In the words of the university website: “The lecture is dropped from the agenda” and the decision is justified by the Institute on the following grounds:
Unfortunately, Prof Morris has recently expressed views … that could be read and even racist. This has led to understandable but … frightening protests.[1].
Quite how such weasel words squares with the Institute’s insistence that “science thrives through the exchange of diverse ideas, including those that are challenging or uncomfortable” and its hope “that our students will be able to engage constructively and critically with the guest speaker”[2] feeds into the subject of this article; the crippling effect of mob censorship and the resultant cancel culture on intellectual debate with specific reference to discussions on the Israel/Palestine conflict. I will show how advocates of both “sides” have sought to limit debate and shut down opinions they do not like; on the one side, supporters of the Israeli government have weaponised the meaning of “antisemitism” in order to censor Palestinian writers and artists; on the other side advocates of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel seek to isolate and quarantine Israeli scholastic institutions and pro-Israel/Zionist voices on the grounds of their supposed connection to the ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories and the war in Gaza. Both “sides” have been guilty of smearing and shouting down their targets. Neither lobby does anything to encourage free exchange of ideas and attempts at nuanced, empathetic understanding of this intractable conflict.
The cancellation of Benny Morris is particularly unfortunate because of his academic record in challenging the Israeli foundational narrative over the expulsion and displacement of 700,000 Palestinian Arabs during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War in what has come to known as the Nakba. He was one of a group of prominent Israeli revisionist historians whose scholarship refuted the myth that the demographic who later became Palestinian refugees fled voluntarily or were frightened into fleeing by lurid forecasts as to their likely fate by propaganda from the leaders of Arab states and the Palestinian leadership. Morris cites the flight of the Palestinians in the context of the adoption of Tochnet Dalet or Plan D by the Zionist militia force the Hagana (later to be integrated into the IDF) shortly before the declaration of Israeli independence and the outbreak of regional war. On Palestinian accounts (and of more radical revisionist Israeli historians such as Ilon Pappe) Plan D was a programme for the ethnic cleansing of Israel’s Arab population. Morris argues, on the basis of extensive archival evidence, that, in fact, it was a military plan for the securing of the country’s borders and strategic highways. He exposes a series of local massacres of Arabs by Jewish forces (800-900 civilians and POWs, perhaps more), but he concludes that there was no overall plan for population transfer that motivated those actions.[3]
Morris has, unfortunately, made some inflammatory statements comparing Palestinian people to “wild animals” and saying that Israel would have been better off committing “ethnic cleansing” rather than being “exterminated” by them.[4]. These comments very likely hastened the pile-on that led to his cancellation but why couldn’t Leipzig University have proceeded with the lecture as the LSE Law School did earlier this year despite the dean and the guest being shouted down for half-an-hour. But students at Leipzig were deprived of the opportunity to challenge and question Morris due to, in his words, this act of “cowardice and appeasement par excellence.”[5]
Censorship of Palestinian Voices
The cancellation of Benny Morris was an example of the long reach of BDS of which more later. But it is not been an isolated occurrence in German academia. Koch cites the cancellation of a lecture by a young biologist on the biological existence of two sexes and the insidious pressure of freedom of expression being exerted from China through Confucious Institutes some of which German universities have “wisely” shut down[6]; a counter-intuitive way of guaranteeing academic freedom of enquiry perhaps!
