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Israel Meets With Google and YouTube To Discuss Censoring Videos (middleeastmonitor.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Various sources report Israel's Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Tzipi Hotovely meeting with representatives of Google and YouTube to discuss censoring Palestinian videos believed to incite violence.
Original aricle (in Hebrew) from Maariv
The open question is how Google and Youtube will define "inciting violence."
Currently, all foreign journalists in the Palestinian territories are required to register with the Israeli military, and all footage must be approved through the Israeli Military Censor's office before being released. However, according to the article in alternet individual Palestinians have been uploading videos showing violence by Israeli soldiers, including execution-style killings, and highlighting the living conditions in the territories, which Israeli authorities consider inflammatory.
>> individual Palestinians have been uploading videos showing violence by Israeli soldiers, including execution-style killings
I think all Israel would need to do is reference YouTube's own Terms of Service, which prohibit videos featuring illegal acts, right? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_YouTube) Or maybe it could copyright all videos featuring its soldiers and go the German route (where YouTube would be liable for violating copyright by hosting videos). /snark
Sadly there is actual video evidence against israeli side. This is why they are asking help from google to censor the other side, they no longer can censor the palestinians independently.
sadly both sides are acting atrociously.
That does not make them morally equivalent. Israel has far more power, and has far more options. Their violence is state-sanctioned, while most Palestinian violence is perpetrated by individuals. But most importantly, as an American, I object to Israel's violence because it is done, in part, with my tax dollars, in the form of military aid and loan guarantees.
Just wait until someone murders your children as you wait for a bus, or throws a brick through your windshield while you're driving to work. You might start to think differently about "soldiers committing violence."
It's not simply violence, it's illegal violence such as crimes against humanity which is punishable by universal law. The violence is targeting civilians that are occupied by Israel on palestinian land.
" including execution-style killings"
Now something like this just demands a cite. Otherwise, you're just making shit up.
It is a fact that there are 1.7 million Arab and Muslim citizens of Israel proper. They all have the same civil and religious rights as Jews and Christians. It is also a fact in all the Middle East, those are the only Arabs and Muslims that have protected civil and religious rights.
To be more clear, Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Women, Gays, Arabs and Muslims have full religious and civil rights.
They go about their daily lives, shop at Israeli malls, use Israeli services, frequent Israeli restaurants and bars, send their children to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and receive Israeli social and health benefits.
Israeli Arabs are the most educated Arabs in the world, with the best living standards and opportunities in the region.
Arabs serve as judges in the Israel Supreme Court;
Some of the best doctors in Israel are Arabs, working in almost every hospital in the country;
They vote in open and free elections. They can run for office in these elections.
In fact there are 16 Arab members of parliament who enjoy the right to criticize the government – a right that they exhaust to the fullest – protected by the freedom of speech;
Arabs win popular reality shows;
And you can even find Arab diplomats like George Deek.
THAT IS HOW ISRAEL TREATS NON JEWS IN ISRAEL.
The videos (and posts) that say otherwise are lies, and incitement. The exact kind of slander that should removed.
jews. always victims in their own minds, even when they are the victimizers. enough said.
I think nearly everyone that's commented on this so far has either missed the point, gone off the deep end, or strayed way off topic.
Israel is not trying to censor speech. They're trying to stop incitement.
In other words, they're trying to stop predominantly arabic language terrorist recruiting and training material.
If you have a rudimentary grasp of Arabic, I highly recommend searching for recruiting and training material put out by groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, even Daesh. Though, in truth, if you did, you would probably get flagged by homeland security in whatever country you're in. In that pile there are some real classics like How to Make a Pipe Bomb, Optimal Use of a Suicide Vest, and (my favorite) How to Stab a Jew. These videos are already in violation of Youtube terms of service on at least three counts I can think of.
Nobody is going to take down your stupid "fuck israel" video, and seriously, nobody even wants to.
Unless you're a senior member of Hamas, your opinions simply don't matter to anyone who has any kind of sway in the government.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Yeah, more violence sure will solve the problem.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
as long as the students at these colleges in the states today dont get to decide whats offensive we should be good
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I'll play devil's advocate:
Firstly, the mandatory [citation needed].
Also, for all Israel's crimes, it's fairly clear they aren't set on maximising needless murder. If they wanted to crush every living soul in Palestine, let's be serious: no-one would stop them. But it doesn't happen. Why? Because Israel doesn't want to do that.
