Excerpt: "The U.K. government today announced that it is will be illegal for
'local [city] councils, public bodies, and even some university student
unions ... to refuse to buy goods and services from companies involved in
the arms trade, fossil fuels, tobacco products, or Israeli settlements in
the occupied West Bank.' Thus, any entities that support or participate in
the global boycott of Israeli settlements will face 'severe penalties.'"
Protesters call for an end to Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands.
(photo: Andrew Stefan/RSN)
Criminalizing Activism Against Israeli Occupation
By Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman, The Intercept
20 February 16
The U.K. government today announced that it is will be illegal for "local
[city] councils, public bodies, and even some university student unions . to
refuse to buy goods and services from companies involved in the arms trade,
fossil fuels, tobacco products, or Israeli settlements in the occupied West
Bank." Thus, any entities that support or participate in the global boycott
of Israeli settlements will face "severe penalties."
This may sound like an extreme infringement of free speech and political
activism - and, of course, it is - but it is far from unusual in the West.
The opposite is now true. There is a very coordinated and well-financed
campaign led by Israel and its supporters literally to criminalize political
activism against Israeli occupation, based on the particular fear that the
worldwide campaign of Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment, or BDS - modeled
after the 1980s campaign that brought down the Israel-allied apartheid
regime in South Africa - is succeeding.
The Israeli website +972 reported last year about a pending bill that "would
ban entry to foreigners who promote the [BDS] movement that aims to pressure
Israel to comply with international law and respect Palestinian rights." In
2011, a law passed in Israel that "effectively ban[ned] any public call for
a boycott - economic, cultural, or academic - against Israel or its West
Bank settlements, making such action a punishable offense."
But the current censorship goal is to make such activism a crime not only in
Israel, but in Western countries generally. And it is succeeding.
This trend to outlaw activism against the decades-long Israeli occupation -
particularly though not only through boycotts against Israel - has permeated
multiple Western nations and countless institutions within them. In October,
we reported on the criminal convictions in France of 12 activists "for the
'crime' of advocating sanctions and a boycott against Israel as a means of
ending the decadeslong military occupation of Palestine," convictions upheld
by France's highest court. They were literally arrested and prosecuted for
"wearing shirts emblazoned with the words 'Long live Palestine, boycott
Israel'" and because "they also handed out fliers that said that 'buying
Israeli products means legitimizing crimes in Gaza.'"
As we noted, Pascal Markowicz, chief lawyer of the CRIF umbrella
organization of French Jewish communities, published this celebratory decree
(emphasis in original): "BDS is ILLEGAL in France." Statements advocating a
boycott or sanctions, he added, "are completely illegal. If [BDS activists]
say their freedom of expression has been violated, now France's highest
legal instance ruled otherwise." In Canada last year, officials threatened
criminal prosecution against anyone supporting boycotts against Israel.
In the U.S., unbeknownst to many, there are similar legislative
proscriptions on such activism, and a pending bill would strengthen the
outlawing of BDS. As the Washington Post reported last June, "A wave of
anti-BDS legislation is sweeping the U.S." Numerous bills in Congress
encourage or require state action to combat BDS.
Eyal Press warned in a must-read New York Times op-ed last month that under
a Customs Bill passed by both houses of Congress and headed to the White
House, "American officials will be obligated to treat the settlements as
part of Israel in future trade negotiations," a provision specifically
designed "to combat the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, a
grass-roots campaign." But as Press notes, under existing law - which is
almost never discussed - "Washington already forbids American companies to
cooperate with state-led boycotts of Israel."
The real purpose of this new law, as Press explains it, is to force American
companies to treat settlements in the West Bank - which virtually the entire
world views as illegal - as a valid part of Israel, by outlawing any
behavior that would be deemed cooperative with a boycott of companies
occupying the West Bank. U.S. companies would be forced to pretend that
products produced in the occupied territories are actually produced in
"Israel." The White House announced that it will sign the bill despite its
opposition to the AIPAC-backed pro-settlement provision.
Rahul Saksena of Palestine Legal said that "the BDS provision in the federal
customs bill, and the dozens of anti-BDS bills being introduced in Congress
and state legislatures across the U.S., are examples of the lengths that
Israel's fiercest advocates and the lawmakers who bend over backward to
accommodate them will go to shut down any conversation critical of Israeli
policies and supportive of Palestinian freedom." Dylan Williams, vice
president of government affairs for J Street (which opposes BDS), told The
Intercept: "The references in the Customs Act to 'Israeli-controlled
territories' are just one instance of a larger effort to sneak Green
Line-blurring language into legislation at both the state and national
level."
