Why Seriously Free Speech?

New Video by the SERIOUSLY FREE SPEECH COMMITTEE


Over the last decade more and more people have started questioning the policies and actions of the State of Israel. In response, some of Israel’s supporters have increasingly tried to suppress open political debate of Palestine/Israel. This campaign to vilify, intimidate and harass Israel’s critics has intensified since December 2009 when live video showed Israel’s treatment of Palestinians during its military assault on Gaza.

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SFSC: What must be said – Poem by Gunter Grass, translation by Michael Keefer & Nica Mintz

What must be said

Günter Grass

Why have I kept silent, silent for too long
over what is openly played out
in war games at the end of which we
the survivors are at best footnotes.

It’s that claim of a right to first strike
against those who under a loudmouth’s thumb
are pushed into organized cheering—
a strike to snuff out the Iranian people
on suspicion that under his influence
an atom bomb’s being built.

But why do I forbid myself
to name that other land in which
for years—although kept secret—
a usable nuclear capability has grown
beyond all control, because
no scrutiny is allowed.

The universal silence around this fact,
under which my own silence lay,
I feel now as a heavy lie,
a strong constraint, which to dismiss
courts forceful punishment:
the verdict of “Antisemitism” is well known.

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Mondoweiss: Indigenous Studies Scholars defend UCLA Professor David Shorter and supporters of BDS

by Native American and Indigenous Studies Scholars, Mondoweiss May 4, 2012

An Open Letter from Native American and Indigenous Studies Scholars in defense of UCLA Professor David Shorter and other scholars who support the academic and cultural boycott of Israel
April 30, 2012

As Native American and Indigenous Studies scholars who endorse the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), we write in defense of our colleague Professor David Shorter. Shorter has been accused by representatives from the “AMCHA Initiative” of misusing campus resources for “the purpose of promoting the academic and cultural boycott of Israel” to students in his Winter 2012 course, “Tribal Worldviews” at UCLA. In its rhetoric, AMCHA equates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, a spurious equation wielded by those who seek to suppress open discussion of Israel and its state policies. Continue reading

AlJazeera: 39 ways to limit free speech

David Cole – Al Jazeera English, May 2, 2012

Is freedom of expression really free when the government can punish that expression because of its political content?

Washington, DC – Google “39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihad” and you’ll get over 590,000 hits. You’ll find full-text English language translations of this Arabic document on the Internet Archive, an internet library; on 4Shared Desktop, a file-sharing site; and on numerous Islamic sites. You will find it cited and discussed in a US Senate Committee staff report and Congressional testimony. Feel free to read it. Just don’t try to make your own translation from the original, which was written in Arabic in Saudi Arabia in 2003. Because if you look a little further on Google you will find multiple news accounts reporting that on April 12, a 29-year old citizen from Sudbury, Massachusetts named Tarek Mehanna was sentenced to 17 and a half years in prison for translating “39 Ways” and helping to distribute it online.  Continue reading

Mondoweiss: Israeli police to activist reciting names of destroyed Palestinian villages: If you keep reading you will be arrested

Leehee Rothschild, Mondoweiss, April 25, 2012

The first text message I received around 22:30 read “The cops have surrounded the building, It’s quite likely that everybody will be arrested once we try to get out of the door. Alert everybody.” The message was sent by a friend of mine, who along with 14 other activists came to the offices of Zochrot (remembering), an Israeli NGO that focuses on commemorating and raising awareness to the Palestinian Nakba, on the eve of the Israeli independence day. They were planning to go out to the street and remind the celebrators the horrible price that was paid and is still being paid by Palestinians for this so called independence.

The planned action was very simple. The activists carried small signs with names of Palestinian villages demolished during the Nakba, which they intended to take to Rabin Square, the main location of festivities in Tel Aviv. They planned to place those signs one by the other, on the floor, create a long line, and ask people to neither step on it, nor ignore it. As aforementioned, though, when they were about to leave the building, located in Ivn Gvirol st., in the centre of Tel Aviv, in order to preform this small protest action, they found themselves in an improvised iron-cage, made of the iron barriers prepared by the municipality to block the streets for the celebrations, surrounded by cops.  Continue reading

Center for Constitutional Rights: Students Face Death Threats for Speaking in Support of Palestinian Rights

April 25, 2012, New York–Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights and other Rights Groups issued the following statement in support of student groups promoting awareness in college communities about the Palestinian peoples’ struggle for freedom and human rights. Members of the student group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Florida Atlantic University recently faced intense pressure from outside groups and were the subject of death threats after organizing a non-violent action to protest the demolition of Palestinian homes by Israeli forces. Students participating in the action posted 200 fake eviction notices on dorm room doors to raise awareness of the issue.  

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Electronic Intifada: BBC challenged for ignoring plight of Palestinian prisoners

By Amena Saleem, Electronic Intifada25 April 2012

Palestinian political prisoners are on mass hunger strike but you’d never know it from watching the BBC.

“I had no idea. How could I not have known?” I heard those words on Palestinian Prisoners’ Day (17 April) from a teacher, shocked at discovering how Israel abducts, abuses and imprisons Palestinian children — some as young as 12 — in the West Bank because they may or may not have thrown stones at Israel’s wall.