The same certainly can't be said of Hamas, who would kill all Jews if they had their way (they're not exactly shy about this). But being morally superior to Hamas isn't saying much, of course.
Yes they do, which is why they've been the most patient of all the Middle Eastern countries. They have to deal with a Palestinian Government which has IN ITS CHARTER the goal of the total destruction of Israel. How exactly do you think Israel can realistically deal with neighbors of that caliber, also knowing the world's spotlight is always on them and almost never on what their enemies are doing?
Both sides are guilt of atrocities and I take no sides in the conflict. But Israel can't win with some people it seems. People just don't want to believe that their enemies are outright, callous fucks as well.
Israel locks up millions of people in what amounts to the largest concentration camps in human history and the government of Israel abuses it's power to ethnically cleanse vast areas of the Palestinian territories it occupies (some Israeli politico called it 'smile and annex'). Now the Israelis want to get Google and Facebook to suppress videos that show their how their soldiers act in these giant concentration camps and how they go about implementing the Israeli government's policy of ethnic cleansing. I am alarmed that Google and Facebook even consented to conduct talks about suppressing videos of Israeli troops summarily executing prisoners because it indicates that they are open to the idea of actually doing it. If Israel really wants to prevent attacks by Palestinian youths angry about Israeli soldiers summarily executing prisoners and videos showing the shitty living conditions in it's monster sized concentration camps Israel should consider prosecuting soldiers who do such things and improving the discipline of it's army and improving living conditions in the concentration camps rather than trying to solve the problem by suppressing the evidence of this. Not that this really matters. Firstly the Palestinians will find other ways of making their videos public and Israel is in for a game of whack-a-mole that it just can't win. Secondly, who forgot to educate that pompous git Benjamin Netanyahu and his ilk about the Streisand effect? ...whoever it was did the Palestinians a big favour.
I think nearly everyone that's commented on this so far has either missed the point, gone off the deep end, or strayed way off topic.
Israel is not trying to censor speech. They're trying to stop incitement.
... by censorship.
In other words, they're trying to stop predominantly arabic language terrorist recruiting and training material.
Trying to stop people from saying something you don't want them to say is known as "censorship". What you're saying here is "I think that in this case censorship is justified."
I admit to some mixed feelings here. I'd like to see videos recruiting people to terrorism pulled down... but I'm skeptical about giving anybody the authority to decide which videos, because that authority can be misused. As has been pointed out, freedom of speech really isn't freedom of speech until it includes allowing people to say things that you personally don't like.
I'm afraid I'd err on the side of freedom here. I don't know if I can trust the government-- any government, but least of all the Israeli government--with the power to decide what to censor.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
There is no Israel, there is only occupied Palestine.
If the land is Israel, why don't its citizens get to vote in Israeli elections?
Except it is quite explicitly not theirs by both international and even israeli law. And since the borders are locked down, even if they wanted to leave they would be unable to.
If someone killed my wife and children... I would not be above genocide utilizing a bioweapon, and I would be capable of building such a thing, targeted to a specific set of tribes or genomes
Good luck with that one. The problem here is that the two ethnic groups are almost the same: they're both Semitic people, and are extremely closely related genetically. Any bio-weapon targeting Jewish genetics is also going to affect Arabs, and vice-versa.
Something like that might work if, for instance, the Nigerians were really pissed at the Chinese. But with most cases where some ethnic group really hates some other ethnic group, the two groups are more similar to each other than to anyone else. It's kinda like all those cases you see where there's a family-run restaurant, but two brothers in the family have a big fight and suddenly there's two restaurants, the original one, and then a new one across the street with the exact same menu and almost same name.
One has a totalitarian martyrhood culture, and the other is using them as substitute culprits to avenge the Holocaust on. Why side with either? Unless, of course, your apocalyptic cult sees Israel as a key to its end-of-the-world prophecies, which seems to be the case for alarmingly many people.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
If they wanted to crush every living soul in Palestine, let's be serious: no-one would stop them.
Wow, what kind of pro-Israel echo chamber do you live in?
I don't know exactly what would happen if Israel embarked on an intense and systematic campaign of genocide (e.g. designed to kill every non-Jew in the West Bank and Gaza in less than a year). But I can guarantee that there would be major international efforts to stop Israel from doing it. At the very least, Israel would face major trade sanctions - along the lines of apartheid South Africa. But there's a good chance that at least a few countries would hit Israel with bombs and missiles. Some might even send in ground troops. The whole situation could easily escalate into a world-wide nuclear war.
