On the afternoon of Friday, June 15, the New Israel Fund sent out a worried alert to the media.

The email’s first line spoke in no uncertain terms: “Tyrants Restrict the Rights of People to Record What Happens Around Them; Democracies Don’t.”

Later that Sunday, the cabinet’s Ministerial Committee for Legislation did indeed vote to advance the bill on to the Knesset.

Yisrael Beytenu chief Avigdor Liberman, the defense minister, didn’t hesitate for a moment. He tweeted triumphantly, “I want to praise the Ministerial Committee for Legislation for approving Yisrael Beytenu’s bill to outlaw filming of the security forces for the purpose of slandering them. IDF soldiers face a homegrown assault from those who hate Israel and support terror, and who seek ways to humiliate and hurt them. We’re putting an end to it!”

It all seems clear: Israel’s cabinet approved a bill that was “guaranteed a majority in Knesset votes,” as the NIF had it, that will throw human rights activists into prison for a decade if they dare to film IDF soldiers committing abuses in the West Bank. B’Tselem and the New Israel Fund said so, Liberman and Ilatov confirmed it, the Knesset even voted in favor. Any right-thinking believer in democracy should be incensed and horrified.

There’s only one problem: None of it is true.

The bill was fake from the start, the cabinet committee that “approved” the bill actually killed it, the preliminary vote was an agreed-upon fiction, Liberman’s gloating was a lie and the left-wing activists’ pearl-clutching was a demonstration of either a similar dishonesty or, worse, ignorance.

Read the full article at Times of Israel.