Steve Apfel is a veteran authority on anti-Zionism. His voluminous works, published over two decades, are a discovery of new perspectives. His latest book “Hitlers at Heart” is at this moment at the mercy of publishers.
In a world turned red hot for Jews the time seems ripe to ban, for their own safety, a phrase of political geography. However, no matter how dire the circumstances, clamping down on speech is quite out of character for Jewish libertarian values. Meta nonetheless humoured the petition. To widespread dismay and disgust, the Oversight Board made a ruling on September 4, 2024. The slogan “From the river to the sea” it said, did not violate company policies on hate speech, violence or incitement. “Simply removing political speech is not a solution.”
Note the barely disguised backhander, “political speech”. What Jews consider a deadly threat Meta dismissed as cheap politicking. By this failed attempt, Jews for suppression of speech entered the culture war as the latest vulnerable group offended by a provoking slogan.
Communal bodies reacted with scorn. “The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) protested that calls for the destruction of the Jews’ homeland were “genocidal in intent and meaning.” The word “intent” is the very devil – totalitarian Stalin and Mao had it in their playbook; “thought crimes” were punishable with gulag exile or death. Ignorant of the yucky association, Arsen Ostrovsky the CEO of the Israeli International Legal Forum, felt bitterly disillusioned.
“There can be no equivocation that this phrase, especially in the wake of October 7, is a genocidal call for the elimination of the Jewish state. The fact that some might interpret it differently is irrelevant. Its vast interpretation has come to mean a rallying-call for the destruction of Israel and used to incite violence against Jews abroad, especially on campuses in America. Meta is essentially legitimizing calls for the destruction of Israel and abetting the incitement to violence against Jews”.
Acclaimed novelist Salman Rushdie knows about religion driven censorship better than anyone. He got a fatwa death sentence for writing an offensive book, Satanic Verses. “There's now a kind of offense industry,” he lately said. “Offense has become an aspect of identity politics. My view is it's very easy for a book to stop offending you. You just shut it."
A different angle of this idea submits that, “The only valid censorship is the right of people not to listen.” Trusting censorship to safeguard people can be, says Rushdie, a slippery slope. It can and has been – unforeseen consequences are legendary.
Far from impeding the spread of National Socialist ideology, censorship handed Hitler a public relations coup. His party claimed it was being targeted for “exposing the international conspiracy to suppress “true” Germans. As one poster explained: Why is Adolf Hitler not allowed to speak? Because he is ruthless in uncovering the rulers of the German economy, the international bank Jews and their lackeys, the Democrats, Marxists, Jesuits, and Free Masons! Because he wants to free the workers from the domination of big money!”
In a 1920s cartoon Hitler is depicted as having his mouth sealed with tape that reads ‘forbidden to speak’ and beneath it: ‘He alone of two billion people on Earth may not speak in Germany.”
In a masterful book, Dangerous Ideas A Brief History of Censorship in the West, from the Ancients to Fake News, Eric Berkowitz traces the tendency of censorship to backfire. Banning information only made it more popular.
Would the Jewish case to ban “From the river to the sea” be stronger if it referenced the Rwandan genocide? Not according to Berkowitz. Rwandan speech wasn’t free to begin with. Radio stations were not permitted to operate without government approval, and when the killing started radio was manipulated to egg it on. He concludes that Rwanda was not an example of what happens when hate speech is permitted. Incitement to genocide he points out, “is not protected in the United States, or anywhere, and would be deemed part of a criminal conspiracy to commit mass murder.”
The chance of banning “From the river to the sea” would be nil in South Africa under an ‘anything goes” constitution. Black parties adopted two songs for their political rallies: “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer” and “One settler one bullet”. In August 2022 The Equality Court in Johannesburg ruled that the songs were not hate speech. Jews for censorship would be advised to learn a salutary lesson from the court’s ruling.
“The broad principle of freedom of expression is tolerance of different views. Society has a duty to allow and be tolerant of both popular and unpopular views of its members,” said the court. “They were used during the apartheid era when black policeman abused people in black townships. The chants referred to the oppressive state in the context of struggle.”
Could not an argument in similar vein be made by anti-Israel movements? “From the river to the sea” they might slyly argue, refers to the ‘oppressive state of Israel in the context of the Palestinian Arab struggle.’
The specious arguments against Meta declining to censor the slogan did nothing but dent, if it hadn’t been dented enough, the credibility of the ADL and other Jewish bodies.
Human rights law attorney Yifa Segal asked what would happen if, “There was a call for genocide against Native Americans, African Americans, or Palestinians? Would such a policy be allowed socially, legally, or constitutionally? I think we all know the answer to that. Allowing a call for genocide against Jews can only be described as an antisemitic policy.”
What makes the comparison invalid is obvious: she had not asked Meta to ban a call for genocide on Jews; she had asked it to ban a fuzzy slogan. It boils down to the unpalatable truth that what may be offensive to one party may not be offensive to another or, as the saying goes, ‘one man’s meat is another’s poison’.
I’m not suggesting giving Meta a free pass. I’m saying that taking the censorship route is like taking a heavy hammer to crack an egg. A more appropriate and effective act would be trapping Mark Zuckerberg into revealing Meta’s anti-Zionist bias by, for example posting on a platform the inviolate truth that so called ‘Palestinian Arab territory’ is a creation unpacked as late as 1968 . If the post attracts a fact check and a warning then Segal would be ready to pin down Meta for double, antisemitic standards.
Free speech is the victim of culture war. Libertarian Jews are not defending this acme of civilisation, they are fighting it alongside anarchist Jew-hating groups. Good intentions are nice to have, except their outcomes can be bad. This truism is actually the title of a significant book. In “The Coddling of the American Mind. How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure.”
“Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising. How did this happen?”
How? Culprit number 1 was the culture of “safetyism”, evidenced by safe spaces on campus (and incidentally by the lockdowns and mandates imposed to beat Covid.) It interfered with the healthy development of a whole generation, hindering the growth path to responsible adulthood and the ability to “navigate the bumpy road of life.”
Kenneth Stern is another who can teach a thing or two about good intentions with bad outcomes. Stern is more than Director of the Bard Centre for the Study of Hate, he led the development of IHRA, the definition of antisemitism adopted by governments and the mainstream Jewish world. Stern is that true liberal who wants the most deplorable speech to be protected, not punished. Making the definition into law, he fears, will be used to censor speech And so it did.
A cornerstone of liberty is the freedom to say or write the first thing that comes to mind. Will prohibiting or punishing ‘antisemitic speech’ be worth a permanent loss of liberty? Will it make Jews more popular, or will banning “From the river to the sea” light a bonfire under antisemitism?