Israel/Palestine

surveillance anywhere in the world. Bringing up the Panopticon in the context of modern surveillance is laughable: the technology not only allows random surveillance of anyone unbeknownst to its subject, it continuously records it. I, as a free citizen of the US, am not only monitored 24/7, but should I commit an infraction (say, run the rd light), I immediately get fined, notified by mail, punished for non-compliance and, should I resist any further, deprived of my driving privileges. And I am not even a resident of an occupied territory where violence is commonplace. How am I not more of a victim that the surveilled Palestinians? How is my voice not less monitored, my freedom of expression not less restricted, and my autonomy not less discouraged? The author is making a clumsy attempt of presenting the nature of surveillance itself as a method of oppression of a relatively small segment of population. His apparent misunderstanding of the nature of surveillance makes for an awkward attempt to fit it to his narrative.

Like I said, the Palestinians have far bigger problems with the Israeli occupation. The article is a distraction from these issues.

Just as it is a distraction to label discrimination of one Semitic group by another Semitic group (which has a long history of manifesting itself in multiple Semitic states and societies) with ridiculous and misleading by design titles like "apartheid" and "ethnic cleansing".