This is why, as a genocide continues unabated in Gaza, we all have a responsibility to insert ‘Palestine’ and ‘Palestinians’ into every conversation.
Last month on the BBC’s flagship news programme, Newsnight, author and journalist Howard Eric Jacobson complained that Britain’s public broadcaster had been showing too many images of Palestinian suffering in Gaza. He added that in televising Palestinian suffering in this way, BBC was “taking a side” and that while it was “agonising to see what is happening…there are reasons for it”.
And this was hardly the first expression of this sentiment. A few weeks prior, a discussion was under way on the professional networking platform LinkedIn on whether there were “too many Israel/Palestine posts” on the site and whether this should change. Many responded that it should – they wanted people to stop talking about Palestinians being starved, bombed and buried under the rubble.
It may seem odd that people like Jacobson are acknowledging the massive levels of suffering in Gaza, but in the same breath demanding the world hears less about it.
But this is not at all surprising. Censorship has always been a necessary complement of genocide.
With the ongoing genocide in Gaza, efforts to silence those who have sought to raise the alarm have taken a variety of forms.
A lot has been said and written about Israel’s refusal to allow foreign journalists to enter freely into Gaza to cover the genocide and its targeted attacks on Palestinian journalists there who risk life and limb to show the world the reality of what is being done to their people. But even the journalists who are thousands of miles away from the Palestinian enclave have been punished for daring to talk about the genocide.
Last December, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) sacked presenter Antoinette Lattouf for re-sharing a Human Rights Watch (HRW) post claiming that “Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza”. The ABC had itself reported on the HRW claim, which has since been repeated by the United Nations. Lattouf, believed to be the first Arab-Australian woman to work as a reporter on commercial television, says she fears the ABC buckled under pressure from pro-Israel groups who had been accusing her of “anti-Semitism and bias” due to her support for Palestinian rights and criticism of Israel since she was first hired. She is suing the ABC for unfair dismissal.
Throughout this genocide, teachers and university professors across the world who tried to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians have also been silenced. An Israeli teacher was fired from his job, arrested, and placed in solitary confinement for criticising the actions of Israel’s military. Meir Baruchin’s only “crime” was a Facebook post he made the day after Hamas’s attack on Israel that said: “Horrific images are pouring in from Gaza. Entire families were wiped out … Anyone who thinks this is justified because of what happened yesterday, should unfriend themselves. I ask everyone else to do everything possible to stop this madness. Stop it now. Not later, Now!!!”
And earlier this month, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem suspended Law Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, for criticising Israel’s war on Gaza and Zionism in general.
The silencing of teachers and university lecturers has not been limited to Israel, either. In November in the United States, the University of Arizona (UA) “temporarily replaced” Assistant Professor Rebecca Lopez and Community Liaison Rebecca Zapien for facilitating a classroom discussion on Israel’s war on Gaza. Pro-Israel groups claimed that their lecture was “biased, antisemitic, blatantly false and terrorism-supporting”. Two first-grade teachers at a Los Angeles-area public charter school were also placed on leave after posting on social media about a lesson they taught on “the genocide in Palestine”.
Politicians and civil servants, in Israel and in countries backing Israel’s war on Gaza, are also not immune to such censorship.
In January, Ofer Cassif, a member of Israel’s Knesset from the left-wing Hadash-Ta’al party, announced his intention to join South Africa in its legal proceedings against Israel brought under the UN Genocide Convention. In response to Cassif’s decision to support South Africa’s genocide case, 85 Israeli members of parliament (out of 120) accused him of “treason” and signed a petition to expel him from the Knesset.
The efforts to censor and intimidate anyone and everyone who speaks up against Israel’s genocide in Gaza are undoubtedly distressing, but they are in no way surprising. A look at global history reveals that such silencing of critical voices has helped create a permissive environment for mass atrocities, and the worst atrocity of all, genocide, since at least a century.
Read about the mass atrocities before the current Israeli mass atrocities in Gaza in the following article:
Kelley writes that the phrase was adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organization in the mid-1960s; the 1964 charter of the PLO’s Palestinian National Council called for “the recovery of the usurped homeland in its entirety”. The 1964 charter stated that “Jews who are of Palestinian origin shall be considered Palestinians if they are willing to live peacefully and loyally in Palestine”, specifically defining “Palestinian” as those who had “normally resided in Palestine until 1947”.(From the river to the sea - Wikipedia) In the 1968 revision, the charter was further revised, stating that “Jews who had resided normally in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion” would be considered Palestinian.
In 1977, the concept appeared in an election manifesto of the Israeli political party Likud, which stated that “between the sea and the Jordan there will be only Israeli sovereignty.”
Israeli lawmakers passed a law on Monday allowing the government to temporarily shutter foreign media outlets that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has determined undermine the country’s national security, and the Israeli leader said he would use the new law to block Al Jazeera broadcasts and activities in Israel.
Mr. Netanyahu’s government has had a tense relationship with Al Jazeera for years, but the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7 escalated tensions. Mr. Netanyahu has called Al Jazeera a “Hamas mouthpiece.”
On Monday, the prime minister said it was time for the Qatar-based network, one of the most widely viewed sources of television news in the Arab world, to stop broadcasting in Israel, although he did not specify when that would happen.
“The terrorist channel Al Jazeera will no longer broadcast from Israel. I intend to act immediately in accordance with the new law to stop the channel’s activity,” Mr. Netanyahu posted on X, while recovering from hernia surgery.
I have longed watched al jazeera, regularly cautiously, so as to have some triangulation from my other sources. AJ often proves better informed than their competition.
No need to censor them. There is no reporting on Arab governance flaws. No one cares.
Strip women of rights. Strip gays of rights. Strip men of rights. Strip economies down for the military leadership. Strip militants down from the Muslim Brotherhood just lock them up.
Jordan is the only exception. Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood. Why say a word about Hamas at all?
American youth must think Arabs have no complaints. Other than scapegoating Jews couched in very different terms. The American youth does not know s/he is deemed the devil to be converted or better yet executed by some in some quarters.
We must be to blame. Not the Israelis the Americans must be to blame. If only we listened to those nice American Muslims on how we can undermine Israel.
Is America next to undermine? Do not say it that way. Just get rid of anyone who is not nice except for the Arab rulers.
What if Arab governance is never reported on and younger American think everything smells so wonderful?