Under the existing laws, American companies have been fined for actions
deemed supportive of boycotts aimed at Israel. For decades, U.S. companies
and their foreign subsidiaries, for instance, have been required by law to
refuse to comply with the Arab League boycott of Israel. Penalties for
violators include up to 10 years of imprisonment.
In 2010, G M Daewoo Auto & Technology Company, a Korean firm owned by
General Motors, was fined $88,500 by the Office of Antiboycott Compliance
for 59 anti-boycott violations, including the "crime" of declaring on a
customs form: "We hereby state that the carrying vessel . is allowed to
enter the Libya ports [sic]." At the time, Libyan law did not allow Israeli
goods or ships that had previously stopped in Israel to enter Libyan ports,
and the company's seemingly banal declaration that it was complying with
Libyan law was deemed by the U.S. government to constitute support for a
boycott of Israel, and it was thus fined.
The suppression of anti-occupation activism is particularly acute on
American college campuses. Among other things, that is deeply ironic. In the
U.S. over the past year, there has been a widespread media debate over
censorship on college campuses. Notably, the pundits who have most vocally
condemned this censorship and held themselves out as free speech crusaders -
such as New York's Jonathan Chait - have completely ignored what is far and
away the most widespread form of campus censorship: namely, punishment of
those who engage in activism against Israeli actions.
This campus censorship on behalf of Israel was comprehensively documented in
a report last year by Palestine Legal titled "The Palestine Exception to
Free Speech." The nationwide censorship effort has seen pro-Palestinian
professors fired, anti-occupation student activists suspended and threatened
with expulsion, pro-Palestinian groups de-funded, and even discipline for
students for the "crime" of flying a Palestinian flag. The report documents
how pro-Israel campus groups and alumni "have intensified their efforts to
stifle criticism of Israeli government policies." The report explains:
"Rather than engage such criticism on its merits, these groups leverage
their significant resources and lobbying power to pressure universities,
government actors, and other institutions to censor or punish advocacy in
support of Palestinian rights."
Notably, the students and administrators justifying the campus censorship of
anti-Israel views invoke the very same "PC" rhetoric of "safe spaces" and
"hate speech" denounced by ostensibly free-speech pundits. The University of
Illinois student who led the campaign to fire Steven Salaita for his
pro-Gaza tweets, himself a former AIPAC intern, told the New York Times:
"Hate speech is never acceptable for those applying for a tenured position;
incitement to violence is never acceptable. . There must be a relationship
between free speech and civility." Another "pro-Israel" student demanding
Salaita's firing said, "It's about feeling safe on campus."
This was a classic and extreme case of oppressive censorship on campus - the
University of Illinois ended up paying Salaita close to $1 million to settle
the resulting lawsuit - yet very few of the pundits who turned "college
censorship" into a nationwide cause uttered a peep about this case or the
countless other instances of suppression of anti-Israel criticism.
It is now routine for students advocating BDS or otherwise working against
Israeli occupation to be disciplined or endure other forms of sanctions. As
the Palestine Legal report documents:
These heavy-handed tactics often have their desired effect, driving
institutions to enact a variety of punitive measures against human rights
activists, such as administrative sanctions, censorship, intrusive
investigations, viewpoint-based restriction of advocacy, and even criminal
prosecutions. Such efforts intimidate activists for Palestinian human
rights, chill criticism of Israeli government practices, and impede a
fair-minded dialogue on the pressing question of Palestinian rights.
This report, the first of its kind, documents the suppression of Palestine
advocacy in the United States. In 2014, Palestine Legal - a nonprofit legal
and advocacy organization supporting Palestine activism - responded to 152
incidents of censorship, punishment, or other burdening of advocacy for
Palestinian rights and received 68 additional requests for legal assistance
in anticipation of such actions. In the first six months of 2015 alone,
Palestine Legal responded to 140 incidents and 33 requests for assistance in
anticipation of potential suppression. These numbers understate the
phenomenon, as many advocates who are unaware of their rights or afraid of
attracting further scrutiny stay silent and do not report incidents of
suppression. The overwhelming majority of these incidents - 89 percent in
2014 and 80 percent in the first half of 2015 - targeted students and
scholars, a reaction to the increasingly central role universities play in
the movement for Palestinian rights.
