Not much intelligence

What started as a fairly-typical Zionist attempt to silence criticism of Israel in South Africa has turned into an international scene. Perhaps the editor of the South African Jewish Report, Geoff Sifrin, should have realised that publishing an article that called on a third party to answer specific questions through the newspaper would result in the third party actually wanting to take up the challenge; perhaps he should have realised that issuing such challenges to a government minister will not end at the issuance of the challenge; perhaps he should have realised that agreeing (promising) to allow the aggrieved minister the space to respond and then not publishing the response will make some people unhappy.

Perhaps. But no one said that Zionists are supposed to be smart.

They certainly don’t seem smart when they, after such stupidities, decide to also take on the respected Freedom of Expression Institute and accuse it of all kinds of nasty things.

Anthony Posner, a correspondent of the Jewish Report, wrote an article attacking Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils, in an article entitled “Some Pertinent Questions to Kasrils”. He ended the article with the challenge: “So Mr Kasrils... now is your chance to engage in ‘civilized discussion’. But perhaps this ‘kitchen’ is too hot for you? I am sure that the readers of the SAJR will be interested to see whether you have the ability to respond in a rational manner to all the points I have raised in this letter.”

When Kasrils expressed his intention to respond, Sifrin promised he would publish the response. Except that when the response landed on his table, he spiked it and, instead, published an editorial where he accused Kasrils of hate speech and said that his readers would be offended by it.

When the Mail & Guardian contacted the Freedom of Expression for a comment, the organisation’s Executive Director, Jane Duncan, responded with essentially two arguments; 1) that “no newspaper worth its salt” would refuse the right to reply in such a case, and 2) that Kasrils’ comments did not constitute “hate speech” by the standards of the South African constitution.

That comment signalled an attack on Duncan by Zionists in South Africa. Posner himself sent numerous emails to Duncan, everything from silly anti- Semitic cartoons to calling her an “Islamofeminist” (she isn’t Muslim). On a South African Zionist blog well-known by Israeli apologists, she and the FXI were also severely attacked. What really irked the Zionists was the FXI’s comment that the SAJR “comes out of this incident looking like a mere extension of Zionism's repressive project” and its wondering, if a government minister was treated in this way, then “what chance [do] ordinary members of the Jewish community have to be heard if they voice dissent against the Israeli state’s policies of forced colonial occupation of Palestinian land.”

For such comments, a Zionist blog headed a post “Jihad by proxy”. Presumably, Kasrils – the atheist and communist from a Jewish background – is the jihadist and Duncan is his “proxy”.

Posner and the bloggers read a number of Duncan’s articles (hopefully they might learn a thing or two about human rights, freedom of expression and gender) and quoted from it to show that she was anti-Israeli, anti-American and all other kinds of anti-. Her organisation was also “leftist” and probably “Islamist”.

The brouhaha prompted the Jerusalem Post to do an article on the issue. Duncan gave the Post a lengthy statement explaining her initial comments. It’s worth reproducing her statement here.

The FXI is independent of any government or political party. As an NGO committed to freedom of expression, we are devoted to fighting for and defending freedom of expression. Our attempts at doing so are done without fear or favour and we often find ourselves in the position of defending an individual or organisation on one day and severely criticising the same on the next. We are driven by our principled commitment to freedom of expression and by our particular mandate.

We also recognise that freedom of expression is heavily mediated by power and politics. So in interpreting this mandate, we have taken a strategic decision to adopt a pro-poor bias, prioritising marginalised communities who are resisting censorship, repression, colonial occupation, racism and sexism. This is because it is in these communities or sections of our populations where the bulk of freedom of expression problems generally lie. It is for this reason that the bulk of our work in South Africa is with poor peoples' movements, as they are least able to exercise this right. Emerging out of the anti-apartheid movement, we also read freedom of expression with our context and history in mind.

Struggling for freedom of expression in South African in the past meant taking a principled position against apartheid, because it was apartheid that gave rise to the censorship of the media, the banning of gatherings, etc. Similarly, we cannot take a pro-freedom of expression position without taking a position against any ideology or power structure that is used to justify the denial of rights (including the right to freedom of expression) of people. Zionism is one such ideology in that it denies various rights of Palestinians and Arabs in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Needless to say, the definition of Zionism is contested, but one constant thread is the assertion that Jews constitute a nation, and therefore have a right to national self-determination on what was Palestinian land. The Israeli nation is therefore not constituted by all those who live in that particular geographic area, or who have historic claim to the land in spite of the fact that they may have been rendered stateless. Israel, not being a state of its citizens but a Jewish state, is thus an exclusive, not an inclusive, form of nationalism, and therein lies the problem. In Israel, this has translated into policies that have denied many people the right to coexist and enjoy equal rights on the basis that they fall outside the definition of who should constitute the nation.

While I am alive to the complexity of the debate about equating Zionism with apartheid, both share the common characteristic of having constructed a system of inclusion and exclusion, rights and privileges, based on ethnic exclusivity, and institutionalised this system through the state. Both have involved the dispossession of land and the repression of indigenous peoples. The policies can be compared credibly, and to the extent that they can, they should also be condemned as inherently censorious. South Africans see the comparisons quite starkly.

To support freedom of expression is to support a democratic solution to the national question in Israel/ Palestine; it therefore means opposing the exclusive nationalist solutions that Zionism has represented. We see no contradiction between calling ourselves independent, and espousing this position. Perhaps others do, but that is their problem, not ours.

Predictably, she is now “anti-Semitic” and all kinds of other nasty things, according to Zionist readers of the Post.

South Africans should be glad that NGOs like the FXI exist to protect the rights of the country’s citizens. And, actually, many are. Those from poor, marginalised communities who get bashed by the rich and powerful and have their rights to freedom of expression (like the right to protest) compromised, undermined and denied and whose rights are championed by the FXI. Or academics who face the brunt of university administrations attempting to silence them and deny them their academic freedom and free expression. Or community newspapers who get sued by wealthy businesspeople or politicians because they vigorously seek the truth and for whom the FXI is their only support. Or poor communities who are part of the FXI’s telecommunications rights campaign and who look to the FXI’s campaigns to fight for a reduction of telecommunications costs, greater access, etc. These are the kinds of South Africans the FXI serves.