Once it fell to politicians and diplomats to solve international conflicts. Now, according to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, responsibility lies with social media.
Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, headed off to Silicon Valley to meet senior executives at Google and its subsidiary YouTube late last month. Her task was to persuade them that, for the sake of peace, they must censor the growing number of Palestinian videos posted on YouTube.
Netanyahu claims these videos spur other Palestinians to carry out attacks, exemplified by the weeks of stabbings and car rammings against Israeli soldiers and civilians.
After the meeting, the foreign ministry issued a press release claiming Google had joined Israel’s “war against incitement”, and would establish a “joint apparatus” to prevent the posting of “inflammatory” videos. Google denied last week that any agreement was reached.
On other fronts of this so-called war, the Israeli army has shut down three West Bank radio stations, accusing them of fomenting unrest. And inside Israel, officials have shut a newspaper and a separate website catering to Israel’s large Palestinian minority.
Meanwhile, Palestinians, including children, are being arrested over their Facebook posts. Others accused by Netanyahu of spreading terror-like incitement include Hamas, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian education system, Palestinian parties in Israel’s parliament and human rights organisations.
There is a deep cynicism at work here.
True, Palestinians are enraged by footage showing their compatriots shot or executed by Israelis, often after they have been disarmed or cornered, or – in the case of two teenage girls last month – badly injured.
But in many cases such videos are posted not by Palestinians but by ordinary Israelis or their government as proof of a supposed Palestinian “barbarism”.
Most Palestinian videos are simply a record of their bitter experiences of occupation at the hands of soldiers and settlers. It is these experiences, not the videos, that drive Palestinians to breaking point.
A “war on incitement” waged through YouTube and Facebook won’t change Palestinian suffering. But it may, Netanyahu presumably hopes, conceal Israel’s brutality from the eyes of the world.
Unrest has escalated of late not because of social media but because Palestinians, faced with an Israeli government implacably opposed to ending the occupation, are losing all hope.
Israel’s generals have warned Netanyahu that without a diplomatic process there will be no end to the attacks. Desperate to obscure this obvious truth, the Israeli right needs to blame everything apart from its own uncompromising ideology.
Israel’s battle against “incitement” is not just meant to deflect attention from the right’s failing policies. It is also a form of incitement itself, and it is no surprise the campaign is led by two masters of provocation: Netanyahu and Hotovely.
Israel has accused Palestinians of incitement for suggesting that Al Aqsa, the much-revered mosque in Jerusalem, is under threat, yet Hotovely recently said her “dream” was to see the Israeli flag flying at Al Aqsa.
There was a reminder, too, of Netanyahu’s own dismal record. An investigation was dropped last month against the prime minister over his warnings, using Israeli terminology for a military emergency, that Palestinian citizens were coming out “in droves” to vote in March’s general election.
A consequence of government-inspired incitement is an ever uglier climate. In many towns, crowds calling “death to the Arabs” barely raise an eyebrow any more.
The justice minister, Ayelet Shaked, has backed a bill to stigmatise Israeli human-rights groups that receive foreign, mostly European, funding. And the culture minister, Miri Regev, demanded that films showing in an Israeli festival about the Nakba, the Palestinians’ mass dispossession in 1948, be vetted for “incitement” and the cinemas showing them threatened with defunding.
Public meetings with groups such as Breaking the Silence, Israeli army veterans who want to shed light on the occupation, are being cancelled under police pressure.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, is giving a free hand to far right news sites as they make false and pernicious claims.
One, Newsdesk Israel, took a four-year-old video of Palestinians revelling at their acceptance into the United Nations and repackaged it as footage of Palestinians celebrating ISIL’s massacres in Paris. Another fabricated report suggested Palestinian citizens were proselytising for ISIL by blasting its songs on their car stereos.
In fact, no target seems too big to avoid the Israeli right’s defamation – not even Europe, Israel’s largest trading partner.
Israeli politicians have misrepresented as a full-blown boycott the EU’s recent tepid move to label products from illegal West Bank settlements and thereby deny them special customs exemptions reserved for Israeli products. The right argues Israel is being uniquely punished by Europe, when in truth the EU has enforced economic sanctions, not just labelling, against 36 countries.
Incitement does indeed pose a threat to the future of Israelis and Palestinians. But it is to be found in the falsehoods promoted by Netanyahu and his ministers, not the bitter truths being posted on YouTube.
