Israel-Hamas war: Israel's crackdown on dissent will only hurt it - Vox
By: Sigal Samuel (Vox)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Silencing criticism makes it harder for Israel's leaders to think clearly.
By Sigal Samuel Nov 1, 2023, 12:40pm EDT Protesters hold a demonstration in support of a ceasefire in Gaza in the Cannon House Office Building on October 18, 2023 in Washington, DC. Members of Jewish Voice for Peace and the IfNotNow movement staged a rally to call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. Getty Images Sigal Samuel is a senior reporter for Vox's Future Perfect and co-host of the Future Perfect podcast. She writes primarily about the future of consciousness, tracking advances in artificial intelligence and neuroscience and their staggering ethical implications. Before joining Vox, Sigal was the religion editor at the Atlantic.
Eight years ago, I published a novel about a Montreal Jewish family with a dangerous mystical obsession. It had absolutely nothing to do with Israel. But that didn't stop a former Israeli combat soldier from trying to get me disinvited from a book event.
He emailed the venue, arguing that it should not promote an author who had writtencritically about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, as I had during my time as an Israel-Palestine reporter. "This," he wrote, "is a disgrace."
Luckily, the venue held firm and I got to do the event. But that experience — absolutely trivial compared to the censorshipPalestinians have long experienced — planted a worry in my mind: If I, a Jew and citizen of Israel, am not allowed to question the Israeli government's narrative, then who is?
The answer, increasingly, is nobody.
Not the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen, who was supposed to speak at Manhattan cultural hub 92NY but saw his event abruptly pulled after he signed an open letter condemning Israel's war in Gaza.
Not the editor-in-chief of science journal eLife, Michael Eisen, who was fired after reposting an Onion article about Gaza with the headline "Dying Gazans Criticized for Not Using Last Words to Condemn Hamas."
Not the Web Summit CEO Paddy Cosgrave, who tweeted that "war crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies," referring to Israel's war in Gaza, and then had to resign from leading Europe's biggest tech conference.
Israel and Hamas are at war. How did we get here? Vox offers clarity.
- Why did Hamas attack Israel?
- A timeline of Israel and Palestine's complicated history
- What does the US-Israel relationship mean for the war?
- Occupation, annexation, and other terms you should know
- What will "full" war between Israel and Hamas mean? And 6 other questions about the conflict.
Not the Boston Workers Circle, a Jewish cultural center that got ousted from the Boston Jewish community's umbrella group after cosponsoring a rally calling for a ceasefire.
Not the Israeli professors, journalists, and lawmakers who have been suspended, fired, or even arrested for criticizing the war in Gaza.
And not even the Israeli hostages who were recently released from Hamas captivity. When 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz stated that she was "given access to medical care" and "treated well while in captivity," Israeli officials moved to prevent any similar press conferences in the future.
American commentators, viewing all this through the lens of American politics, call the silencing of Israel's critics "cancel culture." But it's more serious than that. This is political repression. And that's a problem not only because it cuts against the value of free speech, but because it stands to hurt everyone, including Israel itself.
Silencing voices that challenge the status quo and branding all dissent as disgrace makes it harder for those in power to think clearly. And clear thinking is crucial — especially in wartime.
Israel's climate of repression has been building for a long time
For intellectuals and artists who are now criticizing Israeli policies for the first time, the intensity of the backlash they face may come as a shock.
But it shouldn't, because for decades, Israel has been silencing Palestinians who protest the occupation and advocate for their own freedom. Is it really so surprising that after silencing Palestinian dissenters, Israel would end up silencing others who dissent, whether they're American, European, or even Israeli?
The curbs on Palestinian freedom of expression go back at least as far as 1967, when Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza and set up a military occupation that still deprives Palestinians of some basic civil rights. "Since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, it has ruled using military orders issued in those early days," explains Human Rights Watch. "Under those orders, the Israeli army has stripped Palestinians of basic civil rights protections, arresting Palestinian journalists, activists, and others for their anti-occupation speech, activism, and political affiliations." Recentexamples abound.
Israeli and American Jews started to pay more attention over the past decade, when the repression began to target them. Starting around 2012, it became morecommon to see Jews critical of Israeli policies disinvited from speaking gigs. In 2013, college students who were sick of the leading Jewish campus group Hillel International telling them who could and couldn't speak about Israel formed Open Hillel to promote more pluralistic debate. And 2014 saw the launch of Canary Mission, an anonymously run website that blacklists people sympathetic to Palestinians and posts dossiers on their personal lives and activism.
Over the ensuing years, as Israel launched repeated military operations in Gaza so common that they became known as "mowing the grass," American sympathies, long solidly pro-Israel, began to shift toward Palestinians, especially on the left. This March, a Gallup poll found for the first time that Democrats sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis.
