A series of letters has recently been exchanged between the South African Board of Jewish Deputies (SAJBD) and the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI). In their letters the SAJBD accuses the FXI of having been “consistently exploited as a propaganda vehicle by those with a transparently pro-Islamist and anti-Israel (as well as a general anti-Western) agenda.”
The hostile and antagonistic tone of the FXI’s replies leave me convinced that these supposed guardians of freedom of expression in South Africa have been completely hi-jacked by a radical Palestinian agenda…an agenda formulated by those who seek the destruction of Israel as their ultimate goal.
The letters are far too long-winded and detailed for me to summarise (interestingly the FXI no longer claim that they are not ‘mindless bubbleheads’) but there are a couple of key issues that deserve comment. (You can read all the letters at the FXI website).
The FXI’s anti-Israel policy has been in existence for a long time but it received renewed focus following the SA Jewish Report’s refusal to publish a hate filled Ronnie Kasrils article. The FXI strongly condemned the SAJR’s “censorious” behaviour.
A few weeks later however, the FXI silently condoned intimidation tactics used by Palestinian lobby groups that prevented a series of lectures on the Middle East from taking place in South Africa.
The lectures were to be held by veteran anti-Apartheid activist, Benjamin Pogrund, and Palestinian peace and democracy campaigner, Walid Salem. Former FXI chairman, Salim Vally, forced Walid Salem into cancelling his trip with the typical threats that radical anti-peace Palestinian groups exert on Palestinians who encourage dialogue with Israel.
Vally was able to intimidate Salem by threatening to cause him great ‘embarrassment’; he went so far as to directly call on Salem to cancel his trip – all this because Salem was to share a platform with a Zionist (even though Pogrund is a very left wing Zionist who even the left wing Guardian newspaper finds time for). Vally wrote
Perhaps the best option would be for you to cancel this trip completely. Certainly your speaking on the same platform as a Zionist like Benjamin Pogrund will not endear you to the vast majority of Palestinian solidarity activists and other social justice activists in South Africa who support the Palestinian cause. |
By defending Vally’s position the FXI is tacitly endorsing the censoring of the views of the majority of Jewish South Africans who identify themselves as Zionists.
In their second letter to the SAJBD the FXI state
You state as fact that “legitimate debate” was suppressed by Salim Vally; we disputed that and stand by our position. Further, the notion that Vally’s comment to Walid Salem is a censorious act needs to be placed within the context of a struggle for self-determination of a people fighting against occupation and racism. |
In other words, they are using their anti-Israel prejudices to justify their support for the censoring of the Pogrund-Salem co-existence seminars. They then self righteously justify their anti-Israel prejudices by laying claim to a position of absolute authority regarding human rights abuses around the world.
Their twisted absolutist positions allow them to justify any hypocrisy even those that fly in the face of the mandate that underpins the very existence of their organisation – “to protect and foster the rights to freedom of expression and access to information, and to oppose censorship.”
An example is their refusal to condemn calls for the boycotting of Israeli academics even though this would prevent dialogue, effectively censoring all Israeli academics. They take this stand because they regard it as a “legitimate tactic in the struggle against oppression and occupation.”
I doubt whether they would support calls for boycotts of real repressive regimes that exercise iron fisted control over the right to freedom of expression. They would need to look no further than Israel’s neighbours in the Middle East to find real examples of states that deprive a large number of people of their freedom of speech. They need look no further than those they claim to defend. The Freedom House Press Freedom rankings for 2006 score Israel as the only Middle East country with a free and independent press. The Palestinian Authority comes in second last rated with a rating of ‘not free’.
They can also look at Israel’s most threatening enemy Iran, which has been described as having adopted "one of the world's most substantial Internet censorship regimes," according to the Open Net Initiative, a partnership of researchers from Harvard, Cambridge University, and the University of Toronto.
