Australia censorship debate censored on Communications minister’s website
It’s all kind of ironic when you think about it
By John Ozimek • The Register • 25th February 2010
If you’re planning to censor free speech on the internet, what better approach to take than to, er, censor debate about how you’re planning to censor free speech on the internet? Brilliant.
That, according to one sharp-eyed Register reader, is the game being played by Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, whose ministerial website is currently set up so as not to show searches on embarrassing terms such as “ISP filtering”.
An increasingly common feature of interactive websites is the “search cloud”: this is a listing out of search terms on a site, often with the added feature that the most frequently appearing terms are picked out by size or weight of type.
The Minister’s official site is no exception, and visitors wishing to know what other visitors are searching on just have to take a look at the search cloud at bottom right of the landing page. Well that’s all they need to do unless they wish to find out about “ISP Filtering”, an issue that has been the cause of some controversy in Australia over the past couple of years.
Nip below the page surface and you will find a clever bit of code that sets a counter to record the frequency of any given term, ranks the most frequently occurring terms – and then sets the size of that term within the cloud according to its rank (highest ranked is largest, lower ranked are smaller).
So far so good, unless the search term happens to be “ISP Filtering”. Because the other clever thing that the code does is to exclude that particular term from the search cloud. Sorted. Or not.
In recent weeks, protests against the minister’s censor-tastic activities have reached new heights, with a DDoS attack directed both at the Australian Parliamentary website and at the site of the Communications Ministry. This action was characterised by Conroy as irresponsible – presumably on the basis that in a democracy, government attitudes should be changed by debate and there is no need for direct action.
By contrast, evidence that the debate is being skewed in this way will undoubtedly add weight to those who claim that the government is not interested in discussing issues – and the only way to make them sit up and listen is through direct action.
Meanwhile, appearing before the Environment, Communications and the Arts Legislation Committee earlier this month, representatives of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), revealed that they would not be pursuing an investigation of how Wikileaks got its hands on ACMA’s list of banned URLs.
While they intend to tighten up processes, in the hope that such a thing will not happen again, they also acknowledged that the Federal Police “considered the prospects of success under their guidelines not sufficiently strong enough to push on with the prosecution”.
In addition, there were other more pressing “operational priorities”. ®
Honduran newspaper discovers murder after 3 days
By Belen Fernandez |Pulse Media | February 27, 2010
A headline in this morning’s edition of the Honduran daily La Tribuna, fervent defender of last year’s coup d’état against President Mel Zelaya, announces the search for the “gang member” that killed the daughter of veteran union organizer and anti-coup resistance figure Pedro Brizuela. The murder of Claudia Larisa Brizuela Rodríguez, which took place on February 24 in the Céleo González neighborhood in the northern city of San Pedro Sula, had not prompted any prior coverage in the mainstream Honduran press despite the papers’ usual predilection for homicide photographs.
Honduran journalistic traditions had also been disrupted in July 2009 by the murder during a demonstration at the Tegucigalpa airport of anti-coup teenager Isis Obed Murillo, whose picture appeared in the daily La Prensa only after his blood had been removed via the Photoshop program. La Tribuna refrains from erasing the pool of blood surrounding Brizuela Rodríguez’ body on her living room floor, or from explaining how it is that members of the National Criminal Investigation Directorate (DNIC) are “hot on the trail” of the alleged gang member when the only identifying information provided by witnesses is that he is short.
During a conversation in San Pedro Sula last August, Pedro Brizuela dismissed his daughter’s concern regarding his potential martyrdom on behalf of the resistance and reasoned that he was already old, anyway. As it turns out, Brizuela Rodríguez’ concern was only slightly misplaced, and she was shot at age 36 upon answering the door at her home—a scene witnessed by her two sons, ages 2 and 8. La Tribuna concludes:
The femicide [of Brizuela Rodríguez] has caused consternation among civil and trade union organizations, due to her father’s decades-long involvement in these sorts of activities.”
El Heraldo had demonstrated similar consternation over popular activity in a July 31 article explaining that anti-coup Honduran teacher Roger Vallejo Soriano had “ended up with a head wound”—which promptly killed him—due to the fact that he had “abandoned his classroom in order to go out and protest in the streets.” Brizuela Rodríguez receives more lenient treatment at the hands of La Tribuna, and instead of being blamed for her own demise is cast as the victim of her father’s past, with any other blame for the crime absorbed by the term “femicide,” as gender-related targeting by gangs is less easy to pin on the current administration of Pepe Lobo.
