs were “just a goin’ on over there to “check up on it”.””
You’re remarkably open about indicating your interesting in portraying all opposition to any of Israel’s actions as motivated purely and simply by hatred of and for Jews as Jews. Let me quote from a rather more believable source, shall we:
https://users.ox.ac.uk/~ssfc0005/Israels%20Dirty%20War.html
“The evidence gleaned by Morris from the various sources he consulted, suggests that infiltration into Israel was a direct consequence of the displacement and dispossession of over 700,000 Palestinians in the course of the Palestine War and that the motives behind it were largely economic and social rather than political. Many of the infiltrators were Palestinian refugees whose reasons for crossing the border included looking for relatives, returning to their homes, recovering possessions, tending to their fields, collecting their crops and, occasionally, exacting revenge. Some of the infiltrators were thieves and smugglers; some were involved in the hashish convoys; while others were nomadic Bedouins, more accustomed to grazing rights than to state borders.
There were terroristic and politically-motivated raids, such as those organised by the ex-Mufti, Hajj Amin al Husayni, and financed by Saudi Arabia, but they did not amount to very much. In the period 1949-1956 as a whole, 90 per cent or more of all infiltrations, in Morris’s estimate, were motivated by economic and social concerns.
As the years went by, a certain overlap developed between economic infiltration and political infiltration geared to killing and injuring Israelis. The `free fire policy’ adopted by the Israeli army, border guard and police in dealing with suspects – a policy of shooting first and asking questions later – contributed to this overlap. Faced with trigger-happy Israeli soldiers, infiltrators started coming in organized bands and to respond in kind. Altogether between 2,700 and 5,000 infiltrators were killed in the period 1949-1956, the great majority of whom were unarmed.”
I think we can take it that Benny Morris knows more about Israel around that time than you do.
Secondly, when I read about the early Jewish settlers buying Palestinian land from Beirut landowners, I thought of absentee British landlords in Ireland, before the Irish war of Independence. But I’d also found some books on the European settlement of Hawai’i and New Zealand, and the exact same phenomenon occurred – the settler govt (or in this case the Turkish authorities under orders to modernize the Ottoman State apparatus) issued laws for the subdivision and privatization of the land, and the original tribal owners were not infrequently (mis)represented by people who claimed to own the land, and who sold it off, thus bilking the original owners of their rights and active possession of it. It’s got nothing to do with Jews being Jews, and everything to do with the imbalance of power between the rich and the poor.
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“That old dog whistle again.”
Unlike you, I can hear dog whistles and do not misidentify other whistles as them.
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Does Netanyahu’s “final solution” include any Zyklon B? That’s how it usually works…
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Trying to bomb them out of existence, while also “accidentally” bombing thousands of innocent civilians out of existence, is NOT a solution to anything. It will simply breed a whole new generation of people who hate Israel, including the inevitable tiny fraction who resort to terrorism.
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Simple solution: destroy the Palestinians’ breeding stock in their entirety.
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Better idea, we destroy you. Then finally all of us sexual minorities can breathe a sigh of relief.
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Calling Jews “nazis” so in vogue these days.
It’s almost like that’s just what Lefties call literally anyone who disagrees with them….
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Nobody cares what you think, brat.
Go rope.
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I mean we could mince words about the civilians, thie children, the medical logistics, the humanitarian support, and call them something else.
But that would be censorship by your definition.
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Nope, just those who speak and/or act like the Nazis did.
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Yes, the nazis were well known for protesting the butchering of Jewish children……
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I wasn’t making a reference to the current war, only your silly assertion about “Lefties”.
That said, it’s pretty shocking how Israel and their supporters are leaning more and more into behavior that resembles what was done to Jews 80 years ago.
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Well, yeah, but what does Stephen T Stone think?
Letterman Rides again!
While it might be that wordplay is involved here, or that Israel did indeed modify its “set of Royal authorities”, I suspect that the word actually intended is “Reins”, IE restrictions upon the companies in question.
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Just admit you're an Antisemite, already
Germany has basically THE EXACT SAME LAWS. Which don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with, because I am indeed a “free speech abolitionist”, but these laws are super common. A LOT of EU countries (Aus and NZ too!) have similar laws. Which again, I hate, but in reality only the US has true free speech and only due to vigorous litigation.
Your fixation on Israel is super telling. It was fine before, but weird, but really took a weird turn when you whined about tech supposedly bad for civil liberties being used to find hostages in a war.
You hate that the Jewish state exists and presumably hate Jews at large.
That readers of the same site (or Masnick himself) will call anyone criticizing Soros (for perfectly legitimate reasons) as “antisemitic” is fucking hilarious.
