Please have a look at The Phoenix’s annual Muzzle Awards, a Fourth of July roundup of local anti-constitutionalism that I’ve been writing since 1998. You’ll see why Nat Hentoff likes to say that the human sex drive is exceeded only by the urge to censor.
Among those who get singled out are Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, whose agencies have banned a respected academic, Adam Habib, from the United States. Habib is scheduled to appear at an academic conference in Boston on Aug. 1, but that’s not going to happen unless the ban is lifted.
Also getting whacked is Comcast, for firing longtime Boston television personality Barry Nolan over his campaign against Fox News blowhard Bill O’Reilly. Comcast was within its rights to terminate Nolan, but it was an utterly unnecessary, no-class move.
I’ll be on “NightSide with Dan Rea,” on WBZ Radio (AM 1030), at 9 p.m. today to talk about the Muzzle Awards. If you feel like calling in, don’t be shy.
If you are taking your rabid dog for a walk, then the muzzle is a good thing. “Respected academic” means nothing if the speaker is an enemy of Israel’s policies. We need no new hate mongers is this country.
Banner: Personally, I consider myself to be a strong supporter of Israel, with views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that many people would regard as conservative.
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p>But the issue isn’t whether supporters of Israel agree with Habib – it’s whether he has ties to terrorism, as the U.S. government claims. If there is any evidence of that, then let’s hear it. Otherwise, our laws require – demand – that he be allowed in.
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p>I do not agree with Habib’s views on Israel, but they are no more toxic than those of Bishop Desmond Tutu – or, for that matter, of Jimmy Carter.
Personally I find anti-holocaust denial laws offensive to the ideas of free speech and liberal democracy. I can understand why its criminal in countries with sensitive histories but it ought not to be criminal here.
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p>Additionally simply criticizing Israels foreign policy is a far cry from anti-semetism or holocaust denial. The Anti Defamation League and its neocon President have completely discredited themselves as an advocacy group against hate speech. Both by asserting the right of Turkey to deny its own holocuast of Armenians in the First World War and calling any critic of Israel an anti-semite. My professor John Mearshemier is part Jewish and is quite proud of that part of his heritage but he considers himself an American first and believes that Israel has too much of a say in our foreign affairs, more so than any government, even a friendly government, ought to have. Had the ADL just looked at his flimsey anecdotal evidence and attacked that rather than simply act like children and call him names to dismiss debate everyone might have been better off.
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p>Its incredibly childish to call your opponents names and important issues like the foreign policy of Israel should be listened to and debated in an open supportive environment, especially an academic one, and the censorship of pro-Jewish but anti-Israel unilaterlsim activists in academia is repugnant.
your overall point is a decent one, but I wouldn’t rely too heavily on Mearsheimer’s reputation (or what’s left of it) in making it. It wasn’t just the ADL who called him out.
I wasnt defending the book. As I said in my post it relies on anecdotal evidence and makes a lot of baseless allegations based on correlations that don’t quite make sense. I would also argue that those two links merely reinforce the point that the book while controversial was not groundbreaking and failed to prove its basic claims.
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p>That said I don’t think a lot of people can be taken seriously for responding to weak arguments with the idiom that their opponent is anti-semetic. If anything it makes his critics like the ADL Prez and Dershowitz look childish for calling him names, and by refusing to debate with people that call him this name and becoming a martyr for free speech it actually helps prove his point that he is being muzzled by an Israel Lobby-even if that point is a nebelous one.
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p>It would do everyone a service if these ideas were just debated openly and fairly and it would actually help the pro-Israel cause if that happened.
Was anyone really hurt, for example, when that whacko from Iran came to America to speak in NY? No, we all laughed at his face, as he made one absurd comment after the other. We shouldn’t be afraid of speech we disagree with, especially on college campuses.
and has all but disappeared during the Bush-Cheney Admn. years. I think that for Comcast to fire somebody for openly disagreeing with Bill O’Reilly of Fox News about his attitudes and policies was completely unnecessary…and without reason. Whatever happened to the law stating that a person cannot be fired from a job without just cause?
