Censorship and Cancellation Fail to Camouflage the Ugly Truth

Dana Abuqamar, the 19-year-old president of the University of Manchester’s Friends of Palestine Society, reacting to the events of October 7th, 2023, said:

Israel is an oppressive regime. Israel is an apartheid, racist, colonial state. It tortures, it brutalizes, it terrorizes Palestinians, furthering its policy of fragmentation of the Palestinian people. 2 million Palestinians, enclaving them into a small strip of land with little to no access to clean water, to food, to life saving medicine, to electricity … yesterday Gaza broke free … Gaza broke out of prison.

British authorities claimed that Abuqamar supported Hamas and was therefore a proponent of terrorism; they revoked her student visa on “national security” grounds, noting that she was a “risk to public safety.” Her case, n. HU/64191/2023, is ongoing, and Oxford Professor Emeritus Avi Shlaim, a British-Israeli historian, has been tasked with presenting an expert report on her behalf.

Abuqamar is only one of many UK-based activists who have been called out as “antisemitic” or as supporters of terrorism. Shahd Abusalama, a Palestinian from Gaza who grew up in the Jabaliya refugee camp, eventually obtained her PhD at Sheffield Hallam University, where she began teaching as an Associate Lecturer. She was quickly singled out for her tweets defending Palestinian human rights. “As a high-profile Palestinian artist, author and campaigner for Palestinian rights, I became the target of the Israel lobby in the UK.” Abusalama was accused, investigated and exonerated by SHU, only to eventually find herself hounded out of her job. In a recent piece for Eurozine, she writes:

In the US and across Europe, far-right politics are on the rise…The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians would not be able to continue without western military, diplomatic and ideological support, reflected in biased mainstream media that favor Israeli narratives and systematically silence Palestinians.

A British citizen, Shahd Abusalama has since joined her recently displaced Gazan family in Barcelona. She says that she was traumatized by her years in the UK, where immigration authorities refused her entreaties to help get her endangered parents and a brother out of Gaza during the worst of it.

When Hebrew University of Jerusalem lecturer Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian spoke out against Israel’s assault on Gaza, following the events of October 7th, she was arrested on suspicion of “inciting terrorism.” Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a respected feminist scholar, was suspended from teaching in March, following her participation in a Makdisi Street podcast, in which she expressed doubts about Israel’s official version of the events of October 7th, including the claims of widespread rape and beheaded babies. Hebrew University reinstated her two weeks later, but it is clear that her right to speak freely in wartime Israel has been severely hampered. As of this writing, Shalhoub-Kevorkian has apparently left her job at Hebrew U.

In the US, professors Danny Shaw and Maura Finkelstein were dismissed from their jobs for calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, as was Philadelphia-based Rabbi Lonnie Kleinman. In an opinion piece, Shaw wrote:

After 18 years teaching at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, I have been fired…this heavy-handed action represents a grave threat to academic freedom and the autonomy of university departments to hire and fire their professors. I have had the honor of teaching thousands of students at John Jay College since the spring of 2007. I was fired because of my outspokenness about the United States and Israel’s ongoing genocide of the people of Gaza.

Maura Finkelstein, a tenured professor of anthropology at Muhlenburg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, defended the Palestinian right to self-determination, and criticized Israel as an apartheid regime. Ultimately, she too was fired from her position in May. In April, writing in TMR, she acknowledged that US academics were courting danger by openly supporting Palestinians and criticizing Israel’s vicious bombardment and starvation of Gaza.

It is worth quoting Finkelstein at length:

There is an ideological battle being waged within American academic institutions in the wake of October 7th, 2023: Does Zionism count as a protected class? Under most U.S. college and universities’ Equal Opportunity Nondiscrimination Policy, the list of protected classes includes, amongst its many categories, “national or ethnic origin.”  According to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, “national or ethnic origin” refers to a person who “comes from a particular place, has a particular accent, or appears to have a particular ethnic background.”

Zionism is a nationalist, political ideology invested in the establishment and enforcement of a Jewish state. Despite numerous discursive attempts to collapse the two, Zionism by definition is not synonymous with “Jewish” (an ethno-religious identity) or “Israeli” (a national origin). However, after the House passed a resolution in December equating antisemitism with anti-Zionism, Zionists have been emboldened to lodge complaints against those who are writing, teaching, and speaking out (notably, on social media) against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. To call for a ceasefire, to criticize Zionist ideology, to suggest that Israel is a racist settler colonial state, is — according to this argument — an attack on Zionists and therefore also an attack on Jewish people.

As reported in September in The Intercept, Finkelstein was fired only after a months-long crusade, in which she “was the subject of a campaign of thousands of anonymous, bot-generated emails sent every minute for over 24 hours to the school’s administrators — as well as local news outlets and politicians — demanding the professor’s removal and accusing her of ‘Jew hatred.’…A Change.org petition started in late October…called for Finkelstein’s firing over allegedly ‘pro-Hamas’ rhetoric; it gained over 8,000 signatures.”

Since losing her teaching position, Finkelstein has moved to Brooklyn with her partner and is embroiled in a legal battle with her former employer.

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), headquartered in Manhattan, has received a mountain of complaints and is now representing the case of Columbia law professor Katharine Franke, who has been accused by colleagues of support of Palestinians, thereby “creating a hostile environment” for Israeli and Jewish students on campus. Her CCR attorney, Kathleen Peratis, compared the case to similar represssion in the McCarthy era. “This is the Red Scare of our time, yet those who condemn the Red Scare of the 1950s are nevertheless repeating it today.” Peratis says that, “The complaint is without merit and reflects the climate of oppression and marginalization of Palestinians and their advocates.”