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Yes, we know you hate free speech and wish to abolish it. But I never thought you’d come right out and say it.
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Or we can keep criticizing you.
We didn’t need October 7 to do it. We were already calling you and your team a bunch of fucking idiots anyway.
You won’t stop the fabulous, Matt.
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That doesn’t mean what you think it means, dumbass.
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Actually, I think it does.
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Do you think you’re making a point? Do you honestly think you successfully committed even a single brain cell to a coherent thought, or are you just slamming your face against a keyboard until you see something that looks like an attack on people you don’t like? All you’ve done in your entire life is throw out baseless accusations, pretend being criticized is violence while justifying far worse yourself, and have some dead-end thought about how people not liking you means you’re right.
If I were you and had even 1% of the brain cells you’re pretending to have? I’d have stopped years ago, because all you’ve done is show how detached your cause is from reality. Your rhetoric is so bad you couldn’t convince a food motivated cat out of a wet paper bag using a can of cat food and a can opener. That you can even pretend to yourself that you’re doing something productive here is just hilarious.
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I hope IDF liquidate all of Hamas and turn Gaza into a beautiful nature reserve.
I don’t necessarily support the expending of American treasure (let alone blood!) in pursuit of this, but I genuinely do hope and pray for Israel to avenge the crimes committed against it by the Palestinian terrorists 1000:1 or even 10000:1.
“First, Israel loosened the reigns…”
What? Israel loosened ruling of countries? How in the world did they even do that?
TL;DR: Context spellcheck, please!
Oh the possibilities
How long until some Israeli political parties end up on the list? Would be a brilliant and legal way to eliminate unwanted competition.
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Well, I know for a fact that the Israeli peace activist and former Member of the Knesset Uri Avnery, now deceased of natural causes: old age – had death threats made against him on at least one occasion. It would not be too difficult for Netanyahu and his ghoulish cohorts to continue twisting his victims’ – err, fellow-citizens’ perceptions even further:
https://www.haaretz.com/2012-06-29/ty-article/.premium/word-for-word-by-renaming-migrants-infiltrators-israel-is-forging-a-new-reality/0000017f-e0d7-d38f-a57f-e6d719a80000
Israel’s already got administrative detention on its laws – the abrogation of Habeas Corpus, if you want to know – and has started to use it against Israeli citizens instead of Palestinians.
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Nothing should be off the table when you’re fighting an existential threat – or even simple terrorism. If you have to designate a handful of your citizens as enemy combatants and disappear them into gulags or a military brig, so be it.
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Which is what most of the tyrants of history thought. And “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” …
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Are you calling duly-elected George W. Bush a “tyrant”?
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You’re right. Donald Trump is a lot closer to being a ‘duly elected’ (some question of Russian involvement) tyrant.
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This is the language of genocide. Follow that advice and there will be more blood than soil left on this earth.
The Israelis learned well from the Nazis, from the implementation of concentration camps (the Gaza Strip) to censorship, propaganda, and the manipulation of “truth”. They compared the recent Hamas attacks to Pearl Harbor and 9/11, but not Kristalnacht, because if they had they would have had to acknowledge exactly who wears the jack boots this time around. It’s truly shameful that the US government continues to provide the muscle for these fascist imperialists. We can stop this GENOCIDE tomorrow by simply threatening to cut off military aid, but we are firmly on the wrong side in this mess. And where are all the “Right to Lifers” while all those children are dying in Gaza? All I hear is CRICKETS…
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So tired of the racist West :(
Palestinians have a clear legal right, entrenched in international law, to drive the illegal white colonists out of their country. This narrative by the West that they are somehow “terrorists” and “barbaric” is typical racist rhetoric. Palestinians, including Hamas, are under a brutal occupation by the white invaders! They can, and must, use any means possible to drive them out!
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So tired of the racist everything
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A few weeks ago or so, I told a commenter that their regular use of “wumao” as a blanket insult for anyone they disagreed with, rather than their using it with precision towards the one specific commenter who could reasonably be a wumao, sounded like an attempt to disguise some anti-Chinese racism. Well, dear readers, Valis is the one specific commenter to whom I was referring. Wave hello to the wumao, folks!
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Yes, Israel and Palestine have to follow INTERNATIONAL LAW, wumao.
Something China seems to not want to do.
How can China pretend to play peacemaker when it clearly thinks, like the US, laws are for dweebs?
Or perhaps, you know something we don’t? If so, do share with us what that is.