In most cases, employment is at-will, meaning you can quit any time you want for no reason, and you can be fired for no reason (except for reasons specifically prohibited by law, such as race).
because there were a lot of lawsuits by people who felt that they’d been unjustly fired, and, there was much truth to that. This is not to say that are sometimes legitimate reasons for firing somebody from a job, because there are. However, there’ve been many instances, as happened back then, and is happening nowadays, too; vendettas in the workplace where, if an employer or foreman/woman doesn’t like an employee as a person–inotherwords their personality, they try to and, often enough, succeed, in pushing him or her off the job. That went on during the time when that law came into place, and it goes on today, because, more and more, unions, and therefore, certain protections for employees, especially those with some sort of mental or physical handicap(s) are being undermined.
It is disgusting to see the ravings of fools that support the hate speech of terrorists. If Adam Habib were allowed to travel to this country I hope we would have the good sense to send him to Guantanamo Bay.
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p>”Scholar” and “Journalist” are the covers for the people that will kill us. Right now Mohammed Omer, a famous terrorist, is traipsing all over the world getting awards from bleeding hearts for his propaganda lies.
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p>Time to wake up!
the New York City Theatre Workshop cancelled their originally scheduled hosting of their presentation of the one-woman play, My Name is Rachel Corrie a year ago last fall supposedly due to pressure from very rightwing, Pro-israeli policy groups. Whether or not one agrees with the notion of a person going and martyring themselves by standing singlely between a 60-ton moving bulldozer and the house of a Palestinian civilian family house that was scheduled for demolition by the israeli military to make a point and getting herself killed in the process, I believe that cancelling the play was sort of a muzzling of free speech, because it deprived people of the right to see it, and to have a debate about it who wanted to do so. There has to be more free speech, and not less of it.
Mister Palestinian Liberation Organization, let me understand this. You support a theatrical production about a person that commits suicide by standing in the way of a bulldozer? The play was canceled. Perhaps some people understood that it was wrong to use the actions of this poor woman’s mental illness for propaganda purpose. Or, no one was fool enough to think it was worth the price of admission. If pro-Israel groups complained also, isn’t that their right? Is it only to be freedom for hate mongers?
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p>Mister Palestinian Liberation Organization, if you want to make a statement, why not stand on the tracks in front of the next express train. I’m sure the play with your name will be on Broadway.
There’s no evidence that Corrie was suicidal or even mentally ill. She and others were there to stand in the path of the bulldozers to get the bulldozers to stop. They’d done it many times, and the bulldozers always stopped. This time, it seems, the driver did not see her, and…
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p>The play had previously been put on in London and subsequently received an off-Broadway run, and nobody (that I’m aware of) raised any of the concerns you raise, Mister Name Caller.
This:
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p>I’m in partial agreement with. However, Ms. Corrie kept climbing up on the pile of dirt until she was at eye level with the two Israeli soldiers driving the bulldozer and could see them inside. Instead of turning or rolling aside to avoid getting hit, Ms. Corrie kept going forward, her foot caught on the blade of the bulldozer, she tripped and fell out of view of the bulldozer operators. Ms. Corrie was run over by the blade of the bulldozer..twice. The Israeli pathologist who performed an autopsy on Ms. Corrie agreed that it was heavy mechanical apparatus that had run her over. Unacceptable, imo.
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p>Yet, I’m also of the opinion that the International solidarity Movement, too, has to shoulder some of the responsibility for Ms. Corrie’s death, for having effectively helped put Ms. Corrie in the positionj where she was more likely to be trapped, especially by allowing her to supplant herself and stand singlely between the bulldozer and that house. I also think they should’ve known that, sooner or later, something like this was going to happen, and that it wasn’t going to work. I think that it not only shows the horrors of war, but that acrivism has its limits as to how far it can be taken safely.
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p>All of the above having been said, this raises an important question: Why was Ms. Corrie not protected better by the ISM Movement?
As much as I don’t approve of Israel’s policies in the Occupied Territories, I really never, ever supported the Palestine Liberation Organization, either…trust me. I, myself didn’t think that Ms. Corrie and her friends acted very prudently or wisely when they allowed her to supplant herself singlely between the heavy bulldozer and that particular house. In fact, I think the ISM does bear partial responsiblity for Ms. Corrie’s tragic and untimely death by not protecting her better.
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p>However, this does not mean that the play “My Name is Rachel Corrie” should’ve been banned or canceled, the way it was in a number of places. I also advocate the rights of people who think the other way too, to have their say, even if I don’t agree with them. Also, Banner, I happen to be a woman, and I’m not about to go stand in front of a huge, huge heavy hunk of moving metal machinery to go making my point.
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p>Your sarcasm is also totally uncalled for.