Neil Netanel

#Copyright, Pete Kameron Professor of Law, UCLA. LA, Zichron Yaakov. From Maimonides to Microsoft: The Jewish Law of Copyright. Copyright's Paradox.

[yayafink (יאיא פינק) @yayafink]

"יש מכונה שלמה שעובדת במחיקת המחדל הכי גדול שהיה כאן.
גם בתוך הטרלול ששוטף אותנו, יש נכון ויש לא נכון, יש אמת ויש שקר ויש עובדות".

נאום מכונן של אילנה דיין אתמול בטקס פרסי האקדמיה לטלוויזיה.
חובת צפייה:

[Yosef Yisrael @yosefyisrael25]

שליין עושה עבודת קודש עם שכבות הגיל הכי שטופות מוח בפופוליזם של בן גביר

[Neil Netanel @NeilNetanel]

As always, Fania Oz-Salzberger is spot on: When Shada Khatib, an Arab Israeli student, was killed by an Iranian missile, Israelis’ responses showed the strength of Arab-Jewish bonds—and the forces that threaten them. https://t.co/c3F897mH1w via @WSJ

[Law Professors Forum פורום המרצות והמרצים למשפטים @lawprofsforum]

1/12 פעולתו של ראש הממשלה נתניהו לבחירת ראש השב"כ הבא אינה חוקית. ראש הממשלה אינו רשאי לעסוק בעניין:

[Neil Netanel @NeilNetanel]

📷My article Failing to Save the Press: What Should Be Next?, forthcoming in Texas Law Rev., is now up on SSRN: https://t.co/KMDXkklf8i. Current laws fail to induce Google & Meta to compensate the press for posting news excerpts and links. I survey that and some alternatives.

[Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib @afalkhatib]

I feel immense shame and pain seeing the barbarism that Hamas & a slew of terror organizations put on in Gaza – the depravity of armed men thinking it’s courageous to parade the bodies of literal toddlers and their mother as some trophy for victory; the sickness, evil, and stupidity required to believe that marching with a locked coffin of an 85-year-old peace activist who did so much for Gazans is somehow good for the Palestinian cause. Instead of having a parade for a dead mother, her two babies, and an elderly man of peace, their bodies should have been handled by medical crews with no armed terrorists in sight. This could have been done differently, but Jihadi fascists chose the appalling spectacle instead.

I’m ashamed of any Palestinian who supports or justifies this; I’m ashamed of any “pro-Palestine” activists, “journalists,” or “experts” who are going out of their way to whitewash this and blame Israeli bombardment for killing Israeli hostages without blaming Hamas for taking hostages in the first place.

Those who attacked me repeatedly for calling out Hamas and their Jihadi fascism from day one never seem to understand why I view them as a far more serious existential threat to the Palestinian people than any far-right party or government in Israel. Hamas isn’t just bringing death and destruction upon the Palestinian people; it is decaying and eroding the value system of the Palestinian society and causing rot and degradation from within. This is a serious and terrible consequence of the group's actions that will decimate hopes for Palestinian freedom, independence, and sovereignty, not to mention respect among the nations of the world.

What transpired today isn’t just illegal, immoral, vile, and disgusting; to me, and many who aspire to have a Palestine worth fighting for, it is a matter of values and principles. It’s imperative for all Palestinians of conscience, even if they’re furious at Israel for what it did to Gaza after October 7, to speak out and say not in our name. It is imperative to distance the Palestinian people from the depraved evil and vile display of fascist cowardice that’s masquerading as “resistance.”

It’s time to reject Hamas and separate the Palestinian people’s just and urgent aspirations from a despicable death cult that’s dehumanizing our people time and again. It’s time to denounce all the pro-“resistance” terror enthusiasts in New York, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere who keep cheering on Hamas and are celebrating the shameful parade of dead children, their mother, and an elderly peace activist.

I am ashamed that my once beautiful Gaza, with a vibrant society that stood for values and had so much potential to be the crown jewel of the Palestinian people, has been degraded and embarrassed by inhumane terrorists who are a stain on the Palestinians and their cause. Gaza is not Hamas despite the terror group’s control. I have seen dozens of Palestinians in the Strip condemning what took place today and denouncing the inhumanity of Hamas.