Lobo, an impending beneficiary of the “greater engagement with the countries of the Western Hemisphere” promised by the U.S. State Department, will rendezvous in Guatemala with Hillary Clinton at the beginning of March. As for why Clinton’s Latin America tour includes both Guatemala and Costa Rica but not Honduras, this question was posed by an attendee at yesterday’s press briefing by Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela, who confirmed the geographical proximity between Central American nations:
QUESTION: And the flight time between Costa Rica and Guatemala and Honduras –
ANSWER: Yeah. Right. Right. Guatemala.
Valenzuela’s discourse does not become any less enigmatic as the briefing progresses, and he proclaims with the regard to the U.S. position on the recent Honduran crisis:
So we see the outcome in Honduras is a very successful case of standing for a very fundamental principle and that is that you cannot tolerate a coup d’état in a country. This sets a terrible precedent. And in that sense, we join the unanimity of the hemisphere in this regard. But at the same time, a solution had to be found to Honduras.”
As is clear from the lack of a U.S. response to the slew of politically-motivated murders that have occurred in the first month of Lobo’s presidential term, these are to be considered part of the Honduran solution and compatible with Clinton’s call for “principled pragmatism” in condemnation of human rights abuses.
House Abandons Privacy Protections, Approves PATRIOT Act
By Jason Ditz | February 26, 2010
The House of Representatives narrowly averted allowing the US Patriot Act to expire, abandoning all the proposed privacy provisions to the bill and approving it exactly as worded by the Senate in a vote earlier this week. Parts of Patriot Act would have expired Sunday, but passed through the Senate without debate.
The vote, incredibly enough titled the “Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act,” passed 315-97. The bill was so named because Senate Democrats inserted the Patriot Act’s extension into a Medicare reform bill.
Three sections of the Patriot Act were to “sunset” this year, including the roving wiretap provision, the library records seizure provision, and the “lone wolf” provision, which permitted surveillance against possible terrorists even if there was no evidence tying them to any terror organization.
The Obama Administration had expressed concern about the addition of civil rights protections to the bill, but said they would consider them so long as they didn’t weaken the president’s powers. In the end such consideration will be unneccesary, because the neither the House nor the Senate saw fit to include any protections at all.
Student Harassed by Teacher for Not Standing for Pledge
Standing Up for the Right to Sit Down
ACLU | February 23, 2010
GERMANTOWN, MD – Despite free speech guarantees in the Bill of Rights, state law, and in the Montgomery County School System’s student guide, the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland (ACLU) has had to take action on behalf of a middle school student who was harassed and humiliated by a teacher for declining to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. In a letter sent February 5 to Khadija F. Barkley, Acting Principal of Roberto Clemente Middle School, the ACLU details why what was done to the traumatized student was wrong and humiliating, and seeks an apology and education on the meaning and importance of the First Amendment.
“The law is crystal clear that a public school cannot embarrass or harass a student for maintaining a respectful silence during the Pledge of Allegiance,” said Ajmel Quereshi, an attorney for the ACLU of Maryland. “While expression of patriotism in unsettling times is a worthy and admirable emotion, the Supreme Court says that patriotism is best honored by venerating the civil liberties enshrined in the Constitution and not by punishing or ridiculing those whose views might differ from our own.”
On January 27, a thirteen-year-old at Roberto Clemente Middle School chose neither to stand nor to speak during the school’s daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. Instead, she sat quietly while students recited the Pledge. Her teacher demanded she stand for the Pledge. When she did not stand, the teacher ordered her to leave the classroom and stand out in the hall. He threatened to give her detention for refusing to stand for the Pledge, and sent her to the counselor’s office. The next day, the student again declined to stand for the pledge. The teacher then called upon a school security officer to escort her out of the classroom and to the school counselor’s office. When the student’s mother reached out to an assistant principal for help in dealing with the teacher’s abusive and improper actions, the official said her daughter should instead apologize for her “defiance.” The student did apologize, twice.
However, the right of a student to refrain from participating during the Pledge has been settled law since 1943, when the Supreme Court held that students could not be forced to salute the flag. As the Court put it then, “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” Here in Maryland, the State Court of Appeals, in 1871, struck down as unconstitutional a state law that required students to salute the flag. Maryland law now explicitly exempts from the Pledge of Allegiance “any student or teacher who wishes to be excused.”
In addition, the Montgomery County school system explicitly acknowledges the student’s right to act as she did in the student handbook provision concerning “Patriotic Exercises”:
“You will have the opportunity to participate in and/or watch patriotic exercises in school.
You cannot be required to say a pledge, sing an anthem, or take part in patriotic exercises. No one will be permitted to intentionally embarrass you if you choose not to participate.”
