Last week, the IsraelVersusJudaism.org website posted a video of a protest against the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outside the UN. The video showed a march and a speech against the State of Israel and its atrocities. The video and the text that went along with it were substantially no different from others of a similar nature that we have published in the past.
Subsequently, we received the following message from YouTube:
“Your video Anti-Zionist Jews Protesting Israel and visit of Netanyahu to the UN was flagged to us by the YouTube community. Upon review, we have placed restrictions on how the video will be shown. Please note that your video will continue to be available on YouTube.
We believe in the principles of free speech, even when that speech is unpopular or potentially offensive to some viewers. However, YouTube doesn’t allow hate speech or content that promotes or incites violence. In some cases, flagged videos that do not clearly breach the Community Guidelines but whose content is potentially controversial or offensive may remain up, but with some features disabled.
Your video will be shown after a warning message. In addition, certain features such as comments, sharing, thumbs up, and suggested videos have been disabled. Your video is also ineligible for monetization.“
It seems that the Zionists feel threatened by our activities to the point that they are resorting to censorship. In today’s internet age, where very little censorship exists, and the most vile and immoral subject matter is accessible to all, they have found a way to label our material as offensive hate speech, when anyone can see that it is nothing of the kind. We are simply speaking up for the rights of our fellow observant Jews in the Holy Land to opt out of the army due to their religious principles.
The Talmud says כל הפוסל במומו פוסל, that the slanderer projects his own faults on others. How low the Zionists have sunk, if they can accuse us of promoting violence, when it is actually they who commit acts of violence! Anyone who has perused the material on this site can see that it is the Israeli police who use skunk water cannons, who run over protestors, who beat protestors to the ground until blood runs from their heads. And in general, our objection to the Israeli army is based on the Torah principle that Jews must live in peace with all nations and not be involved in any sort of warfare. They can flag our videos as offensive, but actually we are opening the eyes of people to realize that masses of Orthodox Jews do not support the State of Israel, and indeed are actually suffering under its rule. The Israeli-Arab conflict is thus not rooted in Judaism, but in the ideology of Zionism, an ideology antithetical to Judaism, one that that Orthodox Jews oppose just as strongly as Arabs, if not more.
We humbly ask all those who have followed our material and feel they have been moved to see Jews in a better light because of it, to speak up and let YouTube know that our videos promote peace and harmony and it is the Zionists who promote war and violence.