One last point that deserves mention is the way the FXI’ lust for having things both ways. Responding to accusations that they failed to release formal press statements following the Mohammed cartoon controversy on our local shores (they claim that they didn’t have enough time to issue a statement) they state
You casually mention that “Ms Duncan and Mr Jeenah, in the course of media interviews, condemned the court ruling”. In fact, this point was not a by-the-way thing for the FXI; this was the crux of our commentary on the matter. We repeatedly said that we believed the judge was wrong and the interdict should not have been granted and that the interdict was a blow against media freedom. We also criticised the organisation that applied for the interdict for its censorious behaviour. |
The FXI did oppose the state interdict censoring the publication of the cartoons but they still argued in favour of the censorship of the cartoon by editors as this report confirms
However Jeenah says with press freedom comes a responsibility not to incite violence and therefore the cartoons should not be published. "We expect that editors exercise that decision making power in a manner that takes into consideration ethical concerns and within that context publication of cartoons that portray the leader of Muslims as a terrorist is in fact that incitement to violence and as I say it is less to do with freedom of expression and more to do with a hate speech issue," he added. |
Not all of the cartoons portrayed Mohammed as a terrorist and the cartoon run by the Mail & Guardian was one of the pareve (neutral) cartoons.
The FXI has repeatedly stated that they define hate speech as speech which will result in imminent physical harm (by their own admission a much narrower definition than most other international free speech organization and even the South African constitutional court ). They therefore claim that the Ronnie Kasrils comparison of Israel to the Nazis is not hate speech because it can’t be proven that Kasril’s slur incites people to physical violence.
Yet their fork tongued approach to these issues then allows them to claim that the Mohammed cartoons were hate speech! Can the FXI honestly argue that the publication of the Mohammed cartoons would have resulted in imminent physical harm? Did the cartoon published by the Mail & Guardian result in any physical harm?
They argue that in the context of the Mohammed cartoons, editors should consider ‘ethical concerns’ and refrain from publishing the cartoons. Alarmingly this argument flies in the face of their serpentine condemnation of the SAJR editor. Different standards for different people?
Their warped logic takes on a creepy “some animals are more equal than others” feel: Where interest groups sharing their ideological worldviews are offended, limiting freedom of expression is a legitimate ethical exercise of decision making power; when Jews (or Americans) are offended, limiting freedom of expression is nothing more than a repressive and iron fisted form of censorship.
Its time to end this ‘debate’ with the FXI. It’s going nowhere. I really hope the SAJBD don’t respond with another letter. It’s already denigrated into a childish spat.
It is impossible to reconcile the FXI’s potion on free speech with that of the SABJD (and us for that matter). For the FXI the greatest evil is power differentials in relationships. Thus viewed through their Leftist prism and their experience in fighting Apartheid, they believe that these differentials are the greatest threat to Free speech. So all people, institutions and governments that they perceive as not only powerful but also willing to use that power to their own advantage such as America, Israel, big business, the Jewish lobby etc are by definition the enemies of free speech. And it follows from this that any actions no matter how undemocratic to redress these power imbalances are done in the promotion of free speech. So using this warped logic, Salim Vally’s campaign to prevent the co-existence lecture tour is in fact an act of defending free speech. For his enforcement of the anti-Israel boycott weakens the Israeli state and thus in some way tries to diminish its perceived power over the Palestinian people. The problem of course is the subjective nature of who is powerful and who is weak.
That said I still believe that we should engage with the FXI. I would for example be interested to hear their views on the Iranian Holocaust denial circus. Is Iran and David Duke the victims or the oppressors in this one? I again extend ms Duncan the opportunity to debate these issues here on Its Almost Supernatural. I cant understand why she has until now not accepted our invitations.
Posted by: Mike | December 14, 2006 at 15:22
Because these people are not interested in open discussion , they just want to spit venom against Israel and her supporters , unchallenged.
Their arguments are based on pure hate and cannot stand up to rational debate.
Posted by: Gary | December 14, 2006 at 19:17