The young girl was so traumatized by her teacher’s humiliating and inappropriate reaction, that she has not felt comfortable returning to school until the situation is addressed. Faced with the school’s unwillingness to acknowledge that the teacher had acted improperly, the mother contacted the ACLU for assistance. Even more shockingly, following the ACLU’s letter to the acting principal pointing out the law, and seeking an apology and explanation to the class to ease the girl’s return, the school system’s lawyer responded that school officials would not meet with the mother if she brought an ACLU lawyer to the meeting.
Quereshi noted that “every other school system has moved quickly to resolve Pledge of Allegiance issues when the ACLU has contacted them on behalf of students. It is appalling that, in this case, the school is refusing to meet to resolve the issue, and thus keeping the traumatized victim out of school even longer than necessary.”
The ACLU of Maryland’s letter asks that the teacher personally apologize to the student, and promise to respect her right to respectfully dissent in the future. We further request that the assistant principal and teacher review with the class that witnessed this incident the county school policy on patriotic exercise, and explain that trying to force a student to salute the flag is wrong, and it should never have occurred. It is our hope that this incident can be used as an educational opportunity for both students and teachers – as has been done in other Maryland schools when Pledge issues have arisen.
CONTACT: Meredith Curtis, ACLU of Maryland, 410-889-8555; media@aclu-md.org
HRW slams Obama’s rights records
Press TV – February 25, 2010
Obama has been criticized for his failure to deliver on his promise for the closure of the notorious Guantanamo prison.
Human Rights Watch has blasted US President Barack Obama’s change in “rhetoric” rather than “policies” as US transfers more Guantanamo Bay prisoners to Europe.
Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, says that vows of change in the US administration have been limited to presidential rhetoric, US media said Wednesday.
When it came to promoting human rights, there has undoubtedly been a marked improvement in presidential rhetoric, Roth said. However, he added, the translation of those words into deeds remains incomplete.
Roth referred to Obama’s failure to deliver on his promise for the closure of the notorious Guantanamo prison one-year after assuming power and urged the president to “aggressively” pursue the rights agenda.
Human Rights Watch and other Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have called upon the US government to prosecute detainees in regular federal courts, repatriate them, or resettle them in safe countries.
Roth, however, says that Obama’s refusal to end military commissions and detention without trial continues the spirit of Guantanamo even after its complete shutdown in future.
Roth’s assessment comes amid reports of the transfer of four Guantanamo inmates to Spain and Albania from the US military prison in Cuba.
The four “terror suspects” have been identified as Saleh Bin Hadi Asasi, from Tunisia, Sharif Fati Ali al Mishad, from Egypt and Abdul Rauf Omar Mohammad Abu al Qusin from Libya, reports quoted US Justice Department officials as saying on Wednesday. The identity of the fourth captive has not been disclosed.
Around 190 prisoners still remain in custody in the US Naval detention facilities despite Obama’s own deadline to close Guantanamo by February 2010.
Brown sorry for UK shipping kids to colonies
Press TV – February 24, 2010
In an unprecedented move British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologized on Wednesday for the UK’s role in sending an estimated 150,000 children to former colonies, where they were abused.
Brown apologized for the treatment of children by the child migrants program — under which thousands of British children were sent to Commonwealth countries including Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
According to estimates released by the British government many as 150,000 children were separated from their parents and shipped off to the former colonies.
Brown also announced that GBP 6 million will be allocated to bring back the families that were torn apart by the scheme together. The practice was in place between the 1920s and the 1960s.
“To all those former child migrants and their families; to those here with us today and those across the world — to each and every one — I say today we are truly sorry. They were let down,” the British Premier said in a statement to the House of Commons.
“And we are sorry that it has taken so long for this important day to come and for the full and unconditional apology that is justly deserved. They were mostly sent without the consent of their mother or father.”
Brown said that the children “endured harsh conditions, neglect and abuse in the often cold and brutal institutions which received them. Those children were robbed of their childhood: those most precious years of life.”
The prime minister announced in November that he would like to apologize for the actions of previous governments, and held discussions with charities representing the former child migrants.
Forty of the survivors of the practice arrived in London earlier to listen to Brown’s formal statement.
One of the survivors, Rex Wade, was sent to Australia when he was 11 and put in a children’s home in Tasmania. He described it as a military camp, while those in other homes referred to it as slave labor.
“There was no love, there was no kindness. The punishments were incredible, the beatings we used to get for stupid things,” he told The BBC.
“I blamed myself for years that I must have done something really bad to be shipped away to another country. I don’t care what they say, even today, it wasn’t for the good of the child. I didn’t even know I had a mother.”
