Philosophers consider slippery slope arguments to be logical fallacies. But those philosophers haven’t met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government.

It took Israel about three weeks after banning Al Jazeera — due to purported national security risks stemming from its Qatari funding — to use the same law as a pretext to censor the Associated Press, one of the world’s largest news agencies.

Fortunately, Israel quickly reversed course after pressure from the U.S. and press organizations. But the ordeal should serve as a cautionary tale for President Joe Biden and U.S. lawmakers and prosecutors. They keep empowering future administrations to harass the media –- apparently trusting them, against all historical evidence, to use restraint. Speaking of bad logic.

And if (more like when) the U.S. government does abuse its new powers against the press, the superpower is not likely to back off in response to international pushback like Israel did. Otherwise Julian Assange would be a free man.

Israel’s justification for the raid was that the AP broke the law by providing images to Al Jazeera, which is among numerous clients worldwide that receive video feeds from the AP. There was no allegation that any image endangered national security, but officials nonetheless seized the AP’s equipment, killing its live feed and temporarily stripping millions of people of a view inside Gaza.

Perhaps Israeli authorities saw transparency itself as a national security threat. The U.S. should be able to relate — officials who once sought to censor the Pentagon Papers on security grounds now acknowledge the government’s real concern was embarrassment.

Israel has shut the international press out of Gaza (in addition to killing at........

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