Selective Freedom of Speech
By Nate Hendley
Activists protesting Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians say they’re concerned with free speech. They’ve been handing out flyers in downtown Toronto denouncing the Ontario legislature for unanimously passing a motion condemning “Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW)”.
“This is an unprecedented attack on free speech in Ontario,” reads the flyer, in reference to the legislature’s motion. “Defend Free Speech About Palestine!”
For those who don’t know, IAW (which seems to take place over a fortnight from March 1 – 14, according to a website listed on the flyer), features lectures and protests on university campuses condemning Israeli policy towards Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Activists compare Israel’s handling of the Palestinians to white South Africa’s brutish treatment of people of colour back in the bad old days of government-led Apartheid.
The irony is, of course, is the complete lack of anything resembling free speech—or civil liberties of any kind—in the Muslim Middle-East.
Freedom House, a self-described “independent watchdog organization that supports the expansion of freedom around the world” issues an annual report in which countries are ranked and critiqued. Each nation in the study is judged according to the degree of political rights (as in, the right to vote, form an opposition party, or kick out the national leader by fair and legal means) and civil liberties (such as free speech and free expression).
Freedom House’s 2010 report offers coloured maps of different regions to depict the degree of freedom. In the Middle East and North Africa, there is exactly one free country—you got it, Israel—and three “partly free” nations (Morocco, Lebanon and Kuwait). The rest—including the West Bank territory—are all listed as “Not Free”.
“The Middle East remained the most repressive region in the world,” states the Freedom House report.
Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, practices its own particularly hideous form of Apartheid against anyone with a vagina. Women are, by law, not allowed to leave home or make a non-emergency hospital visit without a male escort, much less drive a car. Freedom of conscience doesn’t exist in the Saudi kingdom, either; religious police zealously enforce mandatory prayers. Handing out Christian, Hindi or Jewish religious tracts can get you tossed in jail while Jews aren’t even allowed to live in the country.
Muslims around the world demonstrated their deep commitment to free speech and free expression by running wild after a Danish newspaper published a few lame cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Rioters weren’t just mad at the depiction they were outraged that a newspaper would have the right to print such offensive material. Demonstrators called for jail terms (or worse) against the cartoonists, despite the fact they lived in a non-Muslim majority nation in which religious caricature is protected by law.
If free speech about Palestine is to be defended, then free speech in Muslim nations would also be a start.
Right, these people have no right to even utter the words: freedom of speech.
While I uphold their right to spew their anti-Semitism and lies, I also uphold, contrary to them, the right of others such as Ann Coulter to state the opposite. If they truly believed in free speech, they would not resort to violence and intimidation to prevent pro Israel speakers from speaking.