No to Silencing of the Palestine Solidarity Movement

- By Jamilé Ghaddar*

Anyone engaged in Palestine solidarity work, particularly in North America, is accused of being anti-Semitic and guilty of hate crimes. Whether the organizers are academics, students, trade unionists, rabbis and so on is irrelevant. There are even special categories of those deemed "anti-Semites." If the critics are Jewish, they are "self-hating anti-Semites." If they come from an Arab or Muslim background, they are "terrorist anti-Semites." If they are trade unionists, it is "proof" of the racist and backward nature of workers. In turn, all the Palestinian people and Arab populations that defend themselves against the Israel state are labelled wholesale "anti-Semites" and, according to the accusers' logic, "hate" Jewish people and "their" state of Israel. It is only one small step from this accusation to the current reality where all of Gaza, 1.5 million people, is labelled a "hostile entity" by the Israeli state in the name of security and defending itself against racism.

Key underlying themes in this discourse are directly linked with the basic premise and theory of Zionism itself. Zionist theory purports that the state of Israel represents Jewish people all around the world. Hence, a perverse illogic was developed that to criticize the state of Israel in any way is to attack Jews. Zionists simply assert this illogic and misrepresentation; they did not ask the Jews of the world outside the state of Israel whether they accept this representation in their name. When people of Jewish faith refuse this representation in their name, they are labelled "self-haters."

The essence of the issue is simple -- do not dare criticize the state of Israel or defend the individual and collective rights of the Palestinians or you will be labelled and attacked as an "anti-Semite."

Not a single court or rules-based process in the world has established the legitimacy of this tactic of silencing critics of the state of Israel as "anti-Semitic." Zionists and the Israeli state simply declare their legitimacy and right to do so on the basis of "might makes right" because they have the military, political and economic power and the backing of the U.S., Canada and European colonizers. The Zionists and the state of Israel have a "right through might" to do anything they want to the Palestinians and neighbouring Arab countries and no one should dare question or criticize them or they too will become a target of attack.

Defending the Right to Be from State Attack

Outside of these self-serving and illogical Zionist accusations of anti-Semitism and hate crimes, a genuine and profound discussion is raging on this topic. The crime of inciting hatred against any group is of profound concern as it directly undermines and leads to the negation of the right of individuals and groups to security. To be secure is to live free from violence and deprivation in society and not be marginalized based on arbitrary criteria of religion, race, lifestyle and so on.

This right to security, for example, has been denied every U.S. citizen of African descent in varying degrees through state-organized chattel slavery, KKK-style terrorism, Jim Crow legislation and present-day racism. German Nazi rule denied security to the Jewish people, Roma, communists, homosexuals, disabled and many others. Today, security is denied to residents of Canada of Muslim descent who live under the threat of having their civil and basic rights negated through Security Certificates, anti-terror legislation and political police. On a larger more dramatic scale, the Israeli state denies security for every Palestinian in their own historic land simply because whether Christian, Muslim, secular or otherwise, they are not Jews. That is the ideological excuse while the actual mechanism to cleanse the Palestinians from Palestine is the Israeli state.

The significance of the right to security is key. The right to security in practice is the modern expression of the right of individuals, collectives and peoples to their own conscience and being, within a state and between states. An individual, collective or people singled out and attacked for being different in some particular way lacks security within the state. For an attack on the right to security to be effective it must be state-organized. It may be based on race, religion, region, political affiliation, nationality, social class, ability or language. Yet in the final analysis people are singled out and attacked by the state not for those particular reasons but because people in positions of political and economic power within the society want to exploit them or eliminate them, seize their land and property or use a diversion based on hatred to perpetuate their political and economic power and control of the state.

The right to security in practice is to negate this singling out and these state-organized attacks. This rigtht to be has necessitated the establishment of the political mechanisms, a rule of law and state norms where people are secure and able to live free from violence and deprivation and not be marginalized based on religion, politics, race, poverty, nationality, lifestyle and so on.