Prior to Brown’s recent statement, no formal apology had been given for Britain’s role in the tragedy.
Up against the wall: challenging Israel’s impunity
Jamal Juma’, The Electronic Intifada, 24 February 2010
Six years ago, we were busy preparing for the start of the hearings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. The world’s highest court was to decide on the legal consequences of Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank, which together with the network of settlements, military zones and Jewish-only roads annexes around 46 percent of Palestinian West Bank land. The court’s decision, months later, was clear: Israel’s wall is illegal, it needs to be torn down and the international community has an obligation to ensure that it is dismantled.
A victory? Not quite. Until today, neither foreign governments nor the UN have joined the Palestinian communities who have been destroyed by Israel’s wall in their efforts to dismantle it. Still, Palestinian villages show incredible perseverance and creativity in protesting the theft of their land and tearing down pieces of the cement blocks or iron fencing. They do so in the face of overwhelming repression.
The year 2004, when the court was deliberating the case, marked the first wave of repression aimed at the grassroots movement mobilizing against the wall. The key features of the Israeli attacks consisted of killings, mass injuries, arrests and collective punishment measures such as curfews, the closing of access to the villages protesting the wall and the denial of permits for farmers and workers to reach their jobs and lands beyond the wall or the “green line,” the internationally-recognized boundary between Israel and the occupied West Bank. The villages in northwest Jerusalem bore the brunt of Israeli violence.
Today the movement against the apartheid wall is once again in the crosshairs of Israeli repression.
A wave of serial arrests of well-known grassroots human rights defenders began this past summer and escalated in September 2009. A vocal advocate of Palestinian rights, Mohammed Othman, youth coordinator of the Stop the Wall Campaign, was arrested in September when he returned from a speaking tour in Norway. At the beginning of December, Abdullah Abu Rahmah, a key figure in organizing the weekly protests against the wall in the Palestinian village of Bilin, was arrested during a night raid at his home. In mid-December, I was arrested from my home by Israeli forces and taken to an interrogation center where I was kept for one month and then released without charge — a reprisal for my public outcry against Israel’s policies that have reduced Palestine to a number of isolated Bantustans behind cement walls.
We were all interrogated, threatened and intimidated while held in the deplorable conditions of Israeli jails. Othman was released just a day after me, but Abu Rahmah remains in detention.
Similar scenes are playing out in all villages protesting against Israel’s wall across the occupied West Bank. In the Palestinian village of Nilin, to date, Israeli soldiers have shot five persons dead, including a 10-year-old boy, and severely injured almost 500 individuals. Since the beginning of 2010 more than 20 have been arrested.
The arrests do not just focus on active members of the popular committees. Children and minors are particularly targeted because their arrest puts pressure on their families and the community at large. Further, being more vulnerable, Israeli intelligence officers often arrest children to recruit them as collaborators. Lately, in a number of cases, family members of wanted activists have been arrested to pressure those activists to turn themselves in.
Neither I nor other activists in the Stop the Wall Campaign have ever attempted to hide our longtime work as critical voices against Israeli apartheid and the architecture of its occupation. Based on the efforts of the popular committees in each Palestinian village, the Stop the Wall Campaign has been a public and central force of research, analysis and regular news dispatches from our “front line” — our bodies, our voices and our villages up against the wall.
Popular committees have been the basic structure of Palestinian social and political organizing for generations. The creeping criminalization of this social organizing structure therefore not only infringes our right to freedom of expression and association but risks creating a “politicide” and would, if successful, destabilize Palestinian society at its core. During the last six months, this has become Israel’s goal.
In September 2009, at the time when the UN-commissioned Goldstone report was to be officially adopted by the UN Human Rights Council, Palestinian civil society showed its strength in front of Israel and an all-too-compliant Palestinian Authority (PA). The report also contains a chapter describing the sharp increase in Israeli use of force against Palestinians in the West Bank — especially at demonstrations against the wall — during and after the Gaza assault.
The Goldstone report also describes the brutal tactics with which the PA attempted to beat down Palestinian internal dissent at the time. Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Ramallah-based PA, attempted to suppress the findings of the Goldstone report, which corroborates Palestinian and international eyewitness testimonies of war crimes committed by Israel during its invasion of Gaza last winter. After the PA’s action at the Human Rights Council in September 2009, Abbas was met by a hefty uproar within Palestinian society and, eventually, pressured by its own constituents, the PA redacted its position on Goldstone.
Especially now that the president’s mandate is expired (since 26 January — which itself was extended for a year under emergency measures), the PA is keenly aware that it is not strong enough to challenge a united Palestinian society, calling for Israel to be held accountable for its crimes. It is clear that Israel also understands this balance of power and has concluded that Palestinian civil society is a force to be reckoned with and therefore should be weakened, if not eliminated.