Germany has also been at the crosshairs of the suppression of Palestinian artistic and literary advocacy through a misplaced desire to avoid any taint of antisemitic behaviour due to the legacy of the Nazi Holocaust, the remembrance of which is institutionalised in its Staatsrason ‘the reason of state.’ In practice this noble ethos has been interpreted to mean unconditional support for the State of Israel and conversely censorship of Palestinian or pro-Palestinian voices. In October 2023, the Frankfurt Book Fair postponed an award ceremony for the Palestinian writer Adania Shibli, amid fears of its possible optics in the context of the attacks of 7th October and the consequent war in Gaza. In the same month, the professional footballer Anwar El-Ghazi was suspended by his Bundesliga club for posting “From the River to the Sea” to his Instagram account. Two public broadcasters terminated contracts with TV host Malcolm Ohanwe after he posted to X about his views on the context of the 7th October attacks. In November, the Jewish artist Candace Breitz’s exhibition in Saarland was cancelled, after she had posted to social media her condemnation both the ‘grotesque bombardment of Gaza’ and the ‘horrific carnage’ of 7th October. Shortly afterwards in Berlin a DJ wearing the word ‘Palestine’ on his T-shirt had his set cut.[7]
A particular chill factor in relation to censorship of Palestinian voices and advocacy has been the International Holocaust Remembrance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism or, more accurately, how IHRA has been interpreted. The IHRA, an intergovernmental body of thirty-one states, adopted its working definition of antisemitism in 2016 as a response to the increase in Israel related attacks on Jewish people in Europe. It was the culmination of efforts to broaden the definition of antisemitism to include aspects of antizionist and anti-Israel speech and activity which had been causing Israeli and Jewish academics and community leaders since the United Nations Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in 2001 which had spawned marked hostility towards the State of Israel and its institutions. It was essentially a data collection and hate crime monitoring exercise. IHRA’s actual definition of antisemitism is just thirty-eight words:
Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed towards Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, towards Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.[8]
So far, so uncontroversial. But problems begin with consideration with the examples the IHRA cites in relation to Israel. It is clearly antisemitic to hold Jews collectively responsible for the actions of Israel. But the two major stumbling blocks are firstly, the reference to ‘Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination’, e.g. by claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavour; and secondly ‘Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.’ For critics of the IHRA definition these examples are not a priori examples of antisemitism in that they conflate support for the State of Israel with opposition to generalised Jew hate and raise concerns over suppression of freedom of speech concerning the Israel/Palestine conflict. The UK Select Committee of Home Affairs did recommend the addition of some caveats to the code to permit criticism of the Israeli government. But this advice was ignored by the then Conservative government who adopted ‘IHRA’ in 2016 as did thirty-three other European governments. The Labour Party adopted it in 2018 only after tortuous manoeuvrings and rows due to its failure to tackle antisemitism under its then leader Jeremy Corbyn.[9]
A future article will discuss more fully the relationship between Israel, Zionism, and generic antisemitism. But as regards the ambiguities inherent in the two Israel related examples cited above, it is important to remember that the IHRA code was not designed as a legal definition, much less as a guide to hate speech. In the words of Kenneth Stern, one of the code’s lead drafters and director of the Bard Centre for the Study of Hate at New York State’s Bard College, IHRA ‘was not drafted, and was never intended, as a tool to target or chill speech on a college campus.’[10]
But in the opinion of Rachel Shabi, that is exactly how some groups have deployed it. As David Feldman, Professor of History and director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, tells it ‘The vast majority of University Vice-Chancellors resisted, until Gavin Williamson, the then Education Secretary, threatened punitive sanctions.’ In Feldman’s view, the IHRA working definition is being abused by its litigants by ‘frequently casting aside the important caveat that we must assess cases “taking into account the overall context.” The prospect of the degeneracy of IHRA into a box ticking exercise was fully amplified by Geoffrey Robertson KC in 2018 when he wrote that:
It is likely in practice to chill free speech, by raising expectations of pro-Israeli groups that they can successfully object to legitimate criticism of Israel and correspondingly arouse fear in NGOs and student bodies that they will have events banned, or else will have to incur considerable expense to protect them by taking legal action.[11]
