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Atheist Ireland ★ As Ireland starts its six-month presidency of the EU Council, Atheist Ireland has submitted a petition to European Parliament’s Committee on Petitions.

1-July-2026

This official process allows citizens and organisations to ask the Parliament to examine how EU law is being implemented in practice.

We’re asking it to examine a gap in Irish equality law. This explicitly protects people with religious beliefs. But it only addresses atheism, humanism, and secularism as the absence of religious beliefs. It does not give them equal status as positive beliefs in their own right.

By contrast, European law refers to freedom of ‘religion or belief’. And the ‘or belief’ part of that phrase refers to nonreligious philosophical convictions. These have the same legal status as religious beliefs.

The problem is not merely symbolic. It shapes how public bodies, schools, equality tribunals, legislators, and regulators understand and apply rights. It causes practical discrimination against atheists, humanists, secularists, and others.

Ironically, the Irish government does recognise the status of Atheist Ireland and the Humanist Association of Ireland as partners in the formal dialogue process with churches and philosophical bodies under Article 17 of the Lisbon Treaty.

But Irish citizens do not receive the equal legal protection that this recognition implies. The gap appears across equality law, religious oaths for public office, the education system, marriage solemnisation, charity law, taxation, political advocacy, and access to effective remedies.

What are the consequences of this discrimination?

The Irish Constitution requires religious declarations for several public offices. This means a conscientious atheist cannot become President, a judge, or a member of the Council of State (which includes the Taoiseach and Tánaiste) because they would have to swear an oath to a god they do not believe in.

The Irish State funds a school system in which most schools are controlled by religious patron bodies. There are no non-denominational schools registered with the Department of Education. Boards of management are required to uphold the characteristic spirit, or ethos, of the school as determined by the patron.

In addition, Irish equality law provides exemptions that allow religious bodies and schools to discriminate on the ground of religion in order to protect their religious ethos. These exemptions affect both employment of teachers, and access to education for non-religious families (Section 37 Employment Equality Act and Section 7 Equal Status Act)

The Irish State has no guidelines on how to give practical application to respecting the beliefs of all families equally in publicly funded schools. The only detailed guidelines in place are those issued by the Catholic Church. These assert that atheism and humanism are not ‘beliefs’, directly contradicting EU and international law.

In a case under the Equal Status Act, the WRC accepted the school’s argument that providing alternative classes for students who opted out of religion might cause chaos within the school. It also suggested that offering another subject to such a child could potentially discriminate against students who attended religious classes.

This illustrates the practical problem. Atheism and humanism are treated merely as an absence of religion. This means the burden falls on the non-religious child to fit around the religious ethos, rather than on the publicly funded school to respect all convictions equally.

The Civil Registration Amendment Act 2012 (Section 45A(1)) discriminates in favour of religious bodies over secular bodies in relation to the solemnisation of marriages. It also discriminates between secular bodies, as only secular bodies with humanist objects can solemnise marriages. The result is that religious bodies are trusted to define their own religious purposes, while secular bodies must fit a narrower statutory category.

Irish charity law and tax law also discriminate against citizens and bodies with non-religious philosophical convictions. The advancement of religion is recognised as a charitable purpose. The advancement of atheism, humanism, or secularism is not. Religious bodies can obtain charitable status and associated tax advantages for the advancement of religion. Secular philosophical bodies cannot.

We’re asking the European Parliament to examine why Irish law does not reflect EU law on freedom of religion or belief.

⏩ Follow Atheist Ireland on X @atheistie

Atheist Ireland Petitions European Parliament On Irish Equality Laws

National Secular Society ★ 'No UK charity should be supporting them', says Keir Starmer.

8-July-2026

A Jewish charity in London is being investigated by the regulator for funding a religious school in an illegal Israeli settlement in the Palestinian city of Hebron, it has been reported.

According to The Guardian, the charity Friends of Yeshivat Shavei Hevron sent almost £200,000 to the religious school between 2019 and 2024.

The UK Government has:

a clear position on Israeli settlements: Settlements are illegal under international law, constitute an obstacle to peace and threaten a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"We strongly advise against conducting any economic and financial activities in illegal Israeli settlements", it adds.

The charity is registered under the charitable purposes 'the advancement of religion' and 'the advancement of education'. Registered charities are legally required to act for the public benefit and are exempted from most forms of income tax.

