‘Literally grasping at straws’ ….
Fighting online BDS in wake of Jerusalem declaration
It is so obvious that ……
PRESIDENT OBAMA LEARNS TO TWEET
May 19, 2015 at 08:01 (Believe it or not, Internet, Social Media, Twitter)
It’s not even close to Halloween, but President Obama is already ‘Twick or Tweeting’ ….
Hello, Twitter! It’s Barack. Really! Six years in, they’re finally giving me my own account.
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ISRAEL TO BE ERASED FROM CYBERSPACE
March 30, 2015 at 12:20 (Internet, Internet Security, Israel, Palestine)
If there isn’t a post on this Blog on the 7th of April, here is the reason why …
Hacker group threatens to take down Israeli servers and sites on April 7 in new video, promising to ‘erase you from cyberspace’.
Anonymous vows ‘Electronic Holocaust’ against Israel
A video released this week by the Anonymous hacker collective vowed to inflict an “Electronic Holocaust” on Israel.
The video shows a masked individual in a suit delivering a prepared statement, in which he announces April 7 as the date of a concerted attack on Israel’s online servers. “As we did many times, we will take down your servers, government websites, Israeli military websites, and Israeli institutions,” he said.
“We will erase you from cyberspace in our Electronic Holocaust.”
The video includes images of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a briefing room with the defense minister and military leaders, as well as distraught Palestinian children and bombed areas that appear to date from Operation Protective Edge.
Anonymous has specifically targeted Israel several times before. The group announced a campaign against Israel in November 2014, but no significant damage was reported.
While Israel is threatened with cyberattacks every few months, hackers often fail or cause minimal and temporary damage. In some cases lists of names and passwords of Israelis are released online, but these lists are sometimes outdated.
A cyberattack by Anonymous and other hackers hit Israel on April 7, 2014, but only a few sites were brought down temporarily.
INTIFADA MOVES FROM THE STREETS OF JERUSALEM TO THE INTERNET
December 4, 2014 at 08:34 (DesertPeace Editorial, False Flags, Internet, Israel, Opinion, Palestine, zionist Media)
At least that’s what the zionists want you to believe …. none of the following was reported in the Palestinian press leading me to believe that the ‘terrorists’ behind this are actually the zionists themselves.
The zionists have an ‘army’ of hackers who monitor pro Palestinian sites and render them ‘offline’ via DOS Attacks or other methods. My question is why have the sites reported about below not been targeted? Again, in my opinion, the answer is obvious.
Palestinians are taking to social media encouraging a car intifada against Israel.
The following is what the zionists want us to believe …. as reported at Ynet
(Be sure to notice the frequent usage of the word PALESTINIAN)
The younger generation of Palestinians has learned well from Islamic State’s staggering success when it comes to sowing the seeds of fear, and has moved the focus of its resistance to the social networks. The blogger has joined forces with the muezzin; the talkbackers are in cahoots with the stone-throwers; and the “share” buttons are working alongside the incitement leaflets.
The social network is the new mosque, and there’s no need to remove one’s shoes when entering; there are Border Police and there’s no tear gas; and the police don’t impose an age restriction on worshipers.
Palestinian terrorists have gone online
With little oversight, Palestinian extremists are recruiting online and publishing unfettered propaganda; the effects are already been felt on the ground in the form of a spate of recent ‘lone wolf’ terror attacks.
Everyone’s looking for the third intifada out on the streets, but it’s not only there; it has active and threatening offshoots on the Internet too.
The younger generation of Palestinians has learned well from Islamic State’s staggering success when it comes to sowing the seeds of fear, and has moved the focus of its resistance to the social networks. The blogger has joined forces with the muezzin; the talkbackers are in cahoots with the stone-throwers; and the “share” buttons are working alongside the incitement leaflets.
The social network is the new mosque, and there’s no need to remove one’s shoes when entering; there are Border Police and there’s no tear gas; and the police don’t impose an age restriction on worshipers.
In recent months, this protected expanse has allowed the Palestinians to establish a new terrorist infrastructure. Instead of recruiting activists on the ground and worrying about them getting picked up on the radar of the Shin Bet security service, they’ve moved over to online recruitment via popular campaigns designed to sow hatred and covey the sense that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is under threat – in the hope of prompting a terror mission carried out by a lone attacker, one who is not affiliated with any terrorist organization.
Online Palestinian incitement, referring to the recent terror attack at a Jerusalem synagogue and the purported threat to the al-Aqsa mosque.
Such was the case with the recent terror attacks in Jerusalem; and such was the case, too, with the death of the construction worker in Petah Tikva in September. We’re no longer dealing with a wave of religious suicide attackers who are waiting to be received by 72 virgins. The new martyrs fall on the network, and get flooded with Likes.
Orit Perlov, a social media analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) who monitors and analyzes the discourse on the social networks in Arab states, says that the Palestinian Internet is currently running a number of incitement campaigns at the same time.
“One of the leading campaigns calls for running down Jews with vehicles,” Perlov says. “It uses the word, ‘Idaas,’ which is ‘run down’ in Arabic, alongside a picture of a car running down ultra-Orthodox Jews. Immediately after the shooting of Yehuda Glick, the networks began a more focused campaign that called for running down Knesset members who have encouraged pilgrimages to the Temple Mount.
“And there’s also the popular ‘Atan’ campaign, which simply gives the instruction, ‘Stab;’ and there’s the ‘Atbah’ – ‘Slaughter’ – campaign, in which you see a masked Palestinian youth beheading someone. And there are Palestinians who are replacing their Twitter profile picture with a picture of an ax. This doesn’t mean that these people are going to go out tomorrow and take action, but that they identify with the notion and promote it.”
Who posts this kind of material? Who’s behind it?
“Individuals in the West Bank and East Jerusalem who understand the psychology of the Net, who know what works.”
Gilad Shiloach, a network analyst who works at the American news website, Vocativ, which monitors social network activity, says that Palestinian Web users respond quickly to developments on the ground. Such was the case, for example, in the affair of the dead Egged bus driver, Yusuf al-Ramouni, who Israel determined had committed suicide, whereas his family claims he was murdered.
“Shortly after he was found hanged, activists from East Jerusalem sent out a Tweet with the heading, ‘Yusuf was strangled,'” Shiloach relates. “Within a few hours, we were seeing it in the thousands. Graphic designers used Photoshop to prepare a beautiful design of Yusuf on the backdrop of the Temple Mount, with slogans like ‘The Jews are sullying Al-Aqsa.’ This is how a blood libel spreads on the social networks; and this happened two days before the terror attack at the synagogue in Har Nof.”
Prof. Yair Amichai-Hamburger, the director of the Research Center for Internet Psychology at the Interdisciplinary Center’s School of Communication in Herzliya, explains that the discourse on the Internet functions as a breeding ground for extremists.
“The Internet group is actually feeding your mind with its messages all the time, and then there’s a kind of escalation,” he says. “The group becomes a hotbed for an idea of a certain nature, and the individuals take it to the extreme in order to play a significant part in it. For the next terrorist, the Internet creates a media ghetto of sorts. He sees what is happening on the social networks, and it becomes his reality.”
What does he experience there?
“The propaganda is absolute. We are perceived there as Satan’s earthly representatives, who can take on the form of a Border Policeman, a 25-year-old woman or a baby of a few months. For him, every Jew represents a part of the threatening mechanism.
“Once the message has seeped in, the sense of solidarity becomes absolute, and the attacker’s personal existence becomes meaningless. He turns into the long arm of Islam. This gives rise to a new profile of a terrorist, one who perhaps just a few days earlier had no intentions of driving his car into a group of soldiers or people at a train station, but ends up saying to hell with the world.”
Online poster refers to recent vehicular terror attacks in Jerusalem.
With its pants down
For many in Israel, up until a month or so ago, Yehuda Glick was an unknown figure; but he’s been a target on the Facebook pages of Palestinian activists for the past two years. “You’ll be dead soon,” said the caption alongside his picture on pages that dealt with visits by Jews to the Temple Mount.
Glick complained, but nothing was done; and one Internet surfer who internalized the message eventually shot him. Today, the social networks are carrying calls for another attempt on the life of the right-wing activist.
Glick now has bodyguards, and the same goes for others associated with efforts to visit the Temple Mount and who also star on the social networks; but the big question is can the Shin Bet foil the plans of the next terrorist – a terrorist who doesn’t yet know he is one.
“The defense establishment has been caught unawares by the new kind of attacker that has emerged; it’s been caught with its pants down,” says Prof. Amichai-Hamburger. “The thought that a regular man with a family and children might suddenly carry out an attack doesn’t fit its profile.”
The Palestinian masses aren’t the only ones taking advantage of this security vacuum; the terror organizations, too, are entering the fray. “These organizations are using the networks to try in fact to find those who do not necessarily fit the classic profile – the introverted attacker, an individual on the margins of society,” Prof. Amichai-Hamburger continues. “And it could be just about anyone from among this very large group. That’s the scary thing.”
Daniel Cohen, an expert in cyber terrorism at the INSS, names Hamas as one of these organizations. “The organization is trying to join the masses and to encourage the lone perpetrator by means of incitement campaigns,” Cohen says.
“We’re talking about popular terror attacks of sorts, ones for which the organization doesn’t have to claim responsibility and have less chance of being thwarted. Once you used to be able to monitor the phone calls of activists and try to identify the individual who would be going out to perpetrate an attack; now, however, the activity has moved to the Net and is directed at the masses, and you have no way of knowing which one it will be.”
According to social media analyst Perlov, “Today, all the security mechanisms have software that monitors content on the Net, so you can see if there is a mass of activity and how many people support the campaign. But there is still no computer program that can analyze sentiment – in other words, the intentions of a specific person. Furthermore, the two terrorists at the synagogue, for example, were not key figures who were active on the Net. People like that won’t make an impression on the security mechanism’s that are monitoring the Internet activity; they’re small fry.”
