The decision to apply military censorship to news stories about Soviet aliyah has focused attention on the widespread suppression of news and opinion, especially in the East Jerusalem Arabic press.
The most vigorous protests against censorship come from the news media, civil rights groups, and from liberal and leftist Knesset members.
But they are bucking a popular trend. The most recent opinion poll shows substantial majorities favor censorship for reasons of security and image preservation.
Israelis are demonstrating a discernible trend away from democratic norms, according to a new poll conducted among 1,006 Israeli adults last month for the Israel-Diaspora Institute.
This propensity includes a willingness to accept censorship, in order to preserve Israel’s image, and readiness to accept discriminatory practices against Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the poll indicates.
Pollster Mina Zemach, director of the Dahaf Research Institute, said, “The results arc an expression of the growing sense of insecurity among Israelis, who are willing to sacrifice some of the basics of democracy in order to achieve what they perceive as security in the period of the intifada.”
But the announcement on March 2 that stories on Soviet aliyah would henceforth have to be submitted to the military censor has raised a hue and cry in the media and Knesset.
Until the imposition of censorship last week, the subject had been freely reported, even courted. The authorities are now arguing, however, hat the censorship is a protective measure enacted in response to an Arab campaign to curtail the immigration of Soviet Jews.
KNESSET DEBATES THE ISSUE
Likud Minister Ronni Milo defended the censorship in Knesset on Wednesday, raising the specter of terrorist attacks on olim. He maintained that the censored reports touched on “sensitive issues,” such as immigration routes, their protection, the number of immigrants and projected numbers, and the agencies involved in the aliyah operation.
Milo was responding to Knesset member Yossi Sarid of the Citizens Rights Movement who attacked censorship. Sarid argued that it would neither “lower the profile nor protect aliyah.”
Sarid warned further that censorship of aliyah stories created the impression that Israel had something to hide, such as the settlement of immigrants in the administered territories.
Censorship of military matters came under fire this week from B’tselem, the Jerusalem-based center for human rights.
B’tselem revealed that the censor had deleted in full or in part more than a third of the material submitted by two East Jerusalem Arabic dailies, A-Sha’ab and Al-Biader A-Siasi.
The censored material included dozens of stories already published in the Hebrew press and translated verbatim.
Among them were statements by Israeli politicians, reports by human rights organizations and stories that had appeared in other East Jerusalem newspapers, B’tselem said.
East Jerusalem newspapers are subject to much stricter censorship than the rest of the country, although legally they should not, since the same laws apply to them as to the Israeli Hebrew press.
B’tselem described two items kept out of the East Jerusalem Arabic newspapers. One was an interview in the Hebrew daily Al-Hamishmar with Amir Abramson, who was severely injured in a terrorist attack on an Egged bus last year.
He was quoted as urging Israelis to “talk to the Palestinians.”
63 PERCENT FAVOR SOME CENSORSHIP
The other item was a cartoon in the Jerusalem Post, showing Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir removing an Arab from a bench to make room for a Russian immigrant.
Military censorship in Israel is a holdover from the Emergency Regulations promulgated by the British Mandate authorities in 1945.
According to a military spokesperson, “It is the practice of censorship not to approve publications which amount to initiating or encouraging civil disobedience, resistance to government and order, or incite or express solidarity with terrorist activity, as well as publications which can cause real damage to the state’s security.”
The spokesperson admitted that the ban often extended to material already published “either because of different versions, different circumstances or a mere human error by the censorship officials.”
In the Israel-Diaspora Institute poll, fully 63 percent of the respondents agreed that “reports or pictures depicting soldiers mistreating residents of the territories should be banned because they harm Israel’s image.”
Over half of those questioned, or 51 percent, thought that the internal security service, Shin Bet, should employ different interrogation methods for Jews and Arabs.
A plurality of 49 percent favored the demolition of Arab homes as a form of punishment.
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