Last month, Labour MP Melanie Ward claimed 32 charities in England and Wales have donated at least £28m to fund illegal Israeli settlements. The taxpayer may have subsidised up to £5.6m of this, she said.

It is not known how many of the 32 charities are registered under 'the advancement of religion'.

Continue @ NSS.

Jewish Charity Investigated For Illegal Settlement Fundraising

Right Wing Watch 👀Written by Peter Montgomery.


“Prophet” and MAGA propagandist Kent Christmas hosted a July 26 “Revival at Ryman” at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville with a cast of characters that included MAGA “prophet” Hank Kunneman and FlashPoint’s Gene Bailey. Christmas, who talked about the event with ElijahStreams’ Steve Shultz on Aug. 3, prophesied that God is getting ready to kill a bunch of people:

“And the days are going to come," said the Lord, "where I'm going to mute the mouth of the evil one. And those that have made covenant with the devil, I'm going to remove them." And the Lord said, "It's a wave, not just of judgment." But God said, "Also, when the glory of the Lord is released, death is going to hit the wicked kingdom." And He said, "The gallows that have been built to hang the Gospel on are going to be reversed." God said, "I'm going to reverse it, and I'm going to hang those that built it [the gallows] on their own judgment.”

Purporting to be speaking on behalf of God, Christmas said God is going to judge and purify the church, including 'every woke preacher . . . '

Continue @ RWW.

MAGA ‘Prophet’ Kent Christmas Keeps Saying God is Gonna Start Killing a Bunch of People

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Fifty Six

 


Pastords @ 56

 

A Morning Thought @ 3228

Pádraic Mac Coitir ✒ As part of the annual Roger Casement commemorations me and Alan Daly as members of Roger Casement Commemoration & Re-interment Association brought three wreaths to Glasnevin cemetery, Sandycove and Dún Laoghaire all associated with Casement.

Roger Casement was reinterred in Glasnevin in 1965 after his remains were taken from Pentonville prison in London where he was executed by an English hangman on 3rd August 1916. His grave is one of the first on entering the cemetery. I've been there many times and would suggest for people to pay a visit.

We then drove to Sandycove and we commented on how much more plush that part of Baile Atha Cliath is compared to the working class parts of the city. 

We arrived at the street where Casement was born and when we reached number 29 there was a plaque on the wall with a wreath below it. When we knocked the door we were met by a man who couldn't be friendlier. He introduced himself as Tom Cook and he was delighted to see us, especially when we told him who we were reprseenting. He was born in that house in the early 1950s and he remembered many stories growing up about Roger Casement. 

There was a cottage built in the 19th century where Casement was born but after his mother died he moved to Ballymena aged 15 where relatives looked after him. The cottage was demolished and replaced by two houses in the 1920s and a plaque erected by the National Graves Association in 1941. Parades were regularly held by Irish Republicans up until 1969 when the recent phase of conflict broke out. The Free State special branch sat outside the house and harassed people and given the area it is in many kept their heads down but Tom's family continued to look after the plaque. He also told us he flew a Palestinian flag outside the house but he was waiting one being delivered. We could have stayed a lot longer but had to be in Dún Laoghaire for 7pm so we bade farewell and told Tom we would be in touch and hopefully he'll come up to do a talk.

Ten minutes later we met people at a local community centre called Eblana House. After introductions we walked to the seafront and on the way down I couldn't get over how wealthy the place looked. As we looked over the coast we saw the statue of Casement and from a distance it looked impressive. When we reached it there was a crowd of about thirty and a piper led us on a short walk where he played a lament then Amhrán na bhFiann. Alan and another person spoke very briefly then wreaths were laid. 

As the rain came on we walked with a few others back to the centre. We couldn't stay too long but glad we did even for fifteen minutes. A video was shown of Catherine Connolly speaking at the centre a few weeks earlier and I have to say she was very good. She spoke about Casement and about the horrors he witnessed in the Congo and Peru when millions of people were killed, starved and mutilated by colonialists from Europe. She went on to speak of the horrors we are witnessing today being carried out by modern day colonialists. I just hope that when she meets those very same people carrying out atrocities throughout the world she speaks about Casement.

As we drove home Alan and I agreed it was a very worthwhile day. I could write a lot more about Roger Casement but if anyone needs to know more about him there a lot of of books and articles out there.

Padraic Mac Coitir is a former republican
prisoner and current political activist.

Roger Casement

Geordie Morrow 🖌 with a painting from his collection of art work. 



