Mark / IL

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Israeli Knesset Member Shlomo Benizri, during a discussion regarding the recent earthquakes felt around the Middle East said (Hebrew version; English here) that “the Knesset needs to consider prevention of [homosexual intercourse]; [...] while we seek a physical solution to protect our buildings, one of the reasons [for the earth quakes] is the Knesset’s acceptance and legitimization of homosexual intercourse”.

The Homo-Lesbian community, instead of whining like a bunch of pansies, managed to save face and wondered whether the issue is “close to the Knesset Member’s heart”.

I can’t even begin to comprehend how our government manages to call itself “enlightened” and “progressive”.
We’re still a third-world republic and no amount of high-tech start-up companies and arms exports is going to change that.

Damn, the Idiocy tag needs to be applied automatically along with the Politics one.

A new law proposal recently submitted for approval (and swiftly approved by a Ministrial Legislative Committee), would impose criminal responsibility on websites with over 50,000 hits (they don’t mention whether those should be unique visitors or merely page views) that published comments (”talkbacks”) considered libel or slander.

There are obvious and immediate problems present within this giant ball of stupidity; most of them are technical (proxies, anonymizers, etc). Another problem is the eternal question of defining the exact borders of free speech.

Regardless, this is something that should probably be marked down as another brainfart of the Israeli government: a technical solution to the social problem of stupid people.

The state of Israel, as most countries, has a Ministry of Communications. The man in charge of it, however, does not own a TV set, nor is he connected to the Internet.

Sounds strange? Not to the average Israeli.

Recently, the stupidity level in the Israeli govt. has risen beyond any reasonable limit: a law, almost unanimously passed by the Knesset, authorizes the Police to create a nation-wide database that will hold pretty much everything. As an added bonus, the law also authorizes the cops to receive information about a person’s communications — SMS messages, ISP logs, phone call records, etc.

Guess who’s exempt? Lawyers.

It seems that the assumption that Israel is immune to the paranoid legislation that has plagued the US lately is false — we’re catching up, fast.

Relevant links (Hebrew):

http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3483670,00.html — Initial report and details

http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3484032,00.html – Knesset members who voted for and against this idiocy.