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Meta Content Court Rules ‘From the River to the Sea’ isn’t Hate Speech
Meta’s company-funded oversight body ruled Wednesday that the social media giant shouldn’t automatically take down posts using the phrase “from the river to the sea,” a decades-old rallying cry for the destruction of the state of Israel that has reignited a national debate about the boundaries of acceptable speech.
Meta’s Oversight Board, an independent collection of academics, experts and lawyers who oversee thorny content decisions on the platform, said posts they examined using the phrase didn’t violate the company’s rules against hate speech, inciting violence or praising dangerous organizations.
“While [the phrase] can be understood by some as encouraging and legitimizing antisemitism and the violent elimination of Israel and its people, it is also often used as a political call for solidarity, equal rights and self-determination of the Palestinian people, and to end the war in Gaza,” the board said in its ruling.
Meta spokesman Corey Chambliss said in a statement that it welcomes the board’s review. “While all of our policies are developed with safety in mind, we know they come with global challenges and we regularly seek input from experts outside Meta, including the Oversight Board,” he said.
The political clash over the Israel-Gaza war has forced the company to closely examine the line between supporting free expression and suppressing dangerous hate speech online, and Wednesday’s ruling may fuel tensions.
Some Jewish groups have accused the social media giant of allowing antisemitism to surge on its networks in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel that ignited the war.
Meta has also been lambasted by digital rights activists and pro-Palestinian groups, who say it has stifled legitimate political critiques of the Israeli government and its armed forces during a war that has claimed more than 40,000 Palestinian lives, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and displaced much of the region.
Activists and pro-Palestinian demonstrators have used the phrase “from the river to the sea” to express their support for Palestinians in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The slogan, which is often followed by the phrase “Palestine will be free,” refers to the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea including the state of Israel. But others have interpreted the phrase as a call to eradicate Israel, with some Jewish American organizations arguing that the phrase amounts to antisemitism.
The board reviewed three cases where the phrase appeared on the platform, including a comment on a Facebook video that had a “FromTheRiverToTheSea” hashtag along with #DefundIsrael and heart emojis in the colors of the Palestinian flag. In another instance, a user posted an image of floating watermelon slices – a stand-in for the Palestinian flag – to form the phrase, alongside the comment, “Palestine will be free.
In all three cases, social media users appealed to Meta to remove the content but the company decided to leave the content up. Those users then appealed to the board.
According to the board, the posts don’t specifically attack Jewish or Israeli people “with calls for violence or exclusion,” putting them outside the company’s definition of hate speech. The board also said the cases didn’t break the company’s rules against inciting violence or praising dangerous organizations or individuals because they don’t glorify Hamas or its actions. Rather, the selected cases show that the phrase was being used in solidarity with Palestinians, the board argued.
The decisions the Oversight Board makes on specific cases are considered binding.
For nearly a year, Meta has faced scrutiny over how it has handled content about the Israel-Gaza war. Soon after the war broke out last year, throngs of Palestinian supporters complained that Meta suppressed their content commenting on or documenting the violence. In July, the company announced it would remove more speech targeting “Zionists” where the word seemed to be a stand-in for Jews and Israelis and included dehumanizing comparisons, calls for harm or denials of existence.
Meta also referred a bundle of cases in which the term Zionist appears to be being used as proxy along with comparisons to criminals, such as the phrase “Zionists are war criminals.” A ruling in those cases is pending.
Since the Oversight Board’s inception four years ago, it has faced criticism that it moves too slowly to make decisions, while others have questioned its price tag and political relevance. Earlier this year, the board notified staffers that it would have to lay off workers amid widespread cutbacks across the technology sector.
But in recent months, the Oversight Board has sought to bolster its influence by taking on more frequent and bigger cases. The board’s trust is also exploring setting up a separate center to handle an influx of user appeals for account restrictions that are required under Europe’s Digital Services Act.
