Israeli Bill Would Allow Secret Blacklists For Websites 132
jonklinger writes with the lead from his report on a move to hamper internet freedom in Israel: "Israel is to attempt, again, to pass a bill that authorizes police officers to issue warrants to Internet service providers to block or restrict access to specific websites involved either in gambling, child pornography or copyright infringement. The bill itself proposes that such administrative procedures shall be clandestine and that court decisions shall be made ex-parte, where some of the court's ruling will not be even dislosed to the owner of the website, and the court may hear and use inadmissible evidence."
There's a theocratic aspect to this (Score:5, Informative)
Note that the proposed law gives the power to censor to the Israeli justice minister. Yaakov Neeman, the current justice minister, is kind of weird. News articles:
There's a sizable ultra-orthodox faction in Israel which wants a political system where rabbis run things. Neeman is from that faction. Israel already has rabbinical courts, but they're currently restricted to ruling on religious issues and divorces. Neeman has said he wants to expand the authority of rabbinical courts, which in Israel are dominated by ultra-othodox rabbis.
Ultra-orthodox groups are very anti-Internet. [nymag.com] This goes way beyond censoring pornography. There are special censored ISPs that only allow a list of 400 approved sites, most of which are religious.
So that's where this may be going, or at least where one faction would like to go. (Israel politics is currently deadlocked worse than US politics. There are many parties, none with a majority, and shifting coalitions. Different factions control different ministries as part of the deals made to put coalitions together. Just because the Justice Minister wants something doesn't mean the Government does.)
Re:hitler would be proud (Score:3, Informative)
In other words, people who belong to certain religious group are more equal than others.
Re:This is how it should be... (Score:4, Informative)
The only good news is that I think (hope?) that this proposal has little chance of passing. Past experience with fighting such stupid proposals tells me that we (voice of reason) can usually garner enough support within the parliament to block such stupid law proposals.
Please remember that proposing such laws only require one member of Knesset. Passing them, well, that requires a little more.
Shachar
Re:hitler would be proud (Score:2, Informative)
You're entirely right, except you missed the part where Israel made Meir Kahane's faction illegal in the country.
Contrast this with Hamas or Fatah where Kill all Jews and destroy Israel is literally in their charter.
It might very well be that the view is extreme, but as long as that is the view of their government, that's the main view you have to worry about.
Re:hitler would be proud (Score:5, Informative)
The US specifically defines itself NOT as a Christian state.
Re:hitler would be proud (Score:3, Informative)
You're entirely right, except you missed the part where Israel made Meir Kahane's faction illegal in the country.
Contrast this with Hamas or Fatah where Kill all Jews and destroy Israel is literally in their charter.
It might very well be that the view is extreme, but as long as that is the view of their government, that's the main view you have to worry about.
In 1948 a group of Jewish militia murdered count Folke Bernadotte [wikipedia.org]. This was the same Folke Bernadotte who negotiated with the Nazis for the release of thousands of prisoners form Nazi death camps while most of the rest of the world was refusing to believe these camps existed. Bernadotte then became a central figure in organising a convoy of vehicles [wikipedia.org] to travel from Sweden (running a gauntlet of Allied submarines and naval mines) to collect these people. Clearly these Jewish activists had murdered a man who by rights belonged on that deservedly much admired list of the Righteous among the Nations that the Yad Vashem in Israel keeps. Now if you thought that the state of Israel threw the book at the killers of this man, you would be wrong. They did convict them of murder but then immediately pardoned them. One of the shot callers behind the murder, Nathan Yellin-Mor, was even elected to the Knesset. The moral of this story is that the state of Israel has a long history, going back to it's foundation, of appearing to severely punish extremists like the Kahane faction only to let them off the hook once Israel's leaders feel the dust has settled.
P.S. In case you are wondering, the last time I checked Bernadotte had still not been added to the list of Righteous among the Nations even though his convoy rescued hundreds of Danish Jews from Theresienstadt concentration camp and thereby from certain death. The murder of Bernadotte continues to clog up relations between Sweden and Israel today, over half a century later.