While it is impossible to give precise metrics as to how abuse of IHRA has impacted on free speech at UK universities, a 2023 report from the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) and the European Legal Support Centre, which provides legal support for Palestinian rights activists, does gave a flavour of its chilling effect. The report looked at forty cases that had been lodged across UK universities between 2017 and 2022 using the IHRA definition and found that all but two ongoing cases had been rejected. Among the cases investigated was an anonymous complaint of alleged antisemitism posted online against a student who had shared an infographic about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, referring to it as ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘as reminiscent of South African apartheid.’ The university in question took two months to decide that this was not a violation of the IHRA code. It also detailed the case of a six-month investigation into an academic specialist on the Middle East over social media posts or ‘likes’ criticising Zionist ideology, linking to pieces about the Nakba and commenting about the antisemitism controversies in the Labour Party. The report noted that the majority of these incidents at universities involved Palestinians and people of colour and the emotional toll and frightening burdens of seeking legal advice in effectively a trial situation.[12]
Outside of UK academia, many other examples of false accusations of antisemitism cloaked in the guise of legitimate criticism of Israeli actions abound. A report published in late 2015 by Palestine Legal entitled The Palestine Exception to Free Speech showed that most of the cancellations or alterations of Palestine-advocacy-related events in 2014 were due to spurious accusations of antisemitism. Most of the cases categorised as either threats to academic freedom, lawsuits, legal threats, or criminal investigations that they received in six months of 2015 were over false claims of antisemitism. The Palestine exception accelerated exponentially in the context of the bombardment of Gaza with Palestinian journalists, lawyers, educators, filmmakers, and medics complaining of being forced into “self-censorship” because of the career and livelihood consequences. Criticisms of the conduct of Israel’s war in Gaza has led to withdrawal of work contracts and speaking engagements across book festivals, arts events, academia and even Hollywood. In November, the Scream actor Melissa Barrera was dismissed from the latest instalment of the franchise over social media posts condemning Israel for committing a ‘genocide’ in Gaza and ‘brutally killing innocent Palestinians, mothers and children, under the pretence of destroying Hamas.’ The film production company confirmed that the decision was due to interpretations of her posts as being antisemitic.
The Other Side of the Coin: When Boycotts Turn into Censorship. The Case of BDS.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign emerged from a “call” from “Palestinian civil society” issued on 9th July 2004 (other writers claim that it originated in British universities in 2005). It made the following demands of Israel:
1. Ending its occupation and colonisation of all Arab lands and dismantling the [Separation] Wall [between Israel and the West Bank].
2. Recognising the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting, and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution `194.[13]
To these ends BDS advocates the following: (1) boycotting Israeli-made protects and services, as well as public events in which Israelis participate; (2) the divestment by governments and private institutions on investment in Israeli companies; and (3) the establishment of international sanctions against Israel.[14]
BDS campaigners claim to look to inspiration to the international sanctions campaigns which hastened the end of the Apartheid regime in South Africa. They similarly look to punish Israel for its “apartheid” policies towards Palestinian and Israeli Arabs. BDS also feeds into the idea that has spread across the left since the 1960s that Zionism is a racist ideology, and that Israel is a western colonial implant in the Middle East. In this binary view, this latter day “anti-imperialist” left view of Israelis as representatives of the – morally indefensible – forces of European (or “white”) colonialism of the – as they believe, morally unchallengeable – revolt of Indigenous peoples against the subordination of their interests to those of the colonialist invader.[15].
Related to this ideological complexion of BDS is its ambiguity about the existence of the State of Israel and the justice and legitimacy of a two-state solution. Are its aims purely the ending of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the illegal building of Israeli settlements there? Or is the replacement of the existing Jewish state by one state extending “From the River to the Sea” its ultimate aim as is implied by its demand for the “right of return”? The validity of BDS’s “Apartheid” comparisons and its centrality to antizionist or anti-Israel discourse and praxis will be a subject of a future article. For now, it is the free speech and enquiry aspects and impacts on academic freedom of BDS and the related Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) that is my focus.
Arab-sponsored boycotts predate the Occupation of Palestinian territories and even the foundation of the State of Israel. In 1945 the Arab League prohibited its members from doing any business with “Zionists/Jews” and with companies that did business with Zionists. They later widened the boycott to include “anything Jewish.” In the 1950s Saudi Arabia promulgated a boycott of all businesses globally that were owned by Jews, did business with Jews, or employed Jews. After the establishment of the State of Israel, possession of an Israel stamp in one’s passport would deny entry to most Arab and Muslim majority nations. [16] In 1973, the Arab led OPEC oil sanctions of Western nations for their support of Israel in that year’s Yom Kippur war triggered seismic shocks in the global economy. Boycotts of anything Jewish and/or Israeli related surely triggers ancestral memories of the hate inspired boycotts of Jews in the Europe of the Middle Age and modern eras.