As we reported in September, the University of California - the largest
academic system in the country - has been debating proposals to literally
outlaw BDS activism by formally equating it with "anti-semitism": as though
opposition to Israeli government oppression (opposition shared by many Jews)
is somehow the equivalent of, or is inherently driven by, animosity toward
Jews. If anything, what is actually "anti-Semitic" is to conflate the
Israeli government with Jews generally (an ugly anti-semitic trope with a
long history). Yet that is the Orwellian tactic being used to justify the
criminalization of anti-occupation activism, as it converts that activism
into "anti-semitism" or "hate speech" and then bans it on that basis.
This attempt to formalize suppression of anti-occupation advocacy on college
campuses is long-standing and widespread. The New York state legislature
actually passed "a bill that would suspend funding to educational
institutions which fund groups that boycott Israel." Such legislation is
becoming commonplace, as the group United With Israel boasted just last
month:
Florida became the fifth state in the U.S. to introduce a resolution to
confront the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement when
it passed a law on December 21, similar to the first anti-BDS legislation
introduced in Tennessee last April.
By doing so, Florida has joined Tennessee, New York, Indiana, and
Pennsylvania. Another 35 states are reportedly considering similar
legislation.
The commendably consistent pro-campus-speech group FIRE, while expressing
some criticisms of the BDS movement, has repeatedly documented and denounced
attempts to suppress BDS advocacy on campus:
FIRE's position on the Israel-focused BDS movement is driven by our concern
for academic freedom - for students and professors, and for its continuing
importance as a meaningful concept in and of itself. Students and professors
must be perfectly free to support boycott, divestment, and/or sanctions
against Israel or any other country they wish, and they must not face
punishment for this support. As you might expect, FIRE has opposed attempts
to punish organizations for supporting BDS, and we have certainly defended
professors' rights to be highly critical of Israel - or, frankly, any other
country, person, or idea.
Yet this censorship effort to ban BDS and other forms of Israel criticism
continues to grow, in multiple countries around the world. It's not hard to
understand why. The Israeli government and its most powerful supporters have
invested vast sums of money and considerable political capital into the
campaign to institutionalize this censorship.
Last year, GOP billionaire Sheldon Adelson and Democratic billionaire Haim
Saban donated tens of millions of dollars to a new fund to combat BDS on
college campuses. Also last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
"decided to implement a 2014 resolution to establish a special task force to
fight the anti-Israeli sanctions"; that task force has funding of "some 100
million Israeli shekels (roughly $25.5 million)." BuzzFeed's Rosie Gray
reported in 2014 that anti-BDS legislation has become a major goal of AIPAC.
As part of the controversy at the University of California, Richard Blum,
the mega-rich investment banker and husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein,
threatened the university that his wife would take adverse action against
the university if it did not adopt the harsh anti-BDS measures he was
demanding.
None of this is to say, obviously, that suppression of anti-occupation
activism is the only strain of free speech threats in the West. The
prosecution of Western Muslims for core free speech expression under
"terrorism" laws, the distortion of "hate speech" legislation as a means of
punishing unpopular ideas, threats and violence against those who publish
cartoons deemed "blasphemous," and pressure on social media companies to ban
ideas disliked by governments are all serious menaces to this core liberty.
But in terms of systematic, state-sponsored, formalized punishments for
speech and activism, nothing compares to the growing multi-nation effort to
criminalize activism against Israeli occupation. Rafeef Ziadah, a
Palestinian a member of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, told The
Intercept: "Israel is increasingly unable to defend its regime of apartheid
and settler colonialism over the Palestinian people and its regular
massacres of Palestinians in Gaza so is resorting to asking supportive
governments in the U.S. and Europe to undermine free speech as a way of
shielding it from criticism and measures aimed at holding it to account."
It is, needless to say, perfectly legitimate to argue against BDS and to
engage in activism to defeat it. But only advocates of tyranny could support
the literal outlawing of the same type of activism that ended apartheid in
South Africa merely on the grounds that this time it is aimed at Israeli
occupation (some of Israel's own leaders have compared its occupation to
apartheid). And whatever else is true, commentators and activists who prance
around as defenders of campus free speech and free expression generally -
yet who completely ignore this most pernicious trend of free speech erosion
- are likely many things, but an authentic believer in free speech is not
among them.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Protesters call for an end to Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands.
