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In France, Most Comments on Gaza Conflict Yanked From Mainstream News Sites

Posted by timothy on from the national-brotherhood-week dept.

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."

10 of 512 comments (clear)

  1. Should Hate be left alone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Or maybe you're not so good at math by popo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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 : )
    1. Re:Or maybe you're not so good at math by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Israel is supposed to be a civilized Western country, so..."

      Dead. Wrong.

      Israel is a civilised *Middle Eastern* country. It is where it is, surrounded by enemies who have sworn to exterminate every last Jew. It doesn't have the luxury of being thousands of miles from the actual conflict, and it can't afford to "try one more time" because any mistake could be fatal. The day that militant Islam starts launching rockets onto the territory of the continental United States -- and it is coming -- people like you will wake up and start baying for blood like so many "savages". How many people did America kill in response to the Twin Towers? How many billions of dollars did it spend on vengeance?

    2. Re:Or maybe you're not so good at math by HiThere · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's not a very moral attidude, but it's a very human one. I'm sorry if your species disappoints you. (I wish it didnt' regularly disappoint me.)

      People tend to care more about a friend's daughter's puppy being rescued from a well than they do about 100.000 people they've never heard of being tortured to death. It's not exactly moral, but it's the way people think. They can empathize with the friend and the daughter, and even with the puppy more than they can with the "larger number than I can picture" number of strangers they've never met.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    3. Re:Or maybe you're not so good at math by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Informative

      My memory is a bit foggy, when was the IRA importing mass shipments of long range artillery rockets from Iran and firing them at the UK?

      They never did. They got the shipments from Libya instead.

      Note that these weapons included rockets propelled grenades, surface to air missiles, flamethrowers, explosives and lots of machine guns.

      By the way, a big source of IRA funding and support was the USA. But everyone has conveniently forgotten that post 9/11. Given the constant US wailing over the funding of terrorism, it'd be impolite to recall the open IRA fundraising activities that occurred in places like Boston.

    4. Re:Or maybe you're not so good at math by dbIII · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem is that any suggestion that the current government of Israel is imperfect is taken as "anti-semitic".

      I like Israel, it has a lot of good things going for it. However currently it is run by a bunch of fucking fascists who have timed yet another pogrom into Gaza to coincide with an election. That seems to run contrary to everything Israel is supposed to stand for.

  3. Re: Like China och USSR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:maybe by war4peace · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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)
  5. Re:maybe by cold+fjord · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  6. Re:maybe by nbauman · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.]