Israelis Question Censorship After Death of Prisoner

The Internet makes old policies unenforceable

In the days after Israel partially acknowledged a report that it secretly jailed an Australian-Israeli main who later died in prison, there is doubt about the censorship powers that enabled the government to stifle the Israeli media until yesterday.

The decades-old sense that the Jewish state is under a constant existential threat has created tolerance of formal limits on press freedoms, but the sense among many Israelis is that in this case authorities have gone too far, and that such a blackout is not practical, let alone possible, with the advent of online journalism.

An investigation by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation into the 2010 disappearance and death of 34-year-old Ben Zygier suggested the Australian joined the Mossad after immigrating to Israel, but that something must have gone wrong with his service. In the hours after the initial publication of the report, Israel's Prime Minister's Office made the rare move of calling in the editors-in-chief of major domestic news outlets to encourage them to uphold a blackout on the Australian report.