(photo: Andrew Stefan/RSN)
https://theintercept.com/2016/02/16/greatest-threat-to-free-speech-in-the-we
st-criminalizing-activism-against-israeli-occupation/https://theintercept.co
m/2016/02/16/greatest-threat-to-free-speech-in-the-west-criminalizing-activi
sm-against-israeli-occupation/
Criminalizing Activism Against Israeli Occupation
By Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman, The Intercept
20 February 16
he U.K. government today announced that it is will be illegal for "local
[city] councils, public bodies, and even some university student unions . to
refuse to buy goods and services from companies involved in the arms trade,
fossil fuels, tobacco products, or Israeli settlements in the occupied West
Bank." Thus, any entities that support or participate in the global boycott
of Israeli settlements will face "severe penalties."
This may sound like an extreme infringement of free speech and political
activism - and, of course, it is - but it is far from unusual in the West.
The opposite is now true. There is a very coordinated and well-financed
campaign led by Israel and its supporters literally to criminalize political
activism against Israeli occupation, based on the particular fear that the
worldwide campaign of Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment, or BDS - modeled
after the 1980s campaign that brought down the Israel-allied apartheid
regime in South Africa - is succeeding.
The Israeli website +972 reported last year about a pending bill that "would
ban entry to foreigners who promote the [BDS] movement that aims to pressure
Israel to comply with international law and respect Palestinian rights." In
2011, a law passed in Israel that "effectively ban[ned] any public call for
a boycott - economic, cultural, or academic - against Israel or its West
Bank settlements, making such action a punishable offense."
But the current censorship goal is to make such activism a crime not only in
Israel, but in Western countries generally. And it is succeeding.
This trend to outlaw activism against the decades-long Israeli occupation -
particularly though not only through boycotts against Israel - has permeated
multiple Western nations and countless institutions within them. In October,
we reported on the criminal convictions in France of 12 activists "for the
'crime' of advocating sanctions and a boycott against Israel as a means of
ending the decadeslong military occupation of Palestine," convictions upheld
by France's highest court. They were literally arrested and prosecuted for
"wearing shirts emblazoned with the words 'Long live Palestine, boycott
Israel'" and because "they also handed out fliers that said that 'buying
Israeli products means legitimizing crimes in Gaza.'"
As we noted, Pascal Markowicz, chief lawyer of the CRIF umbrella
organization of French Jewish communities, published this celebratory decree
(emphasis in original): "BDS is ILLEGAL in France." Statements advocating a
boycott or sanctions, he added, "are completely illegal. If [BDS activists]
say their freedom of expression has been violated, now France's highest
legal instance ruled otherwise." In Canada last year, officials threatened
criminal prosecution against anyone supporting boycotts against Israel.
In the U.S., unbeknownst to many, there are similar legislative
proscriptions on such activism, and a pending bill would strengthen the
outlawing of BDS. As the Washington Post reported last June, "A wave of
anti-BDS legislation is sweeping the U.S." Numerous bills in Congress
encourage or require state action to combat BDS.
Eyal Press warned in a must-read New York Times op-ed last month that under
a Customs Bill passed by both houses of Congress and headed to the White
House, "American officials will be obligated to treat the settlements as
part of Israel in future trade negotiations," a provision specifically
designed "to combat the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, a
grass-roots campaign." But as Press notes, under existing law - which is
almost never discussed - "Washington already forbids American companies to
cooperate with state-led boycotts of Israel."
The real purpose of this new law, as Press explains it, is to force American
companies to treat settlements in the West Bank - which virtually the entire
world views as illegal - as a valid part of Israel, by outlawing any
behavior that would be deemed cooperative with a boycott of companies
occupying the West Bank. U.S. companies would be forced to pretend that
products produced in the occupied territories are actually produced in
"Israel." The White House announced that it will sign the bill despite its
opposition to the AIPAC-backed pro-settlement provision.
Rahul Saksena of Palestine Legal said that "the BDS provision in the federal
customs bill, and the dozens of anti-BDS bills being introduced in Congress
and state legislatures across the U.S., are examples of the lengths that
Israel's fiercest advocates and the lawmakers who bend over backward to
accommodate them will go to shut down any conversation critical of Israeli
policies and supportive of Palestinian freedom." Dylan Williams, vice
president of government affairs for J Street (which opposes BDS), told The
Intercept: "The references in the Customs Act to 'Israeli-controlled
territories' are just one instance of a larger effort to sneak Green
Line-blurring language into legislation at both the state and national
level."