Saying these words does not making me "self-hating," for I am proud of my Palestinian heritage and care deeply about my people.

To the Bibas and Lifshitz families, I am truly sorry for your loss – I grieve with you, and I share your pain. We shall overcome.

[Naama Lazimi - נעמה לזימי @naamalazimi]

עוד הפרה בוטה של ניגוד העניינים של נתניהו, לכן פניתי שוב ליועצת המשפטים לממשלה בהמשך לפנייתי הקודמת.

נתניהו מפר סדרתי של ניגוד העניינים עליו הוא חתום ותוך כדי הוא הופך את ישראל לדיקטטורה משיחית ומושחתת.

נבצרות עכשיו.

[עובדה @Uvda_tweet]

זו שיחה של אחת לדור. ונתניהו, כך נדמה, מבין את זה כשהוא עונה לטלפון האדום ב-6:40 בבוקר 7 באוקטובר. חשפנו הערב את תמלול השיחה הדרמטית הזו, שיעמוד בהמשך במוקד סערת הזיופים בלשכה:

[Fania Oz-Salzberger 🇮🇱🕊️🟣 פניה עוז-זלצברגר @faniaoz]

Very sad nocturnal thoughts from Mount Carmel.
People are angry with me for continuing unabated, on the very day that the ICC issued an arrest warrant against him, to decry Netanyahu’s hostile takeover of Israel’s rule of law.
These people haven’t followed the recent revelations of his closest circle’s dealings.
The cabinet is preparing the Attorney General’s dismissal, while ministers and media cronies hurl abuse at her. The justice minister and coalition Knesset members are planning laws against an official state inquiry commission on 7/10, promoting a political commission instead. Netanyah’s two closest advisors have allegedly run a PR campaign on behalf of (you’d better believe it) Qatar. His ministers are coddling a PM office employee currently under arrest for leaking a classified document to the German newspaper Bild. The suspect and other Netanyahu staff members allegedly acted to turn public opinion against the hostages’ families, by spreading false information on Hamas’s rejection of a hostage deal.
A very large number of Israelis, way beyond the political left and liberals, now think that Netanyahu is Israel’s worst problem. Also that by weakening the Israeli judicial branch and gatekeepers he largely brought the ICC indictment and warrant upon himself and upon us all.
Dear friends of Israel, please consider switching your support from Israel’s current prime minister and his government to Israeli civil society. This is a heartbreaking choice, it is a very bad moment, but it’s time you made it.

[KamBaZman @KamBaZman]

אני: מה אכלת היום בצהריים בגן?
הבן שלי: לא זוכר

[Fania Oz-Salzberger 🇮🇱🕊️🟣 פניה עוז-זלצברגר @faniaoz]

Israel is on the brink of open constitutional crisis as Netanyahu, his ministers, Knesset members and cronies blatantly push against the judiciary.
(1) A huge, vitriolic campaign, orchestrated by the government, preparing the ground for the dismissal of Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara.
(2) Planning quick legislation to install a politically appointed inquiry commission into 7/10, while blocking a legally-enshrined, long due inquiry commission led by a judge, who is normally named by the President of the Supreme Court.
(3) All this while Israel hasn’t had a Supreme Court President for over a year, because Justice Minister Rotman is refusing to convene the committee, which is due to elect the next in line (by time-honored custom): the Court’s most veteran judge, liberal-leaning Yitzhak Amit.
(4) The government intends to fire at least 7 legal advisors (reps of the judiciary) of government ministries, allowing the latter to perform illegal acts with no gatekeepers to halt them.
Bottom line: the executive and the legislature’s majority are heading full steam, guns loaded, into the judicial branch.

[Neil Netanel @NeilNetanel]

@RabbiWolpe Don’t support Musk. Move to Bluesky.

[Fania Oz-Salzberger 🇮🇱🕊️🟣 פניה עוז-זלצברגר @faniaoz]

If you tell me that 27K innocent civilians were killed by Israel in Gaza, I’d agree, and share your pain and anger.
But if you say, parroting most media outlets, that 43K Gazan innocents were killed, you are effectively saying that every single Hamas combatant-terrorist killed by the IDF, including the thousands of 7/10 butchers, is a “civilian” and a blameless victim.
The truth is bad enough. Spreading lies is not helping.

