An award ceremony for the Palestine-born novelist and essayist Adania Shibli is cancelled by the Frankfurt book fair because of “the war started by Hamas”. A cultural centre in Berlin has its funding cut and will be shut down after hosting an event from the organisation Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East. France bans all pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
Michael Eisen is sacked as editor of the biomedical journal eLife for retweeting a post from the satirical website the Onion headlined “Dying Gazans criticised for not using last words to condemn Hamas”. David Velasco, editor of Artforum, a leading art magazine, is fired for signing an open letter calling for “Palestinian liberation and… an end to the killing and harming of all civilians [and] an immediate ceasefire”. Columbia University suspends two student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. Hilton Hotels cancels a conference in Houston by the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights after pressure from the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce.
In Britain, the science minister, Michelle Donelan, singles out two academics for censure for their views on Israel and the Gaza conflict. Liverpool’s Hope University cancels a lecture critical of Israeli policy by the British-Israeli historian Avi Shlaim. Social media platforms remove content from, or suspend accounts of, Palestinian activists, journalists and news sites. Instagram adds “Palestinian terrorists are fighting for their freedom” to the bios of Palestinian users. (It later apologises, claiming a bug in auto-translation.)
Just a sample of cases over the past two months in which individuals and organisations, including many who are Jewish, have found themselves cancelled, banned or sacked for expressing solidarity with Palestinians. There has been much debate in recent years about “cancel culture”. Even so, the current pushback against speech deemed unacceptably supportive of Palestinians is startling in its intensity. Yet many of those who have made the greatest noise about cancel culture have been relatively quiet in recent weeks, while many on the left who previously welcomed censorship of ideas that they despised have become vocal about the curtailment of free speech.
Perhaps nowhere have attempts to restrict expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people been as fierce as in Germany. “In Berlin,” the Jewish American philosopher Susan Neiman has written, “the word ‘apartheid’ can get you cancelled faster than the N-word will get you canceled in New York.”
In 2019, Neiman, the director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, published Learning from the Germans, which contrasted the approaches of Germany and the US to dealing with the darker aspects of their pasts, and lauded the former for the way it had come to terms with the disfiguring history of Nazism and the Holocaust. Germany, she believed, provided “a model for other countries trying to face their own failures and working to construct more honest versions of their histories”.
Four years on, Neiman has changed her mind. Germany, she argues, has adopted a too “formulaic approach to historical reckoning”, viewing Jews “as if they spoke in a monolithic voice forever fixed on their own oppression”. She concludes: “I now suspect the most we can learn from [Germany] is a warning.”
It is a contested argument. Joerg Lau, an international correspondent for Die Zeit, has challenged the idea that Germany’s relationship to Israel, and its censorship of Palestinian voices, is linked to its attempt to atone for the Holocaust, describing this as “a dangerous conspiracy theory”.
Nonetheless, the degree to which German authorities have attempted to suppress Palestinian voices is remarkable. It has led to many Jews, and not just Neiman, to protest. Another German American writer, Deborah Feldman, has observed that only Jews uncritical of Israel are viewed as real Jews. As someone who has long argued similarly about perceptions of Muslim communities – that liberal, secular Muslims critical of Islam are often dismissed as “inauthentic” – it is a perspective I understand. Neiman and Feldman are both signatories to an open letter from German Jewish writers, artists and academics condemning “a disturbing crackdown on civic life in the wake of this month’s horrifying violence in Israel and Palestine”.
The reasons behind the suppression of pro-Palestinian voices in America are different, but here, too, many have been taken aback. “The scale has surprised me and the intensity of it,” observes Genevieve Lakier, a professor of law at the University of Chicago, and a leading expert on freedom of speech and American constitutional law. She adds that “It feels like a new McCarthyism… a repression of speech that we haven’t seen for a while.” People are being sacked and cancelled not for “promoting violence” but “calling for a ceasefire” and being “critical of Israel”. The meaning of “hate speech”, Lakier argues, has become expanded “to include speech that in my view is totally legitimate, often pro-peace speech”. It is an attempt to redraw the moral lines around what is judged acceptable to invalidate Palestinian perspectives.
Against this background, Britain has, perhaps surprisingly, been relatively liberal. Recent legislation, such as the Public Order Act and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, has greatly expanded the ability of the authorities to criminalise protest. Nevertheless, the police have dealt with demonstrations over the Gaza conflict with a relatively light touch, even when put under great political pressure.
Sections of the left have revealed a warped judgment since the 7 October attacks, some celebrating Hamas savagery as “resistance”, questioning the veracity of rape allegations, crossing the line between supporting Palestinian rights and stoking anti-Jewish hatred. It is essential to contest such arguments, to challenge antisemitism and to oppose Hamas, who constitute a menace not just to Jews but to Palestinians, too.
One can, though, neither challenge antisemitism nor counter Hamas by deeming illegitimate expressions of solidarity for the Palestinian people, or by curtailing debate over what constitutes a just future for both Israelis and Palestinians. Such censorship ironically echoes the arguments of many on the left in recent years, who have sought to delegitimise certain viewpoints by expanding the boundaries of hate speech and reframing political debate in moral terms. Both are misguided.
Just as the barbarism of the Hamas attack does not justify the brutality of Israel’s assault on Gaza, neither does the senselessness of sections of the left provide reason to shut down the political advocacy of Palestinian rights. Censorship cannot be the foundation of justice.
• Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist
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