The academic boycott of Israel has its origins in the 2001 UN sponsored Durham World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. At both the official UN conference and the gathering of 3,000 NGOs, passionate discussions about Israel in the aftermath of the breaking down of the Oslo Accords and the resumption of the Palestinian intifada overshadowed every other item of business of the meetings’ agendas. In the end, the declaration by the NGO forum equating Zionism with racism and calling for a boycott of Israel was to set the tone for the BDS agenda.[17]
The first anti-Israel action in the academic world to attract notoriety was the dismissal in 2002 by Mona Baker, a professor of translation studies at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) and the publication of the academic journals Translator and Translation Studies, of two Israelis: Gideon Toury, a professor at the University of Tel Aviv, from the advisory board of Translator and Miriam Shlesinger, lecturer in translation at Bar-Ilan University from that of Translation Study Abstracts. This was despite the expressed opposition of both academics to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.[18]
While not as explicitly discriminatory as this action, the arbitrary and capricious nature of BDS dictums, have created a censorious climate in which artists and scholars have to fulfil loyalty tests in order to avoid silencing and cancellation; the inverse image of the culture created by the weaponisation of antisemitism to curtail Palestinian artistic freedom, of expression. In 2006, some BDS organisers proposed such a “loyalty” test; that only those Israeli academics who support their government “apartheid” policies, but no official protocol was ever put in place to implement this “test”. But instead, individual academics and departments were allowed to interpret this policy on their own. For example, at the 2012 South African Sociological Association convention, an Israeli who was about to participate in a panel discussion was asked by a professor from a South African university to “denounce Israeli apartheid” as a precondition of his participation. On his refusal, an association board member invited the other panellists and the audience to leave the room and reassemble at a different venue, so that the Israeli could exercise his freedom of speech and present his paper – to an empty room.[19] This form of “silent treatment” is disturbingly reminiscent of the interrogation of Jewish Labour members and MPs on their stance on the Israel/Palestine conflict which occurred repeatedly at party meetings during the Corbyn era and the consequent ostracization and harassment of them if insufficiently “loyal” to the faction line. Jewish women Labour MPs such as Ruth Smeeth, Luciana Berger and Louise Ellman suffered particularly vicious treatment.
The “loyalty” test was applied to the American Jewish pop star was disinvited from appearing at Rototom Sunsplash, an annual international reggae festival held in Spain devoted, ironically, to “the promotion of peace, equality, human rights and social justice” after, on the insistence of BDS members, he refused to make a public statement in support of Palestinian statehood and against “Israeli war crimes”.[20] It is worth noting that no such commitments were asked of the other performers (presumably all non-Jewish) in this festival. But such a demand was made of Taylor Swift who after expressing an interest in performing in Israel was warned by Ramah Kudaimi of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights in the Daily Beast that if she did so, it would “help Israel whitewash its denial of Palestinian rights” and would threaten her career.[21]
But the reach of BDS goes beyond those who visit Israel. In 2009, the British film director Ken Loach cancelled the screening of Looking for Eric at the Melbourne International film Festival after learning that the Israeli embassy was a sponsor of the festival. In 2012, African-American author refused to allow a new Hebrew translation of her novel The Colour Purple to be published in Israel, “which is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people.”[22] More recently, in 2024 the Irish author Sally Rooney vetoed a Hebrew translation of her latest novel Intermezzo on the same grounds.
Lipstadt finds the growing list of authors, artists, intellectuals, and filmmakers who have joined the BDS campaign “disturbing”. The covert effect of BDS pressure is the declining of invitations by artists and scholars to Israeli events without public announcement. What is tragically counterproductive and paradoxical about BDS is that a disproportionate number of the Israeli academics, artists and individuals targeted by them are publicly opposed to Israel’s settlement policies.[23] The condemnation by BDS of the Israeli campaign group Standing Together which has emerged in the wake of the Gaza war and which brings together Israel Jews and Arabs in their opposition to the destructiveness of the IDF assault on Gaza on the grounds that their support for Israel’s existence and the two state solution is somehow an endorsement of “Israeli Apartheid” is the strongest indication of the real BDS agenda and political complexion.