Despite the fact that the defense establishment has little chance of laying its hands on the lone terrorist, it still sees value in monitoring the social media sites – digging through the Facebook statuses and Twitter messages can at least offer an understanding of the mood among the Palestinians in the territories.
“There’s something called ‘public intelligence’ – intelligence that is gathered with the purpose of studying the public,” explains an Israel Defense Forces intelligence officer. “The bottom line is that we want to have our finger on the pulse of the Palestinian public; and in the age of the social media networks, you can’t not add this piece of the puzzle to the picture.
“It has great value because it shows which way the wind is blowing among the public and allows you to know what pains it. ‘How is the issue reflected on the Palestinian social media sites’ is a question that will always be asked in the relevant forums. Sometimes, by the way, it’ll be the first question.”
While the IDF merely monitors the Palestinian social media sites without actually taking any action against the incitement campaigns and the like, the Palestinian Authority adopts a more active approach, shutting down Facebook pages and conducting arrests when efforts are made to organize and affect change on the ground.
“During Operation Protective Edge, for example, one of the campaigns that went viral called for the assassination of Mahmoud Abbas,” Perlov says. “He was dubbed “the Zionists’ dog,’ ‘a traitor’ and ‘a collaborator.'”
With attorney approval
Just in case you were wondering, Israelis are no saints either. “Only live ammunition saves lives,” “Jews, revenge,” “Arabs are murdering you,” “Enemies aren’t given jobs” – these are just a few examples from numerous incitement campaigns that have appeared in recent months on the social network sites in Israel.
The Jewish public has not sat by idly and has also reached the Internet boiling point. It happened this week with regard to the deliberations on the proposed Nationality Law, after the attacks in Jerusalem, during the 50 days of Protective Edge, and at the time of the search for the three teenagers who were abducted in Gush Etzion.
And while the Israeli public isn’t swept along to the same extent as the Palestinian public, we are seeing racist and provocative campaigns on the part of right-wing groups, threats against the left, and the undermining of fundamental values of a democratic state. It turns out that this open expanse is actually closing the most mouths.
“If radical right-wing groups were once on the margins of the margins of the Israeli public, hidden deep on the Net, the opinions of such organizations today have become legitimate,” Shiloach says.
“Their presence on the social networks has grown at least four to fivefold in relation to the period prior to the abduction of the boys. It was very noticeable during the war; we saw the emergence of groups such as ‘I’m also in favor of death to terrorists’ or ‘I also support killing the Arabs of Israel.'”
Israeli extremist online propaganda. The caption reads: Only live bullets save lives.
One of the major sources of the fire that has spread through the Israeli social media networks is the extreme right organization, Lehava. Its principal agenda is to prevent marriages between Jewish women and Arabs; but in the wake of the recent terror attacks, it has embarked on a new campaign against the employment of Arabs. “Don’t hire enemies,” Benzi Gopstein, head of the organization, corrects me. “Saying ‘Arabs’ is racism; there are Arabs who aren’t enemies and they can be employed.”
In the framework of the campaign, Lehava posted an announcement with pictures from terror attacks under the slogan, “Fire tomorrow’s terrorist today,” and the organization has also distributed stickers bearing the slogan, “Firing the enemies.”
Gopstein says they block left-wingers who curse them. “So most of the comments are positive, and some things get 80-90 thousand views,” he says. “Many stores are firing their workers thanks to this. Sometimes they want us to publicize them, but not on Facebook, so as not to face legal action, so it gets around on WhatsApp. I have 60 WhatsApp groups. And there’s Instagram too.”
Facebook has shut down a number of your pages because of content you have posted.
“We had 40,000 members on the Lehava page; we’re now at 23,000 and I assume this page will also be closed down in the next week or two,” Gopstein says. “We’ll open a new one. The more they torture us, the bigger we will grow.
“There are many people who sit on our page and complain about a specific picture and then Facebook takes us down. I’ve only been questioned about one of my posts: There was a story about Naftali Bennett saying he was in favor of bringing Arab into the hi-tech world, and I wrote that I’m in favor of sending them into the next world. But it was all in humor.”
Humor?
“Like you see on comedy shows. That’s what I was questioned about. I’m at the police once a week or two; we have talks; but the only connection to Facebook was about the Bennett post. I’d prefer to see them entering the world to come – not that I would put them there. Freedom of expression is very infuriating, but sometimes stands on our side. We are very careful, and every post I put up is checked by a lawyer.”
Who?
“Attorney Itamar Ben-Gvir and several others. When it comes to the more problematic posts, we ask Itamar; he knows all about it.”
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Also reported HERE
ZION’S INTERNET WAR
October 23, 2014 at 08:09 (Censorship, Hasbara, Internet, Internet Security)
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Over the past few years more than 5 million readers have been directed to this Blog via links at What Really Happened. These people are not strangers to what is known as a DOS Attack which renders a particular site ‘unavailable’ for a given time period. For years now, WRH readers have occasionally been denied access to the site because of these attacks. They have not been the only victim of these frequent attacks, other wonderful sites such as Uruknet have also suffered from them. One can show their appreciation to these sites by visiting them frequently and even better, by contributing financially to them. Their continued existence depends on your support. Contributions can be made via these links provided; WRH, Uruknet.
A DDoS attack “is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources,” according to Digital Attack Map, a website sponsored by Google that tracks such attacks. “They target a wide variety of important resources, from banks to news websites, and present a major challenge to making sure people can publish and access important information.”
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ON THE INTERNET!
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The latest targets have been Palestinian News sites, which makes it obvious who the attackers are. It was always assumed that these interruptions in service were the work of zionist hackers, but the report below confirms that.
It’s amazing that rather than change the ugly truth about the evils of zionism, their tactic is simply to hide it with these methods ….
IT WON’T WORK!
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Palestine news websites, including EI,
knocked offline by Internet attackers
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The Electronic Intifada was forced offline for more than six hours on Monday by a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.
This came days after IMEMC (International Middle East Media Center), another Palestine-focused online publication, was subjected to a similar attack.
A DDoS attack “is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources,” according to Digital Attack Map, a website sponsored by Google that tracks such attacks. “They target a wide variety of important resources, from banks to news websites, and present a major challenge to making sure people can publish and access important information.”
DDoS attacks do not require a breach of a target’s own security but rather assault it from the outside – though they do rely on breaches of security on other people’s computers.
“Attackers build networks of infected computers, known as ‘botnets,’ by spreading malicious software through emails, websites and social media,” says Digital Attack Map.
“Once infected, these machines can be controlled remotely, without their owners’ knowledge, and used like an army to launch an attack against any target.”
There are more than two thousand such attacks observed daily worldwide, says Digital Attack Map, which produces visualizations of DDoS attacks such as the one at the top of this post.
A form of censorship
DDoS attacks are widely seen as a threat to freedom of expression, prompting several initiatives to protect potential targets.
“The Internet is a powerful tool for spreading and expanding ideas. However, websites can be knocked offline easily through a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack – censoring important voices,” says Project Galileo. “Public interest websites that cover political or artistic content are often the target of these attacks.”
Project Galileo is a collaboration between the web services company CloudFlare and more than twenty civil society and Internet freedom groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union “to protect politically and artistically important organizations and journalists against attacks that would otherwise censor their work.”
Project Shield is an initiative with similar goals sponsored by Google.
Despite these efforts, DDoS attacks have proven difficult to prevent and those who launch them are difficult to identify. The Electronic Intifada, like many targets, was taking measures to protect against an attack, and is examining what it can learn from Monday’s incident.
Sometimes, however, Internet companies can be unsupportive. “The IMEMC was recently hit by a denial of service attack. Unfortunately, our previous provider refused to help secure the site, and we were forced to change provider,” editor Saed Bannoura told The Electronic Intifada. “Instead, they blamed the victim, and took our site offline.”
While IMEMC was down, it continued publishing news on its Facebook page.
Massive surge in interest
The DDoS attacks come in the wake of Israel’s summertime massacre in Gaza which saw a surge of interest in Palestine-related news.
Bannoura said IMEMC saw a jump in traffic from “two million hits per month to ten million hits per month” during the Gaza attack.
The Electronic Intifada also saw a massive increase in its readership, with more than 15 million pageviews during the 51 days of the attack on Gaza – a two thousand percent increase over the same period in 2013.
The good news is that independent news organizations are taking an ever more prominent and effective role in circumventing mainstream corporate and public media’s self-censorship on Palestine. The bad news is that this may make them more prominent targets for those who want to silence them.
“As a news website that provides daily updates from occupied Palestine, we face constant threats and harassment, but we will not be intimidated, and will continue to provide factual accurate reports from Palestine,” IMEMC’s Bannoura said.
The Electronic Intifada will, of course, be doing the same.
FOXMAN Vs. THE INTERNET
June 24, 2014 at 08:16 (ADL Hatemongering, Internet, Israel)
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“The face of anti-Semitism in the media is also changing. While traditional media at least attempts to apologize for anti-Semitic remarks that slip through, hateful ideas are alive and well on the internet.”
“The internet is a superhighway without any perspective, which permits anti-Semitism or racism, which can go smoothly in nanoseconds through continents.”
The following video is living proof of the hateful ideas and racism that he speaks of … commonly known as zionism
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Buy one of these while supply lasts …..
#ISRAELI HASHTAG OF THE DAY
June 17, 2014 at 08:13 (DesertPeace Editorial, Internet, Israel, Social Media)
#BringBackOurBoys twitter page
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The first time I noticed a ‘hashtag’ I had no idea what I was looking at …. it was for #OccupyWallStreet. The # seemed to have been appearing on more and more sites but I never gave it much notice until today.
Let’s start with the question; What is a hashtag? According to Wikipedia, A hashtag is a word or an unspaced phrase prefixed with the number sign (“#“). It is a form of metadata tag. Words in messages on microblogging and social networking services such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Instagram may be tagged by putting “#” before them, either as they appear in a sentence, (e.g., “New artists announced for #SXSW2014MusicFestival”) or appended to it.