(c) Washington Post
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RECRUITING CRISIS: US Army Smallest Since 1940, Navy and Air Force Numbers Down
According to a Vox Media report, the U.S. Armed Services recruitment crisis has resulted in the smallest U.S. Army since 1940; Nacy and Air Force recruitment numbers are also suffering.
The Army has failed to meet its recruiting goals for the last two years and missed its 2023 target by 10,000 soldiers, a 20% shortfall, Vox reported.
The active-duty Army currently has 445,000 soldiers, 41,000 fewer than in 2021 — and the smallest since 1940.
From Vox Media:
Three of America’s four major military services failed to recruit enough servicemembers in 2023. The Army has failed to meet its manpower goalsfor the last two years and missed its 2023 target by 10,000 soldiers, a 20 percent shortfall. Today, the active-duty Army stands at 445,000 soldiers, 41,000 fewer than in 2021 and the smallest it has been since 1940.
The Navy and Air Force missed their recruiting goals, too, the Navy failing across the board. The Marine Corps was the only service to achieve its targets (not counting the tiny Space Force). But the Marines’ success is partially attributable to significant force structure cuts as part of its Force Design 2030 overhaul. As a result, Marine recruiters have nearly 19,000 fewer active duty and selected reserve slots to fill today than they did as recently as 2020.
A decrease in the size of the active force might be less worrying if a large reserve pool could be mobilized in the event of a major war or national emergency. But recruiting challenges have impacted the reserve components even more severely than the active duty force. The National Guard and Reserves have been shrinking since 2020. Last year, the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve each missed their recruiting targets by 30 percent. The Army Reserve had just 9,319 enlistees after aiming to recruit 14,650 new soldiers. Numbers for the Navy Reserve were just as bad — the service missed its enlisted and officer targets by 35 and 40 percent, respectively.
Donald Trump is promising to fix the recruitment crisis and rebuild America’s military.
“It’s time to create the arsenal of the 21st Century,” Trump said in the Piedmont community of Asheboro last month. “We need a very dramatic increase in development and, in so doing, we will create countless American jobs.”
“Thanks to Comrade Kamala and Joe Biden, morale in our military is now so low that almost every single branch is suffering a major recruitment and retention crisis,” Trump said. “Upon taking office, I will begin the largest peacetime recruitment drive in the history of the armed forces. We have to fill our armed forces with great people … the sense of spirit, pride, and prestige will soon come roaring back.”
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How the General Strike Backfired on Israel’s Anti-Government Movement
The general strike that shut down Israel’s economy for several hours on Monday was a brief but long-awaited achievement for the country’s anti-government protest movement, whose activists had pressured the Histadrut labor union for months to join their cause.
However, the decision by Histadrut chairman Arnon Bar-David to acquiesce and finally declare a strike encountered legal pushback that some say has turned the achievement into a pyrrhic victory for the anti-government movement.
As at least 150,000 people protested across Israel over the government’s handling of the war in Gaza and in favor of a ceasefire with Hamas, a labor court on Monday ordered the Histadrut to end the strike. In declaring it, Bar-David said the strike was to protest the murder of six Israeli hostages by Hamas. Politics outside the Histadrut’s purview and mandate motivated the strike, the court determined.
The ruling may have eliminated large workers’ strikes from the protest movement’s arsenal, at least in the context of the war. It also underlined the limitations of the Histadrut as a political player. Yet Monday’s events also demonstrated the growing impatience and frustration of many Israelis over the slow-rolling war, which is nearing the one-year mark with Hamas still in existence and using hostages as leverage.
“The strike that the anti-government movement had sought so badly was a defeat on the legal front,” Shai Glick, the CEO of the B’Tsalmo, a Zionist, pro-Jewish human rights group, told JNS. However, Glick added, “The turnout for protests on Monday was major, reflecting a growing unease in society, not only among leftists, about the war’s progress.”