 Oil On Canvas 32”x22”

⏩Geordie Morrow is a Belfast artist.

Chilly Hours And Minutes Of Uncertainty

Muiris Ó Súilleabháin ✍ It is becoming increasingly difficult to see how Sinn Féin can extricate itself from the political position it has created for itself, both North and South. 

Voices that would once have defended every leadership decision are now questioning the party's direction. Some are calling for a change of leadership, others for a fundamental reassessment of strategy, many for both. Either would require an acknowledgement that much of what has been presented as success to date has, in reality, fallen short.

In the north, Sinn Féin entered government promising change. Michelle O'Neill spoke of being a First Minister for all. Yet the party ends its first full legislative term at the head of the Northern Ireland (sic) Executive with little tangible evidence that it has delivered any of the transformation promised to workers, families or the communities that have formed the backbone of its electoral support.

The explanation now being offered as an election approaches is familiar: delivery was blocked by the British Government and/or the DUP. Power-sharing does impose real constraints, but that is only part of the story. As Samuel Johnson observed, "What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure." The same might be said of political promises. Many of Sinn Féin's manifesto commitments were neither distinctive nor achievable. The adaptation of Johnson's other observation comes to mind, what was good was not original, and what was original was not good.

None of this should have come as a surprise to the Party. The institutional vetoes that were negotiated by Sinn Féin at St Andrews in 2006 ensured that fundamental change would always depend upon unionist consent. Those who warned at the time that these arrangements would constrain any future Sinn Féin First Minister were dismissed as cynics. Events have proven otherwise. Equally significant was the DUP's strategic decision to forgo the Finance and Economy portfolios in favour of Communities and Education. It was a calculated judgement about where their political influence would be greatest, and one that has left Sinn Féin struggling to explain why many of its flagship ambitions remain unrealised. The consequences of those decisions are now becoming impossible to ignore.

The much-publicised Good Jobs Employment Rights Bill, presented as a flagship commitment of the party of change after Sinn Féin assumed responsibility for the Department for the Economy, will not be enacted during this Assembly mandate. For legislation heralded as a defining reform, its progress was remarkably slow. The Bill remained with the Sinn Fein Minister for years before finally reaching the Assembly, leaving limited time for meaningful consultation, democratic scrutiny and legislative passage before the end of the mandate.

Even then, the legislation fell well short of the rhetoric that accompanied it. Much of what was proposed would simply have extended to workers in the north employment protections already available elsewhere in the United Kingdom, rather than creating a new or distinctive set of rights.

The lack of attention given to drafting the Bill, became apparent almost immediately. Within twenty-four hours of the Bill's introduction, the Sinn Fein Minister was forced to amend a central proposal following universal criticism of its practical implications. The DUP seized on the reversal, rightly claiming that the Economy Minister had been "forced into a screeching U-turn which recognises a major flaw in her original proposals." Whether one accepts that characterisation or not, the episode reinforced the impression of legislation that had been inadequately prepared despite the time available to develop it.

Upon becoming leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, Jon Burrows, a former RUC officer, remarked that when he first entered the Assembly, he could not decide whether Sinn Féin was attempting to undermine Northern Ireland's institutions or whether it was simply incompetent. Having observed the party in government, he said he had reached the latter conclusion.

It is not a harsh judgement, and one that has become increasingly difficult to dismiss. The handling of the Irish place names project, together with a succession of uncomfortable Assembly exchanges in which Sinn Féin ministers and senior representatives, including Gildernew, have struggled under sustained and pointed questioning from Timothy Gaston, Phillip Brett and Jonathan Buckley, has contributed to a growing perception that the party is less assured in government than it once appeared.

For a movement that built its reputation on discipline, strategic planning and political competence, such episodes matter. They do not simply provide ammunition for opponents, they raise legitimate questions among supporters about whether the party has adapted successfully from opposition and agitation to the demands of government.

After a full Assembly term leading the Northern Ireland Government, Sinn Féin ministers appear to have little political capital left to demonstrate that the promised era of change has materialised. Increasingly, ministerial announcements are dominated by photo opportunities around routine infrastructure projects, pothole repairs, road resurfacing and traffic management schemes, rather than the structural reforms that featured so prominently in the party's election campaign.