Hashtags make it possible to group such messages, since one can search for the hashtag and get the set of messages that contain it. A hashtag is only connected to a specific medium and can therefore not be linked and connected to pictures or messages from different platforms.
Because of its widespread use, was added in dictionary Oxford in June 2014, defined as: hashtag n. (on social media web sites and applications) a word or phrase preceded by a hash and used to identify messages relating to a specific topic; (also) the hash symbol itself, when used in this way.
Lately, it seems a new hashtag appears almost daily on the Net … the latest one from Israel is #BringOurBoysHome. A quick glance at the site gives one the impression that it is nothing more than just another zionist hate site. A closer look confirms that.
HaAretz had an interesting piece about that particular hashtag in today’s edition …
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When I ask friends who are hashtagging why they do it, they say that it eases the frustration of knowing that there is nothing they can really do, and this gives them the feeling they are doing something besides pray. They find comfort in that – and in the symbolism, like wearing an armband or a T-shirt or a bracelet. They know it trivializes and simplifies. But it helps them. One friend active in hashtaggery said, “those of us using it feel a sense of solidarity with others using it.”
#BringOurBoysHome: Is a hashtag really the best response to a kidnapping?
If hashtags don’t help the victims, who are we using them for?
A young man attends a mass prayer service at the Western Wall for the release of three kidnapped Israeli teens, June 15, 2014. Photo by Olivier Fitoussi
Jewish Agency head Natan Sharansky embraces the #BringBackOurBoys hashtag campaign.Photo by Twitter
Twitter campaign #BringBackOurBoys has a growing Facebook presence. Photo by Facebook
There’s nothing like a good hashtag when big news breaks. The social media tool is indispensable when it comes to aggregating coverage and commentary on any particular topic from around the globe into one convenient spot. Hashtags allow you to closely keep track of everything that is being said and published in real time – moment by moment – and truly watch a story unfold.
But there are hashtags, and then there are hashtag campaigns. The big international campaigns that really made a splash were #StopKony in 2012 and this year’s #BringBackOurGirls campaign, which thrust the issue of the kidnapped Nigerian girls from the back pages of the newspapers into the spotlight.
Both campaigns made Americans aware of struggles in Africa that hadn’t been covered by the media. They were also part of a phenomenon that has sparked something of a backlash against hashtag “slacktivism” in the United States, with charges that they simplify and sentimentalize complex situations. But that appears to be why they work. An article detailing an academic paper on the phenomenon showed that the more simplistic these campaigns are, the more they succeed in going viral and producing moral outrage.
After reading these pieces, I remembered how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict didn’t really lend itself to hashtags. It is just too terribly complicated to reduce to three or four words, though there have been attempts – such as before and during Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza, when hashtags like #StoptheRockets were used to call attention to the plight of southern Israel.
Hashtags now seem to be a new part of the crisis routine. Seconds after military censorship on the news of the kidnapping of three yeshiva students in the West Bank public on the fateful Friday June 13, hashtag campaigns were launched. There were a few versions at first, but finally, one, #BringBackOurBoys, became the dominant hashtag. It was, clearly, a twist on #BringBackOurGirls.
Ido Daniel, one of the activists who launched it, said, “We based it on the campaign calling to bring the Nigerian girls back home. We thought this was a similar story, a terror organization kidnapping kids, and wanted to clear any misunderstanding regarding who is the attacker and who is the defender. Those boys were on their way home from school and someone abducted them.”
Predictably, some in the Israel-advocacy community quickly gravitated to the hashtag and began sending in pictures and links carrying the hashtag, in the style of previous hashtag campaigns. Across Israel and the US, folks began snapping selfies holding up pieces of paper reading #BringBackOurBoys, or going one step further and scrawling the hashtags over various body parts. Many organizations adopted it, most notably the Israel Defense Forces, who began using it on Facebook and Twitter. The campaign probably could have done without that bear hug. The moment the hashtag was pushed by the IDF, the campaign no longer appeared to the world like a grassroots cry of pain and concern from the Israeli public, but like government propaganda, and blurred the message that these were civilian teenagers, not soldiers, since the military was calling them “our boys.”
In addition, the IDF’s adoption of the hashtag was like waving a red flag in front of pro-Palestinian activists, who rapidly “hijacked” the hashtag, loading it up with pictures of dead and injured children from their side, and laying out their plight. The Palestinians, for their part, launched their own social media campaigns, changing their Facebook profiles, posting pictures of themselves holding up three fingers to represent the three kidnapped Israelis. Very quickly, things descended into the regularly scheduled one-upsmanship that anyone who follows the conflict online is familiar with.
The whole exercise left me feeling rather sick to my stomach, and wondering why the idea of a hashtag has made me so uncomfortable in this particular situation – and whether hashtags are really the right way for those who are worried about the three Israeli young men to take action.
It is true that they call attention to a news story that is getting buried in the mainstream international media. Israel-advocacy activists say this is because Israelis are the victims, not the victimizers – just wait until Israel strikes back in some way, they grimly predict. But there are less nefarious reasons. The kidnapping is heavily overshadowed by unfolding events in Iraq and Ukraine. The major geopolitical shifts in these two big stories have the potential to affect the average European and American’s lives to a far greater extent than the boys in distress in Israel.
So yes, a hashtag campaign may marginally increase awareness of the story. But is “calling attention” and “raising awareness” really the same as doing something? By papering the Internet with these hashtags, are Israelis and their supporters doing something to change the situation?
Television writer Shonda Rhimes got to the heart of the matter in her recent speech at Dartmouth College’s commencement. “A hashtag is not helping. #yesallwomen #takebackthenight #notallmen #bringbackourgirls #StopPretendingHashtagsAreTheSameAsDoingSomething. Hashtags are very pretty on Twitter. I love them. I will hashtag myself into next week. But a hashtag is not a movement. A hashtag does not make you Dr. King. A hashtag does not change anything. It’s a hashtag. It’s you, sitting on your butt, typing on your computer and then going back to binge-watching your favorite show.”
Even if you take the effort really seriously, the #BringBackOurBoys hashtag is far too vague to be truly meaningful. Because really, WHO are we telling to bring them back? Hamas? I have a feeling they don’t have too many pro-Israel Facebook friends. U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders? The Israeli government? And, at what price – at the price of negotiating with terrorists, releasing prisoners with blood on their hands?
Hashtags are the expression of a lovely pie-in-the-sky wish that they will somehow be magically ‘brought’ back – dodging all the messy complicated questions. That’s why – as the research shows – we like them.
For me, the justifications for the hashtags that makes the most sense are those that are honest about the fact that using them helps the person tapping on the computer it more than the cause it advocates.
When I ask friends who are hashtagging why they do it, they say that it eases the frustration of knowing that there is nothing they can really do, and this gives them the feeling they are doing something besides pray. They find comfort in that – and in the symbolism, like wearing an armband or a T-shirt or a bracelet. They know it trivializes and simplifies. But it helps them. One friend active in hashtaggery said, “those of us using it feel a sense of solidarity with others using it.”
Perhaps there is value in the solidarity and in helping people feeling less alone. But let’s not fool ourselves. As media critic Howard Kurtz has said, the Internet “is much better at enlightenment than enforcement.”
Much as we would like, nothing we do online is actually going to get the boys home any faster – just as it hasn’t solved any of the fundamental problems in the conflict that has brought us to this unfortunate point.
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A related report can be read HERE
Hashtags are the 21st-century digital yellow ribbons
SAVING THE NEUTRALITY OF THE WEB
June 5, 2014 at 10:48 (Action Alert, Internet, Internet Security)
This was comedy …. but at the same time very serious …
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John Oliver Fans Crash FCC Website
After slamming new rules that threaten net neutrality, the comedian’s fans flooded the public comment section of the FCC
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[After the Sunday airing of the weekly HBO show Last Week Tonight, during which comedian John Oliver slammed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s new rules which would effectively gut net neutrality protections, the FCC confirmed that their site had crashed.
John Oliver fans reportedly flooded the site after the comedian urged viewers to submit public comment to the FCC in order to “prevent cable company fuckery.” On Monday, the FCC confirmed that their system was experiencing “technical difficulties” because of heavy traffic. At the time of this writing the segment had been viewed over 1.6 million times.]
GAGGING GOOGLE
May 14, 2014 at 08:02 (Internet, Internet Security)
Or …. protecting your right to privacy on the Web ….
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A search engine like Google should allow online users to be “forgotten” after a certain time by erasing links to web pages unless there are “particular reasons” not to, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg said.
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Europe’s highest court said on Tuesday that people had the right to influence what the world could learn about them through online searches, a ruling that rejected long-established notions about the free flow of information on the Internet.
A search engine like Google should allow online users to be “forgotten” after a certain time by erasing links to web pages unless there are “particular reasons” not to, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg said.
The decision underlined the power of search companies to retrieve controversial information while simultaneously placing sharp limits on their ability to do so. It raised the possibility that a Google search could become as cheery — and as one-sided — as a Facebook profile or an About.me page.
Jonathan Zittrain, a law and computer science professor at Harvard, said those who were determined to shape their online personas could in essence have veto power over what they wanted people to know.
“Some will see this as corrupting,” he said. “Others will see it as purifying. I think it’s a bad solution to a very real problem, which is that everything is now on our permanent records.”
In some ways, the court is trying to erase the last 25 years, when people learned to routinely check out online every potential suitor, partner or friend. Under the court’s ruling, information would still exist on websites, court documents and online archives of newspapers, but people would not necessarily know it was there. The decision cannot be appealed.
In the United States, the court’s ruling would clash with the First Amendment. But the decision heightens a growing uneasiness everywhere over the Internet’s ability to persistently define people against their will.
“More and more Internet users want a little of the ephemerality and the forgetfulness of predigital days,” said Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, professor of Internet governance at the Oxford Internet Institute.
Young people, in particular, do not want their drunken pictures to follow them for the next 30 years. “If you’re always tied to the past, it’s difficult to grow, to change,” Mr. Mayer-Schönberger said. “Do we want to go into a world where we largely undo forgetting?”
