Sarah McLaughlin: An Israeli history teacher was arrested on treason charges, his home was ransacked by police, and he was held in solitary confinement for Facebook posts critical of Israel's military action and civilian deaths in Gaza.

An Israeli history teacher was arrested on treason charges, his home was ransacked by police, and he was held in solitary confinement for Facebook posts critical of Israel's military action and civilian deaths in Gaza.

‘It is a time of witch hunts in Israel’: teacher held in solitary confinement for posting concer...www.theguardian.com Meir Baruchin, who was fired and jailed for criticising the military, says that many who agree with him are afraid to go public

wait, i thought israel had free speech and was a democracy and whatnot.

They have freedom of speech but if you intend to say what you aren't expected to, nowhere it is told you'll have also freedom after speech.

Reminiscent of the old Russian joke: Both the USA and the USSR have free speech. In the USA, you can stand in front of the White House and shout "Down with Reagan!" In the USSR, you can stand in the middle of Red Square and shout "Down with Reagan!"

In reality it was a bit more complicated. In USSR they could shout "Down with Reagan" when the authorities told them to, not when they wanted to, which the authorities would suspect as some kind of provocation.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_... some interesting parallels, one way and another, to would-be assassins in the US in the same period.

Viktor Ilyin - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

That's just what they want us to think. Apparently, you have FoS so long as you support the right-wing Revisionist Zionist (look this up) government.

Yes not as democratic as you think. But who is these days

Certainly not the UK with our famous "Mother of Parliaments".

It’s those “…and whatnot” details

It is. But like the USA they're suffering a crisis where fascists are trying to overthrow their democracy. Progressives on the other hand would like to see them wiped out and a fascist Palestinian nation put in place. They're fine with fascism and oppression as long as it's not Jews doing it.

That’s a smart and reasonable take, made in good faith. Deflecting Israeli fascism with an idiotic generalization that twists the predominant belief that Palestinian civilians shouldn’t be wiped out completely into what you said really is fucking trash behavior.

Is anyone defending the murder of Palestinian children capable of doing so without mischaracterising the opponents of genocide? Seems not

i honestly don't think people actually support hamas, being that it's a right-wing fundamentalist militia. they just don't want kids getting 2,500lb bombs dropped on them. just like nobody likes the taliban but understood the US needed to stop bombing afghanistan.

Treason?! Yikes.

yeah I was surprised too, but: "Baruchin was initially told to come to a police station for questioning over charges of sedition. When he pointed out to police that they needed a warrant from the attorney general to charge an Israeli citizen with that offence, treason charges were duly drawn up"

i was blown away by the fact that the police have 5 years to imvestigate him: "But he is living on savings while he waits for the verdict and even if he wins the treason charges have not been dropped: he could live in their shadow for five years, the limit for the police to prosecute."

So many weird and alarming laws in so many countries to learn.

Five year statute of limitations is pretty standard. That's what it is for most federal felonies in the US.

yeah but he's already been arrested and charged

The Sixth Amendment is underrated, even if it is far too often violated

Not that it changes what an insane depraved attack on free speech this is, but same can happen here. You get arrested, charged, the prosecutor drops the charges and they're dismissed without prejudice, but they can bring the charges again until the SOL runs out, w/o violating speedy trial rights.

Living without any Constitution has its drawbacks for sure.

Give us a few years and Trump as president. Pretty sure the SC wouldn't care about some document. They rule on vibes

No, do not give us a few more years of Trump. This year of having to listen to the media cover him 24/7 is going to be enough hell to live through thanks.

Treason is punishable by death there from what I read

lol the only democracy in the Middle East my ass

Police state

Police/military state is what it always was.

Not really, no. I get that it feels good to make sweeping statements, but it's more useful to be sort of gimlet-eyed. Jewish Israel’s has pivoted dramatically to the right in the 2000s for a few reasons.

Oversimplified, the failure of the Camp David Summit and Second Intifada crushed the Israeli left, and the old Ashkenazi elite have lost power to Mizrahi and the Religious Zionists.

It's easy enough to say, "It's just a bad country filled with bad people," but actually solving a problem will take a little more nuance than that.

Nobody said that. They said police state which is not the people or the country. It's the government actors welding power.

not fascist at all!

I love the only democracy in the middle east!

Probably told them Benji is a pork eating sociopath.

Horrible if accurate and not at all a normal incident. If it were, I and at least a quarter of the people I know here in Israel would be in prison.

One time is too many, and that there's a law prohibiting criticizing the government when it's committing genocide? The only thing worse is that Chuck Schumer trying to import that law to the U.S.!

There are laws in most countries that criminalize violent incitement and, especially during wartime, support for enemy states/organizations, a charge of which he has presumably been falsely accused.

Regardless, *many* Israelis are regularly voicing their opposition to state policy and aspects of the war, yet arrests are incredibly rare. This Guardian article treats this as representative of broader patterns, which is absolutely false.

The simple fact you call a genocide "war" says a lot about the so-called "opposition" in the so-called "only democracy in the region". Solidarity with those who, like the professor, effectively see what is going on behind the fascist state propaganda and get persecuted and arrested for it

That you call the war a "genocide" is particularly revealing, but let's not let facts, definition, intent, causes, or conduct get in the way of ideology.

Again, one time is too many. That this can happen at all is enough a threat. Also it's not a war, it's ethnic cleansing.

Are they? And how often are THEY getting rounded up? Or having their lives otherwise destroyed by Netanyahu's corrupt Fascist regime?

Tell you what. You can take the word of a political science professor who lives here, works here, interacts with a wide spectrum (economic, political, religious, ideological, ethnic) of its residents and regularly criticizes the government; or, keep doing what you are doing.

Incredibly rare among Jewish Israelis, but a bit less so for Israeli Arabs.

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