In France, Most Comments on Gaza Conflict Yanked From Mainstream News Sites 512
An anonymous reader writes with
an unpleasant statistic from France, quoting David Corchia, who heads a service employed by large French news organizations to sift through and moderate comments made on their sites. Quoting YNet News:
Corchia says that as an online moderator, generally 25% to 40% of comments are banned. Moderators are assigned with the task of filtering comments in accordance with France's legal system, including those that are racist, anti-Semitic or discriminatory. Regarding the war between the Israelis and Hamas, however, Corchia notes that some 95% of online comments made by French users are removed. "There are three times as many comments than normal, all linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," added Jeremie Mani, head of another moderation company Netino. "We see racist or anti-Semitic messages, very violent, that also take aim at politicians and the media, sometimes by giving journalists' contact details," he added. "This sickening content is peculiar to this conflict. The war in Syria does not trigger these kinds of comments."
Should Hate be left alone? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with most of these comments is that they are vile and hate-filled toward not just a country, but an entire religion.
Europeans have laws against hate speech. That's why these comments are being deleted.
Personally, I'd leave these comments in place. It shows the hatred that is being fomented in many Islamic middle eastern countries. We should know what they really think and why.
I think deleting those comments is actually masking a terrible problem.
Re:maybe (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: Like China och USSR (Score:5, Interesting)
They are being forced to filter "illegal" eg hate/racist/defamatory comments.
The not-so-ironic thing is that a French media moderator is moderating comments on a conflict that is hate-based.
My personal opinion on the entire thing is "there will never be peace in the middle east", Not till those petrodollars run out. Like the thing that I find stupid is the sheer amount of waste Burj Khalifa (Dubai,UAE) and the Mile-high tower (Kingdom Tower,Jeddah, Saudi Arabia) are to their local economy. They build these enormous wealth-measuring buildings, but have none of the support infrastructure (The Burj, has all it's sewage, trucked out) for it to be functional. For the same price, they can build an entire city of smaller, efficient buildings, with all the support infrastructure to make Manhattan look like a dump.)
So all these conflicts in the middle east, are just proxy wars between the uneducated "have-not"'s. The entire Gaza thing is the middle eastern states playing a high-stakes form of chicken with Israel. Nobody wants to be caught funding the terrorists, but "looking a blind eye away" while things are allowed to happen, over and over again, it's getting old. I'd sooner believe Iran is building a peaceful nuclear plant, than there ever being peace between Israel and any of it's neighbors. At some point this is all going to boil over and the "holy land" gets nuked by someone playing the "if I can't have it, you can't have it either" card.
Re:Or maybe you're not so good at math (Score:4, Interesting)
Your argument fails absolutely in moral terms. You are attempting to value civilian casualties differently based on the motivation of the killers.
And your summation of the Syrian conflict is grossly ignorant. It is not just a "guy who wants to stay in power". It's a proxy war between the US and Russia.
There is *real* genocide happening in Syria. There is a relatively minor conflict (mathematically speaking) in Gaza.
Keep on hating.
Re:maybe (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem right now is that the West Bank and Gaza are in a kind of limbo. They aren't part of Israel (so the inhabitants don't get any rights as citizens) and they aren't allowed to become a separate state (if they try they get bombed and 'settled' some more). So Israel should decide what it wants to do, not just keep killing civilians whenever some religious idiots decide to fire of more rockets. ,it should give the inhabitants citizenships and enforce it's laws - not by bombing innocents but by actually occupying and policing everything.
If it wants the land
If it does not want to do that it should get out of the area completely. Not just say that they left and leave the hundreds of miles of fences and checkpoints everywhere so the people can't even go to work without being harrased.
From an American/Israeli... (Score:0, Interesting)
You're just another armchair criticizer. Israel does not have apartheid. We have Arabs with businesses, Arabs in the Army, Arabs in the Parliament... That does not equate to "apartheid". The Nazi's genocided people. If we were genociding the Palestinians, believe me, we could do it in one fucking day. We could level Gaza, and level the West Bank, in one fucking day!
How about you stop watching whatever useful idiot news the left has been feeding you, come here to Israel and see for yourself before spewing outrageous and baseless remarks from whatever desk that is outside the region being discussed. Even bolder, I cordially invite you to go to the West Bank or Gaza, just to see how long you last before they start butchering your dumb ass, as you beg and proclaim that you support them and that you are pro-palestinian, and you are on their side, or maybe you'll be luckily enough to live to be tortured and held captive until they get some lucrative trade for you from the west. Likely, you'll just be the next Vittorio Arrigon.
Eisenhower was right (Score:5, Interesting)
If you look at military spending as a percentage of GDP, Israel spends 1.5x as much as the US. 2% of Israel's population is active military. If you include reservists, that goes up to 9%. Compare this to 0.2% and 0.4%, respectively, for the US.
