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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.
And after Israel gets Google to censor it, that's the only thing you will have. Seriously, Israel thinks reality is "inciting violence." Maybe if their policy wasn't to needlessly murder people, nobody would be violent against them. What else is Israel doing? Oh, they demolish houses of those that commit crimes, but only if they are Arabs. If a Jew does terrorist acts or murders, his house is not demolished, because that would be wrong. Arabs aren't people to these racists.
So the Summary quotes someone else making up shit. That makes it true eh?
Israel is not trying to censor speech. They're trying to stop incitement.
Maybe their soldiers should stop executing people in the streets if they don't want videos of their soldiers executing people in the streets to be on the internet. That would be, like, the fastest way to avoid any more of those videos being posted.
Soldiers in the streets, Israeli tactics right or wrong. Neither of those are the topic of the OP. Why not TRFA before bothering me with this nonsense?
Okay, so going to assume you want terrorists to disseminate training, propaganda, and ethnically motivated hate speech material so that they can gleefully murder more civilians.
How many other terror groups outside of Palestine do you wholeheartedly support in this way? Are you a fan of Daesh/ISIS? Do you think El-Shabab are nice guys? How about Boko Haram? All of them have similar grievances with the West, Jews, and Post Enlightenment society in general. Should they also be allowed to spread recruiting and training material in public forums?
You sure you've thought this through?
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Actually, not in the case of the videos in question here.
They depict "violence" against armed terrorist while actively trying to kill Israelis. They provide names of poor kids killed by the vicious Israelis, while innocently strolling along the streets of Israel, peacefully stabbing bystanders. They glorify the heaven rewards you will get if you do the same.
The article makes it sound like Israel is trying to silence the Palestinians from presenting their side. This is not the case (at least in this particular instance). We are talking about videos directed at Palestinians, using lies and distortions in order to incite impressionable Palestinians, often teenagers and children (some of the recent stabbing were done by 12 and 13 years olds) to go out and get themselves killed while trying to kill Jews.
This is not political. This is plain incitement to violence.
Shachar
Actually, YouTube removed videos which were encouraging Palestinians to kill Israelis (and were actually faked), and were clearly in violation of TOS. The stories don't say anything about removing videos of real Israeli attacks on Palestinians. If you search YouTube for "israeli human rights abuses", you'll still find lots of hits.
http://www.reuters.com/article...
Israel says Facebook, YouTube videos encouraging Palestinian attacks
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-...
YouTube Removes Inciting Videos Portraying Murder of Jews, at Israel's Request
Hamas uploaded one video dramatizing stabbing death of two Jews, while cartoon reenacted murder of Eitam and Naama Henkin in West Bank.
Reuters and Haaretz
Oct 08, 2015 8:06 PM
Exaggeration works to the advantage of both sides.
The Israeli organizations like to say, we talked to Google and were successful in getting Google to remove videos, we're effective, and please contribute money to our ongoing effort.
The Palestinian organizations like to say, the Israelis are censoring Google, support our organization and fight this.
Please send me examples to my private mail (I think this is off topic here).
Just because bad reporting is not limited to Slashdot (the linked English article is below bad) does not mean the subject here isn't worth discussing. I think the discussion totally misses the real subject matter. There are a host of important things to consider here, and I doubt any will be discussed in the comments, mostly because the subject matter says "Israel".
Does it make sense to try and block incitement to violence? Are there freedom of speech implications here? Would such a block, even assuming it would hold and be effective for Youtube and Facebook, even help?
What are Youtube and Facebook's moral and legal obligations here? Does the fact that both have development centers in Israel change anything?
Shachar
I tell my military friends that I respect that they exist and do what they do. I rarely agree with why they do it and don't respect anyone who believes in patriotism or nationalism. I don't believe being a soldier makes someone a hero. I don't believe modern militaries tend to act in the right most of the time. Being a soldier is a job... nothing more. It's no different than driving a bus or picking up trash. And... if you think I'm disrespecting the soldiers by saying this, that's bullshit. I've lived through bus strikes and garbage collector strikes and I believe we as a community suffered greatly during these times. The guy driving this bus and the guy picking up the trash are critical to our lives and our survival as a culture. Do you have any idea how many lives a year garbage collectors save? To give you a hint, it's far more than a soldier will in decades of service. Do you have any idea how many people die from illness in a society where garbage isn't properly managed?
Policemen, firemen, garbage collectors, doctors, soldiers are all very very very important jobs. We should appreciate people who do them and choose to dig through the filth of society to make our lives better. That said... a soldier deserves no more special treatment than a doctor or a garbage collector. It's just a job.
This post, and many others in this thread have been modded "-1 Troll" just because they don't show Israel as an evil state bent on the destruction of human kind.
No, it's because it's self-serving bullshit posted by an anonymous coward, and therefore should be ignored at best, or alternately modded down as propaganda. Especially the line "The biggest complaint arabs have is checkpoints" when in fact Israel is bulldozing crops, removing water systems, etc.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Who decides where the line is? What about videos by US militia training people how to use weapons? Would a recruitment video for a dangerous cult like Scientology, that engages in criminal activity and brainwashing, be banned?
I fully accept that Daesh recruitment videos may lead to there being more terrorism, but I'd prefer to use my own freedom of speech to counter them instead of going down the censorship route. Freedom is very hard won, and not to be given away lightly, especially in exchange for some perceived safety.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
A couple of points. First, the UN does not have the legal authority to renounce Israel's sovereignty. Second, the only way to impose peace on Palestine/Israel would be to convince both sides that they are willing to accept anything to end the conflict. At this moment, the Israelis have indicated a willingness to accept anything short of losing sovereignty over the bulk of the territory which they are currently considered to be sovereign in order to attain peace.(whether or not they are truly willing to do so is unknown because of the other side). On the other hand, the Arabs have indicated that they are only willing to accept peace on the basis of the dissolution of Israel (with some indications that this would involve the death or expulsion of all Jews, although whether that is genuine or just a posture by some is open to debate. If I was an Israeli, I would be inclined to believe that it was genuine.).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison