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In France, Most Comments on Gaza Conflict Yanked From Mainstream News Sites
An anonymous reader writes with
an unpleasant statistic from France, quoting David Corchia, who heads a service employed by large French news organizations to sift through and moderate comments made on their sites. Quoting YNet News:
Corchia says that as an online moderator, generally 25% to 40% of comments are banned. Moderators are assigned with the task of filtering comments in accordance with France's legal system, including those that are racist, anti-Semitic or discriminatory. Regarding the war between the Israelis and Hamas, however, Corchia notes that some 95% of online comments made by French users are removed. "There are three times as many comments than normal, all linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," added Jeremie Mani, head of another moderation company Netino. "We see racist or anti-Semitic messages, very violent, that also take aim at politicians and the media, sometimes by giving journalists' contact details," he added. "This sickening content is peculiar to this conflict. The war in Syria does not trigger these kinds of comments."
The problem with most of these comments is that they are vile and hate-filled toward not just a country, but an entire religion.
Europeans have laws against hate speech. That's why these comments are being deleted.
Personally, I'd leave these comments in place. It shows the hatred that is being fomented in many Islamic middle eastern countries. We should know what they really think and why.
I think deleting those comments is actually masking a terrible problem.
That mandate is false and debunked since two weeks already, it never existed.
Hint: genital mutilation is not an islamic thing but an africans natural religions/tribal thing.
I don't know many 'arabs' got killed in this YEAR in Syria, but I know the death toll in Palestine was over 1000 in the last two weeks, perhaps you can enlighten us how that will scale for the rest of the year?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The problem is that in terms of mathematical relativity, the fighting in Gaza is not a terribly important ongoing conflict.
There are an *exponentially* larger number of ongoing casualties in Syria. Where is the outrage?
There are more ongoing casualties in Sudan, Pakistan and other non-reported conflicts as well. Where are the street protests?
Selective outrage is inherently indicative of a motivation *other* than humanitarian concern.
Great stats here: http://notquant.com/the-israel...
We must care about civilian casualties. But we must not care more about some casualties over others.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
It *used* to be that the religious issues were just a distraction, but that is no longer the case. Islam is reverting to what it was originally: A fascist political movement aimed at world control, masquerading as a religion. It is utterly impossible to compromise with hard-line Muslims because their very religion rejects the idea of compromise with non-Muslims. Non-Muslims are to be killed or subjugated; that is prescribed directly in Islamic religious writings.
On the Jewish side, there has been a similar move to hard-line positions, though to a less dangerous degree than in Islam. The hard-line Jewish extremists want to take over the whole of "Eretz Yisrael." They are not interested in subjugating the entire world.
They are being forced to filter "illegal" eg hate/racist/defamatory comments.
The not-so-ironic thing is that a French media moderator is moderating comments on a conflict that is hate-based.
My personal opinion on the entire thing is "there will never be peace in the middle east", Not till those petrodollars run out. Like the thing that I find stupid is the sheer amount of waste Burj Khalifa (Dubai,UAE) and the Mile-high tower (Kingdom Tower,Jeddah, Saudi Arabia) are to their local economy. They build these enormous wealth-measuring buildings, but have none of the support infrastructure (The Burj, has all it's sewage, trucked out) for it to be functional. For the same price, they can build an entire city of smaller, efficient buildings, with all the support infrastructure to make Manhattan look like a dump.)
So all these conflicts in the middle east, are just proxy wars between the uneducated "have-not"'s. The entire Gaza thing is the middle eastern states playing a high-stakes form of chicken with Israel. Nobody wants to be caught funding the terrorists, but "looking a blind eye away" while things are allowed to happen, over and over again, it's getting old. I'd sooner believe Iran is building a peaceful nuclear plant, than there ever being peace between Israel and any of it's neighbors. At some point this is all going to boil over and the "holy land" gets nuked by someone playing the "if I can't have it, you can't have it either" card.
