For those who have been paying attention, the last few weeks have seen a draconian crackdown on the civil rights of Jewish dissidents by the Olmert government. Some examples:
· People have been arrested and interrogated by the police for putting up anti-Bush and anti-Olmert posters.
· People have been arrested and detained by the police for distributing literature to the foreign press.
· There are seven children, all girls between the ages of 13 to 15, who have been imprisoned for three weeks now, after being arrested for their presence in an unauthorized hilltop community. (One child was released this afternoon.) According to Dr. Yitzchak Kadman of Israel's National Child Welfare Council and others, they are being subjected to criminal abuse.
The Israeli media has had little to say about all these outrages.
Today, the crackdown has reached the blogosphere:
According to this post (see also here), a blogger (Reb. Nati ) was brought in today by the Israeli police, and interrogated by the Shabak (!), apparently – according to the questions he was asked – for the crime of having expressed anti-government opinions on his blog.
If we are silent, the evil is guaranteed to continue growing. Today, it was Reb. Nati; tomorrow it can be any one of us.
Every blogger in the JBlogosphere ought to publicize and condemn this immediately. This should have absolutely nothing to do with whether one is "right-wing" or "left-wing", "religious" or "secular". Everybody who values freedom and democracy should speak out. And kol haKavod to DovBear for having already done so.
ttp://muqata.blogspot.com/2008/01/olmert-targets-blogosphere.html
US raises concerns with Saudi Arabia about detained popular blogger
The Bush administration has raised its concerns with Saudi Arabia about the detention of a popular blogger for violating the kingdom's laws, the State Department said Thursday.
The diplomatic contact comes ahead of President George W. Bush's expected January 14 trip to Saudi Arabia, his first to the kingdom and part of a nine-day trip to the Mideast starting Jan. 8.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said US diplomats raised with Saudi officials the detention of the blogger, Fouad al-Farhan, who was being questioned by Saudi officials.
McCormack said the US message was that freedom of expression is "a cornerstone of any democratic society. And wherever people are seeking to express themselves, via the Internet or via other means, whether that's in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere around the world, we stand for that freedom of expression."
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