Self censorship in Israel

A sensible analysis of censorship in Israel:

However, of far greater concern is the less formal punishment which results from stating opinions as innocent as a parity of value between the lives of Jews and Palestinians; or using the word "apartheid" in relation to the occupied Palestinian territories; or suggesting the Israeli army might have committed war crimes in Lebanon or in Gaza.

There is no law against saying these things but there is certainly a price for saying them. Being identified with such opinions might cost one the recommendation of an already wavering superior. It might undermine a shaky friendship. It has even cost me romantic attachments, at their early stages...
...As the political establishment moves to the right the concern is that what are now informal marks of disapproval of leftist views will be legislated into law. The first attempts have already been made, with Yisrael Beiteinu, the far-right party in the ruling coalition, sponsoring laws like a prohibition of marking the day of the Palestinian nakba. The law failed to pass, but a democracy is about more than its laws.

Even if there is no law to curtail freedom of speech, if we are effectively discouraged from speaking through informal means, then this freedom has no real substance. From there it is only a matter of time before this freedom is gone from the law books, as well as from the talk shows, the water-coolers and the living rooms of the country.

La pensée en France sous haute surveillance

Et la police ce sont les nouveaux philosophes. Ironique, non ?

Point de vue
Nous avons besoin des outrances de Siné, par Jean-Marie Laclavetine
LE MONDE | 31.07.08 | 14h00 • Mis à jour le 31.07.08 | 14h00


Bernard-Henri Lévy a raison : ce qui compte, ce sont les mots. La moindre des choses, quand on se livre à un réquisitoire aussi violent que le sien, serait donc de citer les phrases de Siné, afin de montrer l'évidence "odieuse, inexcusable, mortelle" de son fanatisme antisémite. Il s'en garde bien, et pour cause. S'il citait les phrases, le lecteur pourrait se rendre compte d'une autre évidence, pointée avec colère par Gisèle Halimi : dans un procès en justice, il n'y aurait strictement aucune chance pour que Siné, sur la base de ces lignes, soit condamné pour antisémitisme. La philosophie médiatique n'en est pas à une simplification ou un amalgame près pour frapper l'opinion. Inutile de discuter : on sait "ce que pensent les amis de Siné", ces "âmes glauques qui tripatouillent dans les histoires de sang, d'ADN, de génie des peuples, de race". De telles phrases n'appellent pas de réponse. Mais quelques commentaires, tout de même.


Il était prévisible que cette affaire suscite les récurrents effets de manche et sonneries de tocsin. Il n'y a là qu'un symptôme supplémentaire d'un triste état de fait : on ne respire plus, dans ce pays. La France pète de trouille, et ça ne sent pas bon. La poltronnerie de la plupart favorise l'autoritarisme de quelques-uns. Toute pensée, toute parole libres sont immédiatement soumises à un feu roulant d'intimidations, de condamnations ronflantes et sans appel. Comme le dit un proverbe japonais : "Le clou qui dépasse appelle le marteau." Malheur à celui qui critique les replis communautaristes, l'invasion massive du religieux dans l'espace public, la défaite annoncée de la laïcité dont le discours de Latran était un avant-goût, les clés des banlieues remises aux barbus par une république capitularde, l'arrogance grandissante des imams et des rabbins, la montée des intégrismes sous couvert de quête légitime d'identité, la politique israélienne ou palestinienne. Antisémite ! Islamophobe !

La rhétorique victimaire, chère à nos dirigeants, est omniprésente. Philippe Val n'est plus un patron de journal qui a licencié arbitrairement un collaborateur : il devient la victime d'une horde déchaînée dont l'oeil perçant du philosophe a saisi les motivations racistes. Ainsi Jean Sarkozy, bien fils de son père en matière d'arrogance, d'opportunisme et de grossièreté, est transformé en victime d'attaques honteuses dignes du Pilori (un journal antisémite sous l'Occupation) ou de la Milice.

Pourquoi le texte de soutien à Siné a-t-il recueilli plus de 2 000 signatures ? Bernard-Henri Lévy feint d'y voir un signe supplémentaire de la montée de l'antisémitisme en France. Les signataires se sentiront légitimement insultés par une telle accusation, qui n'est pas seulement injuste mais aveugle. Il semble que nos penseurs n'aient pas pris la mesure du sentiment d'asphyxie qui gagne de nombreux concitoyens, dans une société de surveillance mutuelle et de soumission générale. A l'heure où les humoristes graveleux et serviles imposent partout leur présence - et jusque dans l'entourage présidentiel -, nous avons besoin, un besoin vital, des outrances et des gueulantes d'un Siné. Souvenez-vous des couvertures qu'osaient publier il y a vingt ans Charlie Hebdo ou Hara-Kiri, et comparez avec ce qui se publie aujourd'hui : le chemin parcouru est atterrant.


