People across the political spectrum in Israel were disgusted recently to see others at a Jewish wedding celebrating the fire bombing of a Palestinian family and holding up a picture of 18-month-old Ali Dawabshe who was burned away in the attack. One youth was shown stabbing the picture of the baby as others danced and rejoiced. Israeli police arrested four of the men in the videotape today, though (as despicable as these extremists are) the arrests raise questions over the criminalization of speech.
The wedding of a couple from the far religious right showed people dancing with weapons and rejoicing in the deaths. The father and the baby Ali both burned to death in the attack. It took a month for the mother, Reham, to die in the hospital. She was a 27 year old teacher and had third degree burns over 90 percent of her body. Only their four-year-old son Ahmed survived with second-degree burns on more than 60 percent of his body.
The four men arrested include the groom Yakir Ashbal. What is interesting is that the lawyer representing them was one of those at what is now being called the “hate wedding” filled with extremists. Attorney Itamar Ben Gvir has insisted that a weapon shown in the videotape was a toy and that “even if it was tasteless, no crime has been committed during the dance from this perspective.” Giver would seem to have an obvious conflict in representation as a potential witness. His participation in such a hateful event also raises questions about his own moral judgment, but I fail to see how he could defend a case in which he is a witness.
Putting those ethical concerns aside, his point is still a valid one. The men were charged with “incitement to violence” and “illegal possession of weapons.” The latter charge is a factual question and not particularly troubling from a legal perceptive. The incitement charge is a concern. We have long discussed the increasing criminalization of speech. We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, particularly in France (here and here and here and here and here and here) and England ( here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). Much of this trend is tied to the expansion of hate speech and non-discrimination laws. We have even seen comedians targets with such court orders under this expanding and worrisome trend. (here and here).
Here you have hateful individuals celebrating and rejoicing in the death of a family, including a baby. However, what constitutes incitement and what constitutes opinion rests on a highly subjective determination. Presumably any rejoicing over the attack would encourage or incite others. This creates a slippery slope in which prosecutors can pick and chose who to arrest for unpopular speech. I find these people, including a lawyer at such a hateful event, to be disgusting and grotesque people. Yet, civil libertarians are often required to defend the least sympathetic individuals in our society. We do not need free speech to protect popular speech or individuals. The test of our convictions is our willingness to extend the same protections to those whom we despise.
While Israel does not have the same free speech protections as the United States, it is the country with the most such protections in this region. If there are gun charges to be brought, I say bring them. However, the incitement charges raise deep concerns over how speech is regulated or prosecuted by the government.
What do you think?
A “Palestinian” is kind of like a member of Sudan Temple here in America. They hang out in a mosque like building and have all sorts of rituals. But there is no real ethnic Sudan Temple human and the Palestinians are similar, just arabs with Jordanian or Egyptian nationality in the past. There are tribes and Bedouins etc. The Palestinian State thing is just another ISIS like Caliphate conglomeration. All those folks on the West Bank were Jordanians in 1967 when the six day war was begun and they still are. They are arabs and muslims. That is it.
Haha Bark…!!!!!!
What do you then make of the Jews and Christians who were always in Palestine?
Type into youtube Palestine before zionism and get your mind blown!
Olly:
Murder by mob is unfortunately all too common. Bringing false witness can happen accidentally, or be a means of revenge. All one has to do is claim your enemy insulted the Prophet or burned a Koran, and the mob commits murder.
A similar phenomenon happened hundreds of years ago in the hysteria of the Salem witch trials, as well as the witch trials in Europe. If you had an enemy, rival, or someone you envied, you could claim she was a witch and have her murdered.
If you disagree with the three state solution then you are opening the door to Palestinians claiming a State in LA and other places in America where they have settled.
Bark, what’s in it for the Palestinians?
Three state solution: Israel, Egypt and Jordan. Egypt gets all of Gaza. Jordan gets half the West Bank. Israel gets a secure border. Jordanians living in the West Bank can go to Jordan. Egyptians living in Gaza can stay or go back to Egypt. Hezbulla and the other terrorist groups get killed. Nuff said.
