According to Foreign Sources / Maarv Editorial
A rhetorical fig leaf, the coinage “according to foreign sources” is a common tongue-in-cheek expression in many countries, Israel among them. Although it derives from a situation of legal obscurity, it is nevertheless used with distinctive clarity concerning the punishment for those who dare remove the leaf. “According to foreign sources” has become a prevalent expression in official briefings, the media, and academic discourse. It is habitually used to skirt censorial restrictions whose justification is security in the broadest and most unrestricted sense. It allows the speaker to evade responsibility for exposing forbidden information: They, the foreigners, claim so; it has all been said before.
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According to Foreign Sources
e-Censorship and the Arab Spring
Internet shutdowns, website filtering, overflow, substitution and defamation: Arab regimes and the Internet, a guidebook for dictators
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The philosophy of the secret is antithetical to the highest norm of criminal law. The flirtation of law with “truth” is of no help here. Recruiting the well-ordered and logical universe of the law in order to protect secrets leads to the unavoidable violation of fundamental legal principles, and to the creation of a juridical field dominated by an entirely different physics. Israeli law has created such a field.
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“Firstly, my intention was to find a way to speak about Palestinians without falling into the inevitability of positing them in relation to Israel or to the conflict”.
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So far, the WikiLeaks story has been represented as a struggle between WikiLeaks and the US empire: is the publishing of confidential US state documents an act in support of the freedom of information, of the people’s right to know, or is it a terrorist act that poses a threat to stable international relations? But what if this isn’t the real issue?
Why the Pentagon Papers matter now
While we go on waging unwinnable wars on false premises, the Pentagon papers tell us we must not wait 40 years for the truth