The party's defence has become equally familiar. Speaking after being promoted to a Senator, former Economy Minister Conor Murphy argued that Sinn Féin was trying hard to make the institutions and Northern Ireland work, but that progress was being frustrated by unionist resistance. There is, of course, an element of truth in that claim. The institutions were designed to require cross-community agreement on contentious issues. Yet that was not an unforeseen obstacle. It was the constitutional architecture to which Sinn Féin itself signed up, and which many critics warned would allow the DUP to frustrate significant change whenever it chose to do so.

To attribute the absence of delivery principally to unionist obstruction is therefore to overlook an uncomfortable reality, many of the constraints now cited as an explanation were negotiated, accepted and defended by Sinn Féin itself.

There is an unmistakable irony in a republican movement lamenting that unionism is preventing the institutions of Northern Ireland from functioning as intended. For decades, Sinn Féin's ambition was to challenge, disrupt and ultimately replace those institutions. Today, it finds itself defending them, explaining their limitations and appealing for their effective operation. In doing so, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish the party from the constitutional order of the SDLP it once sought to overturn.

Perhaps the greatest political transformation of the peace process has not been the capture of the institutions by Sinn Féin, but the capture of Sinn Féin by the institutions. The movement that once promised to turn Stormont upside down now finds itself constrained by its procedures, dependent upon its survival and invested in its continuity. The revolutionary has become the custodian.

Casement Park is a case in point. It may be uncomfortable for some to acknowledge, but the principal reasons for the project's failure lie not with unionist opposition but with those who carried political responsibility for delivering it. The prolonged dispute with local residents, the collapse of the original planning approval, and the persistent failure to secure a fully funded and deliverable scheme cannot simply be attributed to unionist obstruction. The greatest responsibility rests with Sinn Féin, the SDLP and those charged with managing the project, not Gordon Lyons.

Had the objective remained the timely construction of a modern stadium for Antrim GAA, Casement Park could have been completed many years ago. Instead, the ambition, driven by Sinn Fein, evolved into something far more complex. The aspiration to develop a multi-purpose venue capable of hosting major commercial events fundamentally altered the scale, cost and controversy surrounding the project. Whether that mistake was well-intentioned or not, that change of course delayed rather than advanced the interests of Gaelic games in Antrim.

The greatest losers have not been politicians but Gaels. For more than a decade, Antrim footballers, hurlers and supporters have been denied the stadium they were promised while political parties traded blame and expectations repeatedly outstripped reality.

Casement Park will almost certainly be built. When it is, it should stand as a home for the GAA and the people of Antrim rather than an outdoor concert venue or a monument to avaricious political ambition.

Casement Park is only one example. More troubling is the apparent ease with which Sinn Féin has been able to attribute their political failure, whether in government or in opposition, to unionism or to the British Government. This manufactured narrative has proved remarkably resilient, often insulating the party from any scrutiny of its own decisions and responsibilities.

The willingness of many Sinn Fein supporters and the media to accept those explanations without demanding a more searching analysis has, for years, reinforced that dynamic. There are signs, however, that this may be changing. Recent elections in the Republic and opinion polling north and south suggest that the party's carefully cultivated image of competence coupled with perpetual victimhood is beginning to encounter greater public scepticism even within their own base. Whether that scepticism becomes the catalyst for political realignment remains to be seen, but the assumption that Sinn Féin can indefinitely externalise responsibility for its own policy and political failure appears less secure than it once did.

The leadership of the movement is not oblivious to these changing political realities. Across Ireland, poorly attended republican family meetings have been hosted as the leadership sought to reassure supporters that a border poll, and ultimately Irish unity, remains within reach. Yet the momentum that once appeared to surround the constitutional question has undoubtedly slowed. The certainty with which unity was presented as an approaching political reality has given way to a more cautious and qualified narrative.

The UK's latest Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, on entering office, made clear that constitutional change within the United Kingdom was not a priority for his government, continuing a position adopted by successive British administrations since 1922. His newly appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has likewise indicated that a border poll is not under consideration. That position is not surprising. The electoral evidence has yet to even remotely demonstrate the sustained shift in public opinion that would justify the exercise of the British Secretary of State's discretion under the Good Friday Agreement.

The shift, in opinion is being reflected elsewhere. Sinn Féin's much-heralded Unity Bill failed to gain any meaningful political traction beyond the party's own ranks. Opinion polling across both jurisdictions continues to suggest that voters are more concerned with housing, healthcare, the cost of living and public services than with constitutional change. Performative politics, once one of Sinn Féin's greatest strengths, appear now, to have diminishing returns when measured against the everyday concerns of the Irish electorate north and south.