Excellent Po! I didn’t intend to convey confidence in the people’s ability to restore government to its primary purpose: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,”. If this blog has shown me one thing it is that we have lost sight of the true purpose for government.
I facilitated a year-long open discussion online to see if we could identify the root cause of America’s decline. The impetus for this was that regardless of the various blogs I was following (across the political spectrum), the discussions were about the myriad of problems we faced and the solutions suggested were always superficial. I would often ask people if “that” was done what would prevent it from happening again. So my question was, “We have many problems with many causes but is there one root cause?
Pick a problem you will find on any blog, pick a solution you will commonly find and you will likely not see the result our discussion came up with.
There was not one but three identified root causes that I challenge anyone to dispute:
Voter ignorance
Voter apathy
Voter dependence
We no longer have an electorate that understands the purpose for government. They are completely ignorant of our countries history leading up to the Declaration of Independence. They ignorantly put their trust in a government made up of people as fallible as themselves. They have effectively turned over control of their lives, their liberty and their property to this massive bureaucracy in exchange for some perceived benefit. And the people are told their benefit will be lost if they are not reelected. Wash and repeat.
If you want proof how lost we are, go into any discussion in any blog and ask how would “their” solution secure unalienable rights. I’ve done it over the last 8 years and without fail, no one has an answer. If any proposed solution for government cannot positively answer that question then it is not a solution.
Olly
I don’t disagree with you, neither regarding the intrinsic gift of natural rights nor the personal responsibility of managing them. I disagree with you as to the practical application of those. Perhaps my view is one that is more pessimistic than yours as to what the ultimate ending is.
We’d like the state to step in the just exact measure to enhance our rights and responsibilities without infringing upon or hijacking them. however, we must keep in mind that the state is also individuals who form a group that shares “natural rights” (which are actually artificial rights, but self-interest is that which ultimately determines what is a right to whom, and leadership is an exercise in maintaining self-interest/ the benefits of the position).
Taking the members of congress, for example, do we doubt that their “natural rights”as perceived by them differ greatly from ours? Certainly not in the framing of life, liberty and property, but what they actually encompass…and with that comes the main difference, the ability, power to determine what constitutes natural rights for others.
So the state, due to its election to determine what constitutes natural rights for others and how they would be permitted to protect them, will always err against the others and for itself. Every society ultimately ends there, because every society ultimately becomes fragmented, and the greater good becomes parceled into parts.
While a dictatorship does it blatantly and allows one man alone’s perspective as the arbiter and protector of everyone’s natural rights, and a theocracy does the same using the small group perspective of religious scholars, the democracy turned oligarchy, which is what we have nowadays, does it through converting the whole system into a propagandist machine, selling pretend ownership into a structure that owns everything.
In that respect, we are no longer a government of the people. Once we agreed to relinquish some of the natural rights, the state determined that all the other rights are up for grab, and the more easily spooked the state is, the more ready it is to jump and swallow those rights.. And though we hate it, we must understand that it must necessarily, and unfortunately, be the case for it is unavoidable, especially for a society so large and diverse as this one.
So the only way to counter it is through a revolution, one that splits the system into more manageable pieces, or one that reverts the course of things and rebuild it anew. Otherwise, it is much too late, and we’ll see that quite clearly in the next/upcoming financial crash.
Absolutely Ken. Thank you.
Ken, Dr Gilbert is one of those people who renew my faith in humanity, willing to lose life and limb to bear witness to the only thing worth losing life and limb for, the truth.
Not only has he been physically helping on the ground, he has also been willing to speak tirelessly against the distortion of reality that is spewed by the Israeli propaganda machine and its enablers of all stripes.
And they did to him what they do to any such people short of accidentally killing them, they ban them from Gaza, while claiming that they do not control Gaza.
Anyone who claims to be just, honest, fair and moral, who yet remains silent before the crimes against humanity done on the Palestinians, or who is able to justify it to any degree, is someone who ought to spend the rest of their life looking for their humanity and decency, for both have surely left them.
@Olly
1, December 30, 2015 at 4:36 pm
“Po,
“I believe we have many points of agreement but in one significant area I would disagree. I believe we all have identical natural rights, period. Once we come into existence our natural rights do as well.
