Anti-Israel activists should have free speech too
Even if they wouldn't support others' right to be offensive
For at least the past decade, if you wanted somebody to protect your right to say inflammatory things in Britain, you would not turn to a progressive. Of late the progs have shrunk from defending offensive speech, denying that ‘cancel culture’ exists while still celebrating when somebody loses their job for a few saucy remarks. It doesn’t happen, but it’s a good thing when it does, as one might uncharitably paraphrase it.
The existence of this trend should be uncontroversial for anybody who is intellectually honest, as should the fact it mostly affected rightwing views. When a controversy blew up over some statement, it was almost always about alleged racism, sexism or some other prejudice. Cases of people being financially disadvantaged for leftwing speech have proven much harder to find.
That was until the past few weeks. Since the latest outbreak of violence in Israel and Palestine, people have undoubtedly been cancelled for criticising Israel. Substacker Freddie de Boer has a mostly US-centric list of examples, while in the UK the now former home secretary Suella Braverman tried to shut down pro-Palestine protests, even suggesting that waving a Palestinian flag could be a hate crime in certain circumstances.
Curiously enough, it turns out that progressives do believe in free speech now. Having been previously happy for people to lose their livelihood or liberty for being offensive, the left have recently discovered they’ve fashioned rods for their own backs. (And, alas, some on the right have also found a rod for their opponents’ backs.)
But such hypocrisy aside, it is vital that people who genuinely believe in free speech recognise that vocal support for Palestine is under threat. The effort to shut pro-Palestine activists up has even reached the absurd point of trying to prevent them from marching for an armistice on Armistice Day.
Such stifling is set to continue even amid a temporary ceasefire in Gaza. A statement from the Metropolitan Police on 24 November warned protestors that: “We will not tolerate anyone who celebrates or promote acts of terrorism – such as the killing or kidnap of innocent people – or who spreads hate speech.”
Given that Hamas is a designated terror group and the government of Gaza, it is hard to see how these rules don’t limit what can be said in defence of Palestine. And it is also notable that the rules wouldn’t bar anyone from vocally supporting Israel’s attacks on Gaza, despite the fact they have certainly entailed the killing of innocent people.
Such double standards fit into longer-standing attempts to stigmatise criticism of Israel. Labour’s ex-leader Jeremy Corbyn was only the most prominent victim of this trend, having been pressed into adopting the the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism despite its ludicrous prohibition on comparing Israel to the Nazis or disputing Israel’s right to exist.
These protections wouldn’t be afforded to any other country. When sports pundit Gary Lineker compared the rhetoric around migrants in the UK to that of Nazi Germany, some people tried to get him sacked, but there was no real risk of becoming a pariah. On the internet you can hardly move for Nazi comparisons to British policy, not least from shadow foreign secretaries. It’s not a good part of discourse, but it’s not prohibited.
One suspects that pro-Israel attempts at censorship exist in part because these criticisms are quite easy to make. Israel is an ethnostate. It was set up as a homeland for Jewish people, and its immigration policy explicitly aims to maintain a Jewish majority.
There is also plenty of scope for criticising Israel’s military strategy. Its current attacks on Gaza are more targeted at soldiers than Hamas’s attacks on 7 October, but collateral damage is an inevitable part of them. Gaza’s authorities claim that 14,000 people have already died, and the Economist notes that the figures have gone unchallenged by Israel and are regarded by some international experts as plausible.
Personally, I’m sceptical about calls for a ceasefire. For all the carnage Israel is causing in Gaza, I believe it had to respond violently to Hamas’s invasion of its territory and slaughtering of many Israeli citizens. Had Israel done nothing, it would have effectively accepted Hamas’s right to murder its people with impunity.
Obviously, the history is complicated. Israeli soldiers and officials have killed plenty of Palestinians, Israelis have encroached on Palestinian land in the West Bank, and the country controls access to resources in the Gaza Strip. Israel also has the backing of history’s most powerful military. There is a context to what Hamas have done, even if it is a group of genocidal thugs.
But my views aside, all these nuances can only be aired if sympathisers of both sides and neither can speak. If nothing else, the recent conflict should have impressed on leftists that the rod won’t always be in your hand when it comes to censorship. The right, of course, should remember that too.
Out to sea. Speaking of contentious occupations, in my latest piece for CapX I make the case for Britain retaining the Chagos Archipelago on military and even humanitarian grounds. Feel free to let me know what you think of either piece in the comments.