None of this is to suggest that Irish unity is impossible. Constitutional change remains a possibility. What has become increasingly difficult to sustain is the claim that it is either imminent or inevitable. The language of inevitability has collided with the real arithmetic of electoral politics and Government. For all the certainty with which it was once proclaimed, it is a destination that, in my judgement, lies beyond my generation.

I suspect Sinn Féin is fast approaching the political crossroads that many seasoned observers have long predicted. The strategic assumptions that served the party so well over the past two decades are beginning to encounter electoral and political realities that can no longer be ignored.

The choices facing the leadership are stark. In the Republic, difficult questions will inevitably arise about whether lame duck McDonald remains the person best placed to lead the party towards government. In the north, Sinn Féin faces a different but equally profound dilemma. Having invested so much political capital in the institutions established by the Good Friday and St Andrews Agreements, it can neither transform them in the manner once promised nor abandon them without accepting responsibility for the resulting instability.

That is the paradox of Sinn Féin's political journey. A movement that once fought to overturn the constitutional position of the north is now one of its principal custodians. It has become bound to institutions that make the achievement of Irish unity contingent upon the consent of others, yet from which it cannot easily withdraw. The once revolutionary movement has become the establishment, and in doing so has created challenges for itself that cannot readily be resolved.

They are, indeed, interesting times.

⏩Muiris Ó Súilleabháin was a member of the Republican Movement until he retired in 2006 after 20 years of service. Fiche bhliain ag fás.

Hope Springs Eternal

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Fifty Five

 

A Morning Thought @ 3227

Remembering Tom McElwee On The 45th Anniversary Of His Death On Hunger Strike In The H Blocks Of Long Kesh.


Tom McElwee🏴 45 🏴 Eternal Dreamless Sleep

Stanley Cohen ★ Writing In Counterpunch.

28-April-2026

Fact … like the Israeli law that criminalizes speech which “minimalizes” the events of October 7th or challenges the government recitation of what occurred on that day, but do not incite violence, under Article 24 of the Israeli Anti-Terrorism Law, Palestinians can be imprisoned for 5 years for merely saying “from the river to the sea” under a theory that words, and words alone, are an incitement to violence, an exaltation of terror, or a threat to state security.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
Fact … according to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor and the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, over the years, “Israeli prisons continue to function as a network of torture camps for Palestinians, with the systematic abuse even more extensive than before. This includes physical and psychological abuse, inhuman conditions, deliberate starvation and denial of medical care, all of which have led to numerous deaths. Some witnesses also described undergoing or witnessing sexual violence and abuse.”

Fact … numerous human rights and media organizations, including Israeli outlets, have been witness to, indeed video recorded, mobs of “Jewish Israeli extremists marching through [the] Damascus Gate into the Old City of Jerusalem “chant[ing] “death to Arabs,” “Muhammad is dead,” and “may your village burn.”

Against this established independent fact-based record, recently on LinkedIn, I posted a 50-word overview that drew comparisons of the disparate treatment of mobs of Israeli Jews who for decades have been permitted to violently march and scream death to Arabs in occupied Palestine with no consequence whatsoever, with instances of where Palestinians have been arrested and severely punished for merely saying “from the river to the sea.”

Following a complaint, no doubt by a Zionist or blanket Israeli apologist, LinkedIn censored and removed my post, finding that “it constituted hateful speech.” Although it provided me with an opportunity to appeal its automated censorship, I have no intention of doing so, for to argue with Algorithmic content control where AI systems and not humans delete or demonize subject matter is little more than a mindless exercise in form over substance. Moreover, even if the “appeal” is ultimately directed to humans and not mechanical toys programmed by majoritarian values and economic ends, I have no interest in arguing issues of constitutional law and free speech with those who essentially get wages to monitor and dictate the reach of the marketplace of ideas.

Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple, whoever knew Truth put to the worse in a free open encounter?
– John Milton, Milton’s Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing.

With these sage words, more than 500 years ago, John Milton laid the idyllic cornerstone for a marketplace of ideas built of dissent and disobedience. Very much a square of verbal clash, by design, this wall-less platform of words is intended to challenge majoritarian values and scheming edicts, be they those of governments or quasi-government entities such as LinkedIn. After all, if left to their own devices, these monitors of debate would gleefully take us all in silence down the pathway of a perilous authoritarian journey.

