Twitter Refuses to Bow to Israeli Censorship

טוויטר גילתה אומץ-לב,  וסירבה לדרישה לצנזר את ציוציי על וולטר סוריאנו והניצחון המשפטי שלי עליו בישראל

I received two emails from Twitter today notifying me that an unnamed “third-party” demanded that it censor a total of 18 of my tweets.  The thread common to them all is that all the tweets promoted a blog post I wrote about Walter Soriano and offered updates on his ultimately unsuccessful attempt to sue me in Israel for libel.  An Israeli lower court and a district court each ruled he had no jurisdiction to sue me in Israel.  A final appeal to the Supreme Court also failed.

Now it appears that he’s taking an alternate route.  I display here one of the two emails I received from Twitter which note the specific tweets he claimed violated Israel law.  In fact, there have been no findings of which I’m aware that the tweets or my blog post violate Israeli law.

Since he failed to get an Israeli court to declare I defamed him, he’s claiming that these tweets which documented his failed legal proceedings against me are themselves in violation of Israeli law.

Speculating on what Soriano did here, either he got an Israeli judge to declare these tweets illegal; or Soriano’s attorney wrote directly to Twitter making such a claim himself.  Either way, I’m gratified that Twitter has the spine to resist such patently obnoxious behavior.  Further, Twitter actually included the welcome message that it stood up for its users and their right to speak.  That’s why it refused to honor the censorship demand:

As Twitter strongly believes in defending and respecting the voice of our users, it is our policy to notify our users if we receive a legal request from an authorized entity (such as attorneys or legal representatives) to remove content from their account.

Please note, Twitter has not taken action on your content in response to this request, other than informing you about this third-party complaint.

Compare this behavior to that of Google, which capitulates whenever an Israeli judge sneezes.  As I wrote recently, I published a blog post two years ago based on an Israeli media report of a settler rabbi who masturbated outside the home of a woman who he was obsessed with.  He also stalked her with incessant text messages.  One of the rabbi’s relatives has secured repeated Israeli directives by judges demanding that Google remove my content from its searches.  Without any review or appeal, Google not only removed my content from Israel-based searches, it refused to show me the order it received from the Israeli court, declaring it could not do so because the court itself denied it the right to do so.

I find such behavior odious.  Compare it to Twitter, which stands up for users.  Google, by contrast, treats users as commodities, while it treats sovereign countries and their security and legal authorities as gods.

Facebook doesn’t get off much better.  Today, I learned that the social media platform eliminated the account of pro-Palestine activist and journalist, Joe Catron.

Well, this is cute. @facebook disabled my account, presumably for choosing this is a header photo. I guess if I’d posted racist/Zionist propaganda instead, they’d have given me a blue check? https://t.co/rbcA3ngPmW pic.twitter.com/ocyGF0U1U6

— “Go to Joe 30330” Catron (@jncatron) August 28, 2019

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His profile image featured a Lebanese man holding a poster with the image of Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah.  The notice he received claimed that Facebook does not tolerate “support for a violent group.”  I assume that given that the Islamist movement has been deemed a terror group by various western governments, that Mark Zuckerberg has adopted their view.

But there’s a wee problem here: Nasrallah, whatever one may think of him, is one of the most important leaders in the Arab world and in the Middle East.  A significant portion of the Arab world actually admires him.  His movement is also included within the democratically-elected government of Lebanon.  If we’re going to ban all terrorists and any world leaders supporting groups which have engaged in terror attacks, where does that leave us?  Shall we ban a Facebook profile image featuring Tommy Robinson?  David Duke?  Donald Trump?  Meir Kahane?  Menachem Begin?  All of them either were terrorists or avid supporters of groups which have engaged in terror.  Does anyone think profile images of any of these individuals would cause the company to eliminate the account?