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

Simchat Torah begins imminently, the last of the many holidays of this first month of the Jewish year.

Literally called “the joy of Torah,” it is a holiday of rejoicing at the great gift of the Torah, of dancing and singing in great circles around the synagogue in thanks for millennia of meaning and belonging.

And this one will hurt.

Because Simchat Torah is now also, and forevermore, the anniversary of the massacre, of the failure of our Jewish collective to rush to the aid of our brethren as they were gunned down in their own personal valleys of the shadow of death.

How do we celebrate while our hearts still reach out in bitter tears to 101 hostages still held by the maniacs who carefully engineered their own polity’s destruction on the altar of ours?

How do we celebrate when our soldiers still hunt through the Lebanese countryside for hiding and fleeing fighters of Hezbollah, who once planned and still dream of a vastly larger massacre?

How do we celebrate on cue, when expressions of happiness seem forced or unfeeling?

The Talmud tells us how.

In Tractate Bava Batra (page 60), the rabbis relate a debate following the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans.

The trauma of the destruction drove a great many Jews to asceticism, the Talmud relates. People stopped eating meat or drinking wine. When some of them are challenged by the sage Rabbi Yehoshua, they explain, “Shall we eat meat, from which offerings were sacrificed upon the altar, now that the altar no longer exists? Shall we drink wine, which was poured upon the altar, now that the altar no longer exists?”

R’ Yehoshua was disturbed by this line of reasoning. “If so, we will not eat bread either,” he points out, since bread was also brought as an offering to the Temple. “Or fruit.”

But the new ascetics only agree - the fruit of the seven iconic species of the land of Israel that were brought to the Temple each harvest as an offering would not be eaten by them for as long as the Temple remained destroyed, they say.

“And water?” R’ Yehoshua asks. The priests, after all, also used water.

For once the newly-minted ascetics “are silent.”

“My children, come,” R’ Yehoshua says, “Not to mourn at all is impossible, but to mourn too much is also impossible.”

Instead, R’ Yehoshua offers the instruction of the Sages: Build the pain into the happiness.

“A person may plaster his house with plaster, but must leave a small amount without plaster to remember the destruction of the Temple.”

And that corner should be prominent, R’ Ḥisda adds, “opposite the entrance, so that it is visible to all.”

How do we celebrate, how do we build, how are we happy in the midst of pain and mourning and adversity and fear? By adding the brokenness of things into our joy. By breaking a glass at a wedding, leaving a visible blemish on our well-plastered walls, leaving a piece of a meal unprepared — all ways the Talmud instructs us to incorporate mourning into our joy.

It is a way to make sure we don’t forget. But far more importantly - who among us can forget? - it is a way to clear a space in the pain for pockets of joy. It is permission for happiness by acknowledging the grief.

And there’s another way.

The old way. Judaism’s most basic and fundamental impulse: Gratitude. Endless, boundless thanksgiving.

In Avot DeRabbi Natan, a kind of extension of the Mishna’s “Ethics of our Fathers,” we are given a story about the great heroes of rabbinic literature all failing miserably to console their great teacher, the mystic Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, over the death of his son.

They all try to comfort him by comparing his loss to other tragedies of the past, and to old heroic figures who “were comforted” despite those tragedies.

Rabbi Eliezer points to Adam’s loss of his son Abel, R’ Yehoshua to Job’s loss of his children, R’ Yosei to Aaron’s grief for his dead sons and R’ Shimon to King David’s.

Others had it worse, they all argued, but were comforted.

But with each contribution, R’ Yohanan’s pain only grows worse. “Is it not enough that I have my own pain? You have to remind me of Job’s pain as well?” He scolds R’ Yehoshua.

Then came the final student, R’ Elazar ben Azariah, one of the great ethicists of the Jewish bookshelf and perhaps its greatest early psychologist. (It was he who ruled that prayers of contrition on Yom Kippur only absolve sins committed against God. Sins committed against other people must first be reconciled with those people.)

