השופט שמאי בקר, שהתיק נגדו על תקיפה מינית של בתו נסגר מחוסר הוכחות, שופט עכשיו עבריין המואשם בתקיפה מינית
Israeli judge, Shamai Becker, against whom charges of of sexually assaulting his daughter were dropped by the attorney general, has returned to the bench. He’s been assigned, of all things, a case of sexual assault by an Israeli mobster against a hospital patient. He’s freed the accused attacker to house arrest in a hotel, despite the fact that during the assault he told the victim that he “owned her.”
The problems with returning Becker to the bench are that he will be forever beholden to the Israeli police, who cleared him of rape. He will also be forever prejudiced in favor of those accused of rape, since he himself has been. The Israeli judiciary, never known for transparency or ethical probity, has prepared itself a positive stew of conflicts of interest in this case.
In dropping the case, the attorney general did not find Becker innocent. He only found that he didn’t have sufficient grounds to prosecute him. After charges were dropped, the State’s chief lawyer demanded that Twitter censor a tweet I published in Hebrew naming the judge as a suspect. Twitter caved without asking for any rebuttal from me.
I am currently seeking legal representation to forcefully object to Twitter’s misguided decision. I’m also seeking media coverage of this story both in Israel and the U.S.
I encourage any Israeli with a Twitter account to protest this decision via your Twitter account or any social media platform. You also may either RT my original tweet (though it will not display in Israel) or post a screenshot of the original tweet, which will. This is a protest against Israeli censorship and Twitter’s decision to acquiesce to it. It is a protest for free speech and press freedom. It is not a campaign to violate Twitter TOS, which my tweet does not do anyway.
“Twitter caved without asking for any rebuttal from me.”- in a previous post you brought Twitter email where they asked for your response.
https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2016/08/03/twitter-warns-it-may-censor-tweet-at-behest-of-israeli-attorney-general/
@ Danny: They asked only whether I would self censor the tweet myself. They didn’t ask for a rebuttal to their censoring it nor did they listen to my argument. They merely censored it.
Twitter outright bans people based on perceived PR / movie opinions (Ghost Busters) – See for instance their ban of Milo –
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/27/dorsey-treats-twitter-like-private-fiefdom-banned-user-milo-yiannopoulos-says.html
In your case they only blocked a single tweet in Israel itself (2 months after it was relevant – to boot! The actual ban (stupid of the Israeli AG to ask for it!) increased the propagation of the information).
So while I agree with you that Twitter’s censoring of this specific tweet is misguided, the whole platform itself is far from a venue where freedom of speech applies – and there are bigger cases.