The court said search engines were not simply dumb pipes, but played an active role as data “controllers,” and must be held accountable for the links they provide. Search engines could be compelled to remove links to certain pages, it said, “even when the publication in itself on those pages is lawful.”
The court also said that a search engine “as a general rule” should place the right to privacy over the right of the public to find information.
Left unclarified was exactly what history remains relevant. Should a businessman be able to expunge a link to his bankruptcy a decade ago? Could a would-be politician get a drunken-driving arrest removed by calling it a youthful folly?
The burden of fulfilling the court’s directives will fall largely on Google, which is by far the dominant search engine in Europe. It has more than 90 percent of the search business in France and Germany.
Google said in a statement that the ruling was “disappointing” and that the company was “very surprised” it differed so much from a preliminary verdict last year that was largely in its favor.
The decision leaves many questions unanswered. Among them is whether information would be dropped only on Google sites in individual countries, or whether it would be also erased from Google.com. Even as Europe has largely erased its internal physical borders, the ruling could impose digital borders.
Another open question is how much effort a search engine should reasonably spend investigating complaints.
“I expect the default action by search engines will be to take down information,” said Orla Lynskey, a lecturer in law at the London School of Economics.
A trade group for information technology companies said the court’s decision posed a threat to free expression.
“This ruling opens the door to large-scale private censorship in Europe,” said James Waterworth, the head of the Brussels office for the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which counts Facebook, Microsoft and Google among its members. “While the ruling likely means to offer protections, our concern is it could also be misused by politicians or others with something to hide.”
That view was echoed by Big Brother Watch, a London-based civil liberties group that was perhaps the first to invoke the specter of Orwell.
“The principle that you have a right to be forgotten is a laudable one, but it was never intended to be a way for people to rewrite history,” said Emma Carr, the organization’s acting director.
Mr. Mayer-Schönberger, the author of “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age,” said such concerns were overblown. He said the court was simply affirming what had been standard European practice.
Relatively few people in Europe have had issues with wanting to delete information on the Internet, Mr. Mayer-Schönberger said. “I don’t think this will lead to the end of the Internet as we know it.”
Michael Fertik is chief executive of Reputation.com, which helps people improve their search results into something they find less objectionable.
“For the first time, human dignity will get the same treatment online as copyright,” Mr. Fertik said. “It will be protected under the law. That’s a huge deal.”
The only loser, he said, was Google. “It no longer gets to profit from your misery.”
And perhaps Reputation.com. “This ruling is not necessarily favorable for my business,” he said.
Those who worry that many people might use the ruling to erase information that is detrimental but is unquestionedly accurate may find support in the case that began it.
The case started in 2009 when Mario Costeja, a Spanish lawyer, complained that entering his name in Google led to legal notices dating to 1998 in an online version of a Spanish newspaper that detailed his debts and the forced sale of his property.
Mr. Costeja said the debt issues had been resolved many years earlier and were no longer relevant. So he asked the newspaper that had published the information, La Vanguardia, to remove the notices and Google to expunge the links. When they refused, Mr. Costeja complained to the Spanish Data Protection Agency that his rights to the protection of his personal data were being violated.
The Spanish authority ordered Google to remove the links in July 2010, but it did not impose any order on La Vanguardia. Google challenged the order, and the National High Court of Spain referred the case to the European court.
Mr. Costeja’s lawyer, Joaquín Muñoz, said Tuesday’s ruling was a victory not only for his client, but for all Europeans. “The fundamental point is that consumers will now know what the rules of the game are and how to defend their rights,” he said.
TURKEY GOING ALL THE WAY TO DESTROY FREEDOM
March 28, 2014 at 12:29 (Censorship, Corrupt Politics, Dictatorship, Internet, Turkey, YouTube)
Image ‘CopyLeft’ by Carlos Latuff
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LATUFF’S LATEST ANTI DEMOCRATIC SPOOFS
February 10, 2014 at 13:44 (Associate Post, Cartoons, Collective Punishment, Corrupt Politics, Dictatorship, Internet, Switzerland, Turkey)
Images ‘Copyleft’ by Carlos Latuff
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Switzerland’s new immigration policy …
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Switzerland has voted 50.3 percent in favor of limiting annual migration from the EU, thus ending the policy of free movement within the bloc that was established in 2002.
Full report HERE
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Turkey’s new Internet restrictions ….
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Turkey’s Family and Social Policy Ministry submitted a bill to parliament this week that would allow authorities to block specific websites and keep a record of users’ Internet activities for up to two years. This represents the latest attempt of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to curb web freedoms.
Full report HERE
ISRAEL’S PLANNED OCCUPATION OF THE INTERNET
January 28, 2014 at 11:35 (God Help Us All!, Hasbara, Internet, Internet Security, Israel, mind control, Occupation)
Netanyahu is not satisfied with the occupation of all of Palestine, now he wants to occupy the entire Internet as well …. including our minds.
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“There should be a sort of UN for the internet. A coalition of the leading companies in the cyber world…and in my opinion Israel is the most advanced.”
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‘Turn the curse into a blessing’: Netanyahu wants UN of the internet
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said at the Cybertech conference in Tel Aviv that he wants to create a coalition of leading companies to turn the internet from a curse into a blessing.
In the wake of a reported breach of Defense Ministry computers, Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu talked of the importance of cyber security at an Israeli cybertech conference in the Israeli capital on Monday, Globes reports.
“The biggest challenge we face with the cyber world is protecting the privacy and security of the public. There could be a serious breach,” he said.
“There should be a sort of UN for the internet. A coalition of the leading companies in the cyber world…and in my opinion Israel is the most advanced,” he added.
Fleshing out his plan during the conference, the prime minister said he envisaged hundreds of cybertech companies being set up in an unprecedented cooperation between the government and the business world. He explained that the more computerized the world gets, the more vulnerable we all become, and so we must deal with it in a systematic and focused manner.
“This project is big and reflects our visions to develop Israel with international cooperation. We all want to see a cyber-world that is open, free and cooperative. When you think cyber, think Israel,” Israel’s leader said.
Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive of IBM Software and Systems, speaks during the opening of the “CyberTech 2014” international conference on January 27, 2014 in the Mediterranean coastal city of Tel-Aviv. (AFP Photo / Jack Guez)
Netanyahu’s speech came hot on the heels of it becoming public that hackers had broken into an Israeli Defense Ministry computer via an email attachment earlier this month, which was tainted with malicious software.
The hackers broke into 15 computers, one of them belonging to Israel’s Civil Administration that monitors Palestinians in Israeli occupied territory.
The software managed to fool employees at the Defense Ministry because it looked like it had been sent by Israel’s Shin Bet secret security service, an Israeli cyber security firm said on Sunday.
The chief technology officer at Seculert, Aviv Raff, told Reuters that Palestinians were suspected of being behind the attack, but other than that he did not have any information on what the hackers did. The Defense Ministry declined to comment.
ARIEL SHARON WATCH
January 5, 2014 at 09:35 (DesertPeace Exclusive, Internet, Israel)
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A new Website has appeared asking one question …. as well as an answer to it. It’s in Hebrew, but simply asks ….
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Is Sharon dead yet?
NO.
NO.
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? שרון מת כבר*
לא
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Stay tuned to this site for the updates …
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Thanks to Sol Salbe who posted the link (on FB)
ANONYMOUS HACKTIVIST SPEAKS AS HE HEADS FOR PRISON
November 17, 2013 at 08:53 (Activism, Corrupt Politics, Internet, Internet Security)
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It has taken a lot for me to write this, to explain my actions, knowing that doing so — honestly — could cost me more years of my life in prison. I am aware that I could get as many as 10 years, but I hope that I do not, as I believe there is so much work to be done.
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Anonymous Hacktivist Jeremy Hammond’s Court Statement Upon Being Sentenced to 10 Years In Jail
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Jeremy Hammond by freejeremy.net
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Jeremy Hammond was sentenced to ten years in prison for hacking Stratfor communications, then releasing the personal account and email info of over 800,000 people, plus the credit card info of 60,000 people. This is his statement.
Good morning. Thank you for this opportunity. My name is Jeremy Hammond and I’m here to be sentenced for hacking activities carried out during my involvement with Anonymous. I have been locked up at MCC for the past 20 months and have had a lot of time to think about how I would explain my actions.
Before I begin, I want to take a moment to recognize the work of the people who have supported me. I want to thank all the lawyers and others who worked on my case: Elizabeth Fink, Susan Kellman, Sarah Kunstler, Emily Kunstler, Margaret Kunstler, and Grainne O’Neill. I also want to thank the National Lawyers Guild, the Jeremy Hammond Defense Committee and Support Network, Free Anons, the Anonymous Solidarity Network, Anarchist Black Cross, and all others who have helped me by writing a letter of support, sending me letters, attending my court dates, and spreading the word about my case. I also want to shout out my brothers and sisters behind bars and those who are still out there fighting the power.
The acts of civil disobedience and direct action that I am being sentenced for today are in line with the principles of community and equality that have guided my life. I hacked into dozens of high profile corporations and government institutions, understanding very clearly that what I was doing was against the law, and that my actions could land me back in federal prison. But I felt that I had an obligation to use my skills to expose and confront injustice–and to bring the truth to light.
Could I have achieved the same goals through legal means? I have tried everything from voting petitions to peaceful protest and have found that those in power do not want the truth to be exposed. When we speak truth to power we are ignored at best and brutally suppressed at worst. We are confronting a power structure that does not respect its own system of checks and balances, never mind the rights of it’s own citizens or the international community.
My introduction to politics was when George W. Bush stole the Presidential election in 2000, then took advantage of the waves of racism and patriotism after 9/11 to launch unprovoked imperialist wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. I took to the streets in protest naively believing our voices would be heard in Washington and we could stop the war. Instead, we were labeled as traitors, beaten, and arrested.