OÙ EST L'OPPOSITION ?


Comme le monde est devenu simple ! La vérité nous est assenée jour après jour par une armée de journalistes conformes et de penseurs autorisés, qui nous débitent à toute heure leurs discours identiques. Où est la presse libre ? Où est l'opposition ? Le seul quotidien estampillé de gauche consacre cinq pages à Carla Sarkozy pour la sortie de son disque, dont les chaînes publiques assurent la promotion. La presse satirique a trempé son esprit d'insolence dans les bénitiers communautaires. Pas un organe de presse, pas une chaîne de télévision qui soit désormais en état de faire entendre une voix discordante. Le Parti communiste a disparu entre deux lames du parquet, l'extrême gauche tapine chez Drucker, le Parti socialiste mijote au tout petit feu des ambitions triviales, les syndicats se laissent tondre la laine sur le dos.

Dans une Europe barricadée, la maison France a fermé portes et fenêtres. La police du langage surveille chacune de nos phrases. Nous vivons dans l'obscurité des vérités communes, des hypocrisies admises, des bienséances cathodiques, des peurs silencieuses, des grandiloquences convenables. Comme il est doux de pleurer ensemble à la libération d'Ingrid Betancourt, tandis qu'on laisse crever en silence Marina Petrella dans sa cellule en attendant de refiler son presque-cadavre à notre ami Berlusconi... Ouvrez ! On étouffe, ici !


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Jean-Marie Laclavetine est écrivain.



Article paru dans l'édition du 01.08.08

Like Sarko, like son: Cartoons, Politics, and Satire in Sarkoland

The President's son – who oozes charm and confidence – became engaged this month to one of the wealthiest young women in France. His fiancée is Jessica Sebaoun-Darty, heiress to the family which owns the Darty electrical goods stores – the French equivalent of Currys. Mme Sebaoun-Darty is Jewish. Persistent media rumours – finally denounced yesterday as false – claimed that Jean Sarkozy intended to convert to Judaism before his marriage. On the basis of these rumours, a radical cartoonist-columnist in Charlie Hebdo suggested earlier this month that Jean Sarkozy was an opportunist who would "go far in life". The Sarkozy family and his fiancée's family threatened to sue the magazine for alleged anti-Semitism. The magazine's editor asked the veteran cartoonist, Siné to retract. He replied: "I would rather cut off my balls."

Remember, the magazine's editor was the one who vehemently defended the freedom of the press to publish the Danish cartoons and his magazine was one among the first to reproduce them.

In French:
Siné: La police de la pensée

The power of satire

When rational discourse becomes impossible, locked in double standards, threats, and guilt, only satire can rescue us from idiocy and bigotry. Thanks to Wolfie and Stef for the links.

"Still, the bulk of my sympathies are with whatever group suffers the most, regardless of how much of the problem is their own damned fault. To feel otherwise would be inhuman. Sometimes it feels as if the Palestinians are only one Gandhi away from fixing their problems. But he’d need to be bulletproof."

"I was happy to hear that NYC didn't allow Iranian President Ahmadinejad to place a wreath at the WTC site. And I was happy that Columbia University is rescinding the offer to let him speak. If you let a guy like that express his views, before long the entire world will want freedom of speech...

...Ahmadinejad also called the holocaust a "myth." Fuck him! A myth is something a society uses to frame their understanding of their world, and act accordingly. It's not as if the world created a whole new country because of holocaust guilt and gives it a free pass no matter what it does. That's Iranian crazy talk. Ahmadinejad can blow me.

...Those Iranians need to learn from the American example. In this country, if the clear majority of the public opposes the continuation of a war, our leaders will tell us we're terrorist-humping idiots and do whatever they damn well please. They might even increase our taxes to do it. That's called leadership."

The Blogosphere: Beyond Manners

A call for manners in the world of nasty blogs.

The blogosphere should not be a free for all place where nastiness is the rule. Moreover, rules for the blogosphere should go beyond pure manners and strive for standards abandoned by mainstream media.
It is important for example to stress the difference between politeness and censorship. Censorship is when we try to hide or supress facts and well crafted arguments and points of view that challenge ours. I don't consider supressing an ill intentioned information or willful propaganda as censorship. I don't consider supressing insults as censorship.
Secondly, arguing is an art that has rules and ehtics and any argument that does not follow some basic logic and honesty about actual facts is not an argument. Propaganda is based on flawed logic and a disregard for facts.
Thirdly, moderation is not a middle of the road position, Aristotle defined it as a point somewhere outside a line formed by the two extremes and not the middle of the line joining the two extremes. True moderation is creative.