Bar-David, the Histadrut chairman, declared the strike hours after news broke that Hamas terrorists had murdered six hostages and left their bodies in a tunnel in Rafah, possibly for fear that they would be freed by nearby Israeli troops.
In a statement, Bar-David tied the strike to how “we must reach a deal [with Hamas] above all else.” He added: “We’re in a tailspin and we keep getting body bags. Only a strike will be shocking [enough] so I’ve decided to declare a general strike.”
Israel and Hamas are engaged in indirect talks for the release of dozens of Israeli hostages presumed to be held in Gaza. Hamas is demanding the release of many Palestinian prisoners and a ceasefire, as well as an Israeli pullout from Gaza. A main issue preventing a deal is Israel’s refusal to leave the Philadelphi Corridor—a move that could restore Hamas’s access to the border with Egypt.
Hamas is believed to have smuggled into Gaza countless tons of arms through the Philadelphi Corridor. The weapons were used to mount the murderous onslaught of Oct. 7, in which Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,200 Israelis and abducted another 251, in addition to launching thousands of rockets across the border. The onslaught triggered an Israeli ground offensive in Gaza amid exchanges of fire with Hezbollah in the north and rocket attacks from Yemen.
Bar-David also acknowledged the pressure on him by anti-government activists to declare a strike to pressure the government into accepting a deal with Hamas.
“I have demonstrated much responsibility so far, and it wasn’t easy,” he wrote in his statement announcing the strike.
The decision to declare a strike, whose cost to the economy has been estimated at 1.5 billion shekels ($407 million), may have satisfied some on the left but exposed Bar-David to harsh criticism from the right.
Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu said during a Cabinet meeting Monday that “Bar-David is strengthening [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar with this strike. It’s like telling him: ‘Go on, murder along, we’re with you’.” Activists, including from NGO Im Tirtzu, protested outside Bar-David’s home over the strike, which the chairman had said would last 24 hours before the court canceled it.
Even before the court’s ruling, multiple municipalities and a major teacher’s union represented by the Histadrut said they would not strike.
“It was a failure, it was widely perceived as partisan and it undermined the Histadrut’s status as a true representative of the hundreds of thousands of employees it says that it represents,” Mordechai Tzivin, a prominent lawyer, told JNS.
But the truncated strike wasn’t necessarily a defeat for Bar-David, according to Glick of B’Tsalmo.
“Bar-David has been cautious in deploying the Histadrut in the service of the anti-government movement. It’s a risky move for him because it introduces unnecessary divisions into the Histadrut, potentially weakening it. By declaring a strike that the court is sure to end, Bar-David gets the anti-government pressure groups off his case,” Glick said.
Some supporters of the anti-government movement condemned the court’s ruling and lionized Bar-David for declaring the strike.
“The State of Israel is in a situation where there’s no longer any significance to the question of what lies within the mandate of any one official,” a senior financial analyst for the left-leaning TheMarker newspaper wrote. “When civilians are abandoned in captivity and hundreds of soldiers risk getting killed because of the government’s inability to end the war, anyone with leverage should use it, regardless of official position,” wrote analyst Hagai Amit.
Michael Kleiner, a former senior lawmaker in Netanyahu’s Likud Party, noted how Bar-David had already aligned the Histadrut with the anti-government movement in the past, when he declared a one-day strike in July 2023 against the Netanyahu government’s judicial reform legislation. That controversial strike also had partial participation, with only 2,000 out of 36,000 state employees participating.
Bar-David had been hard-pressed to explain why that strike was nonpartisan, Kleiner wrote in an op-ed in Ma’ariv. “He thought that he didn’t need to offer such explanations this time around because he had the support of the protest movement, relatives of hostages, and the friendly mainstream media,” Kleiner wrote.
However, Bar-David “did not take into account that the rules of the game have changed. Israelis have wised up and out of the [pre-Oct. 7] conception and the generals’ assurances that ceding land to the enemy is reversible,” Kleiner wrote. “Israelis will no longer obey the wacky whims of politically driven organizations that hitch a ride on the backs of the hostages’ relatives to attack the wartime economy.”