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No, they really don’t, International law is almost completely toothless. Isreali settlement activity in particular has been pointed out as a violation of international Law for decades, but continues to accelerate unchecked. With regards to Crimes against humanity, the only body what could enforce it is the ICC, Israel isn’t a member of the ICC, the Palestinian Authority is, but Israel disputes their membership and thus jurisdiction on the grounds that they aren’t a state. At best it can be claimed that that both states -claim- to follow international law, and perhaps follow -some- of the dictates of International law, while violating others willfully, but what punishments for violations exist are at the whim of other nations via the imposition of sanctions.
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In an ideal world, both have to.
Reality, however, is a different beast, as almost NO ONE actually follows international law despite paying enough lip service to hoodwink most people.
I am sadly and painfully aware of the reality.
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OK then. All the more reason to liquidate all of the Palestinians and resolve this problem permanently (ie, implement a final solution).
The world is moving to authoritarianism. And it’s not happening by accident.
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Nah, more like, the world is returning back to its “natural” state, ie, authoritarianism.
VOT IS DIS?
But concentrating 1million im some sort of camp is fine?
Your arrogance knows no bounds, Stone.
I resent the fact that you accuse me of being “outlandish” for the sake of “trolling.” I genuinely, truly, deeply hope that Israel is able to destroy adequate numbers of Palestinians to force Hamas’s unconditional surrender. In fact, though I realize it’s unlikely, I wish Israel could exterminate the Palestinian people. They’re evil, irredeemable, anti-Semitic terrorists.
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So, Israel’s last-ditch effort to destroy the Middle East then.
The Samson Doctrine.
And the guantareed irradiation of at least several Arab states. And Iran. And Afghanistan.
I’m sure your apocalypyptic worldview wants that.
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Is this the best that 4chan has to offer these days? Because this is just sad.
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I’m embarrassed too.
And then I read the history of 4chan, and realized that their best, even at its heyday, was just as bad.
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What are you dorks blathering on about? 4chan? What’s that? Sounds like some stupid club for aspiring land-grant university students.
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4chan’s “better” trolls are usually more subtle and restrained. The rampant bigotry and direct calls for genocide aren’t good trolling because there’s no meat on that bone, so to speak—it’s just someone being a dick for no reason, not even “for the lulz”. A good troll will make you think twice about what you just read and maybe even change your perspective by a degree or two; a bad troll is only ever a conflict peddler.
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That’s funny. Those “better trolls” rarely existed on 4chan, or at least when I was around.
4chan has ALWAYS been about being edgy and contrarian for the lulz.
The castoffs of the SomethingAwful Forums did create early 4chan. They were banned because they were largely toxic, even for the cesspit that was the SomethingAwful Forums back then.
Also, a good troll gets your attention and fades away. That’s how the Internet got the Rickroll.
The new crop of harassing assholes are the castoffs of the castoffs, people who legit believe in shit ideologies and refuse to even moderate their beliefs in polite society, and a lot of the old guard of 4chan want them gone.
You know you’re toxic when the toxic, radioactive cesspit wants you gone.
Want to bet it -won’t- be applied to Isreaii citizens consuming media advocating for “Price Tag” attacks?
Well, back to the article content, I’m not surprised by this move (independently of the country, it’s not the first country to pass such a “temporary” law after a terrorist attack) but these are rarely effective to stop any form of terrorism.
But since terrorism is the weapon of the poor, virtually anybody can afford it. Our neighbor, our best mate, our sibling, the respected family doctor, etc. installing a strong fear climate that the next attack will be at our door.
So passing a law to prevent such extend could reassure the population (which it’s ironic since anybody could fear to be a terrorist by looking a few pictures), as it’s often asked to government to act such a way.
Now, how much time per day someone has to spend reading terrorism content to be flagged as one? How about keeping contact with someone close that was enrolled as terrorist (to try to persuade him to stop)? What about journalists or historians that need to access such sources for documentation?
They don’t provide any answer, so this is a just another law (even if they’ve go all the resources to pursue arrests based on web history, or much more), but it’s the number of arrests that will decide if they’re serious about it, or if they’re simply waiving their hands to a problem they’ve never found a proper solution for decades (leading to this conflict).
Leats be absolutely clear
Isreal has made it illegal to consume footage of facts and reality of the government’s actions. Because even the country’s own citizens are turning against the government in its response.
The US didn’t ban or block Al Jazeera after 911. One of the more neutral organisations in base news coverage.
Reality here is a case of ‘big stick little dick’ syndrome. Two very weak but heavily armed terrorist governments have decided to slaughter the others’ civilian populations.
Nothing less, nothing more.