Sherif Mansour (on behalf of the Committee to Protect Some Journalists) in the New York Times

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has chosen some strange, decidedly undemocratic bedfellows and sent a worrying message about its commitment to a free press."   This is such a racist and ignorant argument.  It is the argument which was peddled by Thomas Friedman in his lousy book, From Beirut To Jerusalem: that Israel was a peaceful and democratic state but that the Arab neighbored infested it and polluted it.  As if Israel was not originally and always bad in itself, racist in itself, and repressive in itself. This is a state which jailed poets from early on.  A state which sent women to jail for speeches about Palestine, where colors of the Palestinian flags were banned, where the v-sign was considered illegal.