In the United States, open and robust debate has long been a crucial liberty recognized by the philosophical framers of the American Constitution and protected by America’s founders. The marketplace of ideas metaphor was introduced into Supreme Court doctrine by Justice Holmes in his 1919 dissent in Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616, 630 (1919), where he said society’s ultimate good “is better reached by free trade in ideas – that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.”

The marketplace metaphor is routinely used by the Supreme Court in the resolution of free-expression cases. Justices have used it to protect expression in virtually every area of First Amendment jurisprudence: prior restraint, libel, invasion of privacy, pornography, access, advertising, picketing, expressive conduct, broadcasting, and cable regulation. The Court has repeatedly said the primary purpose of the First Amendment is to protect an uninhibited marketplace where differing ideas can clash. In pursuit and protection of that clash stands the First Amendment.

While not an absolute ban on governmental restriction of speech, there are important interpretive nuances in how the First Amendment has been applied to specific situations. One point, however, is crystal clear – in matters of public concern the government may not regulate speech based on its content and, more importantly, based on the viewpoint of the speaker. See, e.g., R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul. Minn., 505 U.S. 377 (1992); Regan v. Time, 468 U.S. 641 (1984). In America, there are no “grand truths” protected by governmental sanctions. And there is certainly no governmentally proscribed historical “fact” unassailable by scholars and crackpots alike. See, e.g., Freedom of Speech and Holocaust Denial, 8 Cardozo L. Rev. 559, 566-72 (1986-87).

Government regulation of historical analysis is so fundamentally foreign to First Amendment jurisprudence in the United States, it is difficult to cite any American precedent or to place my comments within an established exception to First Amendment protection. Indeed, some 15 years ago, international reaction to the recent defaming film “Innocence of Muslims” focused on this precise point. To the many calls for the American government to simply ban the film, then U.S. Secretary of State Clinton responded:

Now, I know it is hard for some people to understand why the United States cannot or does not just prevent these kinds of reprehensible videos from ever seeing the light of day. Now, I would note that in today’s world with today’s technologies that is impossible. But even if it were possible, our country does have a long tradition of free expression, which is enshrined in our Constitution and our law, and we do not stop individual citizens from expressing their views no matter how distasteful they may be. There are, of course, different views around the world about the outer limits of free speech and free expression, but there should be no debate about the simple proposition that violence in response to speech is not acceptable. We all, whether we are leaders in government, leaders in civil society or religious leaders, must draw the line at violence. And any responsible leader should be standing up now and drawing that line.

No matter how scandalous or dubious its content, there was no attempt by the United States government to ban the film. Nor was there any attempt by those who were offended, even outraged, by it to seek judicial prohibition against its publication or to punish its creators or distributors (for example, YouTube) after its release. Indeed, any attempt to censor the film or to prohibit its release no matter how offensive or disturbing its content, whether by the government or a private citizen, would simply have failed under well-settled U.S. law.

Another case, American Freedom Defense Initiative v. M.T.A., provides particular insight into how “hate speech” regulations would fare in the United States. No. 11 Civ. 6774(PAE), 2012 WL 2958178 (S.D.N.Y. July 20, 2012) aff’d No. 11 Civ. 6774(PAE) 2012 WL 3756270, at *1. Ironically, at issue in American Freedom was an offensive anti-Muslim advertisement and the question of whether a government-run transit authority could refuse the ad on the ground that it “demean[ed] an individual or group on account of race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, gender, age, disability, or sexual orientation.” (M.T.A. 1997 Advertising Standards). Id., at *3.

The advertisement at issue in American Freedom paraphrased Ayn Rand and stated, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel; Defeat Jihad.” Id., at *5. The district court determined that, read in context, the ad equated Muslims with savages and on that basis ruled that it ran afoul of the government’s anti-demeaning standard. Id., at *17-18. Nevertheless, the court held that enforcement of the MTA’s advertising standards violated the First Amendment because it was not content-neutral Id., at *18. And though the ad was a paid advertisement, the court nonetheless found it to be “not only protected speech [but] – core political speech.” Id., at *17. In noting that the ad expressed a pro-Israel perspective on the Israeli/Palestinian “conflict” in the Middle East, and implicitly calls for a pro-Israel U.S. foreign policy with regard to the conflict [Id., at *8] the Court applied the highest level of First Amendment scrutiny to the MTA regulation. In siding with American Freedom, the court rejected the notion the restrictions were “necessary to serve a compelling state interest and [were] narrowly drawn to achieve that end.” Id., at *16. Consistent with several Supreme Court decisions, the court concluded that the regulation’s content-based discrimination required that it be struck down. See, also Reed v. Town of Gilbert, 576 U.S. 155 (2015) (content-based laws presumptively unconstitutional); Turner Broad. Sys. v. FCC, 512 U.S. 622 (1994) (“Government action that stifles speech on account of its message, or that requires the utterance of a particular message favored by the Government, contravenes this essential right [of] the First Amendment principle that each person should decide the ideas and beliefs deserving of expression, consideration, and adherence”); Hajur El-Haggan v. Bd. of Educ. for Montgomery Cnty., 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 135025 (D. Md. 2025) (holding punishment of teacher on the basis of internal email signature containing “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” a palpable First Amendment violation).