Israel is a country that is largely lead by war heros from the 60s and 70s and their acolytes. Let's look at the recent PMs of Israel: Netanyahu (former IDF commando), Ehud Barak (former chief of staff of the IDF), Shimon Peres (former defense minister), Ariel Sharon (former IDF general, former minister of defense), Yitzhak Rabin (former chief of staff of the IDF), Yitzhak Shamir (former Mossad agent). The only PM in the past 40 years who didn't have significant connections to the Israeli defense establishment was Ehud Olmert. (He didn't do anything significant beyond the compulsory military service.) If you look at the financial ties between Israeli government officials and major defense companies, things get even more mixed up.
The fact is that ever since the Camp David Accords and the agreement with Sadat, Israel was never again in danger of being wiped off the map. Sure, there were sporadic threats from groups like Hezbollah, but in these conflicts, Israel was always orders of magnitude more powerful than it's opponent. The Israeli government should have begun massively downsizing it's military, but it did not.
When you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. When you have a huge military, every problem begins to look like one that should be solved by force. When you're country is led by dozens of ex-military and next to no one that was, say, ex-foreign ministry, macho man diplomacy becomes the rule. When you have a former commando negotiating prisoner swap with Palestinians rather than a former diplomat, you end up with commandos going in and rearresting the released prisoners [reuters.com]. This incident is just once symptom of a larger problem. The Israeli government hasn't just fallen victim to the pressures of the military-industrial complex; it is the military-industrial complex.
Re:The proofs (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The Muslim world cares so much for the Palestin (Score:4, Interesting)
Bit of history in the "creation" of the Palestinians (as they stand today): When Israel was formed and the Arab nations that surrounded it declared war, the Arab nations told the Arabs who lived in Israel: "Flee from Israel to us. When we drive Israel into the sea, we'll give you your land back."
Many fled, but not all. When Israel won the war, the Arabs who fled found they were blocked from returning. (Would you allow someone back if they supported the people who just tried to destroy you?) The Arabs who stayed, though, kept their land and businesses. Today, they (or their descendants) own businesses, are full citizens, and one even is on the Israeli Supreme Court.
The idea that Israel kicked the Palestinians out is completely false.
Re:Or maybe you're not so good at math (Score:2, Interesting)
"Israel is supposed to be a civilized Western country, so..."
Dead. Wrong.
Israel is a civilised *Middle Eastern* country. It is where it is, surrounded by enemies who have sworn to exterminate every last Jew. It doesn't have the luxury of being thousands of miles from the actual conflict, and it can't afford to "try one more time" because any mistake could be fatal. The day that militant Islam starts launching rockets onto the territory of the continental United States -- and it is coming -- people like you will wake up and start baying for blood like so many "savages". How many people did America kill in response to the Twin Towers? How many billions of dollars did it spend on vengeance?
Funny thing. When the Irish terrorists attacked the UK in the 1970-1980 with terror bombings targeting civilians, the UK did not react in any way similar to what Israel is doing.
Re:maybe (Score:5, Interesting)
Read up on Sherman's March to the Sea or about German and Japanese casualties during WWII. From the standpoint of fighting a war for survival, which the state of Israel is doing (read the stated goals of Hamas and other Arab organizations which are waging wars of terror against Israel), Israel has inflicted insufficient casualties on the Palestinian Arabs. For that matter, why should Israel be condemned just because they do everything they can to protect their civilians, while their opponents do everything they can to maximize casualties among their own civilians?
Hamas, and other Arab groups fighting against Israel, intentionally take actions so as to maximize the deaths of civilians, and particularly children. They store the missiles they fire at Israeli civilians in schools and hospitals. They use civilians, including children, as human shields while firing on Israeli soldiers. It is Hamas that is responsible for the death toll of civilians in Palestine.
You're saying that it's okay to use terrorism to fight terrorism.
Didn't your mother teach you that two wrongs don't make a right?
I disagree with Hamas methods and I do not in any way support them. But I disagree with Israel's methods as well. Hamas hiding weapons in a school does not justify shelling that school when it is full of children.
Israel is no longer fighting a war for survival. At one point that argument would have been valid but to say so now is ridiculous as no country in the middle east - and most likely not the entire middle east all together - could defeat Israel's military might.
On top of that, Israel is not protecting their own civilians as killing Palestinian civilians will not stop Hamas. It will, in the long run, make Hamas stronger as more Palestinian families lose their loved ones and will do anything to strike back at Israel. Hatred begets hatred, as you should know as you evidently have been begot of hatred.
Per your statement "Israel has inflicted insufficient casualties on the Palestinian Arabs" and the general content of what you are writing it appears that you do not care if those casualties that you wish to inflict are against valid military targets or against civilians. Is that correct?
Re:Meta-problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Hamas hides military weaponry in schools, hospitals, civilian homes, etc.
Where on the Gaza map are the Palestinians permitted their military bases and installations?
Re:Or maybe you're not so good at math (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not a very moral attidude, but it's a very human one. I'm sorry if your species disappoints you. (I wish it didnt' regularly disappoint me.)
People tend to care more about a friend's daughter's puppy being rescued from a well than they do about 100.000 people they've never heard of being tortured to death. It's not exactly moral, but it's the way people think. They can empathize with the friend and the daughter, and even with the puppy more than they can with the "larger number than I can picture" number of strangers they've never met.