Israel's government, which has lurched to the far right under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, responded to these shifts not by tempering its policies but by increasingly stifling its critics. One strategy has been to brand absolutely any criticism of Israel antisemitic. Many Jews disagree with that characterization, noting that although anti-Jewish hate is all too real — we're seeing it surging today — it doesn't help Jews or anyone else to use it as a shield for everything Israel does to Palestinians.
Many journalists and analysts warned during this period that the space for dissent about Israeli policies was shrinking. Now, it's shrunk so much that, as the writer Sarah Schulman recently noted in New York magazine, the result is a state of "'manufactured consent' — Noam Chomsky's term for a system-supported propaganda by which authorities and media agree on a simplified reality, and it becomes the assumptive truth."
How silencing dissent harms clear thinking
The latest crackdown on dissent in the Israel-Hamas war is so stark that some journalists and civil rights groups are labeling itdownright"McCarthyite."
The reference to the Cold War era in America is apt. During the "Red Scare," the atmosphere was so hyper-suspicious that fear overtook reason. Case in point: thousands of Americans accused of sympathizing with communism were booted from their jobs even though no evidence of disloyalty was found.
Some scholars have analogized the climate of repression in Israel after the October 7 Hamas attack to the climate in America after 9/11. In both countries, shocking attacks that killed many civilians occasioned fear, rage, and a thirst for revenge. As the Middle East scholar and pollster Shibley Telhami recalled on X this month, "Shrinking media space for criticizing US policy in Israel/Gaza is reminiscent of the pre-2003 Iraq war period. In the middle of war frenzy, it became harder to publish anti-war analysis."
We all saw how that turned out. US politicians alleged, based on faulty reports from the intelligence community, that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. As media outlets overflowed with pundits beating the drums of war, the last Gallup poll before the US invasion of Iraq showed 64 percent of Americans in favor of invading. That support actually rose to 72 percent after the US operation began, despite the failure to turn up any evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
At times like these, it's incredibly useful to have dissenting voices who force us to consider what the evidence is telling us. Yet in both these cases, we see not only that people have a tendency to close ranks when they feel threatened, but also that they tend to undervalue counter-evidence. They also don't think clearly about how they'll make a region safer after war winds down.
America would have benefited from listening to dissenters after 9/11; instead, it silenced them. Israel — with support from its strongest ally, the US — is now making the same mistake.
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This is written by a Jew and there are some good points in the opinion.
The one that I agree with is that Israel has been moving to the right for a while. The forcing out of the West Bank and killing of Palestinians and Bedouins by ''settlers'' is, IMO doing Israel a lot of damage which will carry on into the future.
bibi has more enemies in israel than he does in gaza.
Will he survive after the war is over? From what I've been reading, no he won't but that has been said many times before and he is still PM.
We all know how unpredictable Israeli politics is, but from the talk I've been hearing is that he may not even survive the war. Western government aides are reaching out to multiple people forging ties in the event Netanyahu is ousted.
Interesting, EO.
I'll be posting an article later on the subject.
Any criticism of Israeli politics is instantly classified as antisemitic. Now one is likely to be branded as supporting terrorism too. We went through the same thing after 9/11 (freedom fries and patriot toast anyone?).
And with the invasion of Iraq.
I lumped Afghanistan and Iraq all together as it wall all part of the same move. The Bush war hawks used the pretext of Afghanistan to initiate their failed ME politics. If they had large military bases in Afghanistan and then in Iraq they could book end Iran and dominate the region for generations. They just made shit worse.
"Never get involved in a land war in Asia."
Vizzini - The Princess Bride
“If Saddam Hussein is still there five years from now, we are in big trouble,” Biden told a crowd of 400 Delaware National Guard officers that month at the annual Officers Call event.
“It would be unrealistic, if not downright foolish, to believe we can claim victory in the war on terrorism if Saddam is still in power,” Biden sai
“There is overwhelming support for the proposition that Saddam Hussein should be removed from power,” Biden said in March 2002.
“Dialogue with Saddam is useless,” Biden said.
Determining Hussein’s intentions was “like reading the entrails of goats,” Biden told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and what mattered more was Hussein’s ability to use WMDs, whatever those intentions might be. He pointed to testimony in the July hearings to argue it was clear that Iraq had such weapons.
“We have no choice but to eliminate the threat,” he said. “This is a guy who’s an extreme danger to the world.”
But Biden doesn't work in this case since he wasn't President at the time and the Bush Administration gave false information to Congress.
Congress overwhelming voted for the war with Iraq and now decades later they saw what a CF it was.
I could never understand why we were invading Iraq, it made no sense from any standpoint but when the war drums are beating and the lies are flying, Johnny Get Your Gun.
Biden led the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Don't forget, the Clinton administration, first insisted that Iraq had successfully concealed or re-launched its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs in 1997. He then ordered a massive four-day bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998.