Since 1983, I have spent a significant amount of time in state, federal and international courts litigating speech issues … be they challenges to the efforts of government or quasi-government entities such as LinkedIn to legislate against free speech or to criminalize those who wish to exercise that fundamental human right. Though LinkedIn may claim … uhhhh … no … private, and thus beyond the reach of the First Amendment, given the presence of its corporate headquarters in California [see, Hertz Corp. v. Friend, 559 U.S. 77 (2010)(holding a company’s “principal place of business” is its “nerve center”)] and its numerous contracts and services provided over the years to the U.S. government including to the Department of the Interior, Treasury Department, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Defense and its enrollment in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify program, LinkedIn cannot escape the sweep of First Amendment protections on the basis of the defense of “private” or due to speech laws elsewhere that are less solicitous of free speech protections,

Or is it cynical of me to believe that the billion-dollar investment and service plan that LinkedIn’s parent company of Microsoft, has reaped through contracts with the Israeli Ministry of Defense or the presence of its three global strategic centers employing thousands in Herzliya, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Nazareth, has helped to shape LinkedIn’s approach to free speech when it comes to all things Israeli. Given these factors, LinkedIn may just want to ask its attorneys how best to get around the holding of Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74, 83, 87-88 (1980).

In Pruneyard and its numerous offspring since applying the “state action doctrine,” the Supreme Court recognized First Amendment protections apply to “quasi-governmental” entities—private entities exercising traditional, exclusive public functions or acting as a “virtual arm” of the government. In law that still generally controls, the Supreme Court held a mall could be required to host third-party speech (i.e., to admit individuals who wanted to distribute handbills or solicit signatures on petitions) because the mall’s admission policy did not express any message, and because the mall was “open to the public at large.” Of importance in Pruneyard, the high Court noted because “there was little likelihood that the views of those engaging in the expressive activities would be identified with the owner, who remained free to disassociate himself from those views and who was not . . . being compelled to affirm [a] belief in any governmentally prescribed position or view.” See, Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic & Institutional Rights, Inc., 547 U.S. 47, 65 (2006).

Some fifteen years ago in a free speech case in South Africa I successfully represented a Muslim Radio Station, Radio 786, against an attempt by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBOD) — a private self-admitted Zionist organization– to have the station’s broadcasting license removed because of the tens of thousands shows that it had aired, one was an interview with a so-called “holocaust denier” and another an expose on the crimes of Israel and its Zionist backers.

Not at all an isolated attack on free speech and its cornerstone role in furtherance of self-determination, by its own admission, SAJBOD did not take a stand against apartheid in South Africa until the very end of the liberation struggle. Recently, it targeted the Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF) for hosting the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, for its annual lecture because in her report to the UN she accused Israel of the commission of genocide.

Although the recent finding by LinkedIn that my post was “hateful” was surely not triggered by SAJBOD, nevertheless, it was obviously framed by a fellow traveler … be it a Zionist or denialist supporter of Israel who felt “hurt” not by any threat of violence, but by the sting of my post and the echo of its truth. Wrapped, no doubt, in the cheap petty talisman of anti-Semitic, or self-hating, there is a certain paradox in the attack on my words given the identity of one of the strongest supporters of free speech in the history of the United States.

Justice Louis Brandeis, who was the first Jewish U.S. Supreme Court Justice, served as head of the Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs (1914–1918) and later as president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) from 1918 to 1921 and was a prime influencer of the deadly 1917 Balfour Declaration. In matters of pure speech, Brandeis was a prime mover in its absolute protection. In his concurring opinion in Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357, 375 (1927), he penned:

Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free to develop their faculties; and that in its government, the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government. They recognized the risks to which all human institutions are subject. But they knew that order cannot be secured merely through fear of punishment for its infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones. Believing in the power of reason as applied through public discussion, they eschewed silence coerced by law – the argument of force in its worst form. Recognizing the occasional tyrannies of governing majorities, they amended the Constitution so that free speech and assembly should be guaranteed.