A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.
It isn’t just youtube under attack, but well-known “Women in Black” who were harrassed by police under the guise of “endangering state security” for videoing a counter-protest that included a couple soldiers. Two were arrested and released and their cameras and memory cards eventually released (after lawyer intervened). As the Women in Black broke no laws (at least as of now there isn’t such law, but as the zionist state is moving at warp speed to eliminate any rights to freedom of speech, assembly, thought and freedom to video a protest) the 2 were released without charges. I’m sure Ms. Hotovely and Ms. Shaked will work towards restricting freedom of speech by the end of the week, just another Hannukah miracle in the only democracy in the middle east, right? As the police/military were caught looking their usual stupid selves, instead of stating the Women in Black were innocent of any wrong, stated “attempts to create provocations will not make police any less diligent in carrying out their duty on behalf of the public”, IOW, another WTF response to a situation that involved no provocation nor required any diligence of the police.
By +972 Blog
|Published December 6, 2015
When filming a protest ‘endangers state security’
Anti-occupation activists say that two soldiers threatened them, and when they called police, the cops detained them instead — on suspicion of endangering state security.
By Michael Salisbury-Corech
Like every week the past 26 years, a group called “Women in Black” held a demonstration against the occupation in Jerusalem’s Paris Square last Friday. Across the street, around five people held a counter protest, which two Israeli soldiers eventually joined.
At some point, the soldiers decided to cross the street, and according to Women in Black activists threatened them and demanded that they stop filming — because they are soldiers.
Feeling threatened, the protesters called police. Some 15 minutes later, several officers arrived. The officers also threatened the Women in Black protesters that if they didn’t stop filming and delete their video that they would be detained on suspicion of “harming state security.”
There is no law in Israel that forbids photographing or filming in a public space, even of soldiers. There is no small amount of case law upholding that principle. The activists tried to explain that to the officers — to no avail.
When the activists refused to stop filming and delete their footage, two of them were indeed detained and taken to a police station at which point police confiscated their cameras.
The activists were not ever questioned about any suspected crime and were released about 30 minutes after arriving at the police station. Officers refused to return their camera equipment and memory cards. Only after an attorney intervened did officers return the cameras and memory cards.
+972’s Hebrew-language sister site, Local Call, sent the video to a police spokesperson along with a number of questions: Does Israel Police believe that it is illegal to film or photograph soldiers on a public street? Do such photographs or footage constitute harm to state security in its view? And did police transfer the activists complaints about being threatened by the soldiers’ to military police.
The only response we received was that “the film shows only part of the full picture, in which after a call to police, [officers] conducted an normal examination, during which the complaint was checked comprehensively, including with the appropriate professional ranks within the police, at the end of which nobody was arrested and nothing was seized.”
The police spokesperson also added that “attempts to create provocations will not make police any less diligent in carrying out their duty on behalf of the public.” It was unclear to which provocation they referred: the activists, the soldiers or the police officers.
the idea of incitement, the accusation, is a propaganda tool by design. it didn’t just start, it’s been a long time in the making. it’s a talking point. as israel incites it accuses it’s enemies of incitement. it’s all just a distraction/diversion to throw us off base.
YouTube is a NECESSARY defense against the mainstream media, which is already being strangled by Israel. YouTube is a bastion of free speech today. I hope the Google executives will study this issue thoroughly before succumbing to Israel’s pressure. Freedom of speech and REAL democracy is at stake.
e.g. http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/israel/freedman.htm
Is it possible to be the “only Democracy in the Middle East” when the rules of Democracy do not apply to everyone?
I didn’t think so.
RE: “On other fronts of this so-called war, the Israeli army has shut down three West Bank radio stations, accusing them of fomenting unrest. And inside Israel, officials have shut a newspaper and a separate website catering to Israel’s large Palestinian minority. . . Public meetings with groups such as Breaking the Silence, Israeli army veterans who want to shed light on the occupation, are being cancelled under police pressure. Netanyahu, meanwhile, is giving a free hand to far right news sites as they make false and pernicious claims.” ~ Jonathan Cook
SEE: “Who Will Save Israel” | by Uri Avnery | zope.gush-shalom.org | May 23, 2015
ENTIRE COMMENTARY – http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1432296815/