Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Back to Opinion

Shocked, Shocked: Israeli Web Freedom Group Cries Foul As Police Block Gaming Sites

The Israel Internet Association warns in a court filing, reported on News 1 (Hebrew only) ,that freedom of expression in Israel will be “mortally wounded” if the police are allowed to go ahead with an order blocking access to eight Internet gambling sites.

The Internet Association’s lawyer, Web freedom specialist Haim Rabia, presented his arguments in a meeting at the Bet Mishpat Le-Inyanim Minhaliyim (“court for administrative affairs” – a new one on me) on Wednesday March 16 to discuss the association’s appeal. “At a time when social networks are driving revolutions around the world, the idea that the police should be entitled to determine what constitutes permissible expression is simply terrifying,” Rabia is quoted as saying.

He argued that if any of the eight sites had been charged with criminal activity, there would have been no appeal against a police order blocking access. Instead, however, the police decided to be the investigator, prosecutor and sentencing judge all by itself.

If the order is allowed to stand, he said, it will serve as a legal precedent for future police actions to close other Internet sites promoting forms of expression that the police find objectionable, with no due process.

The state attorney’s office replied that the police are authorized under Section 229 of the criminal code to shut down locations where illegal gambling is going on. The state defines a gambling website as a location and does not consider Internet gambling to be a form of expression.

The judge set a new court date for final arguments. None of the news accounts say what that date is.

Here is Rabia’s own version on his website, it-law.co.il. He appears to specialize in Internet law.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.