Internet Censorship Law Proposal in Israel · Global Voices
Gilad Lotan

Internet censorship could slowly and surely find its way to Israel. Now that a new proposal “that is supposedly meant to protect kids from the dangers of pornography, violence and gambling sites”  has passed the primary voting stage in the Israeli Knesset, bloggers writing in Hebrew are asking: What is next?
From Gadi Shimshon's post “say nicely goodbye to your internet“:
The proposed law requires from the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block adult content-based sites (sexual, gambling and violence) from children. The ISPs will require some biometric means of identification for adults, in addition to a personal password, as a means to verify one's age. The current law proposal does not state who claims which sites will be blocked, and technology will be used by the ISPs for this sort of identification. In one of their meetings, it was suggested that for an additional monthly fee, ISPs would offer their customers means to block “harmful” content, when and if requested. There are so many problems that come up. For instance, how and who decides which content is violent or sexual. How problematic it is if all the ISP's in Israel hold a white list of every user's personal information. If this content can be censored, what is the next stage? Perhaps blocking all sites that deal with evolution?
In his post “Amnon Cohen interests the tip of my finger“, blogger Jonathan Klinger describes the many problems which come up when claiming what the “main nature” of a site is:
Too many parents nowadays are unaware of what their children are up to (not only relevant to the internet). The basic argument claims that it is the parent's responsibility and not the country or government, to educate. A simple yet effective solution is placing the computer in the living room. If the government will start dictating what we can or cannot view, there's no promise that in the near future they will not censure other “topics”. The general notions are that this law will probably not be able to get a majority of votes in the Knesset. But that people should react, and think thoroughly about how utterly important it is to protect the freedom of content. Various banners like the one below have been spreading through the Israeli blogosphere, as well as an encouragement to email all those leaders who supported this law proposal in its initial voting stages. There is less than two weeks before the government takes the proposal to the next stage.
The translated text from a banner depicting Amnon Cohen as Israel's ‘big brother': “my brother, your big brother has come… come and meet your new educator”
link to the law proposal in Hebrew