No self-respecting journalist wants to become an organ for hatred. It would make sense that everyone would support laws that actually helped fight prejudice, right?
Well, laws tend to have unintended consequences. The laws that Democrats put to stop tax avoidance by billionaires have forced people who aren’t even millionaires to renounce their American citizenships. If you can’t afford compliance, you might even struggle to afford the renunciation fee (but the stress of finding a knowledgeable accountant might make it worth it.)
Look up stories on LinkedIn about Accidental Americans in France and you’ll find stories of people who could not even open bank accounts because they banks didn’t like the extra paperwork. Even people without American citizenship are discriminated against when they look like potential American citizens. Israel doesn’t make such a stupid law because that would force banks to discriminate against all Jews.
The laws that were meant to create equality between men and women ended up being used to change the definition of marriage and even to allow males to be called females. They have been even used to attack poetry, as a student editor of a newspaper I was forbidden from allowing in a poem that spoke of “mankind.” “But humankind” I objected to the academic supervisor “ruins the rhythm and could change the meaning.” In the end it was agree that if I could find the poet before the deadline, the academic would not butcher his poem. I couldn’t. (I will not honor that academic with a name or even a pronoun.)
Now, certain poets may have had reprehensible views, but that is not what this is about. It is about the freedom to report things as we see them.
Here are two quotes I found on a website which calls itself “Israeli national news” which I link to so you can decide.
“In a just and decent world, CNN executives would have faced federal charges under the Antiterrorism Act for having provided material support to Hamas.”
and…
“Gazan children died in the conflict because Hamas knew it could rely upon CNN to cover for its crimes.”
Now, this article is written by someone called “Rabbi Yaakov Menken” so maybe Israel National News should not be held responsible. I am sure there are others who write for the same outlet who disagree.
The problem is the judges who use the Vexler law and the Yadan law may be as ignorant as Mr Menken. First of all, Menken’s article* doesn’t only confuse CNN with Tucker Carlson, it* confuses looking after hostages in a hospital with making that hospital a “military base.”
“To take a specific example, when Israel bombed the Hamas Command and Control center located in the Nasser Hospital building in Khan Younis, CNN reported upon the “outrage” that Israel bombed a hospital and “killed journalists, health workers and emergency response crews.” It failed to mention that the erstwhile hospital was a base for Hamas fighters that had been used to imprison hostages.”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/426005
If journalists get killed, other journalists have a right to be outraged. Maybe they were wrong, in the heat of the moment.
I can see how perhaps little Hitlers hid in a statue of a poet with a short political career, but was Hamas also hiding in a Jesus statue or in a church? Maybe the Israeli military made mistakes, or certain members did things that others didn’t approve of.
I find my stomach hurting defending CNN, there are things about them I dislike. But, they have their point of view and I have mine. To say they are providing “material support” to “terrorists” is ridiculous. However, many supporters of the proposed Yadan law and Romania’s current Vexler law would disagree with me and agree that CNN should be charged. (And perhaps include prison time of up to ten years for their reporting or allowing reporters to do their jobs.)
It should be stressed that, as ignorant as Menklen is, his newspaper does not seem to support any form of genocide. Another rabbi, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, says the following in the same website…
It must only be remembered that unlike the regular war against Amalek, in which all must be erased, here only those who hate us and are our enemies must be erased according to the law of Amalek.
We might wish to know what he means as enemies (does CNN hate them?) I hope that Eliyahu is not as extreme as Menklen. But, he does seem to be a bit confused. He continues..
We did not believe that the respectable citizens of France and Poland, Switzerland and Holland, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Romania and Lithuania, Ukraine and Russia would cooperate with the arch killer of all time.
This is such a strange statement. Many jews in Cluj during world war II had fled from Russia. (Part of the excuse for denying citizenship to Jews in territory acquired during World War I was that they spoke a language other than Romanian at home. One of those languages was Russian.) Ukraine was not yet recognised as an independent country, and the founding president of Ukraine, Symon Petliura was killed by a Jewish anarchist who was later honored in Israel with a street named after him.
Some countries are understandbly there. Romania was under an unelected military dictatorship, which was overthrown before the end of the war (when Romania joined the allies), but still, that dictatorship was an ally to the Axis for a good chunk of the war. And most school kids have some idea of what happened in Austria and Germany (we hope, but they aren’t teaching history much any more.)
But even stranger is listing victim Holland, invaded Poland and neutral Switzerland among those who “cooperate” with “the arch killer of all time.” If anything, perhaps he could list Switzerland among those who “would stand by.” (While there were some collaborators in all occupied countries, there were of course sympathisers even in allied countries.)
Accusing invaded people of crimes committed inside their territory is like accusing ordinary Israelis for the hostage crisis because they failed to stop it.
The enemy of Israel isn’t so much thought leaders like Tucker Carlson. We always had people willing to criticize the Jews, a former head of the Ku Klux Klan even ran for US president. It is the quixotic thought leaders who think they are fighting antisemitism but end up chasing windmills, statues, and even fellow victims.
This quixotic search for enemies could end up hurting ordinary students. While student protests on Gaza where nowhere as large as they were in Western European countries, it is not unusual for young people to get involved in protests of some kind. Maybe they are protesting against the cancelled election of 2024. Maybe they are protesting against the removal of a statue. Maybe they were protesting for environmental reasons.
In Belgium and the UK many ordinary school children followed Greta Thunberg and skipped school, thinking they were doing the right thing, or just following their friends. Some believe the cause, others go along with the crowd, like K-Pop or labubu.
Are CNN journalists and editors “terrorists?”
(*) I put stars by Menken’s article and it to show a mistake I almost printed by accident. In the first draft, I wrote Menken instead of Menken’s article. During my thought process, I guess I wrote the “it” to agree with the “article,” rather than a “he” to agree with “Menken.” My first thought was to correct the “it” to “he.” But who knows? Can I assume Menken is a man just because of the beard and the title Rabbi?
And what if I called Menken “they?” That would be confusing. Would a “they” make it look like I was referring to all Israelis, or everyone who worked for that newspaper/website? I still think pronoun laws are even more stupid and restrictive than the Vexler and Yadan laws. But we don’t need any new laws restricting free speech.
And the final reason I am against it? Laws that this promote hatred because of the way they are worded. If you want people to think about pizza, tell them, “Don’t think about pizza.” as Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche says in his yoga meditation. (Or, remember what happens to Basil Fawlty when he says “don’t talk about the war.”)
Sorry, it was, “Don’t mention the war.”
