Ruling Allows Activists To Sue Over Disclosure
San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, November 17, 1998
Bay Area political activists who have sued a Jewish civil rights organization are entitled to learn whether the group illegally disclosed confidential information about them, a state appeals court ruled yesterday . The ruling by the Court of Appeals should enable the activists to go to trial in their long-stalled suit against the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. The activists' suit, which asks for class-action status for as many as 1,000 people, relies on a state law banning disclosure of confidential government information, with damages of $2,500 for each disclosure. Filed in 1993, the suit has been delayed by a dispute over the confidentiality of ADL files. ADL regional director Barbara Bergen said that although the decision "leaves open the possibility of limited future discovery from the League," ADL officials predicted it would lead to a legal victory for the group in future litigation. The organization, which publishes newsletters about hate groups, has the legal status of a journalist, and it says it is therefore entitled to keep its files and sources confidential. The appeals court, however, ruled 3 to 0 that the ADL could not keep its files secret if they were used for nonjournalistic activity.
More on the Jewish "Anti-Defamation League" (ADL)
Internet:
The Jewish-ADL Perspective
The Jewish "ADL" has developed a filter (ADL HateFilter™) that blocks access to Radio Islam and to other Web sites that contain "inappropriate" material!
STATEMENT OF THE "ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE " (ADL) BEFORE THE US SENATE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
SEPTEMBER 14, 1999
This text is published in the US Senate´s homepage
(http://judiciary.senate.gov/91499ad.htm):Ahmed Rami "One high-profile Arab Holocaust denier is Swedish-based Moroccan exile Ahmed Rami, creator of the Radio Islam Web site. Once a lieutenant in the Moroccan military, Rami reportedly played a leading role in a failed 1972 coup d'Ètat and fled, gaining political asylum in Sweden. In 1987, Rami began using a public access Swedish radio station to broadcast Radio Islam, ostensibly a public relations program for Sweden's Muslims but in fact a vehicle for unvarnished anti-Semitism.
Rami has rationalized his bigotry as support for Palestinian causes. While he has become a source of embarrassment for serious Palestinian activists, Holocaust deniers have unabashedly and enthusiastically associated with him. Rami spoke at the 1992 IHR conference and has often been praised by Ingrid Rimland, among others.
Off the air from 1993 to 1995, Rami's program returned in 1996, the same year that he established the Radio Islam Web site. From the start, Rami's site offered visitors anti-Semitic material in English, French, German, Swedish and Norwegian. Early versions of the site described the "so-called 'holocaust'" as a tool used by "Zionists" to win "sovereign rights to oppress and vilify other people," namely Palestinians. These "Zionists," according to Radio Islam, have a monopoly over "information services in the West" and bribe Western politicians to support them in their "Anti-Arab and anti-Moslem racism" and "hatred against everything German."
Today, visitors to the Radio Islam site are greeted with a statement that seems to deny Rami's extremism: "No hate. No violence. Races? Only one Human race." Yet his site has become even more bigoted than ever and demonstrates the implicit connection between Holocaust denial and other forms of anti-Semitism. Radio Islam promotes a myriad of anti-Semitic works in addition to those of Holocaust deniers such as Robert Faurisson, Greg Raven, John Ball, and Bradley Smith.
The Radio Islam site continues to portray the Holocaust as part of a Jewish conspiracy to draw the world's attention away from "the ongoing Zionist war waged against the peoples of Palestine and the Middle East" and "Zionism's totalitarian and racist backgrounds." To support this theory, it provides numerous anti-Semitic texts that allege Jewish conspiracies for political domination, such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Expanding on the anti-Semitism expressed by its denial of the Holocaust, Radio Islam equates "Jewish Racism," envisioned as Jewish prejudice against Muslims, with "Jewish 'Religion,'" as outlined by the Talmud. Visitors to Radio Islam can read "The Truth About The Talmud" by Michael A. Hoffman II and Alan R. Critchley, which asserts that Jews are impelled, by religious law, to mistreat and attempt to dominate non-Jews. The Nature of Zionism by Vladimir Stepin, also available at the Radio Islam site, declares that Zionism rests on three basic beliefs: that Jews are "God's chosen people"; that all others are "merely two-legged animals (goys)," and that "Jews have both the right and the obligation to rule the world."
Furthermore, according to Radio Islam, the Jews are not the "chosen people" for they are not "'descendants' of the mythic Jews of the Bible." Rather, today's Jews are "descended from Mongolians and other Asiatic peoples who had adopted 'Judaism' as their 'religion' over 1,000 years ago and had become know as 'Jews.'" Often advanced by Identity believers, this theory alleges that most, if not all, Ashkenazic Jews descended from the Khazars, an obscure Turkic people whose leaders converted to Judaism in the eighth century. While Identity adherents employ this theory in order to bolster their assertion that Anglo-Saxon whites are actually the biblical Church of Israel, Rami uses it to demonstrate that the ancestors of the Jews were not from Palestine, implying that Israel has no right to exist.
What are Internet "filters" and when is their use appropriate?
Filters are software that can be installed along with a Web browser to block access to certain Web sites that contain inappropriate or offensive material. Parents may choose to install filters on their children's computers in order to prevent them from viewing sites that contain pornography or other problematic material. ADL has developed a filter (ADL HateFilter™) that blocks access to Web sites that advocate hatred, bigotry, or violence towards Jews or other groups on the basis of their religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or other immutable characteristics. HateFilter™, which can be downloaded from ADL's Web site, contains a "redirect" feature which offers users who try to access a blocked site the chance to link directly to related ADL educational material. The voluntary use of filtering software in private institutions or by parents in the home does not violate the First Amendment because such use involves no government action. There are also some commercially marketed filters that focus on offensive words and phrases. Such filters, which are not site-based, are designed primarily to screen out obscene and pornographic material.
May public schools and public libraries install filters on computer equipment available for public use?
The use of filters by public institutions, such as schools and libraries, has become a hotly contested issue that remains unresolved. At least one Federal court has ruled that a local library board may not require the use of filtering software on all library Internet computer terminals. A possible compromise for public libraries with multiple computers would be to allow unrestricted Internet use for adults, but to provide only supervised access for children.
Courts have not ruled on the constitutionality of hate speech filters on public school library computers. However, given the broad free speech rights afforded to students by the First Amendment, it is unlikely that courts would allow school libraries to require filters on all computers available for student use."
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Races? Only one Human race United We Stand, Divided We Fall |
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No time to waste. Act now! Tomorrow it will be too late |
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