I would say the Russians were victimized a lot more than the Jews, and maybe even in a more cruel way like in the case of the starving of Leningrad. Israel is being fascist at the moment and I agree, it is awful to consider that Jewish people in Israel are today doing the same thing to others that they suffered in the not so distant past. Perhaps it is time to think about this whole hatred and land grabbing mentality again. Those Palestinian rockets are being launched for a reason.
My non-jewish family was victimized by fascism. But I don't run around yelling "I'm offended!" every time the subject is brought up. My family moved on 5 decades ago, and I still think it took the a bloody long time to do it.
Seriously, stop it. Just let it go and move on. You're doing nobody any good.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
From the Israeli Declaration of Independence:
THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open to the immigration of Jews from all countries of their dispersion; will promote the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; will be based on the precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Hebrew Prophets; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture; will safeguard the sanctity and inviolability of the shrines and Holy Places of all religions; and will dedicate itself to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
From the Hamas charter:
Ye are the best nation that hath been raised up unto mankind: ye command that which is just, and ye forbid that which is unjust, and ye believe in Allah. And if they who have received the scriptures had believed, it had surely been the better for them: there are believers among them, but the greater part of them are transgressors. They shall not hurt you, unless with a slight hurt; and if they fight against you, they shall turn their backs to you, and they shall not be helped. They are smitten with vileness wheresoever they are found; unless they obtain security by entering into a treaty with Allah, and a treaty with men; and they draw on themselves indignation from Allah, and they are afflicted with poverty. This they suffer, because they disbelieved the signs of Allah, and slew the prophets unjustly; this, because they were rebellious, and transgressed.
This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement.
Any procedure in contradiction to Islamic Sharia, where Palestine is concerned, is null and void.
It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Moslem generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.
Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people. "May the cowards never sleep."
The Islamic Resistance Movement consider itself to be the spearhead of the circle of struggle with world Zionism and a step on the road. The Movement adds its efforts to the efforts of all those who are active in the Palestinian arena. Arab and Islamic Peoples should augment by further steps on their part; Islamic groupings all over the Arab world should also do the same, since all of these are the best-equipped for the future role in the fight with the warmongering Jews.
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
This sickening content is peculiar to this conflict. The war in Syria does not trigger these kinds of comments.
The war in Syria doesn't involve a nuclear state casually bulldozing civilian houses, complete with civilians inside, all because a handful of pesky terrorists keep lobbing ineffective bombs into empty fields.
Israel's problem really boils down to a matter of proportion. Yes, they have an unenviable situation to deal with; but they have chosen to respond in a way that makes them look like monsters (to the point that even many Jewish Israelis consider their government's behavior nothing short of reprehensible). When you cook ants with a magnifying glass, no one blames the ants, even if one or two do manage to sting you.
As for the FP's hypothetical French forum moderator - You count as part of the problem. When people can freely say things such as what I wrote above, they can contribute to the discussion, sometimes even vent a bit, and move on. When, however, fairly peaceful discussion vanishes under some bullshit pretense of racism - People then feel the need to escalate the impact of their few words making it through to other eyes.
Have you noticed what their neighbors are doing to their citizens? I would rather be a non-Jewish citizen of Israel than a citizen of the neighboring countries.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
If you look at military spending as a percentage of GDP, Israel spends 1.5x as much as the US. 2% of Israel's population is active military. If you include reservists, that goes up to 9%. Compare this to 0.2% and 0.4%, respectively, for the US.
Israel is a country that is largely lead by war heros from the 60s and 70s and their acolytes. Let's look at the recent PMs of Israel: Netanyahu (former IDF commando), Ehud Barak (former chief of staff of the IDF), Shimon Peres (former defense minister), Ariel Sharon (former IDF general, former minister of defense), Yitzhak Rabin (former chief of staff of the IDF), Yitzhak Shamir (former Mossad agent). The only PM in the past 40 years who didn't have significant connections to the Israeli defense establishment was Ehud Olmert. (He didn't do anything significant beyond the compulsory military service.) If you look at the financial ties between Israeli government officials and major defense companies, things get even more mixed up.
