In The Guardian, Aluf Benn, the editor-in-chief of Haaretz, explains how censorship works in Israel. Interestingly he points out that “censorship has its advantages. Your military and intelligence sources are more open to give you secret information, trusting the censor to play bad cop.”
But the reason censorship operates effectively is because most Israelis do not question its value.
The success of censorship relies not on coercion and legal enforcement, but on public support. The military and intelligence community enjoy sacred status in Israeli society, and “national security” resonates much better than “civil liberties”. Many journalists accept censorship willingly as their national contribution, don’t argue with it, and criticise their peers who break with the official line. They are even proud of knowing the story and withholding it from their audience.
Israel is small and vulnerable and is situated in a dangerous neighborhood, so its national security needs trump all others — or so the narrative goes. Israel is a victim of circumstances.
But think about the mindset this engenders and it is one that is actually anathema to most Americans — a mindset of unquestioning trust in the state.
American mistrust of government can often veer towards the opposite extreme, yet there is such a thing as healthy suspicion of government power.
“National security” — wherever it is invoked — is an issue that almost always serves as a justification for secrecy. It delegitimizes citizenship and infantilizes the people.
For their own good, the people must not know what the government is doing. And when the people acquiesce, they are no longer being served by a representative government. They have instead turned themselves into the foundation of a totalitarian state.
“As long as ‘state security’ is sacred in the public mind, we will have censorship,” writes Benn. And as long as Israel functions as a security state, it cannot claim to be a democracy.
It always has me mystified how zionasties and their dupes get away with pretending that Israel is a democracy anyway, without people waking up to the fascistic mindset.
Winning elections with an artificially created majority, is electoral fraud.
Electoral fraud, is not democratic.
How can it be, that such a blatant lie, has not been widely identified, to the point that zionasties had given up the pretence decades ago ? Is this the most blatant proof waiting for activists to convince the lumpen amongst us, that most of us have been brainwashed ?
Most blatant that is, in competition with the one about tower blocks that fall down symetrically, pancacking without delay between the floors ? Not falling over, but down, smoothly, no resistance at the topmost floors, before the accumulation of weight upon the lower floors.
And the one about how economic growth, will always lead out of depression, despite the fact that people in all other countries who want to escape economic poverty, also want economic growth, which also means growing their exports. Where do they expect their markets can grow to ?
Any more examples, we just have to wait for, to fall into the holes where ostriches have shoved their heads ?
Isn’t there some way, to illuminate such examples, so we don’t have to put up with neo-nazi, (state practioners of racially motivated murder), thugs getting away with their crimes ?And the same, regarding whatever force it is, that manipulates the neo-nazi thugs ?
I cannot accept Mr. Benn’s perspective as intrinsically Israeli. Let us not forget that while Israel was started by an eclectic bunch of idealists and shysters, Zionism was always acutely aware of the fact that it is competition with the Diaspora Jews as one of the main pillars of Western culture. And so, though there’s nothing really “Jewish” about Israel—despite the concessions to the Haredi for their vote in order to form regimes—Israel always sought to out academize the Diaspora. In that respect, it went through many a schizoid phase where not only ideals trumped pragmatism but lies always brought on a guilt ridden reaction that produced incredibly spectacular exposes.
All this came to an end as the Likus Zio-totalitarians in their fear that they couldn’t keep up with the Diaspora brought in large masses of Russian hooligans and bought off a lot of Safardics that it once treated as blacks were treated in America. Likus since Sharon meant that there’s plenty in American generosity for daring assaults on the Arab sea around the little Zionist Island and there’s still plenty left over for personal Swiss bank accounts. In a country that so openly turns over its soil to the sunshine’s antiseption, Likud lives in fear and, as any other Mafia, more and more depends on assassination in order to both solve problems and hide sins. But though it goes to great lengths to solve problems with murder, it goes to far greater lengths to hide the murders from daylight. And, while the Likud character has polarized itself into moral anesthesia by arguing to itself: IT’S THIS OR ANOTHER HOLOCAUST, it has failed to dominate in Israel. Today Israelis are still intellectual mavericks like Mr. Benn. It comes invariably in the cultural genes like literacy. Every Israeli is at heart a fascist because he thinks that he has the right answer as to how a people should behave. Yet, everyone of them knows that if any of the others gets on top it will be Ziofascism for themselves. And so, suspecting extremism of the worst kind from eachother, each grasps at his intellectual sword (the pen) to assault whomsoever seems to be gaining absolute power….not because they are idealists but because no Israeli thinks any other Israeli knows limits. I recall the Knesset verbal brick-a-brak between Ben Gurion and Begin calling eachother: “Nazi” and “Hitler” and “Holocaust maker” etc. It goes to show how little those wishing to give Israel direction don’t trust eachother. In such a setting CENSORSHIP is a ridiculous word applied to a sinking ship that can’t be bailed out fast enough. One can argue that it is the leakers who are sinking the ship of state or that the “fascists” are weighing down. In the end, Israel is a monument to the many schizophrenic anarchists and communist totalitarians that made up its founding government leaders. These are distinct from the very honest Jews that cabled back to Vienna after a visit to Jerusalem about the prospects for Palestine as a Jewish state: “The bride is beautiful but she is already married.”
Jews means lying and honesty in a dialectic madness that makes them the intellectual giants they are. No lie goes unchallenged by truth and no truth goes unchallenged by lies. In the end, the world’s greatest intellectual caldron is trying to hide it with censorship and compensate for it with assassination. Neither has yet dampened the Israeli free spirit that makes the French look like totalitarians. There is no censorship in Israel only attempts to do so that end in murder…but that only makes the final leak that much more portentous. Palestinian intellectuals make their case against Israel TOTALLY based on Israeli sources. But privately they express how much they wish a Palestinian state might be as open and as honest as Israel. Everything is relative but Israel—despite its psychotic traits—cannot escape its Western Jewish roots as unstoppable and uncensorable intellect.
Israel: intellectual, but unintelligent.