Anti-Israel Violence Does Not Justify Censorship of Pro-Palestinian Speech

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2 days ago

American supporters of Israel, many of them affiliated with the political right, are using recent episodes of appalling violence against Jews as an excuse to push an agenda of censorship. In fact, they are deploying several familiar rhetorical arguments against pro-Palestinian speech, including that it is hateful, indistinguishable from violence, or constitutes misinformation.
These arguments ought to be especially familiar to conservatives since they were—and still are—routinely cited by the mainstream media, liberal advocacy groups, and Democratic politicians who want to quelch conservative speech. In the name of protecting Jewish people, Republicans are now endorsing arguments against free speech that have become the hallmark of the woke left.
Take, for instance, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who wrote in a recent statement that "reckless and irresponsible reporting by major U.S. news outlets are contributing to the antisemitic climate." Huckabee was referring to media reports on the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) reportedly firing on Gazans and killing a large number of people; the IDF has admitted to shooting at the Gazans, but did not confirm whether there were any casualties, whereas the Hamas-run ministry of health reported 27 deaths. While the underlying facts might still be in dispute, this is irrelevant to the actual argument being made: Huckabee's contention is that the very act of reporting the story is an example of the media spreading anti-Semitism and inspiring violence against Jews abroad.
Of course, these arguments are indistinguishable from those made by campus progressives who want censorship of inflammatory speech because they think it will inspire violence against various identity groups: people of color, women, trans people, gays, and so on. The conflation of words and violence, a long-running practice of those who wanted safe spaces, trigger warnings, and microaggression policing, is on full display.
Violence against Jews is real, and ought to be prevented. Sadly, the U.S. witnessed two violent attacks on Jewish people in the past month. A horrific assault in Boulder, Colorado, this week involved a man chanting "Free Palestine" and using improvised incendiary devices to set fire to a dozen Jewish people. The alleged attacker, an Egyptian national, 45-year-old Mohamed Sabry Soliman, is being charged with a hate crime, and also attempted murder. His motivations are not a mystery; Soliman told police he wished to "kill all Zionist people," and targeted a group of Jewish demonstrators who advocate the release of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.
No one was killed in the Boulder attack, though several people were injured. A separate attack in Washington, D.C., last month, however, resulted in the deaths of two Israeli embassy staffers—an engaged couple. They were shot dead by a man who had also shouted "Free Palestine." The suspect, Elias Rodriguez, appears to harbor anti-Israel views.
The perpetrators of these terrible crimes should be brought to justice, and anyone who defends their actions—or violence of any kind—should be harshly condemned. No one who opposes the Israeli government's war on Gaza should embrace retaliatory violence as a sound method of persuasion. Killing innocent people is always wrong. While most pro-Palestinian advocacy in America is peaceful, it is nevertheless true that some aspects of the anti-Israeli movement on college campuses have tacitly endorsed violence against Israel or made excuses for the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 6. National Students for Justice in Palestine, for instance, described that dark day as an "historic win for the Palestinian resistance." Such a statement was both morally abominable and profoundly misguided: What followed that "historic win" was a campaign of destruction in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of people.
But with respect to the two attacks, the responsible parties are the perpetrators, not pro-Palestinian activism writ large, or skeptical coverage of the Israeli government.
Again, this is obvious to conservatives when the perpetrator of some violent episode is somehow tangentially associated with right wing media, conservative causes, or President Donald Trump. Conservatives were correct to protest mainstream media headlines that treated Cesar Sayoc—a deranged man who mailed bombs to Democrats, media figures, and other critics of Trump—as some inevitable outgrowth of Fox News, or explicitly blamed Tucker Carlson for the actions of the Buffalo shooter. Unfortunately, when the shoe is on the other foot, they just can't help themselves; Vice President J.D. Vance, for instance, directly linked the July 2024 assassination attempt on Trump to anti-Trump rhetoric coming from the left.
Ironically, one of the figures who was previously most inclined to call for the suppression of conservative speech was Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. He called on Fox News to fire Carlson, and helped to organize an advertiser boycott of X after Elon Musk acquired the social media site and ended its heavy-handed moderation policies regarding extreme and hateful content. Today, Greenblatt is seeking to deploy similar tactics against Israel critics on the left; he recently called on the Trump administration to action against social media influencers and speakers who spout anti-Jewish and anti-Israel talking points.
Social media sites, media organizations, and private universities are welcome, of course, to take aggressive action to combat anti-Semitism; they are even free, in their capacities as private organizations, to deter speech that is critical of Israel. The cause of fighting anti-Semitism is undermined, however, when it is conflated with mere criticism of Israel's government.
Non-liberals who remain hypervigilant about government-initiated censorship on social media, on college campuses, and elsewhere, must not succumb to the temptation to say that pro-Palestinian expression will inevitably cause real-world violence, and should be suppressed on this basis. The crackdown—not on violence, but on free speech—being perpetrated by the Trump administration, not merely with the permission but also the encouragement of much of the conservative movement, is an ill-advised betrayal of fundamental first principles.
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