Today's political correctness has corrupted the rules of arguing and informing about facts, and the ethics of information and communication. Today's political correctness considers fairness as giving voices to all sides, even though some of them may be lies and pure fabrications and dangerous rethorics. Otherwise how did we come to be poisoned by the Malkins, the O'Reillys, the Hirsi Alis, the Coulters, the Bin Ladens, spitting their hate and their propaganda on mainstream media. On the other hand, today's political correctness in the US leftist and 'liberal' blogopshere condemns censorship except for the criticism of Israel which it censors as 'antisemitic'. Today's political correctness has corrupted our view of the world to the point of putting propaganda and truthful information at the same level obscuring real information in a web of lies and unleashing hate where dialogue should be fostered by objective and respectful information.

Mainstream news outlets have their commercial imperatives, their political allegiances, their corporate interests, and sometimes their hidden political agenda. We, in the blogosphere, have only our conscience to guide us. We should practice freedom of expression with conscience. We should be open and forward coming about our political agenda. We should be ready to offend when it is justified to offend and we should refrain from offending when the only result of the offense is to offend and nothing else.

As a blogger, I encountered some serious problems with some commentators visiting my blog. Insults, manipulation attempts, distortion attempts, propaganda attempts. I finally decided to moderate, and, when not moderating, to erase any comment that does not respect the basic ethics of communication, information and arguing. It was a difficult excercice in the beginning but from the practice emerged some simple rules. No lies, no propaganda, no disrespect, no insults, no faulty logic (this one is tolerated to some point when it is only due to weakness of the intellect and not ill intentioned, after all we are not machines, we are also humans with emotions), and most of all, no manipulation of the information we, bloggers, slave to put on our blogs.

UPDATE: Francis Pisani from Le Monde has a post and a summary of the new code of conduct for bloggers that is being prepared under a wiki form and can be found as a draft that can be commented on this blog.

Main points of the code of conduct:
1) We are responsible of all material published on our blog, posts and comments.
2) We should never publish things online that we cannot state in person.
3) Conflicts should be resolved in private (by email) before becoming public.
4) We should act if somebody attacks unjustly another person on our blog. In private first in order to convince him of changing his wrongful attitude.
5) We should not permit anonymous comments.
6) We should ignore trolls.

From The Guardian: Web Gurus try to banish bad behaviour from the blogosphere.

The ADL, Anti-Semitism and Freedom of Expression

When considering freedom of expression in the US, it seems to me that every hateful bigot has the right to spread his killing words and feel protected by the constitution and by those naive liberals who are trapped in thinking that their first duty is to protect Free expression no matter what...Two recent examples- Michelle Malkin's hateful video on Muslims and the Columbine father accusing the scientific teachings in public schools for being responsible for the shootings - show how hate and bigotry can reach the national stage without provoking any debate other than that of the freedom of expression...It seems as if this principle is an all or none principle.

Well it is actually not when it comes to the criticism of Israel. The cartoon here is from Latuff (Thanks FurGaia)

Tony Judt, a prominent antagonist of the Israel Lobby, was prevented from speaking on october 4th on the lobby in a space rented from the Polish consulate on the basis that he and others, speaking on the Israel lobby, are encouraging anti-semitism. The accusation, which is being defended by Chris Hitchens, came from the ADL, assorted with an implicit threat of legal action.

I think we are going through a process of radicalisation of the public opinion by which honest debates about important matters like the war on Iraq, Lebanon and the situation in the middle east in general are suppressed, information is held from the public by both authorities and news outlets, while everything else from hateful anti-Muslim expressions to provocations and manipulations are unleashed without any reasonable restraint.

In this context, it is very dangerous to leave the debate where it is now, at the level of an unconditional protection of free expression, without trying to regain equal rights for all individuals, to reestablish balance in the public debate and accountablility from our newsmen and women and our leaders.

Freedom of expression was established in a context in which other equally important rights were established; the right to be informed and the duty to inform, the right to exercise one's own civic and democratic responsibilities and the duties that go with them; the right to defend oneself from attacks and the right to be defended against attacks; the right to have access to courts and legislation that protect the citizen and the duty to keep laws and legislations in the sevice of justice. Without the democratic state there can be no democratic virtues. We just have to ask ourselves, are we living the democratic promise in the US right now ? I believe not since George Bush was elected. So lets work to reestablish our basic democratic rights before giving the right to free expression to someone like Ms Malkin.

I would like to quote here Jean Baubérot French historian who teaches the history of Seculairsm at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. Commenting on the recent controversy around the anti-Islamic and offensive publication of Robert Redeker's article and the ensuing controversy, Baubérot writes in Le Monde: '' We are walking on a road lined by two precipices and I am afraid that the intellectuals who defend the freedom of speech of Redeker and the likes are seeing only one precipice and walking backward so horrified from it to fall in the one they did not want to see.''

Defending unconditionally free speech in the actual context amounts to an irresponsible surrender motivated only by fear of what we know to fall in the darkness of what we don't want to face and try to know better.