Despite growing criticism from abroad, Israel’s ruling coalition is pushing a new bill in the Knesset which would impose major penalties on human rights groups, including a massive 45% tax on all foreign donations and a full ban on funding for groups seen as too critical of the government.
The 45% tax will apply to all human rights groups except those who are already funded by the Israeli government, which will be able to solicit funds tax-free. It is seen as a “compromise” bill after previous efforts by Avigdor Lieberman’s faction to ban all funding to all human rights groups not approved by the foreign ministry were blocked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who feared a major international backlash.
The bill is explicitly aimed at civil rights groups critical of the government’s harsh moves against freedom of the press and its restrictions against Arab citizens. NGOs have been outspokenly critical of the measure, saying it threatened to damage Israel’s democracy irreparably.
In other news, the controversial “Talkback” bill is moving forward in the Knesset as well. The bill, which is almost uniformly supported among both the ruling coalition and the “moderate” opposition, imposes serious restrictions on the posting of comments in online forums, and allows MPs to sue any poster, even anonymous ones, in Israeli courts for any comment which they believe is designed to “damage” their positions. It would also force Israeli ISPs to keep track of the sources of all such comments so they could “out” anonymous posters for punitive lawsuits.
I am surprised that the USA-orientated media of any political orientation has failed to fully address the outstanding alleged crime against humanity, the truth or otherwise of the use of nuclear weapons in both Afghanstan and Irak during the period of Mr George W Bush's Presidency and his duty role of Commander-in-Chief? weapons _The allegation is much discussed in the officer's messes in both the Army and the Airforce of Pakistan, according to the current scuttle-butt some very old USA W-class 'honest John' nuclear weapons bombs from bases in Germany were diverted from de-commissoning totals, and used in the mountains of Afghanstan and the southern the desert sector north of the Iraki capital._Moreover, presumably the identity of exploded weapons is a simple matter of radiatiion testing from site samples!_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A "democracy" without free speech – hmmmm!!
Looks like Israel can no longer claim the high ground in comparing their apartied democracy to America's crony capitalism. Both seem to be willing to take their citizen's rights away whenever the rights become inconvienent.
Next they'll take the human rights groups to the ovens!!
So if I post that "Avigdor Lieberman smells like feet and his mother dresses him funny" in Israel he could sue me? That's awesome. The Israeli courts have little better to do than hear an endless procession of Online Trolling lawsuits.