So BDS is problematic on two grounds. The first, in relation to academia, is that boycotts are blunt instruments. A fundamental core principle of academic freedom is that a scholar’s academic work and politics are separate. Application of political tests to an individual scholar and/or academic institutes recall the worst aspects of totalitarian states and of the darkest episodes in democracies such as the McCarthyite era of Cold War anti-communist hysteria in the USA in the 1940s and 1950s. Boycotting of ideas belongs to the era of the Inquisition. In relation to Israel-Palestine, BDS closes down voices just as equally zealous pro-Israel advocacy has done with Palestinian voices and hinders the very necessary communication and academic engagement between Israelis and Palestinians.
But secondly, BDS represents censorship. Individual authors have the legal right to publish their works in whatever countries and languages they wish. But to deprive people anywhere of the opportunity of the intellectual and spiritual nourishment that books give and to deny the experience of discovery of other cultures that books and other works of art affords on the grounds of ideological purity in the manner of writers like Sally Rooney is censorship; censorship with a smug Western imperialist hue.
To conclude, conflicts are never resolved by academic and artistic boycotts. By all means protest the sale of armaments such as fighter jets to Israel; boycott settlement goods; avoid the purchase of Caterpillar products due to that company’s corporate role in the dynamiting of Palestinian homes on the West Bank and target any company or agency involved in the bureaucracy of the Occupation. But leave ideas and their production and dissemination alone.
References
[1] Tanit Koch Germansplaining. Cancellation. The New European 5-11th December 2024 p.11
[2] Ibid
[3] Shalom Lappin (2024) The New Antisemitism. The Resurgence of an Ancient Hatred in the Modern World. Cambridge: Polity p.135
[4] Zev Stub German cancellation of Israeli’s professor talk highlights widening academic boycotts. The Times of Israel 5th December 2024
[5] Tanit Koch, The New European p.11
[6] Ibid
[7] Rachel Shabi (|2024) Off White. The Truth about Antisemitism. London: OneWorld pp. 167-68
[8] Ibid, p.160
[9] Ibid, pp.161-62
[10] Ibid, p.162
[11] Ibid, pp.162-63
[12] Ibid: pp.163-64
[13] Bernard Harrison (2020) Blaming the Jews. Power and Delusion. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press p.146
[14] Deborah Lipstadt (2019) Antisemitism. Here and Now. London: Scribe p.170
[15] Harrison, p.166
[16] Lipstadt, pp.170-71.
[17] Ibid, p.171
[18] Ibid, p.174
[19] Ibid, p173
[20] Ibid, p.173
[21] Ibid, p.174
[22] Ibid, p.175
[23] Ibid, p.175
[1] Tanit Koch Germansplaining. Cancellation. The New European 5-11th December 2024 p.11
[2] Ibid
[3] Shalom Lappin (2024) The New Antisemitism. The Resurgence of an Ancient Hatred in the Modern World. Cambridge: Polity p.135
[4] Zev Stub German cancellation of Israeli’s professor talk highlights widening academic boycotts. The Times of Israel 5th December 2024
[5] Tanit Koch, The New European p.11
[6] Ibid
[7] Rachel Shabi (|2024) Off White. The Truth about Antisemitism. London: OneWorld pp. 167-68
[8] Ibid, p.160
[9] Ibid, pp.161-62
[10] Ibid, p.162
[11] Ibid, pp.162-63
[12] Ibid: pp.163-64
[13] Bernard Harrison (2020) Blaming the Jews. Power and Delusion. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press p.146
[14] Deborah Lipstadt (2019) Antisemitism. Here and Now. London: Scribe p.170
[15] Harrison, p.166
[16] Lipstadt, pp.170-71.
[17] Ibid, p.171
[18] Ibid, p.174
[19] Ibid, p173
[20] Ibid, p.173
[21] Ibid, p.174
[22] Ibid, p.175
[23] Ibid, p.175
⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.
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