Weinberg - Beefing Up Libel Law

David M. Weinberg..
A Citadel Defending Zion..
10 January '12..

The Knesset has given first reading and initial approval to an amendment to Israel’s libel law proposed by Yariv Levin (Likud) and Meir Shitreet (Kadima). It will be back on the Knesset agenda this week. The amendment would significantly raise libel penalties and make them easier to achieve, especially if media publishes defamatory material on individuals without offering them the opportunity to respond fully and in real time. As a result, the angry media has labeled this a “silencing” bill and an “attack on democracy.”

Not at all. In fact, the amendment doesn’t go far enough.

The dry technicalities of the amendment involve the setting of new maximum penalties for defamation without proof of concrete damage to the aggrieved party (the maximum fine would increase from NIS 70,000 to NIS 300,000, and to double that if damages are proven). If media refuse to publish a full response of the aggrieved party, the maximum fine could rise to NIS 1.5 million.

Of course, no law can determine in advance what penalties a court of law might actually impose on a libelous violator. Generally, the courts are not quick to rule that media truly libeled anyone, nor do they rush to impose maximum penalties. Consequently, all the hyperbole about “silencing” and the crushing of free speech is exaggerated.

But the proposed amendment does seek to create a chilling effect – chilling the enthusiasm of media to gaily and liberally splash into print every juicy, outlandish and nasty bit of information they can possibly get their hands on, without proper fact-checking or allowing the accused robust possibility to respond. This is not a bad thing.

Annoying

I spent the past two days in Jerusalem attending the annual 2009 Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism (GFCA). There were more than 500 participants from over 50 countries. Among those taking part was Lithuania’s Foreign Minister, Canada's Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, and the Czech Republic’s Minister of Human Rights. There were also legislators, jurists, academics, and heads of many NGO's among the participants... and as near as I could determine, one cartoonist.

You can visit the GFCA website by clicking here.

Turkey

What has happened to the Turkish-Israeli Alliance?

According to the Muslim Media Network:

"TEL AVIV — Turkey was said to have suspended up to $1 billion in proposed Israeli defense projects after canceling a major air exercise with Israel.

A leading Israeli defense analyst said the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has decided to end defense and military cooperation with Israel. Analyst Ron Ben-Yishai said the Turkish Defense Ministry has shelved a range of proposed Israeli projects.

“New deals worth tens and hundreds of millions of dollars offered by Israel’s defense industries to the Turkish Army, as well as cooperation with Turkish colleagues, are being put on hold or cancelled altogether,” Ben-Yishai said in a report." -more

According to Barry Rubin:

The Turkey-Israel alliance is over.
"After two decades plus of close cooperation, the Turkish government is no longer interested in maintaining close cooperation with Israel nor is it—for all practical purposes—willing to do anything much to maintain its good relations with Israel.

The U.S.-Turkish alliance, which goes back about six decades, is also over but much less visibly so, though the two relationships are interlinked.

And that’s one important point in the first development. If the Turkish government was really concerned about protecting the kind of tight links with America that have existed for so long, it would be far more cautious about jettisoning the old policy toward Israel." -more

UN Guide

the Goldstone UN Gaza Report

From the ZOA press release response to the shocking UN Report:

"The very title of the Report - ‘Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories: Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ – contains a falsehood – namely, that Gaza is “occupied” by Israel when, under Article 6 of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, a foreign power is only considered an occupier “to the extent that such Power exercises the functions of government in such territory” – something Israel has not done since 2005."

And also:

"the Report claims that “The data provided by non-governmental sources with regard to the percentage of civilians among those killed are generally consistent and raise very serious concerns with regard to the way Israel conducted the military operations in Gaza.’ Yet, as British journalist Melanie Philips points out, Israel provided a detailed breakdown of the Palestinians killed in Gaza and stated that the vast majority of these were Hamas or other terror operatives. Even the UN eventually acknowledged that some 75% of the dead in Gaza were Hamas terrorists."

And:

"ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “The ZOA condemns this atrocious, new installment in the international effort to delegitimize Israel, using perverted and spurious norms of international law in order to invalidate Israel’s elementary, fundamental right and obligation to defend its territory and its citizens. It is nothing less than an anti-Semitic, Israel-bashing, immoral piece of trash. We are appalled that Justice Goldstone was willing to ruin his legal reputation by participating in this dishonestly-conceived and fraudulent investigation. Most serious, perhaps, is the fact that Richard Goldstone was willing to bend and pervert legal norms – such as the definition of occupation and of combatants – in order to pin non-existent legal responsibility on Israel for acts were both justified and indeed necessary in self-defense."

To read the complete Press Release from ZOA (America's oldest Zionist Organization) in response to this latest example of Jewish Defamation and UN anti-Israel bias, click on ZOA Press Release.

End the Incitement

14 March 2007

At the time of this writing Israel's lackluster PM and the PA's irrelevant President are trying to prop each other up. The topic they've discussed is supposedly peace. But the only path to peace is through an end to incitement. And that's one item that I'm sure was not on their agenda.

For more info and links, check this previous posting about Incitement and the Peace Process.

(While this Dry Bones is from 2007, none of us should have had any illusions that this is something that would be going away. As can be seen from this PMW posting, both the PA and Hamas have not allowed themselves to be distracted from their normal course of discourse. YH)

Palestinian TV children's quizzes teach that there is no Israel

by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
PMW Bulletins
Sept. 2, 2009

Palestinian children are taught through formal and informal education to see a world in which "Palestine" exists and replaces all of Israel. Two children's quizzes broadcast last week on Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority television show how the PA routinely teaches its children to identify all Israeli cities as Palestinian cities.
(Continue)

Swedish Future

The cartoon shows a future Miss Sweden in a burqa, the body-bag in which Islamists want to imprison all women. The demonization of Jews and the Jewish State continues in full force. The insane Islamist antisemitic incitement has now commandeered the European press. The end will, of course, be the Arabization of Europe. Here's Alan Dershowitz commenting on the latest outrage out of Sweden:

Sweden's shame over Israeli 'organ theft' nonstory

Why won't its government condemn the outrageous article that accused Israeli soldiers of harvesting Palestinian organs?

Cambridge, Mass. - "The Swedish government has refused to condemn a "blood libel" published by one of Sweden's leading newspapers, Aftonbladet.

The article claims that Jewish soldiers in Israel killed Palestinians in order to harvest their organs. The writer of the article, Donald Bostrom, has acknowledged that "he has no idea whether the accusations are true." Yet a widely read Swedish newspaper was prepared to publish this undocumented and highly volatile accusation without requiring its author to present any credible evidence.

This false accusation is reminiscent of the medieval blood libels that falsely accused Jews of killing Christian children in order to use their blood for religious rituals. It is also reminiscent of the notorious Czarist forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. One expects this sort of thing from Iranian or Syrian newspapers, but not from Swedish papers.

Not only has Foreign Minister Carl Bildt refused to issue a personal condemnation of the current "organ libel," his foreign ministry explicitly disavowed the denunciation that was issued by Sweden's ambassador to Israel, who had called the article "shocking and appalling." In a self-righteous statement, Mr. Bildt claimed that condemnation of the article would be inappropriate because freedom of expression is a part of the Swedish Constitution." -more