“Let me give you a parable,” R’ Elazar tells his master. “The king gave [someone] a deposit to hold. Every day [that person] would cry and wail and say, ‘O when will I be free of this deposit?’ So it is with you, rabbi. You had a son who read from the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings, the Mishna, the law and the Aggadah, and then was taken from the world free of sin.”

“Rabbi Elazar, my son,” R’ Yohanan replied, “you have comforted me as people are supposed to.”

(The full story is available here in Hebrew and English at the wonderful Sefaria website: https://t.co/OHgugWzBgi)

Friends, comfort cannot be found in minimizing our loss and pain, in ignoring it, in dramatizing the pain of others so that ours feels smaller.

The opposite: Comfort is found in the immensity of what we have lost, in gratitude for what we were given. Great pain is a function of great love.

Or as the 12th century sage Maimonides explains, suffering is the gap between expectation and reality. The key to overcoming suffering doesn’t lie in lowering your expectations but in deepening your understanding of the immense gifts of our reality, of our lives and this world and the people around us. Both the great gift of being and the great gift of being here and now, pain and all.

We do not forget our loss, we incorporate it into our happiness. We thus make our happiness imperfect, fragile - and all the more precious.

“Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad with her, all who love her,” Isaiah implores us, and then repeats the instruction for those of us who are in pain. “Rejoice with her joy, all you who mourn for her.”

We do not stop dancing, we do not fall into sackcloth and ashes, we do not forget our joy because of great pain and calamity.

Let us be happy not despite our great loss, but because we know how much we have to lose. Every last bit is a gift and all life is thanksgiving.

Simchat Torah is our Thanksgiving.

Chag sameach.

[Elica Le Bon الیکا‌ ل بن @elicalebon]

The mental gymnastics, reverse causality, and revisionist history that far leftists engage in to normalize jihad is no accident, and I’m no longer pretending that it is

[Fania Oz-Salzberger 🇮🇱🕊️🟣 פניה עוז-זלצברגר @faniaoz]

Here is my UCLA lecture in full.
Please watch. Comments welcome.

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

A few thoughts moments before settling into this Yom Kippur. A bit long, a bit into the weeds. Apologies.

How do we repent on this Day of Repentance - when we are still afraid and unable to really judge ourselves? When we still rage at God and man?

How do we shrink ourselves into supplicants when family members are in a war and we are called upon to be brave and present and strong to support those who struggle around us?

How do you enter the “headspace” of Yom Kippur when it seems so detached from the anxiety that surrounds us?

To be honest, I don’t know. I don’t know how to pray this Yom Kippur. I suspect I’ll fail.

Here’s my attempt to make it possible.

Yom Kippur is a hard holiday, grim and serious. It isn’t user-friendly or happy or self-validating. It isn’t for the kids, it doesn’t commemorate anything. You can’t make a Spielberg movie out of it.

It’s about suffering and shame and confession and the impossibility of purity and how the painful baring of one’s soul is a necessary precursor to the emotional and spiritual release of forgiveness.

“Torment your souls,” Leviticus instructs us about this holiday.

But it isn’t the torment of the fasting. The “torment,” chapter 23, verse 23 commands us, begins the day before, “on the ninth” of Tishrei. Today. Amid the bustle of preparations and family and the feasting that precedes the fast.

The Talmud makes it explicit. In tractate Yoma, page 81, it explains: “All who eat and drink on the ninth, [the Torah] treats them as if they tormented [their souls] on both the ninth and the tenth.”

The feast is as much “torment” as the fast.

But why? “Why is the feasting on the eve of Yom Kippur comparable to the fasting?” asks the 19-century sage and poet Malbim. “Because to eat for the sake of heaven is more difficult than to fast for the sake of heaven.”

The Sages believe in the theater of religion, in the power of these theaterics - poetry, music, ritual, special spaces - to shape shared norms and build strong sacralized community.

But like the Torah, they are also afraid of these theatrics, of the repetition that robs them of their authenticity, of the way the ritual inevitably comes to replace genuine emotional and moral change.

And so they dislike the ascetic impulse, the all-too-easy holiness of self-flagellation. The fear it because it is beguiling, because it is fake.

It is far easier to die with great fanfare for a great moral cause than to live for it each day, through drudgery and effort. It is easier to get social validation from high drama than from sustained self-correction.