The fact is that ever since the Camp David Accords and the agreement with Sadat, Israel was never again in danger of being wiped off the map. Sure, there were sporadic threats from groups like Hezbollah, but in these conflicts, Israel was always orders of magnitude more powerful than it's opponent. The Israeli government should have begun massively downsizing it's military, but it did not.
When you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. When you have a huge military, every problem begins to look like one that should be solved by force. When you're country is led by dozens of ex-military and next to no one that was, say, ex-foreign ministry, macho man diplomacy becomes the rule. When you have a former commando negotiating prisoner swap with Palestinians rather than a former diplomat, you end up with commandos going in and rearresting the released prisoners. This incident is just once symptom of a larger problem. The Israeli government hasn't just fallen victim to the pressures of the military-industrial complex; it is the military-industrial complex.
Why would you post the photos and no the whole article which includes quotes by several muslim heads condemning those placards or asking for that demonstration to be banned? Is reality perhaps more complex than what you want people to think?
The "fun" part is that being anti-Israel currently is less antisemitic than it is antifascist...
The "fun" part is how thin that beard is, especially when European Jews are being threatened and attacked as part of the rioting and violence in various European countries when the object of the protests is supposedly Israel.
‘Gas the Jews!’: European anti-Semitism during the Gaza crisis
"They are not screaming 'death to the Israelis' on the streets of Paris, " Roger Cuikerman, head of French Jewish political group CRIF, said. "They are screaming ‘death to the Jews.'" ....
According to the Associated Press, anti-Semitic slogans have popped up in protests inside Germany. "Gas the Jews," has been chanted at some protests, according to the Associated Press
Well, many people have a hard time "thinking straight" when it comes to Israel.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Read up on Sherman's March to the Sea or about German and Japanese casualties during WWII. From the standpoint of fighting a war for survival, which the state of Israel is doing (read the stated goals of Hamas and other Arab organizations which are waging wars of terror against Israel), Israel has inflicted insufficient casualties on the Palestinian Arabs. For that matter, why should Israel be condemned just because they do everything they can to protect their civilians, while their opponents do everything they can to maximize casualties among their own civilians?
Hamas, and other Arab groups fighting against Israel, intentionally take actions so as to maximize the deaths of civilians, and particularly children. They store the missiles they fire at Israeli civilians in schools and hospitals. They use civilians, including children, as human shields while firing on Israeli soldiers. It is Hamas that is responsible for the death toll of civilians in Palestine.
You're saying that it's okay to use terrorism to fight terrorism.
Didn't your mother teach you that two wrongs don't make a right?
I disagree with Hamas methods and I do not in any way support them. But I disagree with Israel's methods as well. Hamas hiding weapons in a school does not justify shelling that school when it is full of children.
Israel is no longer fighting a war for survival. At one point that argument would have been valid but to say so now is ridiculous as no country in the middle east - and most likely not the entire middle east all together - could defeat Israel's military might.
On top of that, Israel is not protecting their own civilians as killing Palestinian civilians will not stop Hamas. It will, in the long run, make Hamas stronger as more Palestinian families lose their loved ones and will do anything to strike back at Israel. Hatred begets hatred, as you should know as you evidently have been begot of hatred.
Per your statement "Israel has inflicted insufficient casualties on the Palestinian Arabs" and the general content of what you are writing it appears that you do not care if those casualties that you wish to inflict are against valid military targets or against civilians. Is that correct?
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
There's also a huge difference between BEING victimized and SAYING you're victimized.
Here's how I see the situation:
During WW2, multiple nations and groups were savagely "victimized" (that's an understatement but we'll go with that as an euphemism): Jews, Gypsies, Poles, homosexuals, etc. It is clear that the most affected were the Jews.
WW2 ended, the deeds were documented, everybody eventually moved on. Everybody but Jews.
Not that I have a problem with that, not at all, people are free to remember the bad things that happened to them, and are free to do that until the end of time. What i have problem with is the fact that their cries became increasingly strident over time. We're currently facing positive discrimination, which is even more ridiculously emphasized that the one regarding black people.
Couple years ago, a lesser government person from my country, due to his severe lack of historical knowledge, said something about the Holocaust, namely he played it down. I don't remember exactly what he said, because I read the statement back then and said "that guy's dumb. So, honey, what do we have for breakfast?" That's exactly how much attention that retard got from me, because that was the attention he was worth. People say dumb things all the time, we don't really pay attention.
BUT! The Jewish association was outraged. How dared he? So they squirmed and pushed and lobbied until that guy was publicly reprimanded by the government and had to go visit the Holocaust Museum in the States, then come back and issue an apology. We, the whole people from my country, had to apologize through our Government for what some dumbass said, and he didn't even really mean it. The poor bastard was uninformed. But nooo, let's not let it go, hurrah, time to rub this in a whole nation's face! said the Jewish Association.
Last Christmas (or Easter? I don't remember. probably Easter) there were some traditional songs being broadcasted over some local county TV station. All nice and good until some song was played which said something about jews, I don't remember what because it was a traditional song (centuries old) and the verses were recited verbatim. It's a documented song, not something made up recently. Anyway, nobody realized it might be offensive to anyone until the very same Jewish association jumped 9 yards and declared that song OFENSIVE and squirmed and pushed and lobbied until the TV station manager was fired and again a public apology had to be issued.
So my advice to Jews and anyone else who acts like that: stop blowing things out of proportion! Your stridence pisses people off and people remember you for being what you don't want to be, rather than what you really are. And to me, you're normal, regular people, not to be hated, not to be looked down at, and to be honest I never ever asked anyone I met what their religion was, because I DO NOT CARE.
But when you act like damsels who faint when they hear the word "spider", you cover yourselves in ridicule. So please, my plea to you is: talk to your representatives ant tell them that not every word issued out of ignorance is a direct attack on your nation.
One more thing: I have a colleague whose last name is Bernstein. I never made the connection until last year when we had a conversation about recent international events and I kept talking about how fascinating is the tech behind the Iron Dome and the Merkava tank, at which point he casually mentioned "yeah i have family in Israel" and only then i realized he was Jewish.
My opinion on him didn't change a bit. It was just a fact, nothing to it.
But if he would have said "yeah we're the best and anyone who messes with us should be put down like a dog" then I would have said "dude you're crazy" and probably wouldn't have talked to him again.
Oh and his manager is German. Heh.
I loathe fanaticism, extremism, the sense of superiority some groups have, etc. And that's valid for ALL groups, regardless of skin color, religion, traditions, past history, etc. And I stop here because most people don't read this wall of text anyway.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
The "fun" part is that being anti-Israel currently is less antisemitic than it is antifascist...
Please explain why Israel or Jews are fascist.
Because they do things like this:
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/...
773. At about 12.50 p.m., Khalid Abd Rabbo, his wife Kawthar, their three daughters, Souad (aged 9), Samar (aged 5) and Amal (aged 3), and his mother, Hajja Souad Abd Rabbo, stepped out of the house, all of them carrying white flags. Less than 10 metres from the door was a tank, turned towards their house. Two soldiers were sitting on top of it having a snack (one was eating chips, the other chocolate, according to one of the witnesses). The family stood still, waiting for orders from the soldiers as to what they should do, but none was given. Without warning, a third soldier emerged from inside the tank and started shooting at the three girls and then also at their grandmother. Several bullets hit Souad in the chest, Amal in the stomach and Samar in the back. Hajja Souad was hit in the lower back and in the left arm.
[The IDF refused to let an ambulance bring them to the hospital, so they walked. Amal and Souad died. Samar had a spinal injury and was left paraplegic for life. The Israeli government never investigated this event or prosecuted the soldier responsible.]