In a situation where our top leadership is both de jure out of office and de facto too weak to stand up to Israeli and international pressure to defend our interests, such a weakening of civil society would allow Israel even more room to continue its crimes with impunity.
From the bombs dropped in Gaza on an entrapped civilian population, the repression against human rights defenders and the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, to the broad-daylight theft of land and construction of the wall, Israel remains a state that is not held accountable to international law.
Yet there is a window of opportunity opening up in defense of law and Palestinian human rights. In the coming months, the European Union (EU) and its member states will negotiate a new “Action Plan” to implement the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
The fact that this agreement is enacted at all sheds doubts over the acumen of the EU decision-makers: the agreement with Israel seems a contradiction in terms, as article two renders the agreement conditional upon compliance with human rights law and democratic principles. However, to keep a veneer of respect for its own rules and regulations, the EU has started up a “political dialogue” with Israel on its violations of human rights. The result of more than five years of discussions is not only disheartening for Palestinians but also embarrassing for the EU as the only result ever recorded for this “dialogue” is the “willingness” of Israel to talk about the issues.
At last, there seems to be some discontent within EU diplomatic circles about the fact that Israel not only disrespects all human rights and international legal obligations but even imprisons those who try to defend these rights, at a national level and through international advocacy. Yet without sustained civil society pressure, this change in perception will be absorbed into meaningless expressions of “concern,” and no action will be taken.
Member states of the EU have given valuable support to the campaign to release Mohammed Othman and myself. Yet far more decisive pressure from Europe needs to be forthcoming, not just from governments but also from European civil society, to force Israel to change its policies. As long as the EU member states uphold their cooperation agreements with Israel, hide the 2004 International Court of Justice decision against the wall under the carpet, and are unwilling to implement the recommendations of the Goldstone report — even at risk of losing their own credibility — more Palestinian human rights activists will be arrested, detained, tortured, or killed.
An active civil society is a key component of any democratic society and without it justice in Palestine and the rest of the region will remain as elusive as ever.
Jamal Juma’ is a coordinator of the Stop the Wall Campaign. For more information on the campaign visit stopthewall.org.
Montreal Gaza Photo Exposition to Stay Open
CJPME and Cinema du Parc win battle to host Gaza Exposition
CJPME | February 22nd, 2010
Montreal – It was with great satisfaction and relief that Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) received the news Wednesday that its Photo Exposition Human Drama in Gaza would continue until its scheduled closing on Feb. 28th. Around noon, an email from legal representative Lieba Shell advised the management of Cinema du Parc, the exposition host, that after “reviewing its options,” Management Redbourne retracted its previous position and was no longer seeking to close the photo exposition on Gaza. Given the lack of justification for its demand, Redbourne backed down on its request when hundreds of emails of support from the public were received.
Two days earlier, on Monday, Feb. 15th, the real estate management firm owning the shopping center housing the Cinema du Parc – one of whose shareholders is based in Israel – had indeed ordered Cinema du Parc to dismantle the exposition immediately, failing which it threatened to use legal action. Citing a clause in its lease, Redbourne had argued that the Cinema du Parc had violated the terms of the lease with the Photo Exposition. This claim, however, was contradicted by the preceding clause, which clearly mentions the possibility for Cinema to host all kinds of related activities, such as “presentations, meetings, viewing, or other similar activities.” Cinema du Parc had frequently exercised this right in the past, with the hosting of nearly forty exhibitions of a socially progressive nature, without there ever having been a problem in the past. “People should know what happened,” said Thomas Woodley, the President of CJPME.
“Redbourne sought to intimidate the Cinema du Parc into shutting down the Exposition. This behaviour is unacceptable and had absolutely no legal basis. It was clearly a political manoeuvre intended to block access to information regarding the Israeli assault on Gaza last winter, and during which several violations of human rights have been identified.” CJPME had hoped that the dialog around the Exposition would help Canadians grasp the gravity of crimes committed during the Israeli assault, and would facilitate a free public debate on the incidents. CJPME was naturally alarmed when Redbourne, prompted by pro-Israeli voices, sought to shut down this free exchange. As publicized since its inception, Human Drama in Gaza sought to transcend labels and stereotypes, and wanted to help people understand the human catastrophe unfolding in Gaza. The Exposition aimed to put a human face on the misery of the people of Gaza, and to show the poignant resilience of a people facing severe adversity. The captions accompanying the photos cite statistics and legal analyses of Israel’s 22-day assault on Gaza of last winter.