Monday’s partial strike did bring out many thousands to protest, Tzivin said. But following the strike, “that option, of shutting down the economy to strongarm the government, seems less likely to make a reappearance,” he added. “We may see some private corporations staging brief solidarity strikes, but major union shutdowns appear to be off the table.”
(JNS)
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Friedman: US Pressure On Israel Reduces Chances of Regional Peace
Israel’s decisive defeat of Hamas in Gaza will facilitate regional peace with Saudi Arabia, whereas failure to achieve such a result is thwarting a deal, according to former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.
Friedman, who served under former President Donald Trump when the Abraham Accords were signed four years ago, told JNS that U.S. pressure on Israel regarding the war was making the chances of regional peace more remote.
“Being a strong regional superpower that can manage its borders is what is admired in the Arab world,” he said in an interview with JNS. “The Saudis want to see a strong Israel defeating [the two countries’] common enemies.”
The Biden administration thought, he continued, “that by limiting Israel’s ability to prosecute the war they were preserving the opportunity for peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia; just the opposite. What makes the Arab world pay attention to Israel is Israel’s strength against the enemies their countries face as well. If you reduce that strength, you reduce the prospect of normalization.”
Motivated by hatred with or without the Saudis
The former ambassador, who conceded that no one could have imagined that the war against Hamas would drag on for nearly a year, downplayed assessments that terrorists carried out the Oct. 7 massacre to thwart an emerging deal with Saudi Arabia.“They did it because they could,” he said. “Their motivation was hatred, with or without the Saudi initiative, and they did it because Israel let its guard down.”
Friedman voiced pessimism regarding a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, despite recent remarks by U.S. President Joe Biden and top administration officials that a deal was close.
“I am not optimistic that they will ever make a deal,” he said.
A second term?
Friedman, who is based in the United States but travels to Israel several times a year for his “spiritual health,” said the Oct. 7 attacks have made him want his old job back, should Trump be re-elected in November.
“There is unfinished business, and course correction after four years of the Biden administration,” he said.
A proponent of Israeli sovereignty over the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria with local autonomy for Palestinians, Friedman said Israel needs to change the deeply entrenched international paradigm of a two-state solution, which he called “fitting a square peg in a round hole,” by first changing its own mindset.
There must be a serious national discussion and consensus on the issue in Israel, he said, noting that it has been relegated to the Israeli far right, who he said have no credibility on the issue and don’t speak for the mainstream public at large.
“There is a vacuum on this issue … and leadership is not in place to make this happen,” he said. JNS
{Matzav.com}
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Sen. Hawley: Most Agents Guarding Trump During Assassination Attempt Were Homeland Security Personnel Who Took ‘Two-Hour Online Webinar’
Senator Josh Hawley has revealed that whistleblowers informed him that the majority of agents assigned to protect Donald Trump during the attempted assassination at his Butler, Pennsylvania, rally in July were primarily personnel from Homeland Security, who had received limited training in protective duties.
Rather than being surrounded by a large contingent of Secret Service agents at the July 13 rally, Trump was largely safeguarded by Homeland Security agents who had only undergone online webinar training before the event, according to Hawley (R-Mo.), during an interview on “Jesse Watters Primetime” on Tuesday night.
“A two-hour, online webinar. And I’m told that half the time, the sounds to the webinar didn’t even work,” Hawley stated.
“Consider this: The former president of the US … is brought out on stage, with the majority of his protectors being undertrained and unqualified. They received only a webinar training, and even that was flawed,” he remarked with disbelief.
“This is absolutely outrageous.”
Hawley noted that the Homeland Security agents were reportedly diverted from child exploitation cases and other investigations to provide protection for Trump, a role they were not accustomed to.
He also criticized the Secret Service and FBI for their lack of transparency regarding the rally, where Trump narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks.