“Alone in the state of nature we have the full responsibility of the security of those natural rights and it’s when we enter into civil society that we agree to empower the state to provide ONLY that measure of security necessary to secure our lives, liberty and property.”
This whole comment is very well stated, Olly, and if I may, I’d like to suggest one (to me) clarifying modification of your second sentence above, so that it reads, ‘Alone in the state of nature we have the full responsibility of the security of those natural rights and it’s when we enter into civil society that we agree to empower the state to provide ONLY that measure of security necessary to secure those natural rights.”
Is that agreeable?
“You should avoid travel to Israel, then, as you’re quite likely to meet people expressing ‘joy, happiness, or satisfaction over the killing of the enemy.’ ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/middleeast/israelis-watch-bombs-drop-on-gaza-from-front-row-seats.html
And to be clear on what is meant by “killing the enemy” in Gaza, consider the following eye-witness testimony. If you have the stomach for it, read the whole article:
Journaling mass murder and chaos in Gaza
“Dr. Gilbert’s emergency room journals provide the substance for two compelling books on exactly what it looked like from the ground in Gaza, as the Israeli military lay siege to an entrapped population of over a million Gazans. His first book, Eyes in Gaza, written with his colleague Erik Fosse, was an account of their experiences at al-Shifa during Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza during ‘Operation Cast Lead’ (December 2008 – January 2009). His new book on the 2014 war, (sic) Night in Gaza, was released in June of 2015.
“I spoke to the seasoned ER doctor during a recent visit to Northern California, where he was a guest speaker at a benefit for the peace group A Jewish Voice for Peace. Night in Gaza is set at al-Shifa Hospital, where Dr. Gilbert was working during Israel’s massive assault in the summer of 2014, which killed over 2,100 civilians, more than one third [of whom were] women and children. Israel has since banned Gilbert from re-entering the blockaded zone.
“Gilbert goes to Gaza ‘because I want to be an objective medical witness to the sharp edge of the Israeli military machine,’ he said, ‘and because our sanitized mainstream media has turned into a lying machine for the Israelis. It’s not telling the truth, and it is distorting the realities. (Emphasis added) So I think there is such a need for alternative voices, and the other narrative – the narrative of the Palestinian people, which I try to tell through the stethoscope, through the medical eye, and through my account of the Palestinian experience.’
“Dr. Gilbert bristles in response to the claims that the Israelis bend over backwards to avoid civilian casualties when they carry out their attacks in Gaza, the most densely populated place in the world. (My emphasis)
” ‘Let’s look at the numbers from the last UN report, the commission that was established by the UN to investigate the last attack. If the Israelis, on the one hand, say that 90% of their bombs hit the intended target, which they say all the time … how do they explain killing 2,151 people, 551 of them children and 299 of them Palestinian women? How on Earth can you claim that you tried to avoid civilian casualties, when you kill half a thousand children in 51 days?” he asked.
“According to UN figures, 3,000 children were wounded, 20,000 houses were destroyed, and 500,000 Gazans were displaced. The UN puts the number of children killed at just under five hundred.”
http://rsnorg.org/opinion2/277-75/34287-focus-slaughter-through-a-stethoscope
Po,
I believe we have many points of agreement but in one significant area I would disagree. I believe we all have identical natural rights, period. Once we come into existence our natural rights do as well.
Alone in the state of nature we have the full responsibility of the security of those natural rights and it’s when we enter into civil society that we agree to empower the state to provide ONLY that measure of security necessary to secure our lives, liberty and property.
“And when most people agree to relinquish the protection of their natural rights to society, which trumps the other, the communal wish or the individual wish to handle those duties by himself?”
These natural rights are unalienable; we disable only that portion necessary and retain the rest. If we alienate ourselves from them completely then we are no longer a government of the people. We are rapidly moving in that direction and many would argue we are already there. The state’s assault on our 1st and 2nd amendment rights is the final peaceful battle we can fight. I’m not very confident that is winnable because so many people have already given in to the all-powerful administrative state. They’ve convinced themselves the government dishes out rights and privileges. Somehow they believe it will be different this time when the state controls everything. That is unbelievably ignorant and quite frankly music to the ears of the state.