In Chapter 2 of his Laws of Repentance, part of his monumental codex of Jewish law called the Mishnah Torah, the 12th-century sage Rambam instructs us to begin the confession of our sins *today*, hours before Yom Kippur itself, and specifically before the start of the pre-fast feast. His explanation is sarcastic and biting and the heart of Yom Kippur: “Lest he choke during the feast without having confessed.”

The fast is meant to clear the mind, not to torment it. If you are focused all day on the fast, you’re doing it wrong. It isn’t the physical discomfort that absolves. Repentance isn’t a tit-for-tat of suffering in which self-inflicted pain earns brownie points with God or with those you have wronged.

A repentance that doesn’t torment you when you’re feasting doesn’t become more authentic or real when you’re fasting.

On Yom Kippur, our Sages teach, you stand before a God who knows you, who sees through your confusion and defenses and self-loathing to each wrinkle of your struggling soul — and luckily for us all, to the deepest core of goodness around which he built us, that inner nucleus of self buried beneath the many layers of experience and pain that drive us to do bad things.

It is this knowing God, this forgiving God, before whom we stand and confess our failings, before whom we ask for help reaching inward to that goodness that is our essential core and root and truth.

I plan to scream at God. He can take it. And then I plan to tell him about my awful year. And then I hope to obtain his help in turning inward to my innermost self, in the desperate hope that I can find it. In that moment of honesty, with God’s help, I will ask my people for forgiveness. I could have done so much more. I will ask my enemies for forgiveness too, for reasons too complex to be listed here. Then I will ask God for forgiveness. And finally, with any luck, I will ask myself for the same.

May we all know the difference between real repentance and wasting ourselves on our egomania, and may we all find solace and release in true forgiveness of each other and ourselves.

Gmar hatima tova.

[Fania Oz-Salzberger 🇮🇱🕊️🟣 פניה עוז-זלצברגר @faniaoz]

My 7/10 memorial lecture at @UCLA tomorrow, 10/10, will be open to you all via zoom. Please register here.
@israelstudies
*Reclaiming the humanist Legacy of Zionism*

[Amit Mandelbaum @Amit_Mandelbaum]

הנה כמה עובדות שכל מי שמתנגד או תומך בעסקה צריך לדעת, או ניתוח (כמה שיותר עובדתי) על המצב עכשיו ומה אפשר לעשות:

שמעתי בבוקר אצל קלמן ליברמן שני ראיונות אחד עם שיקלי והאחר עם מילשטיין (סליחה שאני לא זוכר את השם הפרטי) מומחה צבאי (אולי גם ד״ר בתחום) . אני רושם כאן דברים שאספתי מהריאיון ומעוד דברים שקראתי בימים האחרונים:

1. ציר פילדלפי הוא אכן ״צינור החמצן״ של חמאס אבל רק כשכוללים ביחד עם הציר את מעבר רפיח. רוב מוחלט של הנשק עבר דרכו והוא ימשיך לעשות כך אם לא נשלוט בציר
2. צינור החמצן הכלכלי של חמאס קשור גם לציר פילדפי (הברחות) אבל הרבה מאוד לכסף שהגיע מקטאר (דרך נתניהו) והכסף שהגיע לאונר״א. בפן הכלכלי של חמאס ניתן וצריך לטפל (בחלקו) גם ללא שליטה בציר פילדלפי
3. העסקה מול חמאס אינה רק על ציר פילדלפי, היא קודם כל על הפסקת הלחימה (גם אם באופן זמני) ופינוי של כל כוחות הצבא מהרצועה (כבר בשלב א׳), וכן, עסקה מלאה משמעותה סיום המלחמה וחזרת חמאס לשלטון, מי שחושב אחרת (לדעתי) משלה את עצמו.
4. אין שום תוכנית אופרטיבית כלשהי להחזרת החטופים ללא עסקה. הממשלה החליטה במודע להפקיר את החטופים למותם, גם כאן, מי שחושב אחרת משלה את עצמו. חשוב לומר פה, מבחינה בטחונית גרידא (אני שם רגע בצד את הפן המוסרי והחברתי) מדובר בהחלטה לגיטימית, בתנאי שהיא מלווה בתכנית אסטרטגית להשמדת חמאס. וכאן אנחנו מגיעים לסעיף הבא
5. אין שום תכנית אסטרטגית להשמדת חמאס. התכנית היחידה שיש כרגע על הפרק היא מלחמת התשה כמו זו שיש כבר חצי שנה. המלחמה הזו, לפי מומחים, תימשך במקרה הטוב כמה שנים, במקרה הרע גם כמה עשורים ובסופה לא מובטח שנשמיד את חמאס.
6. משמעות מלחמת ההתשה הזו היא עזיבת צפון המדינה לתקופה של שנים ארוכות.
7. גם אם נשלוט בצורה מלאה בציר פילדלפי וגם אם נשלוט באופן מלא במעבר רפיח, לא ניתן למנוע הברחות נשק, בוודאי לא באופן הרמטי, כפי שמוכיחה ההיסטוריה הקרובה, זה מה שנקרא, תנאי הכרחי אך לא מספיק
8. לא ניתון להשמיד את חמאס ללא השמדת השלטון האזרחי, בניית שלטון חלופי וסגירת אונר״א. במשך 10 חודשים הממשלה לא עשתה דבר בתחום למרות שהיה ברור שצריך לעשות את זה
9. כוחות המילואים הגיעו לסף שחיקה קריטי, כבר היום מדובר על התייצבות של כ-50% לאוגדות המתמרנות, על הגבול של אי-כשירות. לאור התחממות הגזרה ביו״ש, לא ניתן להמשיך עם הסד״כ הנוכחי בעזה (או בכלל) ללא טיפול מיידי בנושא.

אני בכוונה לא מתייחס כרגע לשאר האספקטים בהם הממשלה פוגעת במדינת ישראל (כלכלה, שחיתות, חוסר שיווין בנטל ועוד) אלא רק למה שקורה בצד המלחמתי כרגע. והנה הסיכום (לא שלי, אלא של כל המומחים ששמעתי וקראתי בימים האחרונים):
בפני מדינת ישראל עומדות שלוש אופציות כרגע:
1. המשך עם האסטרטגיה הנוכחית ויציאה למלחמת התשה ארוכה מאוד על כל המשמעויות הנלוות (שאותן רשמתי).
2. הסכם שמשמעותו סיום המלחמה (בהפסד) וחזרת החטופים, תוך הבנה שהממשלה והצבא נכשלו קשות בניהול המערכה ולא ניתן לנצח אותה בשלב זה.
3. יציאה לבחירות בהן (בתקווה) ניתן יהיה לבחור בממשלת ימין אחרת (שגם תחליף את הפיקוד הצבאי הבכיר) שתנהל את אסטרטגיית הלחימה בצורה נכונה שלא גוררת מלחמת התשה ו-ויתור מוחלט על החטופים. אין תסריט שבו עולה ממשלה שפשוט לוקחת את ההסכם של עכשיו ומקבלת אותו כמו שהוא. אין לכך מספיק מנדטים.

כל אדם בישראל עכשיו צריך להחליט באיזה אחת מהבחירות הוא בוחר, אין אופציות אחרות. וחשוב להבין שמי שבוחר באופציה 2 לא עושה את זה כי הוא בעד חמאס אלא כי הוא מבין שלא ניתן לנצח את המערכה הזו (בצורה שבה היא מתנהלת עכשיו, עם הממשלה הנוכחית) ולכן יש להודות בהפסד (החלקי, כי חמאס כן ספג מכה קשה מאוד) ולהציל את החטופים שעוד ניתן להציל. מי שמתנגד לעסק ולא קורא לבחירות למעשה בוחר באופציה 1, שאת ההשלכות שלה כתבתי אבל הסיכום שלהם הוא מלחמה של כמה שנים שסופה בניצחון לא מובטח בשום דרך, עם סבירות גבוהה מאוד שמדינת ישראל תסבול מהגירה משמעותית והתרסקות כלכלית.

[Dov Waxman @DovWaxman]

Netanyahu has reiterated his opposition to withdrawing from the #Philadelphi_Corridor, which makes a hostage/ceasefire deal very unlikely (unless Sinwar capitulates). Here's a thread explaining why this is such a sticking point in the hostage/ceasefire talks & the Israeli debate: