I hope, however, that we can see exactly how the suppression of critics of Israel works. You say the wrong thing, you lose your position. No second chances. You will be tarred as an anti-Semite and your job will disappear overnight. This is one key reason why Israel continues to get away with horrific crimes. To speak honestly and frankly about the facts risks bringing swift censorship. Human rights violations continue with impunity. And when Israeli snipers target Palestinian children, the Guardian is complicit.
How the Media Cracks Down on Critics of Israel I was fired as a newspaper columnist after I joked about U.S. military aid to Israel on social media. by Nathan J. Robinson Current Affairs, Feb. 10 https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/02/how-the-media-cracks-down-on-critics-of-israel It is widely recognized that critics of Israel, no matter how well-founded the criticism, are routinely punished by both public and private institutions for their speech. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has documented a pattern by which “those who seek to protest, boycott, or otherwise criticize the Israeli government are being silenced,” a trend that “manifests on college campuses, in state contracts, and even in bills to change federal criminal law” and “suppress[es] the speech of people on only one side of the Israel-Palestine debate."... . . . The Guardian is probably the most “progressive” mainstream newspaper in the United States, so we can tell a lot about the limits of speech about Israel from its actions. The paper is not right-wing, and it does publish criticisms of Israel, which it would surely point to as evidence of its commitment to open debate. I am not arguing that the Guardian never gives voice to critics of Israel or U.S. policy towards Israel, but that it wants to carefully screen its writers’ statements on the topic and make sure they only say what the paper’s editors have deemed appropriate. Furthermore, it’s clear that the Guardian doesn’t want anybody to know that it will censor its writers’ social media posts on Israel. Mulholland did not want me to tell anyone what he was telling me... I’ve long been critical of those who paint a picture of the left as a group of totalitarian “cancel culture” warriors trying to stifle free speech. This picture has it exactly backwards. Reactionaries and bigots get huge megaphones, in general. Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) activists, on the other hand, operate under the threat of criminal prosecution... ... If the Guardian’s position is that its opinion columnists can only have a very narrow range of opinions, or have to be carefully monitored for deviance, so be it. (The late anthropologist David Graeber, once a regular writer for the newspaper, refused to have anything to do with it during the last years of his life, saying that the Guardian used the presence of left-wing writers to give cover to its pushing of spurious anti-Semitism charges against Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, and more than one critic has argued that the Guardian cynically wielded anti-Semitism to defend the centrist wing of the Labour Party against the left.) But let the Guardian be honest about what it does and the ideological stances it demands of its writers... . . . I hope, however, that we can see exactly how the suppression of critics of Israel works. You say the wrong thing, you lose your position. No second chances. You will be tarred as an anti-Semite and your job will disappear overnight. This is one key reason why Israel continues to get away with horrific crimes. To speak honestly and frankly about the facts risks bringing swift censorship. Human rights violations continue with impunity. And when Israeli snipers target Palestinian children, the Guardian is complicit. # # # -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#6312): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/6312 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/80580271/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