Most likely this is either a faked event used to take away freedom of speech or it’s a real event being used to take away freedom of speech. They do it here, they do it there, they do it everywhere that freedom of speech is a threat to the powers that be. Ever notice that? They did it in Rome, they did it in medieval times, they did it in China, they do it in the U.K., they do it in 2015, they did it in 1984, they did it from 1950 to 1956… anywhere they can get away with it. And often the infamous “they” have the full support and encouragement of some percentage of the citizenry.
Hence the tireless efforts of some of us who, like a stuck record, continually try to wake people up to how they’re being exploited, used, duped, led around by the nose, by those who control the media and the message. (I.e. six major corporations and whomever controls them and the federal government and whomever controls them and guess what? It ain’t us.)
A ‘Christian’ threatens to burn a Koran and six innocent aid workers are killed thousands of miles away. Israeli extremists celebrate the burning of a Muslim baby and rockets are fired and innocents die (will probably happen). An idiot teenager yells extremist slogans in a crowded place and innocents are trampled to death. There is no absolute freedom of speech, not one without responsibility both individual and surely societal. The same society that confers and protects must determine responsibility.
This nonsense about nature and gods is made up by humans, societies, therefore can be adjusted to fit the occasion.
The road to extremism begins with the authority of someone’s concoction of the divinity of that authority. We make it, therefore we are responsible for it.
Or, there is no difference between the celebrating baby killers and that very freedom of speech. Personally, the wedding deserved a rocket, but how often does the appropriate action receive the appropriate reaction.
So. What was the muslim’s first comment on this thread? It was censored? By whom? If I convert to Islam do I get kicked off the blog?
The act is reprehensible but i am not sure if it is criminal.
The authoritarian impulse to control others by suppressing freedom of speech is a perennial problem, as witness some of the comments by authoritarian followers here, as well as the authoritarian arguments of people like Cass Sunstein and Eric Posner.
“But there is a difference between violating constitutional rights, as those cases have done, and formally restricting them, as people like Sunstein and Posner are now agitating to do. Guaranteeing free speech rights is one of the things that the U.S., relative to the rest of the world, still does well (not perfectly, but well). It is not an exaggeration to say that the people now plotting how to exploit terrorism fears in order to formally restrict rights of free expression themselves pose a clear and present danger to the U.S. (Emphasis added)
“(Sunstein previously proposed that the U.S. Government ‘cognitively infiltrate’ the internet by sending teams of covert agents into ‘chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups’ to discredit what he regards as false conspiracy theories, as well as pay so-called ‘independent’ credible voices to bolster the Government’s messaging). (Emphasis added) And as far as ‘hate speech’ goes: there are few things more ‘hateful’ than wanting to imprison one’s fellow citizens for expressing prohibited political ideas.
“I certainly don’t think their right to espouse these dangerous ideas ought to be suppressed or punished. The solution to their dangerous ideas is to confront and refute them, not outlaw them. But it is vital to recognize the danger they and their ideas entail. We’ve been told for years that The Terrorists ‘hate our freedoms,’ yet we cannot seem to rid ourselves of those who think the solution is to voluntarily abolish those freedoms ourselves.”
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/34337-those-demanding-free-speech-limits-to-fight-isis-pose-a-greater-threat-to-us-than-isis
Worth noting that Cass Sunstein is Samantha Power’s husband…lest some think that this vile movement to shut people up is solely the privy of the right!
Obama too is an enemy of the freedom to report, has gone hard against journalists.
I made a prediction on how our resident Muslim would act on this thread. It was the first comment on this thread. It was deleted. But, for the record, I was 100% correct. That said, most anyone could have made the prediction. Our resident Muslim is nothing if not predictable. JT, like most liberals in this world, are still thinking they can appease and protect people whose values are in direct conflict w/ the civilized world.
Once upon a naive time I believed all humans had a core of “goodness.”
Read newspapers to your own peril; read original source documents of our founding and you’ll discover the folly of the press.
po,
I believe you don’t share isaac’s take on natural rights. We do have absolutes with respect to natural rights in the state of nature. Once we enter into the social contract we agree to disable a portion of those rights only to the extent necessary to secure ALL them.