Under the existing laws, American companies have been fined for actions
deemed supportive of boycotts aimed at Israel. For decades, U.S. companies
and their foreign subsidiaries, for instance, have been required by law to
refuse to comply with the Arab League boycott of Israel. Penalties for
violators include up to 10 years of imprisonment.
In 2010, G M Daewoo Auto & Technology Company, a Korean firm owned by
General Motors, was fined $88,500 by the Office of Antiboycott Compliance
for 59 anti-boycott violations, including the "crime" of declaring on a
customs form: "We hereby state that the carrying vessel . is allowed to
enter the Libya ports [sic]." At the time, Libyan law did not allow Israeli
goods or ships that had previously stopped in Israel to enter Libyan ports,
and the company's seemingly banal declaration that it was complying with
Libyan law was deemed by the U.S. government to constitute support for a
boycott of Israel, and it was thus fined.
The suppression of anti-occupation activism is particularly acute on
American college campuses. Among other things, that is deeply ironic. In the
U.S. over the past year, there has been a widespread media debate over
censorship on college campuses. Notably, the pundits who have most vocally
condemned this censorship and held themselves out as free speech crusaders -
such as New York's Jonathan Chait - have completely ignored what is far and
away the most widespread form of campus censorship: namely, punishment of
those who engage in activism against Israeli actions.
This campus censorship on behalf of Israel was comprehensively documented in
a report last year by Palestine Legal titled "The Palestine Exception to
Free Speech." The nationwide censorship effort has seen pro-Palestinian
professors fired, anti-occupation student activists suspended and threatened
with expulsion, pro-Palestinian groups de-funded, and even discipline for
students for the "crime" of flying a Palestinian flag. The report documents
how pro-Israel campus groups and alumni "have intensified their efforts to
stifle criticism of Israeli government policies." The report explains:
"Rather than engage such criticism on its merits, these groups leverage
their significant resources and lobbying power to pressure universities,
government actors, and other institutions to censor or punish advocacy in
support of Palestinian rights."
Notably, the students and administrators justifying the campus censorship of
anti-Israel views invoke the very same "PC" rhetoric of "safe spaces" and
"hate speech" denounced by ostensibly free-speech pundits. The University of
Illinois student who led the campaign to fire Steven Salaita for his
pro-Gaza tweets, himself a former AIPAC intern, told the New York Times:
"Hate speech is never acceptable for those applying for a tenured position;
incitement to violence is never acceptable. . There must be a relationship
between free speech and civility." Another "pro-Israel" student demanding
Salaita's firing said, "It's about feeling safe on campus."
This was a classic and extreme case of oppressive censorship on campus - the
University of Illinois ended up paying Salaita close to $1 million to settle
the resulting lawsuit - yet very few of the pundits who turned "college
censorship" into a nationwide cause uttered a peep about this case or the
countless other instances of suppression of anti-Israel criticism.
It is now routine for students advocating BDS or otherwise working against
Israeli occupation to be disciplined or endure other forms of sanctions. As
the Palestine Legal report documents:
These heavy-handed tactics often have their desired effect, driving
institutions to enact a variety of punitive measures against human rights
activists, such as administrative sanctions, censorship, intrusive
investigations, viewpoint-based restriction of advocacy, and even criminal
prosecutions. Such efforts intimidate activists for Palestinian human
rights, chill criticism of Israeli government practices, and impede a
fair-minded dialogue on the pressing question of Palestinian rights.
This report, the first of its kind, documents the suppression of Palestine
advocacy in the United States. In 2014, Palestine Legal - a nonprofit legal
and advocacy organization supporting Palestine activism - responded to 152
incidents of censorship, punishment, or other burdening of advocacy for
Palestinian rights and received 68 additional requests for legal assistance
in anticipation of such actions. In the first six months of 2015 alone,
Palestine Legal responded to 140 incidents and 33 requests for assistance in
anticipation of potential suppression. These numbers understate the
phenomenon, as many advocates who are unaware of their rights or afraid of
attracting further scrutiny stay silent and do not report incidents of
suppression. The overwhelming majority of these incidents - 89 percent in
2014 and 80 percent in the first half of 2015 - targeted students and
scholars, a reaction to the increasingly central role universities play in
the movement for Palestinian rights.
