Cancel Palestine?

ISRAEL: Western media and academic think tanks lose no opportunity to lecture the developing world about ‘freedom of speech, expression and ideas’, but Israel’s war on the people of Gaza has blown the cover off their holier-than-thou hypocrisy. In the 10 weeks since the war began, there have been dozens of instances in the US and Western Europe of challenging voices being shut out of the one-sided debate on what is being framed as ‘Israel’s right to defend itself’ rather than as ‘Palestinian children’s right to life’. The campaign has cut a wide swathe across the West’s fabled institutions—cultural, academic, media—and the smothered voices include a variety of personalities—journalists, activists, celebrities, thinkers, economists, students.

The fact that the ruses in each case have been thin betrays the midlife crisis of the West. Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon was dropped—and made to apologise—by her agency for attending rallies in support of Palestine and saying American Jews, who are feeling insecure in the context of worldwide criticism of Israel, are now “getting a taste of how it feels to be Muslim in America.” In Germany, the Indian art historian Ranjit Hoskote had to resign from his role in the prestigious art exhibition Documenta for having signed, in 2019, a petition critical of Israel’s policy in the occupied territories. Rock icon Roger Waters, formerly of Pink Floyd and a longtime supporter of Palestine, was shut out of hotels in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay for giving interviews critical of Israel on social media.

Right from the dawn of Oct. 7, liberal as well as conservative media have been at the forefront of framing the issue as one bereft of any context other than the terror strikes by Hamas in southern Israel. News anchors of all the major western mainstream TV networks insisted on securing from their interviewees, including Palestinian spokesmen, a prior condemnation of Hamas before allowing them to express their opinion on Israel’s actions. The BBC suspended six of its Arabic service staffers for questioning its presentation of the issue. The Guardian sacked its cartoonist Steve Bell for drawing a cartoon depicting Benjamin Netanyahu carving the map of Israel on his own stomach. The newspaper said it espied a reference to Shakespeare’s Shylock in the cartoon while Bell was only paying tribute to a hero of his.

Bordering on the ridiculous, Playboy (formerly a laddie magazine), terminated its relationship with adult entertainer Mia Khalifa, for tweeting in support of the militant outfit. Khalifa had been outspoken in her views on Israel even before the Oct 7 attacks, and she’s Lebanese to boot.

The great media crackdown in the West has taken place in publications that have nothing to do with the Israel-Palestine conflict. Even editors of non-political academic journals have been sacked for expressing their views on their own social media platforms. The editor-in-chief of eLife, an academic science journal was removed for a Twitter post that said, “Zionism is a racist ideology”. A sports writer for Philly Voice was dismissed after tweeting that “Israel is an apartheid state”.

The latest iteration of cancel culture is even more bizarre. The presidents of Harvard, Claudine Gay, and University of Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Magill, have been raked over the coals not for what they said, but for what they didn’t. There were expected to say in their testimonies to the US Congress that the students protesting in support of Palestine were in fact supporters of genocide.