Suppressing freedom of expression will not change Palestine’s truth

Issam Adwan, a Gaza reporter for the Associated Press, Zahraa Al-Akhrass, a Palestinian-Canadian journalist for Global News, and Jackson Frank, a PhillyVoice.com sports reporter were fired by their respective employers for expressing pro-Palestine opinions on social media.

The BBC—having recently been thrashed into docility by Israeli president Isaac Herzog for not branding Hamas as "terrorists"—, is "urgently" investigating at least six of its Arab journalists, including senior reporters in Egypt and Lebanon, for their activities on social media—which are mostly pro-Palestine.

It is interesting to note that most of these reputed news outlets have used the terms "fairness," "balance," "unbiased," "impartial," and "comprehensive" in justifying their sacking of employees. But what does fair, unbiased, impartial, comprehensive, or balanced mean in the context of the dispossession of Palestinians since 1948 and their occupation by Israel of more than five decades?

Academicians, cultural personalities, politicians, and even states have been subjected to similar suppression.

Michael Eisen, editor-in-chief of esteemed science journal, eLife, has been sacked for retweeting a satirical Onion article, titled "Dying Gazans Criticized For Not Using Last Words To Condemn Hamas," with the caption, "Bingo."

David Velasco, editor at Artforum, one of the world's most reputed art magazines, has been fired for publishing an open letter supporting the liberation of the Palestinians—which had been signed by thousands of artists, cultural activists, and academics—because it was apparently "not consistent with Artforum's editorial process."

British MP Paul Bristow has been fired from his role as an aide to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, after he wrote a letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak requesting him to reconsider his stance on the Israel-Gaza War and support a "permanent" end of the conflict.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently asked Qatar to "tone down" Al Jazeera's Gaza "war" coverage, and change its posture towards Hamas.

Similarly, India-based The Eastern Herald speculated that Bangladesh might be slapped with "Further Stricter US Actions" for its position on the Gaza genocide and its media's reaction to the Israeli attacks, as documented by a report of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), supposedly an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit body that provides "original analysis of political, ideological, intellectual, social, cultural, and religious trends to the governments of the US and its allies, and to their counterterrorism officials, law enforcement agencies, militaries, and other authorities."

These blatant attempts by establishments and global powers to suppress pro-Palestinian voices has added an alarming dimension to the ongoing Middle East crisis. Not that this is happening for the first time. Ultra right-wing pro-Israeli groups, such as the Canary Mission and the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), have been lobbying to silence pro-Palestine activists, journalists, academicians, politicians, for some years now.

To understand how such lobbying works, let us take a closer look at the aforementioned Artforum letter issue. After the letter was published by Artforum, influential art dealers and collectors—including ultra right-wing US-Israeli multi-millionaire venture capitalist Michael Eisenberg, who invests in emerging Israeli companies, and is also an art collector owning artwork worth millions of dollars, including some by the signatories of the letter—made phone calls not only to Artforum management to pressurise them to fire Velasco, but also to individual artists to coerce them into retracting their stance. This influential group mobilised social media resources and common art platforms, including art magazines, to decry their outrage and mount pressure on the artists to back down. This resulted in some artists submitting into the demand and retracting their statement.

What these lobbyist groups, establishments, and governments must realise is that freedom of speech and expression are basic democratic rights of the people. By suppressing the people's rights, these so-called progressive authorities are creating a culture of fear within their organisations, communities, and even countries. At the same time, this is also emboldening ultra right-wing groups and providing them with a moral arsenal to attack victims and gag them for good.

For instance, due to the irrational "ironclad" support of the United States for Israel, hate crime against Muslims has increased manifold in recent weeks in the country. A six-year-old US-Palestinian boy, Wadea Al-Fayoume, was stabbed to death by a 71-year-old man in Chicago recently. The boy was stabbed 26 times with a military-style knife. His mother was also stabbed a dozen times, being left severely injured. They were targeted for being Muslim.

At the University of California, Los Angeles, a group of extremists intruded on a webinar, threatening to tear off the heads of Palestine supporters and branding them terrorists. In Oregon, the Islamic Society of Greater Portland stated that the Muslim community there is living in fear, under threats of violence which have been reported to law enforcers.

But in a country where the government is aiding and abetting crimes against humanity, what can be expected of law enforcers? The FBI, it has been reported, has increased targeting Palestinians, detaining and questioning them, and visiting mosques more frequently in the wake of the ongoing Gaza genocide. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and Stop LAPD Spying Coalition have both raised flags regarding more reports of federal agents intimidating not only Palestinians but also supporters of the Palestinian cause.

European countries such as Germany, France, Austria have banned pro-Palestine protests, and expression of any form of support for Palestine are being scrutinised. France is trying to systematically silence protests by proposing a so-called anti-Semitic law that would punish any critic of Israel with jail term and a hefty fine. The country has in fact slapped a fine of $143 on a journalist for covering a "banned" Palestine solidarity protest, despite the journo showing his press ID card. These same countries, however, allow pro-Israeli protests and events. The British government is also planning to ban pro-Palestine protests on Armistice Day.

Interestingly, it is these so-called developed, democratic countries that intrude into the internal affairs of other sovereign nations and preach democratic values. But the West and its allies have lost the moral compass and authority to talk about democracy. For them to be able to take on the moral high ground, they need to first ensure the basic democratic rights of their people, including the right to freedom of speech.

Popular social media platforms including Meta, YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok have also been found to be censoring content critical of Israel or sympathetic towards Palestine. The 7amleh has documented 238 cases of pro-Palestinian content censorship and has, along with 47 other organisations, issued a statement expressing their concern over this.

The October 7 Hamas assault on Israel did not happen in a vacuum, as rightfully pointed out by the UN secretary-general. This needs to be contextualised with the Balfour Declaration by the British government in 1917 giving its blessing for the creation of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine; the 1948 Nakba, when Zionist militias raped, killed, and displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland; the 1967 capture and occupation of Gaza and the West Bank by Israel; the dehumanised lives the Palestinians are being forced to endure in their own lands under the Israeli occupation. And people—brave people, strong people, people with conscience—should not be persecuted for asking the right questions.

If this trend of suppression continues, it will only snowball into a bigger problem of right-wing terrorism and suppression of victims, as we have seen already happening in various parts of the world, more pronouncedly in the US.

The world is witnessing the Gaza genocide in real time despite Israel causing blackouts. More than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in Gaza alone in the last one month.

Israel will go down in history as an apartheid, genocidal regime, with its allies as its enablers, no matter how much they try to suppress the truth. They would do better to stop the genocide, than try to bury the truth under Gaza's rubbles.

Tasneem Tayeb is a columnist for The Daily Star. Her X handle is @tasneem_tayeb