JERUSALEM // Nine months ago, Dareen Tatour, an Arab citizen of Israel, posted a poem on Facebook about her frustration over the increasing violence between Israelis and Palestinians. A few days later, Israeli police banged on her door in the middle of the night and arrested her, accusing her of inciting violence.
She was also charged with supporting a terrorist organisation because — according to the indictment — she once expressed support for a Palestinian uprising She spent three months in jail and has since been held under house arrest near Tel Aviv. She was allowed only one 48-hour pass to visit her family on the first day of Eid. She also has to wear an ankle tag. .
She may soon not be the only one. Israel is now preparing to introduce legislation restricting content on social media, including Facebook, on the pretext that it is the driving force behind the escalation of Palestinian attacks in the last ten months. According to Israeli reasoning, social media provides a valuable platform for those wishing to spread violence and sites such as Facebook should be made accountable for any damage arising from posts which drive others to commit violence..
“Where is the democracy here? Voicing your opinion is the only medium for an individual in a democracy,” said Ms Tatour, 34, speaking by telephone. With no access to the internet and the restrictions on her movements, it is her only tool of communication.
Before her arrest, Ms Tatour worked as a carer for the elderly — a job she has since lost. Writing poetry was a hobby which she shared with close friends and 4,000 followers on Facebook. She has only ever read her poems in public on three occasions. The one that got her into trouble contained the lines “Resist, my people, resist them ... and follow the caravan of martyrs.” But she insists it was not a call to violence but an expression of anger at what she perceived as excessive force by the Israeli authorities. “I never thought I would be arrested for poetry,” she said.
It has, however, attracted the attention of more than 150 literary figures, including pro-Palestinian authors Alice Walker and Naomi Klein, calling for MsTatour’s release.
Ever since the tensions over a site regarded as holy by both Muslims and Jews boiled over into violence last September, Israel has repeatedly blamed allegedly inflammatory social media content — such as drawings depicting Jews being killed, or instructions on the most effective way to stab an Israeli for ramping up the attacks. A police monitoring team — the authorities won’t say how big it is, how long it has been operating or what search tools they use — scour hundreds of thousands of posts on social networks, searching for any that might be deemed as an incitement to violence. Posts that directly call for or encourage murder immediately set off alarms, but they also look for certain keywords, the type of exposure a post gets in terms of followers or likes and whether the user is affiliated with a militant group.
Shlomi Avramzon, a Justice Ministry official who heads a team that assesses content for incitement, says the process has built-in checks so as not to infringe the right to freedom of expression.
He says that unlike other crimes in Israel, police need to receive permission from the state attorney’s office before they can launch an investigation. If the state attorney’s office wants to issue an indictment, it must first receive clearance from the attorney general.
The Palestinians contend that any content deemed objectionable is a direct result, as well as e the violence itself — — of frustration and hopelessness after nearly 50 years of Israeli occupation.
According to police figures obtained by the Israeli Movement for Freedom of Information, 426 Arabs were arrested for incitement between 2011 and 2015, much of it on social media. The figures did not differentiate between Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel. During that period, around 64 Jews were also arrested. The Justice Ministry said 45 indictments had been served in the last 18 months, the majority against Arabs.
Palestinians in the West Bank are bound by Israeli military law, which has its own rules on incitement. The military says 100 indictments have been issued against Palestinians for incitement offences since last November.
Suhad Bishara, the acting director of Adalah, an Arab legal rights group, said that some investigations into incitement are justified but others challenge posts “that fall clearly within the realm of free expression.”
The new social media law, dubbed “the Facebook Law,” the Israeli authorities would be able to apply to the courts for permission to order social networks to remove posts in cases where the user cannot be found or is not under Israel’s jurisdiction.
As a test, Israel had asked Facebook to remove 74 posts deemed to amounted to incitement. Facebook agreed to remove 24. This, said Mr Erdan, showed that social networks need to be made accountable by law for the content on their sites. It was preferable to investigate people for posting potentially incriminating posts, even if they proved innocent, than to risk violence.
“We are left with no choice to protect the public other than advancing a law that will give us a legal tool to act against internet companies,” he said. “I’ve called on Mark Zuckerberg to take responsibility.”
* Associated Press
BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE
Starring: Winona Ryder, Michael Keaton, Jenny Ortega
Director: Tim Burton
Rating: 3/5
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How Tesla’s price correction has hit fund managers
Investing in disruptive technology can be a bumpy ride, as investors in Tesla were reminded on Friday, when its stock dropped 7.5 per cent in early trading to $575.
It recovered slightly but still ended the week 15 per cent lower and is down a third from its all-time high of $883 on January 26. The electric car maker’s market cap fell from $834 billion to about $567bn in that time, a drop of an astonishing $267bn, and a blow for those who bought Tesla stock late.
The collapse also hit fund managers that have gone big on Tesla, notably the UK-based Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust and Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation ETF.
Tesla is the top holding in both funds, making up a hefty 10 per cent of total assets under management. Both funds have fallen by a quarter in the past month.
Matt Weller, global head of market research at GAIN Capital, recently warned that Tesla founder Elon Musk had “flown a bit too close to the sun”, after getting carried away by investing $1.5bn of the company’s money in Bitcoin.
He also predicted Tesla’s sales could struggle as traditional auto manufacturers ramp up electric car production, destroying its first mover advantage.
AJ Bell’s Russ Mould warns that many investors buy tech stocks when earnings forecasts are rising, almost regardless of valuation. “When it works, it really works. But when it goes wrong, elevated valuations leave little or no downside protection.”
A Tesla correction was probably baked in after last year’s astonishing share price surge, and many investors will see this as an opportunity to load up at a reduced price.
Dramatic swings are to be expected when investing in disruptive technology, as Ms Wood at ARK makes clear.
Every week, she sends subscribers a commentary listing “stocks in our strategies that have appreciated or dropped more than 15 per cent in a day” during the week.
Her latest commentary, issued on Friday, showed seven stocks displaying extreme volatility, led by ExOne, a leader in binder jetting 3D printing technology. It jumped 24 per cent, boosted by news that fellow 3D printing specialist Stratasys had beaten fourth-quarter revenues and earnings expectations, seen as good news for the sector.
By contrast, computational drug and material discovery company Schrödinger fell 27 per cent after quarterly and full-year results showed its core software sales and drug development pipeline slowing.
Despite that setback, Ms Wood remains positive, arguing that its “medicinal chemistry platform offers a powerful and unique view into chemical space”.
In her weekly video view, she remains bullish, stating that: “We are on the right side of change, and disruptive innovation is going to deliver exponential growth trajectories for many of our companies, in fact, most of them.”
Ms Wood remains committed to Tesla as she expects global electric car sales to compound at an average annual rate of 82 per cent for the next five years.
She said these are so “enormous that some people find them unbelievable”, and argues that this scepticism, especially among institutional investors, “festers” and creates a great opportunity for ARK.
Only you can decide whether you are a believer or a festering sceptic. If it’s the former, then buckle up.
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The Written World: How Literature Shaped History
Martin Puchner
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Company Profile
Name: Thndr
Started: 2019
Co-founders: Ahmad Hammouda and Seif Amr
Sector: FinTech
Headquarters: Egypt
UAE base: Hub71, Abu Dhabi
Current number of staff: More than 150
Funds raised: $22 million
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