As we reported in September, the University of California - the largest
academic system in the country - has been debating proposals to literally
outlaw BDS activism by formally equating it with "anti-semitism": as though
opposition to Israeli government oppression (opposition shared by many Jews)
is somehow the equivalent of, or is inherently driven by, animosity toward
Jews. If anything, what is actually "anti-Semitic" is to conflate the
Israeli government with Jews generally (an ugly anti-semitic trope with a
long history). Yet that is the Orwellian tactic being used to justify the
criminalization of anti-occupation activism, as it converts that activism
into "anti-semitism" or "hate speech" and then bans it on that basis.
This attempt to formalize suppression of anti-occupation advocacy on college
campuses is long-standing and widespread. The New York state legislature
actually passed "a bill that would suspend funding to educational
institutions which fund groups that boycott Israel." Such legislation is
becoming commonplace, as the group United With Israel boasted just last
month:
Florida became the fifth state in the U.S. to introduce a resolution to
confront the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement when
it passed a law on December 21, similar to the first anti-BDS legislation
introduced in Tennessee last April.
By doing so, Florida has joined Tennessee, New York, Indiana, and
Pennsylvania. Another 35 states are reportedly considering similar
legislation.
The commendably consistent pro-campus-speech group FIRE, while expressing
some criticisms of the BDS movement, has repeatedly documented and denounced
attempts to suppress BDS advocacy on campus:
FIRE's position on the Israel-focused BDS movement is driven by our concern
for academic freedom - for students and professors, and for its continuing
importance as a meaningful concept in and of itself. Students and professors
must be perfectly free to support boycott, divestment, and/or sanctions
against Israel or any other country they wish, and they must not face
punishment for this support. As you might expect, FIRE has opposed attempts
to punish organizations for supporting BDS, and we have certainly defended
professors' rights to be highly critical of Israel - or, frankly, any other
country, person, or idea.
Yet this censorship effort to ban BDS and other forms of Israel criticism
continues to grow, in multiple countries around the world. It's not hard to
understand why. The Israeli government and its most powerful supporters have
invested vast sums of money and considerable political capital into the
campaign to institutionalize this censorship.
Last year, GOP billionaire Sheldon Adelson and Democratic billionaire Haim
Saban donated tens of millions of dollars to a new fund to combat BDS on
college campuses. Also last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Error!
Hyperlink reference not valid. "decided to implement a 2014 resolution to
establish a special task force to fight the anti-Israeli sanctions"; that
task force has funding of "some 100 million Israeli shekels (roughly $25.5
million)." BuzzFeed's Rosie Gray reported in 2014 that anti-BDS legislation
has become a major goal of AIPAC. As part of the controversy at the
University of California, Richard Blum, the mega-rich investment banker and
husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, threatened the university that his wife
would take adverse action against the university if it did not adopt the
harsh anti-BDS measures he was demanding.
None of this is to say, obviously, that suppression of anti-occupation
activism is the only strain of free speech threats in the West. The
prosecution of Western Muslims for core free speech expression under
"terrorism" laws, the distortion of "hate speech" legislation as a means of
punishing unpopular ideas, threats and violence against those who publish
cartoons deemed "blasphemous," and pressure on social media companies to ban
ideas disliked by governments are all serious menaces to this core liberty.
But in terms of systematic, state-sponsored, formalized punishments for
speech and activism, nothing compares to the growing multi-nation effort to
criminalize activism against Israeli occupation. Rafeef Ziadah, a
Palestinian a member of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, told The
Intercept: "Israel is increasingly unable to defend its regime of apartheid
and settler colonialism over the Palestinian people and its regular
massacres of Palestinians in Gaza so is resorting to asking supportive
governments in the U.S. and Europe to undermine free speech as a way of
shielding it from criticism and measures aimed at holding it to account."
It is, needless to say, perfectly legitimate to argue against BDS and to
engage in activism to defeat it. But only advocates of tyranny could support
the literal outlawing of the same type of activism that ended apartheid in
South Africa merely on the grounds that this time it is aimed at Israeli
occupation (some of Israel's own leaders have compared its occupation to
apartheid). And whatever else is true, commentators and activists who prance
around as defenders of campus free speech and free expression generally -
yet who completely ignore this most pernicious trend of free speech erosion
- are likely many things, but an authentic believer in free speech is not
among them.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