Clinton was supported by Minority Leader Tom Daschle, John Kerry, Carl Levin, and others who signed a letter in October 1998 — urging the president “to take necessary actions, including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspected Iraqi sites, to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.” Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was repeatedly making statements regarding Iraq’s possession of WMDs, even justifying the enormous humanitarian toll from the U.S.-led economic sanctions on Iraq on the grounds that “Saddam Hussein has . . . chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction.”
Sen Joseph Leiberman sent a letter to President Bush in December 2001 declaring that “There is no doubt that … Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs” and that Iraq’s “biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status.”
Wasn't it Bill's pillow talk that Caused Hillary to vote to give Bush II the green light.
Did he give the orders to invade?
Did Clinton give the order to invade?
Yes, and when anyone criticized it they were called unpatriotic.
They were all wrong on the intel and they learned nothing from Russia's invasion of Afghanistan.
War is big business. Didn't the number of 'contractors' in Iraq outnumbered the miliary at one time?
That is correct.
No, he preferred bombing and starvation:
SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: Good afternoon. We have been very active in explaining our actions in Iraq and securing support around the world for the military campaign now underway. In the last 24 hours, our ambassadors around the world have personally engaged host governments in clarifying our reasons for resorting to military force. In Washington, we are briefing every foreign mission on the reasons we've undertaken this action. Since yesterday I have personally contacted over 20 foreign leaders and the Secretary General of the United Nations to discuss the situation. The response has been gratifying.
In my calls to the Arab leaders, I found a full understanding of why we have undertaken military action. Most expressed the view that Saddam Hussein is entirely responsible for the military strike now underway, due to his refusal to take advantage of the final chance offered him in November to begin full and unconditional cooperation with the United Nations weapons inspectors.
They also understand that we have given diplomacy every possible chance to work. They know we have resorted to this action because Saddam Hussein has left us no other choice. Like us, they are concerned for the welfare of the Iraqi people. They, too, strongly support the massive United Nations humanitarian program in Iraq, of which the United States was one of the chief authors. They know that we are exercising every effort to avoid civilian casualties in this operation. There have been a few critical public comments, but the reaction so far serves to underscore how isolated Saddam is in the Arab world.
"We have heard that half a million [Iraqi] children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima," Stahl said. "And, you know, is the price worth it?"
"I think that is a very hard choice," Albright answered, "but the price, we think, the price is worth it."
Me, neither. There's a good movie either on Netflix or Prime that stars Woody Harrelson and James Marsden as 2 Reuters (I think)** reporters who dug deep into the invasion of Iraq and found that it was all based on lies. I have wiki the movie
The movie is called "Shock and Awe:
**They worked for Knight-Ridder not Reuters
The Army has always used contractors. It's reliance on then significantly grew during the Clinton drawdown with his deployments to Bosnia and Kosovo and contiued in the CENTCOM AO to this day.
If I remember correctly we had a massive amount of contractors in both Iraq and Afghan, twice as many as military.
It was Trump who pardoned 4 US contractors who had been convicted of the murder of Iraq civilians.
Enough finger pointing back to the subject.
And I've always opposed the use. From combat contractors to mechanical contractors - why do we have a standing military if all we're going to do in the end is pay companies to do the miltary's job?
Reducer the number of military cooks allows and increase of infantry. The Army also can't compete against corporate salaries for very technically trained specialties. After investing the time and money in training a military specialist, he/she leaves for higher pay.
Good, decent people are absolutely not anti-semitic. Why would anyone be anti-semitic, Jews are no different than any other human beings in this world who organize themselves around ethnicity, culture , or religion. Of course over the course of century after century Jews have been singled out for well, persecution , of different levels of severity at different times. Centuries of anti-semitism inevitably requires that any issue in which Jews are in the center of has to be approached with a sensitivity that perhaps is not applied to other conflicts and controversies. It is horrible that these distinctions have to be applied, but it has gone on for so long now that it is unrealistic to think it can be different (at least not now, maybe future generations will do better).
What you say is true, for some people no criticism of Israel can ever be justified and such criticism is called anti-semitism.
Netanyahu is anti-Arab.
Far-right anti-Arab party joins proposed Netanyahu coalition in Israel | Israel | The Guardian
Nothing justifies what Hamas did and they must be punished with, hopefully, death, but at the same time Israel cannot continue on with a far right government that abuses Palestinians rights and expect to escape criticism.
The article is about the crackdown on opposing opinion, we have done it as provided above and Israel is doing it and IMO it hurts the cause of the group doing the crackdown.
Thoughts please.
I'm all for free speech even speech I don't agree with. Israel used to be more progressive. Free speech and all that. If Bibi keeps up with his anti-Arab bullshit he will have the world turn against him.
What is happening in the West Bank is not going to win Bibi any fans.