About CJPME – Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is a non-profit and secular
organization bringing together men and women of all backgrounds who labour to see justice and peace take root again in the Middle East. Its mission is to empower decision-makers to view all sides with fairness and to promote the equitable and sustainable development of the region.
For more information, please contact Grace Batchoun at 514-745-8491or grace.batchoun@cjpme.org.
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East
http://www.cjpme.org
Israel’s new ‘attack on freedom of speech’
By Jonathan Cook | The National | February 21, 2010
NAZARETH // The Israeli government and its right-wing supporters have been waging a “McCarthyite” campaign against human-rights groups by blaming them for the barrage of international criticism that has followed Israel’s attack on Gaza a year ago, critics say.
In a sign of the growing backlash against the human-rights community, the cabinet backed a bill last week that, if passed, will jail senior officials from the country’s peace-related organisations should they fail to meet tough new registration conditions.
The measure is a response to claims by right-wing lobbyists that Israel’s human-rights advocates supplied much of the damaging evidence of war crimes cited by Judge Richard Goldstone in his UN-commissioned report into Israel’s Operation Cast Lead.
Human-rights groups funded by foreign donors, such as the European Union, would be required to register as political bodies and meet other demands for “transparency”.
Popular support for the clampdown was revealed in a poll published last week showing that 57 per cent of Israeli Jews believed “national-security” issues should trump human rights.
In a related move, right-wing groups have launched a campaign of vilification against Naomi Chazan, the Israeli head of an American Jewish donor body called the New Israel Fund (NIF) that channels money to Israeli social justice groups. The NIF is accused of funding the Israeli organisations Mr Goldstone consulted for his report.
Billboard posters around Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and a newspaper advertising campaign, show a caricature of Ms Chazan with a horn growing from her forehead under the title “Naomi-Goldstone-Chazan”.
“We are seeing the evaporation of the last freedoms of speech and organisation in Israel,” said Amal Jamal, head of politics at Tel Aviv University and the director of Ilam, a media-rights organisation that would be targeted by the new legislation. The Israeli political system, he added, was being transformed into a “totalitarian democracy”.
Leading the charge against human-rights groups – most of which are officially described as “non-governmental organisations” – has been a self-styled “watchdog group” known as NGO Monitor. Its activities have won support from the government following the international censure faced by Israel for its attack on Gaza.
The bill, approved by a ministerial committee last week, is the product of a conference staged in the parliament in December by Gerald Steinberg, NGO Monitor’s director, and a settler-backed organisation known as the Institute of Zionist Strategies.
A professor at Bar Ilan University, Prof Steinberg presented a report to MPs and ministers that referred to peace groups as “Trojan horses” and argued for imposing constraints on funding from European governments and the NIF.
In a statement at the time, Prof Steinberg said: “For over a decade European governments have been manipulating Israeli politics and promoting demonisation by funding a narrow group of favored non-governmental organisations.”
He has reserved special criticism for advocacy groups for the country’s Arab minority and for Jewish groups opposing the occupation, accusing both of promoting an image of Israel as an “apartheid” state that carries out “war crimes” and “ethnic cleansing”.
According to his report, 16 Israeli peace NGOs received US$8 million (Dh29m) in European funding in the previous three years.
Pressure has been building in the government for action. This month Yuli Edelstein, the diaspora affairs minister and a member of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, told reporters the cabinet had been “concerned for a time with a number of groups under the guise of NGOs that are funded by foreign agents”.
One of the MPs who participated in December’s conference, Zeev Elkin, also of Likud, initiated the legislation.
Although the bill will need to pass a vote of the parliament, backing from the government has dramatically increased its chances of success.
According to the legislation, human-rights groups will have to satisfy a long list of new conditions. They include: registering as political bodies; submitting ID numbers and addresses for all activists; providing detailed accounts of all donations from overseas and the purposes to which they will be put; and declaring the support of foreign countries every time an activist makes a speech or the organisation stages an event.
Senior officials in NGOs that fail to meet the requirements face up to a year in jail.
Hagai Elad, head of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, the country’s largest human-rights law centre, said there was “a very hostile political climate” and that freedoms were being attacked “one step at a time”.
“These are classic McCarthy techniques, portraying our organisations as enemies of the state and suggesting that we are aiding Hamas and terror groups.”
He added that NGOs were heavily regulated under Israeli law. “Which leaves me with a troubling question: given that we are already transparent, what is the real motivation behind this legislation?”
Caught in the middle of the campaign against the NGOs has been Ms Chazan, a former dovish MP.