“The only reason we have this information is because of whistleblowers,” he said during his conversation with Watters.
Representative Clay Higgins (R-La.) recently disclosed that a SWAT team from Butler was actually the first to fire shots that damaged Crooks’ rifle and stopped the shooting spree before the Secret Service intervened.
During a congressional testimony on July 31, acting Secret Service director Ronald Rowe Jr. did not mention the local SWAT team’s involvement, Watters pointed out.
{Matzav.com}
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Poll: Majority of Israelis Back Netanyahu on Philadelphi, Oppose Protests
An overwhelming majority of Israelis support Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s negotiation positions regarding a hostage deal with Hamas and oppose anti-government demonstrations in Tel Aviv demanding an immediate deal at any price, according to a new, in-depth JNS poll.
Netanyahu’s positions are supported not only by coalition-party voters, but also by approximately one third of voters for opposition parties, the survey found.
Direct Polls conducted the survey on Monday evening both before and after the prime minister’s press conference, finding a significant disparity in Netanyahu’s favor in the latter sampling.
At the press conference, Netanyahu set out the rationale for his refusal to remove Israel Defense Forces troops from the border zone between Gaza and Egypt, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, its code name on IDF maps.
JNS asked respondents: “Do you believe Israel should support or oppose a deal that conditions the receipt of between 18-30 hostages on an IDF withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor for six weeks, during which Hamas will be able to rearm and smuggle hostages out of Gaza?”
Thirty-five percent of respondents overall said that Israel should agree to such a deal, while 62% opposed it. Three percent had no opinion.
Among coalition-party voters, 7% supported withdrawing from the Gaza-Egypt border, compared to 62% of opposition voters. Ninety-two percent of coalition voters opposed the withdrawal and 33% of opposition voters opposed withdrawing from the Philadelphi corridor.
Notably, 65% of opposition voters polled before the press conference supported withdrawing from the Philadelphi Corridor, and only 57% of opposition voters polled afterwards supported that position. Support for the withdrawal among coalition voters decreased from 8% to 5%.
The disparity between the way opposition party voters polled before and after Netanyahu’s press conference viewed mass anti-government protests on behalf of a hostage deal was even more apparent. Fifty-two percent of opposition party voters surveyed before Netanyahu’s press conference thought that the demonstrations advanced the goal of getting the hostages home. Thirty-two percent said that the demonstrations had no impact on whether or not a deal would be achieved that would get the hostages home. Sixteen percent said that the demonstrations decreased the chance of getting a hostage deal with Hamas.
After Netanyahu’s press conference, only 42% of opposition voters believed that the demonstrations increased the prospects for getting the hostages home. Thirty-nine percent said that the demonstrations didn’t affect their plight, and 19% said that the demonstrations decreased prospects for bringing them home.
Sixty-one percent of Israelis agreed with the sentence, “Only military pressure on Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and planned military actions including hostage rescue operations can lead to the release of the hostages.” Thirty-three percent agreed that “Continuing IDF operations in the Gaza tunnels endangers the hostages’ lives.”
Israelis are sharply split over whether Netanyahu bears responsibility for the execution of the hostages. Opposition voters support the claim 69% to 28%, while coalition voters oppose it 94%-6%.
The hostage deal Netanyahu has accepted involves three phases. In the first phase Israel would agree to free hundreds of Hamas terrorists from prison and significantly draw back its forces from Gaza while accepting a six-week ceasefire. Hamas in exchange would free 18-30 hostages. In two later phases of the deal, Hamas would release the rest of the hostages—alive and dead—in exchange for the further release of terrorists from prison and continuation of the ceasefire.
JNS asked Israelis if they believed Hamas would be willing to release additional hostages in later phases of the deal or would refuse to release them. Sixty-nine percent of Israelis (88% of coalition voters and 50% of opposition voters) believe Hamas will not release additional hostages. Only 24% of Israelis (10% of coalition voters and 38% of opposition voters) said that Hamas will be willing to advance along the deal and release additional hostages.