This quote from Bastiat’s The Law I believe describes very well:
” What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.
Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?
If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.”
Olly, I don’t disagree with the general premise of your argument about natural rights.
However, it must be broken down between what you call natural rights, and freedom of speech.
Both are necessarily curtailed by a higher authority, an artificial one, the LAW, which is a combination of all the varieties of natural laws that define different groups within society based on a hierarchy of sensitivities.
So, there is ALWAYS a primacy of some natural laws above others, in their definition and in their application. The natural laws of a believer is not the natural law of a secular person, and though often those two clash, one is bound to dominate the others.
But, the natural right to protect one’s life, liberty and property is a rightful right in general…but what does it mean practically? One does not have the privilege to determine what those laws entail, and how they might be enforced, and by whom. The Law/State, is the construct that modern society requires, but one that ultimately swallows those natural/individual rights and in exchange offers a communal law that stands in for all the various natural laws.
That law cannot co-exist with that which makes it up, the whole cannot co-exist with its various parts, independently of itself.
it is therefore natural that to allow such a Law to exist, is to relinquish one’s individual right to self-protect one’s life, liberty and property because the social compact empowers the state to handle those responsibilities as part of its effort to insure stability and order, and close the room for misinterpretation/subjectivity in societal agreements.
The state therefore offers those structures for protecting freedom, life and property (courts, police, firefighters…) in exchange for individuals not to manage those responsibilities themselves, and communally for groups not to manage those rights themselves.
And when most people agree to relinquish the protection of their natural rights to society, which trumps the other, the communal wish or the individual wish to handle those duties by himself?
Freedom of speech is another beast that is even more readily trampled under foot, for it is a modern construct that stands in for that which individuals lost in their expression/enforcement of their natural rights.
One can’t do many things that are personal in nature for they do affect others greatly, but speech, due to it being viewed as less harmful, is the only thing still entrusted to individuals…for now.
In that, it goes against traditional cultures which viewed speech, the word, as the greater responsibility as it is the one that could cause the most harm.
Modern societies are circling back to that, some of which for fear of its effect on other individuals, but also for fear of the challenge to itself.
The greater danger to our freedoms comes from these mindless absolutes devoid of self awareness. This culture has been thrown a few bones but has had tastes of freedom no more than many other cultures. What this culture has had is the illusion of freedoms, to a much greater degree. Read the newspapers and pay attention.
Agree with Isaac, there are absolutely no absolutes,,,everything is relative, and as such, the gains and rights we claim as natural and inherent to society (not humanity, which is really nothing more than man taken out of society, which makes it man into the wild, for communal man does not exist outside of some form of society) as gains and rights we evolved into based not only on our experience but also our aspirations.
As we sit here willing to happily relinquish all of our “natural”rights for the sake of a subjective increase in safety, we must wonder what is “natural”” rights? who gets to define it?
France just capped a march in the name of freedom of speech only to turn around and clamp down heavily on speech…and its population goes along with it without a blink…we must ask which is more natural, freedom of speech or safety?
There is no such thing as absolute freedom of speech…the idea of fighting for such shows how misguided we are about what we know, want and whom we are. Society’s role is to insure cohesion and civil stability, and anything that challenges cohesion and stability needs scrutinizing, and history has shown us that nothing is quicker to create societal havoc than the ability of some to speak hatefully of others.
Freedom of speech is NOT a communal right, it is an individual right because the individual is responsible only for his own self, including his personal opinion, so his opinion engages solely his self and his self alone..
A leader of a group however, speaking on behalf of or to that group, no longer has a personal opinion for his opinion now binds others and spurs them to think or act in such a way as to impact society with a greater effect. So, yes, I support individual freedom of speech to the end, not so communal freedom of speech.
And any observer/student of history would see that the greatest danger to Israel, as stated by other rabbis and Israeli office holders themselves, is not the Palestinians, it is these Ultra-orthodox who are holding Israel hostage and pushing it over the cliff of tribalism and extremism in the name of freedom of speech.