In France, dozens of peaceful protesters have been fined for displaying Palestinian flags. Writing in Mediapart in April, Edwy Planel explained that expressing “solidarity with Palestine has become a crime. Expressing it by speaking, writing or demonstrating is punishable by police summons, criminal conviction or prior banning.” A number of French activists have been summoned by the authorities for protest activities or social media statements on behalf of Palestinians.

The primary accusation? Being apologists for terrorism.

Mathilde Panot, president of La France Insoumise for the Assemblée National, was called into the Paris Préfecture in April. “This is the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic that a leader of an opposition group in the Assembly,” she said, “has been summoned for such a serious reason…on the basis of fallacious accusations.”

Journalist and activist Simone Assbague, who tweets @s_assbague, also received a police summons under the pretense that she was an apologist for terrorists, after posting a tweet explaining the settler-colonial nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — noting as many have that the conflict didn’t begin on October 7, 2023. In a video for Daily Motion, she articulates why France and so many other western countries are oppressing pro-Palestine speech. Israel, she argues, has aligned itself with western countries as a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism, Arab extremism and “terrorism,” particularly where Palestinian resistance is concerned. In the absence of a Palestinian state, and with further encroachment of Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank, resistance to apartheid and military occupation continues, under multiple banners, including by Hamas, but also other homegrown militant movements. Yet Israel has convinced the United States and its allies that they are all fighting the same enemy; Assbague argues these are all imperial powers who support Israel’s supremacist narrative.

Meanwhile, in Germany, the Federal Education and Research Ministry (in German, the BMBF) launched an investigation of academics in June, who voiced support for students who have protested against Israel’s assault on Gaza. “More than 100 Germany-based academics had signed an open letter protesting the authorities’ response towards pro-Palestinian student protesters during a demonstration at the Free University of Berlin on 7 May. The group accused the university administration of subjecting demonstrators to ‘police violence,’” reported the Middle East Monitor.

However, according to a July story in University World News, BMBF Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger has subsequently been called on to resign. “Pressure on Stark-Watzinger has been building up since it was revealed that senior officials at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) had started blacklisting academics who signed an open letter backing students’ right to peaceful protest and stressing fears of Israel commencing its bombardment of Rafah in the South of Gaza.”

Despite Germany’s support for Israel, including hundreds of millions of dollars in arms shipments, an August 2024 poll conducted by public broadcaster ARD found that 68% of Germans disapproved of military support for Israel, should its war spread to Lebanon or Iran.

Despite government censorship and pressure on those decrying the ethnic cleansing taking place in Gaza and the West Bank, millions of people worldwide continue to protest. According to ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data), many thousands of pro-Palestine demonstrations have taken place across the world. “Yemen has had the highest number, with 3,996 demonstrations, followed closely by the United States (3,656), Morocco (2,457), Turkey (1,598) and then Iran (1,121). There have also been demonstrations throughout Europe, East and Southeast Asia, in Australia, and scattered across sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America,” notes ACLED’s Kieran Doyle.

While criticizing Israel’s assault on Gaza has caused the censure of thousands of students and academics across the US and western Europe, others with plenty to lose have stepped up to the plate. Last month, for instance, a celebrity collective in Hollywood, Artists4Ceasefire, bravely called for an end to the war on Gaza, as reported in Variety. “Through a partnership with artist Shepard Fairey and several humanitarian organizations — including Oxfam America, ActionAid USA and War Child Alliance/Children in Conflict — the group has launched a call to action bearing the message ‘Ceasefire Now, Stop Weapons, Save Lives’ that urges the halt to what it says are ‘weapons transfers that violate U.S. and international law.’”

A year earlier, a different group of celebrities, numbering some 700, had signed an open letter condemning Hamas, in support of Israel and a return of the hostages. None of them faced any consequences or lost any work for parroting the mainstream view. In contrast, some celebrities who simply defend Palestinian humanity have been made to pay a price.

According to a story in The Evening Standard, “Melissa Barrera has reportedly been dropped from the Scream franchise for sharing her concern about the conflict that had emerged across Gaza,” which she called out as “genocide and ethnic cleansing.”

As well, actress and activist Susan Sarandon was reportedly dropped from her talent agency’s roster after participating in several pro-peace demonstrations in New York. The Oscar-winner wrote on her social media, “You don’t have to be Palestinian to care about what’s happening in Gaza. I stand with Palestine. No one is free until everyone is free.”

Fashion model Bella Hadid, daughter of the Palestinian American construction mogul Mohamed Hadid, said she has lost both jobs and friends as a result of her outspokenness on Gaza.

Early in the Gaza onslaught, dozens of celebrities signed a letter sent to Joe Biden, calling for a ceasefire, among them Cate Blanchett, America Ferrera, Bassem Youssef, Jon Stewart, Dua Lipa, Hasan Minhaj and Oscar Isaac. The list of names added to the online petition on Artists for Ceasefire Now has continued to grow. It now includes Jennifer Lopez, Ramy Youssef, Rosie O’Donnell, Ben Affleck and Viggo Mortensen, and dozens of others. The online petition notes that, “Since Oct 7th, more than 70,000* tons of bombs and missiles have been dropped on Gaza — resulting in one child being killed or injured* every 10 minutes” (*updated on October 1, 2024).

What Arab Americans have learned over the past year is that support for Israel and its assault on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank is ironclad. They have understood that the value of Arab lives in Palestine and now Lebanon is cheap. As Abdelrahman ElGendy wrote in the Washington Post in December, “As Arabs, we’re asking fundamental questions about our place in the world. We’re coming to understand that our disposability is not a failure of the world order; it’s one of its integral functions.”

ElGendy, like many of us, has come to understand that Arabs are expendable and disposable.

A year after October 7^th, it appears that Israel’s war against its neighbors will continue unhindered, with no post-war peace plan, and no force that can stop it, no matter how many of us line the streets in protest.