Free speech on the Israeli internet

In Israel, the Jerusalem Post is reporting that a bill that would hold owners and editors of web sites legally liable for everything posted on their sites, including things in comments or talkback forums, has passed through committee phase and is on track to being approved by the full Parliament. The bill was introduced by the number-two member of Parliament from the Israel Beiteinu party, which is full of neoconservatives, hard-line right-wing immigrants, and modern revisionist Zionists. But the bill helpfully provides an out: sites can absolve themselves of responsibility by incriminating the offending posters. In other words, if you reveal your users’ private details, you’re off the hook.

This is, naturally, completely against the spirit of the open and free exchange of ideas—something that needs to be protected legally if a democracy is to be a true democracy. Just think back to the controversy last year in which Bill O’Reilly appeared to hold the Daily Kos responsible for comments posted on its site, equating the Kos with Nazism because of things that were pulled from the comments section. It’s simply common sense that you can’t make this inference: if it were valid, you could prove that Bill O’Reilly supported death threats against Senator Hillary Clinton, for example. But it’s more than a matter of common sense: it must be enshrined in law that speech belongs to the speaker, and therefore only the speaker can be held responsible for it. Otherwise, calling it ‘free speech’ is a useless term at best and doublespeak at worst.

If this bill passes and becomes Israeli law, it should be reckoned as confirmation—for those who still need it—that the modern Israeli ‘democracy’ is nothing of the sort. On the contrary, the assertion that Israel is a democracy is for the most part a myth peddled to Jews in the Diaspora for political and fundraising purposes. A democracy that inhibits its inhabitants’ free speech does not deserve to be called a democracy. We seem to hold other so-called enlightened Western countries—or at least aspiring enlightened Western countries to these standards. Israel must not be an exception.

[Hat-tip: Jerome, via Shmarya.]