I have been arrested for numerous acts of civil disobedience on the streets of Chicago, but it wasn’t until 2005 that I used my computer skills to break the law in political protest. I was arrested by the FBI for hacking into the computer systems of a right-wing, pro-war group called Protest Warrior, an organization that sold racist t-shirts on their website and harassed anti-war groups. I was charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the “intended loss” in my case was arbitrarily calculated by multiplying the 5000 credit cards in Protest Warrior’s database by $500, resulting in a total of $2.5 million.My sentencing guidelines were calculated on the basis of this “loss,” even though not a single credit card was used or distributed — by me or anyone else. I was sentenced to two years in prison.
While in prison I have seen for myself the ugly reality of how the criminal justice system destroys the lives of the millions of people held captive behind bars. The experience solidified my opposition to repressive forms of power and the importance of standing up for what you believe.
When I was released, I was eager to continue my involvement in struggles for social change. I didn’t want to go back to prison, so I focused on above-ground community organizing. But over time, I became frustrated with the limitations, of peaceful protest, seeing it as reformist and ineffective. The Obama administration continued the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, escalated the use of drones, and failed to close Guantanamo Bay.
Around this time, I was following the work of groups like Wikileaks and Anonymous. It was very inspiring to see the ideas of hactivism coming to fruition. I was particularly moved by the heroic actions of Chelsea Manning, who had exposed the atrocities committed by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. She took an enormous personal risk to leak this information — believing that the public had a right to know and hoping that her disclosures would be a positive step to end these abuses. It is heart-wrenching to hear about her cruel treatment in military lockup.
I thought long and hard about choosing this path again. I had to ask myself, if Chelsea Manning fell into the abysmal nightmare of prison fighting for the truth, could I in good conscience do any less, if I was able? I thought the best way to demonstrate solidarity was to continue the work of exposing and confronting corruption.
I was drawn to Anonymous because I believe in autonomous, decentralized direct action. At the time Anonymous was involved in operations in support of the Arab Spring uprisings, against censorship, and in defense of Wikileaks. I had a lot to contribute, including technical skills, and how to better articulate ideas and goals. It was an exciting time — the birth of a digital dissent movement, where the definitions and capabilities of hacktivism were being shaped.
I was especially interested in the work of the hackers of LulzSec who were breaking into some significant targets and becoming increasingly political. Around this time, I first started talking to Sabu, who was very open about the hacks he supposedly committed, and was encouraging hackers to unite and attack major government and corporate systems under the banner of Anti Security. But very early in my involvement, the other Lulzsec hackers were arrested, leaving me to break into systems and write press releases. Later, I would learn that Sabu had been the first one arrested, and that the entire time I was talking to him he was an FBI informant.
Anonymous was also involved in the early stages of Occupy Wall Street. I was regularly participating on the streets as part of Occupy Chicago and was very excited to see a worldwide mass movement against the injustices of capitalism and racism. In several short months, the “Occupations” came to an end, closed by police crackdowns and mass arrests of protestors who were kicked out of their own public parks. The repression of Anonymous and the Occupy Movement set the tone for Antisec in the following months — the majority of our hacks against police targets were in retaliation for the arrests of our comrades.
I targeted law enforcement systems because of the racism and inequality with which the criminal law is enforced. I targeted the manufacturers and distributors of military and police equipment who profit from weaponry used to advance U.S. political and economic interests abroad and to repress people at home. I targeted information security firms because they work in secret to protect government and corporate interests at the expense of individual rights, undermining and discrediting activists, journalists and other truth seekers, and spreading disinformation.
I had never even heard of Stratfor until Sabu brought it to my attention. Sabu was encouraging people to invade systems, and helping to strategize and facilitate attacks. He even provided me with vulnerabilities of targets passed on by other hackers, so it came as a great surprise when I learned that Sabu had been working with the FBI the entire time.
On December 4, 2011, Sabu was approached by another hacker who had already broken into Stratfor’s credit card database. Sabu, under the watchful eye of his government handlers, then brought the hack to Antisec by inviting this hacker to our private chatroom, where he supplied download links to the full credit card database as well as the initial vulnerability access point to Stratfor’s systems.
I spent some time researching Stratfor and reviewing the information we were given, and decided that their activities and client base made them a deserving target. I did find it ironic that Stratfor’s wealthy and powerful customer base had their credit cards used to donate to humanitarian organizations, but my main role in the attack was to retrieve Stratfor’s private email spools which is where all the dirty secrets are typically found.
It took me more than a week to gain further access into Stratfor’s internal systems, but I eventually broke into their mail server. There was so much information, we needed several servers of our own in order to transfer the emails. Sabu, who was involved with the operation at every step, offered a server, which was provided and monitored by the FBI. Over the next weeks, the emails were transferred, the credit cards were used for donations, and Stratfor’s systems were defaced and destroyed. Why the FBI would introduce us to the hacker who found the initial vulnerability and allow this hack to continue remains a mystery.
As a result of the Stratfor hack, some of the dangers of the unregulated private intelligence industry are now known. It has been revealed through Wikileaks and other journalists around the world that Stratfor maintained a worldwide network of informants that they used to engage in intrusive and possibly illegal surveillance activities on behalf of large multinational corporations.
After Stratfor, I continued to break into other targets, using a powerful “zero day exploit” allowing me administrator access to systems running the popular Plesk webhosting platform. Sabu asked me many times for access to this exploit, which I refused to give him. Without his own independent access, Sabu continued to supply me with lists of vulnerable targets. I broke into numerous websites he supplied, uploaded the stolen email accounts and databases onto Sabu’s FBI server, and handed over passwords and backdoors that enabled Sabu (and, by extension, his FBI handlers) to control these targets.
These intrusions, all of which were suggested by Sabu while cooperating with the FBI, affected thousands of domain names and consisted largely of foreign government websites, including those of XXXXXXX, XXXXXXXX, XXXX, XXXXXX, XXXXX, XXXXXXXX, XXXXXXX and the XXXXXX XXXXXXX. In one instance, Sabu and I provided access information to hackers who went on to deface and destroy many government websites in XXXXXX. I don’t know how other information I provided to him may have been used, but I think the government’s collection and use of this data needs to be investigated.
The government celebrates my conviction and imprisonment, hoping that it will close the door on the full story. I took responsibility for my actions, by pleading guilty, but when will the government be made to answer for its crimes?
The U.S. hypes the threat of hackers in order to justify the multi billion dollar cyber security industrial complex, but it is also responsible for the same conduct it aggressively prosecutes and claims to work to prevent. The hypocrisy of “law and order” and the injustices caused by capitalism cannot be cured by institutional reform but through civil disobedience and direct action. Yes I broke the law, but I believe that sometimes laws must be broken in order to make room for change.
In the immortal word of Frederick Douglas, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
This is not to say that I do not have any regrets. I realize that I released the personal information of innocent people who had nothing to do with the operations of the institutions I targeted. I apologize for the release of data that was harmful to individuals and irrelevant to my goals. I believe in the individual right to privacy — from government surveillance, and from actors like myself, and I appreciate the irony of my own involvement in the trampling of these rights. I am committed to working to make this world a better place for all of us. I still believe in the importance of hactivism as a form of civil disobedience, but it is time for me to move on to other ways of seeking change. My time in prison has taken a toll on my family, friends, and community. I know I am needed at home. I recognize that 7 years ago I stood before a different federal judge, facing similar charges, but this does not lessen the sincerity of what I say to you today.
It has taken a lot for me to write this, to explain my actions, knowing that doing so — honestly — could cost me more years of my life in prison. I am aware that I could get as many as 10 years, but I hope that I do not, as I believe there is so much work to be done.
Stay strong and keep struggling.
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TWEETING FOR ZION
August 14, 2013 at 09:07 (Espionage, FaceBook, Internet, Internet Security, Israel, Twitter, zionist harassment)
“In light of the success in the battle for awareness during the Pillar of Defense Operation [the Israeli military operation against the Gaza Strip in November of last year] and the experience gained in activating a large number of situation rooms on university campuses and work with students in general, it was decided to establish a permanent structure of activity on the Internet through the students at academic institutions in the country.”
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Israel setting up “covert units” to tweet, Facebook government propaganda
Ali Abunimah
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Screenshot shows Israelis in an organized digital “war” room posting tweets against the flotilla to Gaza in the summer of 2011. (Source)
The Israeli prime minister’s office is organizing Israeli students in “covert” and “semi-military” style units to tweet and post pro-Israel messages on social media without revealing they are doing it as part of a government propaganda campaign, Israeli media reported today.
But as The Electronic Intifada has previously revealed, this effort is not entirely new.
Haaretz reports today:
The Prime Minister’s Office is planning to form, in collaboration with the National Union of Israeli Students, “covert units” within Israel’s seven universities that will engage in online public diplomacy (hasbara).
The students participating in the project, who would post on social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter on Israel’s behalf, will be part of the public diplomacy arm of the PMO [prime minister’s office], but would not identify themselves as official government representatives.
It is clear that the Israeli government views universities and students as tools in its international propaganda, as a government document, cited by Haaretz, reveals:
“In light of the success in the battle for awareness during the Pillar of Defense Operation [the Israeli military operation against the Gaza Strip in November of last year] and the experience gained in activating a large number of situation rooms on university campuses and work with students in general, it was decided to establish a permanent structure of activity on the Internet through the students at academic institutions in the country.”
Haaretz adds that it is apparent from the document “that a diplomacy group will be set up at each university and structured in a semi-military fashion.” The person in charge of the initiative is Daniel Seaman, former director of the Government Press Office, who has used his personal Facebook page to post racist, Islamophobic and violent material.
Israel’s covert use of social media not new
But this effort is not new. Last year, The Electronic Intifada revealed that the National Union of Israeli Students was already a full-time partner in Israeli government propaganda and set up a project to pay Israeli university students up to $2,000 to spread propaganda online.
As The Electronic Intifada also reported, the National Union of Israeli Students sent its members for government propaganda training and described students as Israel’s “pretty face,” to be deployed as a propaganda auxiliary force.
