ADC applauds proposed web blackout for hate groups
Peter Kohn: Australian Jewish News | April 14, 2008
http://www.ajn.com.au/news/news.asp?pgID=5253
CIVIL liberties arguments do not apply when extremist organisations use the internet to spread hatred, B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) chair John Searle said last week.
“Clearly a line has to be drawn between freedom of speech, voicing of differing opinions – and material that just incites racial hatred, religious intolerance and violence. When that line is crossed, that material ought not to be freely available to all who log onto the web.”
Searle was responding to protests voiced by civil libertarians after a recent conference of state and federal attorneys-general proposed cutting off Australian internet access to hate groups.
State and federal attorneys-general met in Adelaide late last month to canvass options for empowering the Australian Communications and Media Authority to order internet service providers to cease hosting racist and anti-Semitic websites.
The ADC has joined groups from other com-munities welcoming the proposal.
Searle said the ban, if it receives the go-ahead, will not stop underground distribution, but will remove a heavily accessed outlet for groups to disseminate their message.
The ADC drew attention to virulent anti-Semitic material hosted by the Australian website, Mission Islam.
Material promoted by Mission Islam include The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as well as an article that accuses Jews of infiltrating the United States administration, and another claiming Jews “like to spread mischief and corruption”.
Members of the ADC last week met with Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs Laurie Ferguson to discuss the material disseminated by Mission Islam and other extremist organisations on the web.
Searle previously said state governments and the former federal government had resisted calls by the ADC to ban these sites.
“We have laws banning race hatred and we have laws policing certain kinds of violent and pornographic material on the internet, but we have no system to police race hatred on the internet. It’s inconsistent and leads to the abuse of minorities,” he said.
Meanwhile, the ADC has appointed Deborah Stone as its new research director.
Searle said the organisation had not had a person in the role for some months, since the departure of Melinda Jones.
He said Stone, a former AJN editor, “has an excellent knowledge of the community and of the issues the ADC faces”.
Comment:
I’d be willing to bet that sites such as The Australian Jewish News will continue their hatred of all things that are not obscenely pro-Israel.
https://creativityalliance.com/jewish-groups-applaud-annihilation-of-freedom-of-speech