Getting back to the whole incitement/propaganda/censorship topic, I have the sense people in the pro-Israel camp are unaware of how much mainstream opinion is shifting against Israel. They seem to imagine that a century from now Israel will still be happily discriminating against people who are not Jewish - e.g. Jewish (only) "right" of "return". But, at the same time, any hints of discrimination against Jewish people will be absolutely crushed - e.g. public careers destroyed by accusations of "antisemitism".
As a matter of basic fairness, though, that doesn't seem sustainable. Eventually everyone's going to have to play by the same rules when it comes to discrimination.
Fair enough for this case, giving you the benefit of the doubt, but there are plenty of situations where the corrupt bunch of extremists currently in charge of Israel do so.
One sided war propaganda from a bunch that very much resemble what the Jewish people had to flee from is the order of the day. If this keeps up Israel is going to be treated like South Africa was some years back.
So, you believe the issue here is about choosing a side? To a certain extent that might be true. But let's be fair, until the UN renounces Israel's sovereignty, takes over, disarms the entire region and enforces peace.. preferably peacefully while treating all the people fairly and with respect, there will be no right side. I don't give a shit if you favor Israelis or Palestinians. They're both a disgrace and behave like something out of a grapes of wrath type experiment.
The issue here is whether or not a nation like Israel should be allowed to censor "their enemy" on YouTube and other sites. I have no love for anyone who preaches hate like the Palestinians and Israelis do. I have no respect for anyone who would look their brother in the eye and see an animal when what they really see is a mirror. But, for a moment, imagine Israel being able to claim the videos you site as instigating violence... they do... only a fool would disagree with you on this. There are many videos like this and if I believed I had the right to have them taken down, I would.
But, what about the video of a crying child who lost his mother or father or sister to bombings and raids led by the Israelis... when that child cries out in fear and terror and agony that the Israelis did this to him. That he hates the people who took someone he loves from him. Would you also agree that this video would insight violence? Would you not agree that only a heartless man would not want to cry for this child? Would you not agree that a fighter would see this as his duty to avenge? Would you agree that this video should be taken down too? I personally wouldn't. A video like this should be seen.
At which point between these extremes do we decide which video is appropriate and which insights violence and which insights violence and should be seen... and which ones shouldn't.
This IS NOT an issue of black and white. While I sympathize with the Israeli leadership that these videos are easily a weapon being used against them... I also sympathize with the Palestinians who lack better channels to communicate and sadly lack better things to communicate about. What's worse is, I feel deeply for the Israelis and the Palestinians who actually believe they are doing the right thing because some fool in "their leadership" has convinced them that this is how they should think and behave.
Israel is a completely failed experiment and a place which could be a world wide symbol of peace representing some of the biggest religions is a cesspool of steaming shit instead. Quit picking a side like Israel or Palestine. Instead fight to have them both dissolved and if the US and UN are going to pay for "peace keeping" in the region, then treat it like post-was Germany and just take the damn thing over and treat it as a haven instead and bring peace there.
> Why don't you list the fucking real atrocities that are going in Syria, or in Africa, or in 100 other places where there is conflict in the world.
Because they're not lobbying Google to censor Youtube uploads of their atrocities. Also, after the atrocities suffered by the Jewish people, we should expect better from Israel. And also, because don't give Syria privileged access to US funding, military hardware, and intelligence reports.
Not generally... there is almost no Semite in modern Jews anymore. There are some left of course, but the blood line is far from being so pure. From thousands of years of mixing the bloodlines during their nomadic movements throughout the world, there's almost nothing left. Chances are, the Jews have far more in common with the Russian, Polish and Germans than with the Arabs. Israeli Jews have practically nothing to do with the ancient Jews. It probably would work.
Of course, you can't dispute this with the Jews... these are people who actually believe in things like the Cohan gene. For people who don't know, Cohans and Levis are bloodlines which probably went extinct 2000 years ago and were extremely rare to begin with as these were the direct descendants of the holiest and the most powerful of people in the Israeli empire. Over history, it has been a great goal for many Jews who were known as Israelites which translates correctly to "The bloodline which designates thee as just another schmuck" to promote themselves to Cohan or Levi by never clearly answering which bloodline they were members of and making enough money to move somewhere else and pretend to be either holy or powerful and change their name to Cohen or Levi in the process. A very important additional benefit of this would be to try and arrange a wife who would make good children for their sons and instead of choosing from the generally short and chubby semetic line, they would somehow stumble upon a man willing to allow his daughter to convert for the right price.
