The case of Ilan Pappe: free speech now, free speech forever.

 

In the midst of #metoo and black lives matter, Harper’s Magazine felt compelled to defend “free speech”. In a well known manifesto, Harper’s signatories enthusiastically agreed to the following:

 “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters.”

It turns out that what was meant by caustic counter-speech was black face and calling women cunts. What was not meant was, well, defending Gaza’s right to self-defense, or putting in question in any way Israel’s campaign of mass murder that has so far killed, according to U.N. estimates, 7,000 plus children (the UN recently revised its estimates because at least ten thousand casualties are too blown away to categorize. And this does not include the estimated 10,000 buried in the rubble).

So, here we are, with the banning of the conference on Palestine in Berlin, the yanking away of Nancy Fraser’s appointment at a German university because she – a Jew – turns out not to be the right kind of Jew, even signing a petition against Israel’s war in Gaza (by some awkward coincidence, it is estimated that 30 percent of the academics and intellectuals who have been banned or have had their speech interdicted in Germany are Jews. Hmm). And then there is the United States, where snipers are set up at Indiana University to deal with the “dangerous” pro-Palestinian protesters, where pro-Israeli hooligans are allowed unimpeded access to attack pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA, and so on and so forth.

The latest un-upholding of “the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech” was the detaining of Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian critical of Israel’s policy towards Palestinians, by the FBI at the Detroit airport.

This is his account.

"Did you know that 70 years old professors of history are threatening America' national security?

I arrived on Monday at Detroit airport and was taken for a two hours investigation by the FBI, and my phone was taken as well.

The two men team were not abusive or rude, I should say, but their questions were really out of the world!

am I a Hamas supporter? do I regard the Israeli actions in Gaza a genocide? what is the solution to the "conflict" (seriously this what they asked!)

who are my Arab and Muslim friends in America...how long do I know them, what kind of relationship I have with them.

Is some cases I sent them to my books, and is some cases I answered laconically yes or no...(I was quite exhausted after an 8 hours flight, but this is part of the idea).

They had long phone conversation with someone, the Israelis?,

and after copying everything on my phone allowed me to enter.

I know many of you have fared far worse experience, but after France and Germany denied entry to the Rector of Glasgow university for being a Palestinian...God know what will happen next.

The good news is - actions like this by the USA or European countries taken under pressure from the pro-Israeli lobby or Israel itself smell of sheer panic and desperation in reaction to Israel's becoming very soon a pariah state with all the implications of such a status."

We have yet to hear from the defenders of blackface about Pappe’s detention. Most likely, they are for it. Because he’s "anti-semitic" – although an Israeli Jew. Because Netanyahu and the cops determine, now, who is a Jew and who is an un-Jew.

Creating a false equivalence (Israeli equals Jew) is doing beaucoup service, especially for the right and right-center, which now can enjoy its long history of anti-semitism while claiming, righteously, to support "Jews" - meaning Israelis. It is rather like claiming that Canada and the U.S. are anglo-saxon countries. Which claim, by some coincidence, has been exactly what the right has been pushing for forever.

 Ethnonationalism, no matter where it starts, always ends up doing one thing: killing "minorities". And this, under a supposed liberal Democratic president.

 Another wasted decade. How many can we waste?