I’ve just published a new piece in Truthout giving an overview of my latest reporting on the assault on Israeli democracy underway via the Knesset and Prime Minister Netanyahu. The piece focuses on the death threats and vandalism directed at Peace Now by Dor Oved, who’s being protected by an Israeli judge’s gag order designed to protect his father, Shahar Oved from exposure since he’s a Shin Bet officer. I think this is a major abuse of the rule of law in a democratic society and have therefore broken the gag. I hope, as has happened with other stories of gags I broke involving Anat Kamm and Dirar Abusisi, that mainstream journalists will take up this worthy cause and begin reporting the story as well. This is the only way the Israeli judicial and media system will think better of this short-sighted policy of protecting the powerful and well-connected.
I was interviewed today on Kol Yisrael by Elihu Ben Onn, the late night talk show host. The interview starts around minute 23:00 of the program. A warning: it uses Castup technology which I find extremely annoying. I can never get Castup video or audio to work on Google Chrome or Firefox. I recommend using IE, with which it seems more compatible. The interviewer is a bit intrusive at times and I didn’t succeed in conveying the full breadth of my views given his interruptions, but considering that the show was heard by Israelis not only in Israel but all over the world, it was a useful exercise.
On a totally different subject, my website has had a few hiccups lately which I hope most of you haven’t noticed. But if you get any error messages when you try to access my site could you e mail me with any information you have when this happens including the message you see. If you are a subscriber to my daily digest plugin, you may not have received e mail notices of my new posts. If you used to receive such notices and haven’t on a daily basis, this has to do with a conflict between my web host and the plugin generating the e mails. I’m working to resolve this issue. If you begin receiving these messages please let me know. And if you don’t receive them but believe you should, let me know that as well.
You weren’t interviewed. You were a guest on a program where Hebrew (mainly Israelis) speakers phone in and chat about their lives abroad. Having listened to this program for years, as a sedative, I cant remember him ever discussing politics. The closest I remember is when he asked the people on the roofs of buildings in Ashkolon, who went to watch the Iron Dome rockets smashing the missiles coming in from Gaza, to please go into their bomb shelters! ( the Iron Dome has a 90% success rate)
I appreciate what you mean but when a radio host asks questions & you answer (or at least attempt to) that’s an interview. But I appreciate that the show is usually non political. I sensed that he didn’t want to get too heavily into that & that’s fine. I got my word in & those who wanted to can follow up.
And indeed here I am following up. You are often mentioned in the press when there is a local gag. In the internet age even military censorship is just about impossible. Sorry