Judaism is one of the more ruthless religions due to their internal conflict... bickering... even hatred of each other. It's as bad as going to Church on Christmas and 95% of the people who go there celebrate the humble life and birth of their lord by dressing up as expensively as possible and showing off their new cars.
OK, I'll give you your citation.
This post refers to the well-known Goldstone report:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It should be noted that the author of the report retracted the claim that it was Israeli government policy to deliberately target civilians. Read the whole wikipedia article or google it for details, TLDR: The report stated that both Hamas and Israel targeted civilians, then the part about Israel targeting civilians was retracted because the author concluded that his sources were bias and inaccurate. Even with that having happened, the anti-Israel crowd still quote the redacted parts of the report because it fits their narrative, and fail to mention the part about Hamas targeting civilians.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
you realize that it's not a concentration camp right? seems like you drank up that cooled real good.
So If you lock up close to 1.9 million people in a limited strip of territory and don't allow them to enter and exit freely, tightly control the influx of supplies and seek to censor and suppress information about what you are doing in there? what is that? The Zionist idea of a holiday park?
It really is super double twisty speak to claim showing acts of violence being committed somehow incites violence, kind of fucking late you know, violence is already being committed. Reality is, showing those acts of violence being committed is putting enormous pressure on, to stop committing those acts of violence. So, question, is it an act of violence for a occupying force to drive around telling families they are going to gas them to death or not, https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (rather ironic considering the source). Honestly it looks like many of the acts of violence committed by the Government controlling that region, are being done purposefully to incite violence in return, so that an excuse can be fabricated to carry genocidal policies, without ramifications from the rest of the world.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
You've got that spot on, I think. But first things first - as always when commenting on these issues, I'll start by stating that I am not, in any way, anti-semitic; I am not against the right of Jews to live and enjoy life and freedom just like everybody else, no matter what their religion or race. I am, however, against the state of affairs that is largely being perpetuated by the State of Israel.
The existence of modern Israel has come about based on a combination of the bad conscience of the Western powers af WWII and the myth of the lost homeland of the Jews. Yes, there was once a nation called Israel, as far as we know - but that nation was itself based on the conquest of a previous nation followed by genocide of the previous inhabitants (if we are to believe the Bible, and who would doubt the Holy Scriptures, eh? Certainly not the Jews, I would have thought). Perhaps we should go and dig out the Filistrians and reinstate them in their rightful homeland? All nations are ephemeral in nature, Israel included.
As for the role of the bad conscience of the West: however atrocious the Holocaust was, it is now part of a history that is getting ever more remote. I think we have learnt the lesson of that and many countries - Germany not least - have redeemed themselves. What happened back then should not be used as a carte blanche to excuse the present days state of Israel for any and all actions they desire to take. On the contrary, the memory of these horrors should inspire the citizens of Israel to be better than their opressors - and far better, not 'only just'. But there is a far more practical consideration: the might of the West is in decline. Soon nations like China and India, and later other nations who have no particular issue either for or against Israel, will play a role that may change the way Israel is being supported beying reason. In light of this, would it not be sensible if Israel started making friends with their neighbors? They can - but not if they allow their own religious extremists and their selfish landgrabbers to rule the country like they seem to do now.
DICE should be ashamed to publicize such trashy liberal propaganda !!
The Palestinian government is run by Hamas & Fatah - DICE has nothing to do with it.
The propaganda problem is with Israel: trying to keep the rest of the world ignorant about their oppression of Palestinians.
It was a war. Shit happens.
No, it wasn't a war. It was a series of heavy-handed, ultra-violent overreactions to minor incidents which themselves were responses to systematic oppression. Military action often does kill civilians, the so-called "collateral damage", but herding groups of unarmed women and children into a building and then deliberately shelling that building to kill them all is not collateral damage; the unarmed civilians were the target.
If you want to understand what's really going on in Israel, I highly recommend you read "Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel", by Max Blumenthal. It's a hard book to read, not because Blumenthal isn't a good writer but because the truth is so horrible. And if you doubt that it is the truth, check the included citations.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Why don't you list the fucking real atrocities that are going in Syria, or in Africa, or in 100 other places where there is conflict in the world.
When the first response to an accusation is "why aren't you looking at some different crime some different place," I read this as an acknowledgement that the accusation is accurate.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com