She had tagged along with a friend to a talk given in London by Gerard Horton of Defence for Children International–Palestine Section, and until that moment had been unaware of the brutalities of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Horton’s lecture focused on a new DCI-Palestine report which documents the various traumas Palestinian children regularly face during Israeli military detention (“Bound, Blindfolded and Convicted: Children held in military detention,” 14 April 2012).

The answer to her question is fairly simple: this woman — a member of the educated, professional middle-classes — did not know because she relies on the mainstream media, led by the BBC, for her news. And that media’s silence on the realities of Israel’s occupation is deafening.  Continue reading

Electronic Intifada: New York Times ad accuses BDS movement, college professors of inciting murder of Jewish children

Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah, 04/24/2012

In a sign of growing desperation among anti-Palestinian groups, a New York Times ad published today likens the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement to the Holocaust.

“The Holocaust began with boycotts of Jewish stores and ended with death camps,” begins the ad, placed by notorious anti-African American and Islamophobic agitator David Horowitz.

Citing the murder of three Jewish children and a rabbi in Toulouse, France earlier this year, the ad says, “it is time for supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) to ask themselves what they did to contribute to the atmosphere of hate that spawned these and other murders of Jews.”

Unsatisfied with blaming supporters of Palestinian rights in general of aiding and abetting murder, the ad names specific professors whom it holds responsible, and calls on them to be “publicly shamed and condemned for the crimes their hatred incites.”  Continue reading

CS4AF: Treatment of UCLA Professor adversely affects academic freedom

April 18, 2012

To: Andrew Leuchter, Chair, Academic Senate UCLA

*CALIFORNIA SCHOLARS FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM** *(CS4AF) is a group of 134 scholars at twenty California institutions of higher education.  We are writing to express our concerns about your handling of the events surrounding Associate Professor David Delgado Shorter’s, World Arts and Cultures course website which followed a complaint by a well-known partisan duo who have been harassing California faculty for some time (Amcha).

Our concerns involve the possible violation of academic freedom; the overstepping of your authority as Chair of the Academic Senate; honoring of complaints by a clearly partisan political group over collegiality and protocol regarding treatment of tenured faculty at UCLA; and setting up Prof. Shorter to be judged in the “court of public opinion” by releasing information to the press without his knowledge.  Continue reading

Montreal Gazette: Israeli politician urges Canadian boycott of products from Israeli towns on West Bank

By Lee Berthiaume, Montreal Gazette, April 16, 2012

OTTAWA — An Israeli politician appears to have contravened a controversial law in his home country by calling on Canadians to boycott companies and products linked to Israeli towns built in the West Bank and other occupied Palestinian territory.

Ahmad Tibi, an Arab-Israeli who is also deputy speaker of Israel’s parliament, said he does not know what penalty he will face for breaking the Boycott Law, which came into force in July and allows a civil suit against those who encourage such a boycott.

“I said that I am willing to test this immoral law trying to prevent me, as a member of the Parliament, from expressing my views against the settlements in a peaceful way,” he said during a visit to Ottawa on Monday. “This is the first time that someone is calling and demanding abroad.”  Continue reading

LA Times: UCLA professor told not to link class material to anti-Israel campaign

Larry Gordon, Los Angeles Times, April 16, 2012

In a situation that stirred questions about academic freedom, a UCLA professor has been asked not to link his class online syllabus in the World Arts and Cultures/Dance Department to a website that called for a boycott of Israel, according to the head of the campus faculty Senate.

The link from class materials last quarter to that boycott campaign stepped too far into political activities, according to Andrew Leuchter, chairman of UCLA’s faculty Senate. Leuchter said the professor, David Delgado Shorter, has agreed not to repeat the link in future courses. But Shorter said he made no such promise.  Continue reading

WDFSAWU: Banning protesters an attack on democracy

By Stephen D’Arcy, We demand free speech at Western University, Sunday, April 14, 2012

The City of London Ontario certainly benefits in innumerable ways from the presence of a major research university in this city. But the benefits flow in both directions. Western University needs Londoners as much as London needs Western.

In particular, the city and the university enjoy the benefits of a vigorous public sphere that stretches across the boundaries of Western’s campus to encompass the whole city.

At its best, this public sphere draws students, staff and faculty from the university, as well as citizens, activists, elected officials and advocacy groups from across London, into discussion about public policy, social justice and the common good. The voices of researchers, advocates, journalists, social critics and concerned citizens mingle in reasoned discussion that form the basis for democratic civic life.

We ought to be alarmed, therefore, when we see the university taking steps to target Londoners who visit the campus to contribute to public dialogue. Recently, Western issued an order prohibiting two London community activists from setting foot on any part of the university campus (Occupy architect battles campus ban, April 9).

Why would the university, through its campus community police service, choose to target activists from the wider city in this way? One might imagine these activists had engaged in some sort of violent or disruptive protest, hindering the capacity of the university to carry out its mission. In fact, they participated in a protest that was neither violent nor disruptive. Instead, it was a silent vigil, in which advocates for Palestinian human rights covered their mouths with tape, in a peaceful and non-confrontational protest during an Israel Day event taking place at Western.  Continue reading