The union set as one of its organizational goals, working “in cooperation with government ministries and additional organizations, to improve the explanation [hasbara] of Israel’s position around the world.”
At the time, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Jillian C. York compared Israel’s online propaganda efforts to those of China, Syria and Bahrain.
“I have seen considerable efforts, both by Israeli companies like Ahava and–apparently–government-supported groups, to utilize some of the same techniques as Syria and Bahrain, particularly on Twitter,” York also previously wrote.
Such Israeli government efforts, which attempt to disguise official propaganda as the work of ordinary concerned citizens and students, date back at least to December 2008, during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead assault on Gaza.
Every computer user is a “kind of soldier”
At that time Israeli social media strategist Niv Calderon wrote that he was hired by the foreign ministry for a first of its kind effort to create a digital “war room” to promote Israel’s propaganda message internationally.
Calderon was later involved in similar organized social media efforts to discredit the Gaza flotillas, and in one report on Israeli TV from June 2011, Calderon can be seen managing a social media “war room” working against that summer’s flotilla to Gaza.
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“There is a media war here,” Calderon explains, “and every citizen, every computer user, is a kind of soldier.”
“Equipped with laptops and iPhones,” the report says, government social media propagandists go to war using “tweets as their weapons.”
The report even shows social media propagandists being trained to find random images of market places in Gaza to post online to obscure the fact that Israel’s siege has caused severe hardship to the civilian population there.
Calderon has also previously worked on the social media campaigns of the anti-Palestinian group StandWithUs.
Desperate
The new “covert” social media push comes as surveys confirm Israel’s status as one of the most negatively viewed countries in the world.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shrugged off these findings, declaring, “it’s not about the facts, it’s about the defamation of Israel and our portrayal as peace rejecters, war mongers instead of an enlightened nation that is fighting against aims to destroy us.”
Netanyahu, like the Israelis behind these various covert schemes, seems to think Israel can still market, sell, cheat and tweet its way out of being seen, rightly, as an apartheid-practicing, colonizing occupier, violently depriving millions of Palestinians of their most fundamental rights.
One obstacle the Israeli campaigns must overcome is the fact that Israel’s biggest social media hits have been entirely negative – a result of the tendency of many Israelis, especially soldiers, to post violent, hateful and outright racist material on their social media accounts, especially on Facebook and Instagram.
Strengthens case for academic boycott
The recruitment of universities and their complicity in government propaganda efforts aimed at justifying Israeli violations of Palestinian rights will likely strengthen arguments in favor of the Palestinian call for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.
This call received a boost this week – unrelated to these social media campaigns – from dozens of international faculty calling on their peers to boycott an upcoming conference on oral history at the Hebrew University.
Written FOR
ISRAEL STRIKES BACK AT GOOGLE
May 6, 2013 at 10:03 (Internet, Irony, Israel, Palestine, Palestinian Statehood)
It’s interesting to see zionism strike back at one of its most loyal supporters. How dare Google stray from the ‘line’ …. at least that’s how Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister sees it …
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Elkin claimed this decision was liable to have a negative impact on efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. And the bombing of Syria won’t??
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Deputy FM tells Google: Recognition of Palestinian state undermines peace talks
In letter to Google CEO Larry Page, Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin urges company to rescind decision to refer to Palestinian territories as ‘Palestine,’ arguing that such measures encourage Palestinians to take one-sided actions.
By Oded Yaron
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Palestinian homepage of Google’s search engine reading ‘Palestine’ at internet cafe in East Jerusalem.Photo by AFP
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Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin wrote to Google CEO Larry Page on Sunday urging the company to rescind its decision to refer to the Palestinian territories as “Palestine” on all its products. Elkin claimed this decision was liable to have a negative impact on efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
“By so doing,” Elkin wrote, “Google is in essence recognizing the existence of a Palestinian state. Such a decision, is in my opinion, not only mistaken but could also negatively impinge on the efforts of my government to bring about direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
“ … I would be grateful were you to reconsider this decision since it entrenches the Palestinians in their view that they can further their political aims through one-side actions rather than through negotiating and mutual agreement.”
Elkin concluded by proposing that Israeli representatives meet with representatives of Google to discuss the issue.
On Friday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor also slammed the decision, saying that Google isn’t a diplomatic entity with the authority to grant recognition to other states, “which begs the question why are they getting involved in international politics and on the controversial side.”
Google said over the weekend that its move was a response to the United Nations General Assembly’s vote last November to recognize Palestine as a nonmember observer state and to similar moves by other international agencies.
“We’re changing the name ‘Palestinian territories’ to ‘Palestine’ across our products,” Google spokesman Nathan Tyler said on Friday. He explained that Google consults with various sources and authorities when naming countries, and in this case, it is following the lead of several international organizations, including the UN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the International Organization for Standardization.
Until about four or five years ago, Google had virtually ignored the Palestinian Authority’s existence. Only in 2009, for instance, did it decide to create a homepage for the Palestinian territories – google.ps. That same year, it removed all the territories Israel captured in 1967 from its maps of Israel.
PALESTINE GETS NATION STATUS ON GOOGLE
May 4, 2013 at 19:43 (Internet, Palestine, Palestinian Statehood)
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Google gives ‘Palestine’ online statehood
Internet giant replaces the phrase ‘Palestinian territories’ on google.ps homepage; Israel not ‘feeling lucky’
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A screen shot of Google’s local Palestinian edition on Friday
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Internet behemoth Google changed the tagline on its Palestinian edition from “Palestinian territories” to “Palestine” on Thursday, in a controversial move that lends online credence to local aspirations of statehood.
Israeli officials indicated their displeasure with the move. Last November, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly voted to upgrade the status of its Palestinian mission to that of non-member observer state. The move was met with strong Israeli and US criticism.
The term “Palestine” is contentious largely because the final status of the Palestinian territories and their borders has yet to be settled through negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. Talks between the parties have been largely at a standstill for over four years, with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s government demanding several preconditions ahead of their resumption.
“Google is not a political or diplomatic entity, so they can call anything by any name, it has no diplomatic or political significance,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told The Times of Israel on Friday. “That said, of course, there can be many questions raised by this change, regarding Google’s policy and the meaning of all that. Precisely because Google is not the UN or any international diplomatic institution, this begs the question of whether there is room for any political stance on controversial issues on behalf of what is basically a private Internet company.”
Google has not yet commented on the change, which appears on both the Arabic and English versions of the local homepage.
ZIONISM HAS FOUND ITS ENEMY
February 25, 2013 at 17:13 (Cartoons, Internet, Israel, Palestine, zionist Slander)
Instead of engaging in self examination of their wrongdoings, zionists have decided to concentrate on those opposed to it. Who is a better target for them than our very own Carlos Latuff?
Here is their latest round of attacks from a site called The Coordination Forum For Countering AntiSemitism. Apparently these groups have the time and resources to spread their evil on the Net rather than attempting to rectify their ways.
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The more exposure Carlos’ works get, the louder our message becomes. Listing him on hate lists only strengthens our cause. For this we are grateful.
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Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff utilizes “Judeophobic stereotypes” in his attacks on Israel
Carlos LatuffBrazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff was listed by The Simon Wiesenthal Center as No. 3 in its 2012 Top Ten Antisemitic/Anti-Israel Slurs for “slandering Prime Minister of Israel [Binyamin] Netanyahu. The cartoon shows Netanyahu profiting politically by squeezing votes out of the body of a dead Arab child in Gaza (the attack was carried out within 2 months from the elections in Israel).
According to the Wiesenthal center, during the November 2012 conflict instigated by Hamas against the Jewish state, the Brazilian cartoonist slandered Israel and her Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for doing what every world leader would do against the onslaught of rocket attacks targeting innocent civilians.
Latuff responded mockingly to his inclusion in the list by the Simon Wiesenthal Center by tweeting his “Thanks to Rabbi Marvin Hier and @simonwiesenthal for the award for my toons on #Gaza slaughter.” Latuff attached a cartoon depicting himself being “awarded” a third-place medal by Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Wiesenthal Center.
In the cartoon (shown above) an aggravated Hier presents a beaming Latuff with a medal that says “3rd” as Latuff sits on a chair drawing an airplane indiscriminately bombing Gaza. Hanging above Hier’s right ear are two lightning bolts that Petra Marquardt-Bigman, a historian and blogger for The Jerusalem Post, noted are the symbol of the SS – an elite Nazi unit.
Latuff won second prize in the International Holocaust Cartoon Competition hosted in Iran in 2006 under the auspices of the Iranian regime. Submissions mocked the Holocaust, inverted it, or denied it happened.
Latuff’s award-winning cartoon (see above) shows a man against the backdrop of the Israeli security fence but given the appearance of a Nazi concentration camp. Instead of wearing the Nazi required Star of David for Jews, he is wearing a red patch the shape of an Islamic crescent. Latuff’s entry was described as “Holocaust inversion,” a “motif” of antisemitism, by Manfred Gerstenfeld.
Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian freelance political cartoonist with an impressively large portfolio of work – much of which openly express antisemitic themes. Although Latuff claims to be only anti-Zionist, his cartoons have drawn criticism and allegations of uninhibited utilization of “judeophobic stereotypes.”
Latuff is of Lebanese Christian ancestry; in his own words he said he has “Arab roots.” He claims this Arab background had no relevance to his work and clearly it is his Leftist beliefs that influence his work but many of the antisemitic themes in his work appear to come from the Arab world. Since 1990 he has worked for a Leftist trade union (workers) press, Vapt-Vupt, the journal of the Workers’ Syndicate of the Federal Fluminense University (in Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro).
In his antisemitism he joins other Arab Christians in their attacks on Israel such as Mark Glenn of Lebanese Christian descent who created an antisemitic website “the Ugly Truth,” and Mauricio Abu-Ghosh Parham and Daniel J. Jadue of Palestinian Christian descent who are predominant in much of the anti-Israel activity in Chile.
