BY PETER SCHEER—The Israeli Parliament on Monday passed legislation to bar public calls for a boycott against Israel or its West Bank settlements, according to the New York Times. The law’s supporters said it was necessary to push back against what they described as a strategy to delegitimize Israel in the eyes of the world.
Am I the only one to see the irony here? Suppressing calls for boycotts or other demonstrations, ostensibly to protect against challenges to a government’s legitimacy, is akin to shutting down a university in order to counter an assault on academic freedom, or canceling an election to thwart threats to democracy. Or, to paraphrase US policy proclamations during the Vietnam War, destroying a village in order to save it.
Israel, which is not only the oldest democracy in the Mideast, but, even following the Arab Spring revolutions, the freest Mideast country by far and the most protective of individual liberties, ought to know better than to engage in this sort of legislative doublespeak.
The way to protect Israel’s legitimacy is by protecting speech and expressive (nonviolent) conduct that contests Israel’s legitimacy, whether from Israeli citizens, Palestinians in the occupied territories, or neighboring countries with which Israel remains formally at war. Israel is strengthened by its tolerance of criticism.
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And closer to home . . . .
A native American newspaper in a remote area of northern California has learned the hard way that First Amendment’s safeguards do not necessarily apply on a tribal reservation.
The two-person staff of the Two Rivers Tribune in eastern Humboldt County, a weekly newspaper owned by the Hoopa Valley Tribe, was ordered by tribal authorities to cease publication “effective immediately.” The Hoopa Valley Tribal Council, while citing financial considerations, made clear that displeasure with the Tribune’s editorial policies figured prominently in the decision to shut down the newspaper.
Council chairman Leonard Masten, in a memo to the Tribune staff, said that he was “very disappointed” in recent articles published in the paper, apparently referring to an interview with a fugitive and news coverage of a ballot initiative to legalize marijuana. He said these articles were “not in the best interest of the tribe.”
Hopefully Masten and other Council members will come to their senses and realize that the Hoopa tribe’s members are best served by a publication that is independent of the tribe’s government. Even though tribal authorities, as the Tribune’s owners, may have the power to dictate what stories the paper publishes, their exercise of that power is an offense to the tribal members–the voters–who elected them and to whom they are, in theory, accountable.
Voters want a real newspaper, not a tribal propaganda organ.
2 Comments
Now, I get the point of the headline of course, but strictly speaking the 1st Amendment obviously does not apply in Israel or any other country outside the United States.
Israel. A theocratic, fascist state, NOT a democracy. It has become the murder and propaganda machine that Germany was. The cycle of abuse is certainly apparent here; they became excatly like their opressors. Textbook fascism.
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