In other words, 69% of Israelis believe that between 83 and 71 hostages would be left behind in Gaza indefinitely.
Hamas’s negotiating position is that Israel must remove all of its forces from Gaza, including from the 3 kilometer wide security perimeter within Gaza along the border with Israel, the Netzarim Corridor that separates central and southern Gaza from northern Gaza, and the Philadelphi Corridor.
Seventy-three percent of Israelis, (95% of coalition party voters and 51% of opposition party voters) oppose Hamas’s demands. Twenty-two percent of Israelis support it, (4% of coalition voters and 40% of opposition voters).
A majority of Israelis do not trust the Biden-Harris administration’s commitments to support Israel if Hamas breaches the ceasefire-for-hostages deal. In response to JNS’s question, “Do you believe that the Biden-Harris administration will permit or block Israel from reinstating hostilities and reconquering Gaza to defeat Hamas if Hamas breaches the agreement,” 38% of Israelis said the United States would permit Israel to renew military operations; 56% said the United States would block Israel from renewing its military operations in Gaza. Only 14% of coalition voters believed the Biden-Harris administration would support a renewal of operations, while 61% of opposition voters trusted the administration’s support. Eighty-one percent of coalition voters said the United States would prevent Israel from renewing its operations if Hamas breaches a ceasefire deal, compared to 31% of opposition party voters.
On Sunday, Arnon Bar-David, the chairman of Israel’s main labor union, the Histadrut, declared a general strike in order to force the government to accept a hostage deal at all costs. A Labor court ruled the strike illegal on Monday afternoon and ordered it stopped immediately. The damage to the economy from the lost work hours is assessed at 2 billion shekels ($541 million).
JNS asked the public whether they believed that the strike advanced a hostage deal, had no impact on prospects for a hostage deal or damaged prospects for a hostage deal. Eighteen percent said the strike increased the prospects for a deal, 32% said it had no impact and 50% said it harmed prospects for a deal.
The heads of the anti-government protest groups active since January 2023 and the Hostage Families Forum, which represents a few dozen hostage families, have been cooperating informally since Oct. 7. In December 2023, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, the unofficial leader of the anti-government political groups organizing the protests, called for the anti-government groups to work behind the hostages’ families. On Tuesday it was reported that Barak’s associates will begin officially cooperating with the Hostage Families Forum from now on, effectively merging the group representing a fraction of the hostages’ families with the anti-government protest movement.
JNS asked the public whether it believed that the anti-government protest groups have joined the hostages’ families groups in order mainly to help secure their release, mainly to overthrow the government or to advance both goals equally. Fifty-five percent of Israelis (90% of coalition voters and 20% of opposition voters) said that the anti-government groups are helping the Hostages’ Families Forum to overthrow the government.
Twenty percent of Israelis (3% of coalition voters and 37% of opposition voters) said the anti-government groups were supporting the Hostage Families Forum to secure the hostages’ release.
Twenty-four percent of Israelis (7% of coalition voters and 41% of opposition voters) believed they were helping the Hostage Families Forum to advance both goals equally.
In light of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s open opposition to the Security Cabinet’s decision to oppose all withdrawals from the Philadelphi Corridor, JNS asked whether Israelis believe he should quit or be fired, or whether he should remain in his position. Fifty-one percent of Israelis said that Gallant should be fired or resign.
Thirty-three percent (53% of coalition voters and 14% of opposition voters) said Gallant should resign.
Eighteen percent of Israelis (32% of coalition voters and 4% of opposition voters) said that Netanyahu should fire Gallant.
Forty-five percent of Israelis (13% of coalition voters and 76% of opposition voters) said he should remain in his position.
Similarly, 48% of Israelis believe that IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Hertzi Halevy should either resign immediately or in the next four weeks and 41% believe that he should leave when the war is over. Only 7% believe he should remain in his position until the official conclusion of his term in 2025.
(JNS)