Public speech is not without its limits - nor is there an absence of any controlling case law that addresses its limits. To be sure, in the early through mid-twentieth century, the Supreme Court carved out and developed an exception to First Amendment protection for speech that incites violence. The culmination of that line of reasoning was Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), where the Court stated that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of violation of law except where such advocacy is directed to inciting imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.

In its unanimous 1969 decision in Brandenburg, the Supreme Court set aside a Ku Klux Klan leader’s criminal conviction on the ground that his remarks were protected by the First Amendment. The leader had staged a rally for several television reporters where he made derogatory remarks against Blacks and Jews, suggesting that the government should return Blacks to Africa and Jews to Israel. Importantly for First Amendment purposes, the speaker stated that if the Blacks and Jews did not leave, the Klan would take matters into their own hands to force the removal. The Court ruled that the mere advocacy of violence did not forfeit First Amendment protection. Id. at 449. Instead, the Court stated that speech lost such protection only if it incited imminent lawless activity and was likely to produce such activity. Id. at 448-49. No such claim can be made with regard to the 50 words I posted on LinkedIn contrasting the reality of Palestinians and pro-Palestinian speech with the truth and double standard of Israeli violence.

I could go on and on citing state, federal and international constitutional and statutory law and litigation, which provide complete protection for my words deemed to be hateful by LinkedIn, but I will not. That my pen of fact reveals that in Israel and elsewhere, protestors are imprisoned for the mere words from the “river to the sea” and where many of them have subsequently been the victims of sexual assault, or lost their lives in prison … is fact. No less important, that these words, whether fact or not, upset a pro-Israeli member of LinkedIn or its cash fueled corporate headquarters is inconsequential in the search for truth.

Words convey thought; words have meaning; words are important. But words are not deeds. In the United States, hatred is tolerated – even hateful speech; violence is not. And violence fueled by hatred can be more severely punished. It would be wrong to conclude that America and most Americans care less about collective equality and human dignity than they do about individual freedom of expression.

That the person who challenged my 50 words as hateful to a sympathetic corporate Algorithmic censor is of no personal moment. In a “free” society, that these few simple words caused the reader immature discomfort, even anguish, matters not. Unbridled speech is the ultimate linchpin of the marketplace of ideas … the necessary village of jarring thoughts essential to the uncovering of truth. Speech is not measured by either pain or cheer. It is only through the competition of ideas, free of government or quasi-government intervention, that the best or truest ideas will ultimately prevail.

Most Americans have concluded, and their jurisprudence reflects, that human dignity and equality are not only not hampered by unrestricted expression but that those important goals can only be achieved by unrestricted expression. It is equally wrong to conclude that the American model denies the pain caused by speech. Speech in need of First Amendment protection is by its very nature controversial—in other words, it insults and outrages some persons; in most cases, many. There is no question that the clash of ideas causes pain; the suppression of ideas causes greater harm.

Like so much a drumbeat of systemic regularity, it cannot be denied that countless numbers of Palestinians of all ages and genders have been arrested and stolen away into Israeli military custody for little more than their mere existence and words. This palpable breach of fundamental international law has long been attested to by Israeli human rights groups, independent international tribunals and NGOs across the globe. That tens of thousands of these political prisoners have sat chained indefinitely in military custody uncharged, untried, unconvicted, and unsentenced cannot be denied. So, too, no longer can the world flee the established reality that most of these political prisoners have suffered rampant abuses that take them from deliberate isolation to calculated emotional trauma to physical and sexual assault and, at times, death.

This abuse can no longer be simply swallowed away and ignored by what has been a long, highly financed and successful Israeli and Zionist campaign of deflection, typically led by the glaring petty mantra of anti-Semite.

Can it be that today we have reached a point in the marketplace of ideas that the sheer horror of these palpable truths to anyone with open eyes and a warm heart has, of necessity, moved the defense of these outrages from rank denialism to empty chants of hate speech, with the loudest megaphone of this invention being social media platforms driven by the dishonest algorithm of cash?

Stanley L. Cohen is lawyer and activist in New York City.

“From The River To The Sea” 🪶 Words Can Set You Free

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