Maariv, a populist newspaper, published a report last month by a right-wing group called Im Tirtzu that blamed Ms Chazan and the NIF for funding human-rights groups responsible for 90 per cent of the criticisms of Israel contained in the Goldstone Report that were from non-official sources.
A counter-report last week suggested that in reality only about four per cent of the citations were from NIF-funded groups, and many were unrelated to the Gaza operation.
But the attack on Ms Chazan has rapidly gained traction, with commentators denouncing her in the media and the derogatory billboard posters springing up across the country.
The campaign against the NIF was backed this month by a petition signed by a long list of former generals, including Giora Eiland, the previous head of the National Security Council, and Doron Almog, a recent chief of the army’s southern command.
Ms Chazan has also been sacked by the right-wing Jerusalem Post newspaper after 14 years serving as one of its few liberal columnists, while an article accusing Ms Chazan of “serving the agenda of Iran and Hamas” was distributed to foreign journalists by the Government Press Office.
Ms Chazan said: “They’re using me to attack, in the most blatant way, the basic principles of democracy.”
NIF has pointed out that Im Tirtzu’s funders include Christians United for Israel, a group led by pastor John Hagee, who made the headlines in the US presidential race in 2008 when in a speech supporting contender John McCain he said “Hitler was fulfilling God’s will”.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae – Source
University Of Colorado Must Reinstate Professor Whose Free Speech Rights Were Violated
ACLU, AAUP And NCAC File Brief Urging Court To Uphold First Amendment In Ward Churchill Case
ACLU | February 18, 2010
NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Colorado, American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) today submitted a brief to a Colorado Court of Appeals arguing that the University of Colorado, a publicly funded university, should reinstate a tenured professor who was wrongly terminated from his job there for exercising his right to free speech.
“The First Amendment prohibits public officials from suppressing lawful speech or retaliating against those who engage in such speech, no matter how unpopular or offensive the speech may be to some people,” said Aden Fine, staff attorney with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group. “That is especially the case in the university setting, where the Supreme Court has made clear that First Amendment freedoms must be vigilantly protected.”
After he was fired from the teaching post he had held for many years, Ward Churchill sued the University and its Board of Regents alleging that he was unconstitutionally terminated because of a controversial and unpopular essay he had written concerning the events on September 11. In April 2009, a jury agreed that Churchill was fired for expressing his personal opinions, which is a clear violation of his First Amendment rights.
However, a judge denied Churchill’s petition to be reinstated to his job, essentially denying him any relief for the blatant denial of his rights. Churchill is appealing that decision to the Colorado Court of Appeals. The ACLU, ACLU of Colorado, AAUP and NCAC filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting reversal of the trial court’s decision, arguing that plaintiffs whose constitutional rights have been violated must be provided with a remedy, and that in this case, Churchill should be reinstated to the job from which he was wrongly fired.
“Denying a remedy to people whose rights have been violated amounts to gutting the Constitution,” said Mariko Hirose, a legal fellow with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group. “The court has a responsibility to ensure the University of Colorado rights its wrong and reinstates Professor Churchill immediately.”
“Unless the trial court’s ruling is corrected, university professors will receive the chilling message that silence is smart and voicing unpopular views can be fatal to their careers,” said Mark Silverstein, ACLU of Colorado Legal Director. “The First Amendment right to speak out is meaningful only if it is enforceable in court.”
Today’s friend-of-the-court brief is available online at: www.aclu.org/free-speech/ward-churchill-v-university-colorado-et-al-amicus-brief
Attorneys include Fine and Hirose of the ACLU First Amendment Working Group, Silverstein of the ACLU of Colorado, Rachel Levinson of AAUP and Joan Bertin of NCAC.
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org
Children as young as 12 arrested in night raids in Silwan, East Jerusalem
B’Tselem | February 16, 2010
B’Tselem recently uncovered a number of cases in which minors aged 12-15 from Silwan, in East Jerusalem, were arrested in the middle of the night by police officers and Israel Security Agency agents accompanied by armed border policemen. In four cases documented by B’Tselem, the minors were taken from their beds and homes and brought, their hands cuffed, to interrogation at the police station in the Russian Compound, in West Jerusalem. The parents of the children were not allowed to accompany them. The minors were then interrogated on suspicion of stone throwing. Testimonies given to B’Tselem indicate that, during the questioning, the interrogators beat and threatened them. The detention of one of them, a 14-year-old, was extended for seven days. The rest were released. There are indications that several other minors were similarly arrested and interrogated.
The ongoing friction between residents of Silwan and the settlers in nearby Beit Yehonatan and security personnel guarding it, in which context Palestinian children in the neighborhood throw stones at the building, is apparently the reason for the arrests.