Latuff’s works have been posted mostly by himself on Indymedia websites and private blogs. However, some of them have been picked up and featured in magazines such as the Brazilian edition of Mad, Le Monde Diplomatique, and the The Toronto Star. In addition, a few of his works were published on Arab websites and publications.
Joel Kotek a professor at Belgium’s Free University of Brussels, in his book Cartoons and Extremism: Israel and the Jews in Arab and Western Media (Vallentine Mitchell, 2009) calls Latuff “the contemporary Drumont of the internet.” (Edouard Drumont was the founder of the French Antisemitic League of France and the publisher of La Libre Parole, a magazine that printed numerous classically antisemitic cartoons during the years of the Dreyfus Affair). Latuff is one of the more prolific anti-Semitic cartoonists on the web, with a staggering amount of work dedicated to advancing explicitly antisemitic political imagery.
Themes of Latuff’s cartoons
Zoomorphism
Zoomorphism describes the attribution of animal forms or symbols to characterize a human being. In a classical antisemitic stereotype, Jews are drawn with horrific physical characteristics. According to Dr. Joel Kotek: “To abuse one’s adversaries, one dehumanizes them by turning them into animals. In Nazi and Soviet caricatures, the Jew is often depicted as a spider or an octopus, perceived as an evil animal.”
Jews, or Israel, may be pictured as savage beasts and its leaders as demons, devils, and vampires. Jews are all drawn with large noses and small eyes. In many cartoons, Israelis are shown with yarmulkes (Kipot), despite the majority not wearing a yarmulke.
Latuff makes frequent use of the Jews as beast theme.
In the above cartoon, Latuff makes fun of the Israeli charge that its citizens have been targeted by rockets fired from Gaza. Yes, rockets are fired from Gaza but they are without explosives – of course, this is not so – while the Israeli reaction is overproportionate. Israelis, however, are shown as being religious though the targeted areas in Israel were primarily non-religious communities, which also had many children not shown in the cartoon.
The bestiality of Israeli leaders reached a high point in Latuff’s drawings of Ariel Sharon, previously Prime Minister of Israel from February 2001 to January 2006. The top two cartoons show Sharon as a devil and as a monster. The bottom two cartoons show Sharon as a pig and as anti-Christ. The bottom two cartoons also show the USA showering money on the war criminal Sharon.
In their 2003 Annual Report, the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism noted that Latuff’s “portrayal of [former] Israeli Prime Minister Sharon is reminiscent of the anti-Semitic caricatures…in Julius Streicher’s [Nazi publication] Der Sturmer.”
The cartoon above represented a commentary on the May 30, 2010 flotilla of six ships incident off the coast of Gaza. It combines both the cartoonist’s frequent claim that Israel has become a Nazi-like state (Note the Jewish Magen David on the Israeli flag is morphed into a swastika) and imagery portraying the Jewish state as a beast, with its tentacles wrapped around the flotilla – which is emblazoned with the word freedom.
Next to the flotilla cartoon, for comparison, is a Nazi antisemitic cartoon from about 1938 in which an octopus with a Star of David over its head encompasses the world with its tentacles.
In the cartoon above drawn a week after Latuff drew Israel as an octopus, he now makes Israel into a shark. The cartoon was based on the interception by Israeli Defence Forces of the1,200 cargo ship Rachel Corrie on June 5, 2010. The ship was purchased by the Free Gaza Movement in Ireland and attempted to break the Gaza blockade. The vessel was brought to Ashdod harbor with none of its passengers harmed.
Associations between Israelis/Jews and Oppressors in other societies
In Latuff’s “We are all Palestinians” cartoon series, various well-known oppressed groups in history and elsewhere in the world now are shown stating “I am Palestinian.” If you are a victim of oppression anywhere, then you are Palestinian as well.
The cartoons include African-Americans after U.S. Civil War, Tibetans under Chinese rule, South-African black people in apartheid days, South-Vietnamese civilians during Vietnam War, Native Americans facing U.S. Cavalry, and Natives from Chiapas facing Mexican troops.
Association of Israel with South African apartheid
Latuff makes use of the evil history of South African apartheid to claim that Israel is resorting to the same method. Apartheid (“the status of being apart”) was a system of racial segregation enforced through legislation by the National Party governments, who were the ruling party from 1948 to 1994, of South Africa, under which the rights of the majority black inhabitants of South Africa were curtailed and white supremacy and Afrikaner minority rule was maintained.
Apartheid compelled Black South Africans to live in separate places defined by race, prohibited marriage and sexual relations between persons of different races, provided for segregation of municipal grounds creating, among other things, separate beaches, buses, hospitals, schools and universities.
The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is clearly not an apartheid situation. Israeli Arabs are not segregated and have full civil rights. Those Arabs who live in the areas of the Palestinian Authority have established their own State institutions.
These two cartoons above show how Latuff links Israel to South African apartheid.
In the cartoon above, the State of Israel is shown as a park bench that is only for Jews. This, however, is not in any way accurate since 21% of the country’s population is made up of Israeli Arabs and they include 12 members of the Israel parliament and a Supreme Court Justice. Israeli Arabs are also employed in significant proportions as medical staff in every major Israeli hospital, some serve as soldiers in the Israeli army, and they are well represented as members of the Legal and Judicial professions. There are no segregated parks or other public facilities.
Holocaust inversion
The last cartoon drawn in 2002 for the series “We are all Palestinians” shows a scene from the Nazi-era Warsaw Ghetto, where a Jewish boy says “I am Palestinian.” The figure of the devastated Jewish child is transformed into a different one. Now the Palestinians are the ghetto-child whose fate is in the hands of oppressors who clearly intend his extinction.
The cartoon abuses, polemically, sensationally and luridly, the suffering of the Jewish people in the holocaust to cast the Jews as the evil incarnated in the Middle East. The ghetto wardens of today are not the Nazis anymore, but the Israelis.
For the purpose of holocaust reversal, all means seem justifiable to defame the Jews. The “Jews” are the “Germans” of the Middle East, the murderous invaders who attack as well – and foremost – children. Their only goal is the total extermination of the Palestinian people.
This puts an end to any possible dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis. No communication is possible between the mutely murderous black wall and the helpless child. The only solution is a demolition of the wall and as the wall stands for Israel = Jewry, when all is said and done, the cartoon stands for the extermination of the Jewish people and the state of Israel.
Latuff repeats the Warsaw ghetto image in 2008 from the infamous photograph of the little boy who is threatened by an SS-man armed with a gun. Hardly any other picture from any ghetto has the same symbolic and emotional impact. This time he makes the cartoon into a closer representation of the original holocaust picture with Israeli soldiers replacing the Nazis and one soldier with a look of pleasure as he terrorizes a Palestinian child.
Latuff again uses the Holocaust as a backdrop for his attack on Jews for this cartoon published on Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2009. He shows a Jew embedded on the wire of a concentration camp with a Palestinian next to him. He makes fun of the slogan that Jews use after the holocaust that they would “never again” allow a holocaust to occur by putting “over again!” below the Palestinian.
In 2010, Latuff again draws a cartoon based on the holocaust by making the Palestinians into the Jews of today. The cartoon shows Palestinians being deported into the Gaza ghetto.
The Blood Libel and Infanticide
Latuff makes frequent use of the blood libel antisemitic theme and particularly involving infanticide. The blood-libel motif originated in the twelfth century in Christian England. It alleges that the Jews have a non-existent Jewish religious law that commands them to kill non-Jews. In today’s Arab world this staple image of unbridled hatred has mutated into the alleged quest for Palestinian blood. The blood libel sees Jews not only as murderers, but murderers who prefer to target children.
In the Latuff cartoon above we see the bloody Jews ready to cut off Palestinian heads. The blood libel also has Jews eating body parts.
The Latuff cartoon at the beginning of this article showed Netanyahu squeezing dead Palestinian babies for ballots. This was not the first time he used this theme as in 2009 he drew a similar cartoon but with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert cradling a dead Palestinian baby. Latuff suggests Israeli leaders kill Palestinian children because it is popular among the Israeli public and helps Israeli politicians get elected.
The Latuff cartoon above was posted under the title “Gaza Holocaust Has Begun.” While the theme of the cartoon is child murder, the title corresponds to the Israel-as-Nazi theme.
Latuff’s cartoon entitled “Baby Killer Zombies” manages to make the Jews into both baby killers but also into the beastly zombies. Their helmet is inscribed with “born to kill” so as to let us know that Jews are genetically killers. And we have the count of babies killed on the rifle illustrated by infant pacifiers implying that the killing of infants is the objective of the Israeli soldier.
Continuing the infanticide theme, Latuff in this 2012 cartoon shows Israel killing infants in Gaza and Prime Minister Netanyahu stamping terrorist on the bodies in order to justify their killing as being actually a war against terror.
Israel as a Nazi State
Latuff has drawn a large number of images comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. He shares this emblematic set-up of the Israelis = Nazis symbol with many within the Arab world who have used this topos since the foundation of Israel in 1948. It is published regularly in Arab newspapers.
Adam Levick, managing editor of CiF Watch, a blog that combats antisemitism, describes Latuff’s Nazi State cartoons as advancing “the narrative that Israel is a unique and immutable evil in the world. His work includes imagery clearly indicating moral equivalence between Israel and Nazi Germany, which he has explicitly acknowledged to be his view.”
‘Just following orders’ shows Nazi SS members compared to Israeli soldiers described as “born to kill.” Text in the shape of a Nazi swastika says: “Israeli soldiers are just following orders”
The above is a Latuff cartoon comparing the war in Gaza with the genocide of Jews by the Nazis. After what he calls Israeli collective punishment in Gaza, he claims that the next logical step for the Jews is to build gas chambers to exterminate the Palestinians.
In another Latuff cartoon, he makes sure there is no doubt that the Jewish state has morphed into the new Nazi Germany by showing the tracks of the Israeli tank shaped like swastikas. The Israelis are outfitted in Nazi uniforms.
