Do not confuse Koogle with Google or God's gift with scrambled eggs.

Five years ago I visited Israel as a tourist and, walking through the streets of Jerusalem, wandered into an Internet cafe to send photos to my parents by e-mail and was very surprised to see young ultra-religious Jews browsing porn sites at the neighboring computers. It was only later, after moving to Israel for permanent residence and having plunged into a bit of fuss, did not witness how representatives of the ultra-religious community smashed Internet café windows, burned trash cans and blocked roads, protesting the development of the Internet, and with it the dangers that lay in wait for the religious society.

It was a strange coincidence, to visit that Internet cafe, which was later subjected to pogroms. Paradoxically, the owner of an Internet café, who suffered enormous losses, remained at the extreme.
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I do not remember whether this event prompted the development of a whole network of “kosher” Hebrew-speaking Internet resources, but that this caused a public debate is for sure. The Shas religious party even attempted to pass a bill in the Knesset to introduce Internet censorship and initially received great support, even from secular parties. National surveys also showed high support for this initiative among the population.

In fact, in Israel, ultra-Orthodox in recent years have been struggling with a dilemma about how to limit the use of computers and the Internet, which carry a lot of temptations. The most radical groups of believers do not keep computers at home, while the liberal ones agree to use the Internet at work, and at home, at most, e-mail.

And, since the ultra-orthodox community is numerous and has good financial support from Europe and the USA, then there were investors who began to create a computer network specifically for the “Haredi”. This is how the “kosher” Internet resources, news sites like “Kikar a-Shabat” and “Katsar”, as well as their own “kosher” search engine Koogle appeared .

Moreover, the term “kosher” here means not only filtering erotic and pornographic content, but also a ban on viewing and reading news, chatting on forums, advertising, and blocking the use of resources on Saturday, during the posts and Jewish holidays, such as Doomsday ...

In other words, entering the Internet, the user will be able to get only to those sites that are approved by the rabbinate (the main religious judicial body in Israel), who is trying to extend his power not only to content censorship, but also to approval (“caching”, ironically consonant with the "caching") of computers through which you can use the Internet, as well as mobile phones, because all these innovations, according to the rabbinate: "may pose a threat to conservative ultra-orthodox values ​​and special for life, especially among young people. "



It became interesting to me and I went to Koogle’s kosher search engine and tried to find something “not kosher”, and received a search result that translates like this: " Most likely, the type of business you are looking for is located in a search engine, but you made a mistake Correct the error and try again . " Well, first, I was not mistaken, at least spelling. Secondly, I was embarrassed why the “type of business” was written. After an additional small acquaintance, it became clear that a “kosher” search engine is just a directory of “kosher” resources and a search among them.

Although it was stated by the administrator of the search engine Yossi Altman: “Koogle filters inappropriate content, omitting when issuing the results links to web resources that are questionable from a religious point of view. These include not only erotica and pornography, but also most of the usual photographs of women, since they are most often considered immodest "- in fact, there is no sophisticated filter for dropouts, and the usual search in the catalog is among those that have already received approval.

Clean up the Internet - the initiative is not new and it is clear that with the advent of Web 3, the era of personalized Internet will begin and this initiative will be embodied. However, such initiatives in Israel always alarm me, because there is a deep social conflict between secular and religious, expressed in the distorted protection of the rights of secular communities. Therefore, religious attempts to introduce censorship on the Internet will be regarded as part of society as attempts to conquer for themselves another financial niche "to issue permits."

And after all, the most important thing is that in Israel it is possible to introduce censorship. How is it possible to prohibit IP telephony on the grounds that local telecom operators suffer losses (there was a temporary ban 5 years ago, then they canceled it). How is it possible to ban the importation of iPads or seriously discuss the issue in the government, so ban Skype or not?

In the meantime, it is encouraging that innovation is so rapidly conquering the market that no accelerated decision at the legislative level can stop this avalanche. It remains only to occasionally experience peculiar “bans” to the fact that it is progressive, convenient, meets the requirements of users and at the same time does not impair their rights and freedom of choice.

And it remains only to hope that in Israel this business will not go as far as it happened in China or Iran.

PS
He laughed when he came up with the title of the article. At first I remembered the saying about the gift of God and scrambled eggs, and then I remembered that Google had two yellow circles resembling a fried egg, the search for such a logo through Google was not successful, so I had to draw it myself. Therefore, whoever finds it, respect me.