The authorities’ treatment of the minors completely contravenes the Youth Law, as amended in 2008 (Amendment No. 14). Under the Law, a minor who is suspected of committing a criminal offense may consult as a rule, with a parent or other relative prior to being questioned, and the parent or relative may be present during the questioning. The Law also prohibits, other than in exceptional cases, questioning a minor at night, and states that, if the objective can be achieved in a less harmful way, the minor should not be arrested. In the present case, some of the parents were willing to undertake to bring the minors in the morning for questioning, and there was no need for the night operation.
The actions by the authorities severely violated the human rights of the minors, all of whom are Israeli permanent residents. A military-style operation conducted in the middle of the night, with the aim of detaining for interrogation minors aged 12-15 suspected of stone throwing is illogical and unjustifiable on any grounds. It is hard to believe that the security forces would have acted similarly with Jewish minors.
B’Tselem has sent urgent letters to the Jerusalem police commander, Maj. Gen. Ilan Franco, and to the head of the Department of the Investigation of Police, Herzl Shviro, calling for an end to police, ISA, and Border Police operations to detain minors in Silwan. If any child from the neighborhood is suspected of having committed a criminal offense, he can be summoned for questioning in the presence of an adult on his behalf. Also, the questioning must be conducted by youth interrogators.
Israeli poll: 75 percent favour deporting fellow citizens; Netanyahu favours birth control
By Zuhair Andrew | Al-Quds Al-Arabi | February 14, 2010
A survey conducted by the Israeli Knesset channel shows that 75 percent of Israeli Jews are in favour of deporting Israeli-Arab citizens to a future Palestinian state as part of any deal between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. Almost seven hundred people representing a sample of the Jewish public in Israel were asked if it could be justified to demand the deportation of Arab citizens of the Zionist state as part of a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Twenty-five percent rejected the idea outright; of the 75 percent who agreed with deportation, 28 percent said all Arabs should be deported, 19 percent preferred deportation only from certain areas, while 28 percent said that deportation should be based on a “loyalty test”.
On issues of identity, 50 percent of the Jews surveyed said that they believe that the Arabs in Israel relate first and foremost to Palestinian identity and then identify themselves as Israelis. Forty percent said that Israeli-Arabs relate only to a Palestinian identity, and 1 percent said that they believe that Arab citizens of Israel think of themselves only as Israelis.
While the majority of the Jews who took part in the survey said that Arab citizens’ right to stay in their homes is not a given, 52 percent believe that the Israeli authorities do not discriminate against Israeli-Arabs; 43 percent said that they do discriminate.
The demography of the state of Israel is a major issue and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regards his Arab citizens as a demographic time bomb. In an effort to boost his popularity ratings while those of his political rivals tumble, Netanyahu has launched a media campaign to convince Israelis of his important role in reducing the birth rate among Israeli-Arabs. He believes that this is essential to preserve Israel as a Jewish state. During interviews with a number of television channels, Netanyahu told viewers that when he was finance minister in the Sharon government (2003 – 2005), he reduced state social security benefits to families with many children in an effort to persuade Israeli-Arabs that there was no financial benefit from having large families and so to cut their birth rate. Netanyahu claims that this was a successful move.
He added that research conducted by his ministry showed that the difference between the birth rates of Israeli-Arabs and Israeli-Jews went down from 3% to 1% in two years. Netanyahu said that when he was the Minister of Finance, the ratio of Israeli-Arab births to Israeli-Jewish births was 4 children to 1; when he resigned, he said, the ratio was 4.1 to 3.1 children.
Moreover, Netanyahu stressed that his policy represents one of the most important responses to the demographic danger of Jews losing their majority in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, and he emphasised further his policy’s contribution to reducing social security payouts, thereby increasing the amount of money available for other public services across Israel.
However, economist Avraham Tal from Haaretz newspaper said that Prime Minister Netanyahu is wrong to claim credit for this birth rate reduction. According to Mr. Tal, the reduction took place in 2000, three years before Netanyahu became the Minister of Finance. Tal attributes the decrease to lifestyle changes influenced by western values, pointing to a similar reduction in a number of Arab countries. Reducing social security payments did not have a serious effect on Israel-Arab fertility levels, said Tal and, in any case, the Central Bureau of Statistics in Israel shows that there is a slow decline in the number of Jews living in Israel. The latest statistics show that Jews make up 76 percent of the total population, compared to 76.2 percent in the previous year surveyed. Israeli-Arabs now constitute 16.3 percent of the population, a rise of 0.2 percent; by 2025, the Bureau predicts that this figure will have risen to 30 percent of the population of the Jewish state.