Again we see Israeli soldiers dressed in Nazi uniforms using flame throwers against mosques and with the USA preventing the UN from taking any action against the killings.
Dual Loyalty and conspiratorial notions of Jewish control
Latuff makes use of the antisemitic theme that Jews have secret control of world leaders through their desire for world domination. Jews are said to already control banks, the stock exchange, politicians, and the media
Latuff in the cartoon above claims that the powerful Israel lobby has the power to silence or to discredit anyone criticizing Israel.
In this cartoon, Jewish control over the American government leads to a shift in the blame for Israeli “war crimes” on the presumably innocent [terrorist group] Hamas.
In the cartoon above, Israel is shown controlling Greece. On Friday July 1, 2011, the Greek government announced that it was prohibiting the departure from Greek ports of any ships, Greek or foreign, for Gaza. In the cartoon, Prime-Minister Netanyahu of Israel is shown throwing dog biscuits to reward Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou who was in office from October 6, 2009 to November 11, 2011, for this decision. Greece is presumably succumbing to Israel and its wealthy powerful lobbies.
Iran
A campaign is being waged by Latuff against any action that might be taken against the nuclearization of [peace loving] Iran. He sees such military action as being driven by Jewish power to influence US policy by shaping the debate on this issue.
In the cartoon above it is Jewish influence represented by the lobby group AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) that has built a wall with an Israel flag to prevent those from being heard by the US Congress who object to the bombing of Iran.
In the two cartoons above, Latuff is showing Israel’s control over the USA as leading to an attack on Iran.
In the two cartoons above Latuff shows Jewish influence on not just the USA but the entire Western bloc of countries. It is Israel that is planning a nuclear attack on [peaceful] Iran and using the questionable assertion (as Latuff apparently sees it) that the Nazis killed six million Jews as justification to remove the threat to the Jewish State.
Mother Palestine
Another favorite theme of Latuff is mother Palestine. Mother Palestine is an elderly but defiant grandmotherly woman. She is a sympathetic figure for the Palestinians in contrast to the Israeli Nazis. She is not particularly loveable but defiantly faces down the Nazi Israelis and the lies of their leaders.
In the cartoon above, Mother Palestine takes on the image of a holocaust survivor with a concentration camp number tattooed onto her arm. But the tattoo number is 1948 with blood coming out of it to symbolize the catastrophe (Nakba) that the Palestinians supposedly suffered with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
Here Mother Palestine sits skeptically to hear the proposal of Prime-Minister Netanyahu to have two states for two peoples. And of course in the picture we also have cheering both President Obama and a religious settler with his automatic rifle.
h President Obama and a religious settler with his automatic rifle.
These two cartoons show a militant Mother Palestine who attacks Israeli army vehicles and tramples Israeli tanks. The second cartoon was for the 63rd anniversary of the Nakba (catastrophe) on May 15, 2011.
In this cartoon from 2012, Latuff shows Mother Palestine spanking ‘President’ of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas. He is charged with garnering the support of the United Nations but not from the people of his own nation. In particular, this is an attack on Abbas saying that he personally will not take advantage of the Right of Return of displaced Palestinians. The key in the hand of Mother Palestine is the symbol of the Palestinian demand to reoccupy the present State of Israel.
INTERNET STORM OVER SOLDIER’S PHOTOS
February 21, 2013 at 13:46 (Internet, Irony, Israel, Photography, Soldier Brutality)
More outrage for smoking joints in uniform than for killing a Palestinian …
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The current outrage has to do with a Golani Brigade soldier who posted pictures of himself on Instagram, smoking what he says are joints, while in uniform. The soldier uploaded a second photograph of a bound Palestinian prisoner, and also boasted on Twitter of having killed a Palestinian.
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Drugs, guns, and bound Palestinians: An Israeli soldier’s photo album
Days after a Golani Brigade soldier posted a photograph of a Palestinian boy in the crosshairs of his rifle, a new scandal emerges surrounding an Israeli soldier’s online photos.
By Oded Yaron
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Golani Brigade soldier apparently smoking a joint with his weapon. Photo by Screenshot
Israel Defense Forces soldiers’ social-media activity is once again creating a storm on the Internet, just days after a soldier who posted a photograph of a Palestinian boy in the crosshairs of his sniper’s rifle drew harsh criticism.
The current outrage has to do with a Golani Brigade soldier who posted pictures of himself on Instagram, smoking what he says are joints, while in uniform. The soldier uploaded a second photograph of a bound Palestinian prisoner, and also boasted on Twitter of having killed a Palestinian.
Electronic Intifada first reported on the soldier’s photographs and apparently spent time rummaging through the photos he posted online. The site posted a number of his pictures, including one of him half-naked and holding a weapon. The soldier has since blocked his accounts on Instagram and Facebook.
Among the other photos included in Electronic Intifada’s report were two with English captions reading “Keep calm and kill people in your mind” and “Keep calm and take over Gaza.” Another picture shows a map of the Gaza Strip with the caption “Soon to be a giant theme park!!”
The report also included the soldier’s response to an Arab user’s comment on Facebook, in which he wrote, “For all I care you can comment all my pictures, you’re just a f–king Arab pile of s–t, you even smell like it….”
The IDF Spokesperson responded: “This is a grave incident, which does not represent the IDF. Our investigation of the incident is ongoing and disciplinary action will be taken in its wake. The IDF will continue to act to prevent incidents of this sort, which are not in line with the IDF’s values.”
This incident was reported after Electronic Intifada and other news sites around the world last weekend posted an Instagram photo of what appears to be a Palestinian boy in the crosshairs of a sniper’s rifle.
“This is what occupation looks like,” representatives of Breaking the Silence, a group of IDF combat veterans who aim to raise public awareness of what happens in the territories, said on the group’s Facebook page. “This is what military control over a civilian population looks like.”
More photos from the Golani soldier’s account.Screenshot found at Source below
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The advocacy group said the image shows that not much has changed in the decade since a similar photograph taken by a soldier was displayed in the organization’s first public exhibit in 2003.
“There, too, an Israeli soldier aimed a weapon at a boy and took a picture with his camera as a memento, a gesture of an endless feeling of power that is connected to control over another people,” read the Breaking the Silence Facebook page. “Ten years have passed. The devices and the applications have changed; the ways in which pictures are shared has changed. The feeling of excessive power and the clear contempt for human life and human dignity have remained.”
The soldier, whose actions “are not in accordance with the spirit of the IDF or its values,” according to the army, has since deleted his Instagram account.
ISLAMOPHOBIA TO GET ITS DAY IN COURT
September 20, 2012 at 08:14 (Internet, Islamophobia)
“This lawsuit is not an attack on the First Amendment nor on the right for Americans to say what they think, but does request that the offending content be removed from the Internet,” the lawsuit said.
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Actress sues California man behind anti-Muslim film
Cindy Lee Garcia, an actress in the anti-Islam film “Innocence of Islam,” sues the California man linked to the film’s production for fraud and slander. (Al Arabiya)
By ALEX DOBUZINSKIS
REUTERS/LOS ANGELES
An actress in an anti-Islam film that triggered violent protests across the Muslim world sued a California man linked to its production on Wednesday for fraud and slander, saying she had received death threats after the video was posted on YouTube.
Actress Cindy Lee Garcia, who also named Google Inc and its YouTube unit as defendants, asked that the film be removed from YouTube and said her right to privacy had been violated and her life endangered, among other allegations.
It was the first known civil lawsuit connected to the making of the video, which depicts the Prophet Mohammad as a womanizer and a fool, and helped generate a torrent of violence across the Muslim world last week.
The violence included an attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi in which the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed. U.S. and other foreign embassies were also stormed in cities in Asia, Africa and the Middle East by furious Muslims.
Garcia accused a producer of the movie, whom she identified as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula and said he used the alias Sam Bacile, of duping her into appearing in a “hateful” film that she had been led to believe was a simple desert adventure movie.
“There was no mention of ‘Mohammed’ during filming or on set. There were no references made to religion nor was there any sexual content of which Ms. Garcia was aware,” said the lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.
For many Muslims, any depiction of the prophet is blasphemous. Caricatures deemed insulting in the past have provoked protests and drawn condemnation from officials, preachers, ordinary Muslims and many Christians.
“This lawsuit is not an attack on the First Amendment nor on the right for Americans to say what they think, but does request that the offending content be removed from the Internet,” the lawsuit said.
A representative for Nakoula’s criminal attorney declined to comment on the lawsuit. A Google spokesman said the company was reviewing the complaint and “will be in court tomorrow.”
Apparent dubbing
Garcia, who had a relatively small part in a trailer available online, has said that her character was forced to give away her child to a character named “Master George” in one scene. An expired casting call available online describes a character named George as a “strong leader” and a “tyrant.”
But in the English-language trailer at YouTube, Garcia’s character appears to be dubbed over in that scene, with a voice-over for her character referring to Mohammad instead of George.
Garcia’s lawsuit said her voice was also “dubbed into Arabic” in another version of the trailer.
She said the film, which has circulated online as a 13-minute trailer, had prompted her family to refuse to allow her to see or babysit her grandchildren, fearing for their safety.
The suit accuses Nakoula, Google and YouTube of invasion of privacy, unfair business practices, the use of Garcia’s likeness without permission and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
U.S. officials have said authorities were not investigating the film project itself and that even if it was inflammatory or led to violence, simply producing it cannot be considered a crime in the United States, which has strong free speech laws.
But Nakoula, a Coptic Christian California man who pleaded guilty to bank fraud in 2010, was interviewed by federal probation officers on Saturday probing whether he violated the terms of his release while making the film.
Nakoula, who was released from prison in 2011, is prohibited from accessing the Web or assuming aliases without the approval of his probation officer, court records show. Violations could result in him being sent back to prison.
Nakoula, 55, did not return to his house in the Los Angeles suburb of Cerritos following his interview with federal probation officers, and his whereabouts are unknown. Last week, he denied involvement in the film in a phone call to his Coptic bishop in Los Angeles.