For indigenous peoples around the world, including those in North America or Palestine, their very existence, their being, is a block to the realization of the state colonial project in each area. Similarly, for African slaves in the Americas and the Caribbean, the denial of their right to be and to security was fundamentally related to the need of the established state colonial powers and slaveowners to exploit their involuntary servitude and participate in the slave trade. Such state cruelty, exploitation and genocide cannot be effective or maintained for long if displaced slave populations or indigenous peoples retain their own systems of living, thinking, cultures, languages; in sum, their right to be and to be secure within their societies. State-organized hate speech and denial of security for a particular group negates individual and collective rights and violates the right to be and rule of law and norms of a modern state.

The right to conscience, freedom of association and speech, the right to dissent, and many other rights enshrined in North American constitutions and laws are also directly related to the question of being. The imperialists and Zionists speak of a tension or finding a balance between freedom of speech and right to conscience versus the right to live in security and the criminality of hate speech. This supposed tension or finding a balance between these factors is simply false and meant to disinform. These rights, including the right of security from state-organized hate speech, are part of a seamless theory and set of rules within society meant to protect individual and collective rights without interference or negation by greater economic and political powers. To have the right to one's conscience, the expression of that conscience and the association with others of similar conscience is part of the right to be. The essence of these rights is that no one should be denied the living out of their being, the expressions of who they are by virtue of their very existence.

The recognition and guarantee of individual and collective rights are part of an overarching concern with the affirmation of being. The affirmation of being is directly related to the division of political and economic power within each society and internationally. The conception of the right of all to participate in the governing of one's society, and the need to establish state mechanisms and laws to guarantee that right to govern are to ensure the peoples have the necessary power to deny the negation of their right to be. When people themselves decide the political and other affairs in the society that affect them, then they are no longer at the mercy of others to "tolerate" them or "recognize" their rights.

Rights in the Context of the Real World

 Given this modern rendering of rights and laws, the fallacies inherent to the line of labelling "anti-Semitic" those who oppose Israeli state policies are readily apparent. They are inherently a contradiction. It is not possible to claim that those who affirm the right to be of Palestinians are guilty of hate crimes or violate the right to security of those who are resident in the state of Israel. The negation of the Palestinian nation and Palestinians' right to be due to Israeli state policies is in itself a negation of the security of all those resident in the state of Israel and constitutes a hate crime against the entire Palestinian people and their rights to security, self-determination, conscience and related freedoms.

It is the height of absurdity and nonsense to claim that defending Palestinian rights is a negation of the rights of those resident in the state of Israel or people elsewhere. The defence of Palestinian rights or any people's rights cannot negate the rights of others. Affirming the rights of the Palestinians does not negate the rights of the residents of the state of Israel. On the contrary, the rights of the residents of the state of Israel to be and to security are negated by the policies of the Israeli state and the Zionist project, which is founded on the denial of Palestinian rights. To accuse those who support the rights of the Palestinians as violating the rights of others, is akin to the oppressor calling the oppressed victim an oppressor; the slaveowner calling the fight of the slave to be free a denial of the slaveowner's right to enslave; the U.S. and Canadian occupiers of Iraq, Afghanistan and Haiti labelling the resistance of the people to occupation a denial of the occupiers right to occupy. Said another way, Israel does not have a right to be a racist and colonial entity that works to eliminate the Palestinians.

Prime Minister Harper now presents the line that any criticism of Israel is a form of hate speech. This clearly shows that the Harper government is concerned to negate the right to be of various sectors of the Canadian population, as well as around the world. Those who hold economic, political and state power in Canada are negating the right to be of peoples from Afghanistan to Haiti, from aboriginal First Nations, Canadians of Muslim background to Palestine solidarity activists. This state-organized denial of rights serves to ensure that everyone's right to be, whether based on class, nationhood or otherwise, will be negated or at best presented as a privilege that is conditional on behaviour acceptable to the ruling power. The working class and all justice loving people must not permit this anachronistic logic to pass but rather defend all who are under attack for expressing their right to conscience and to be, and for all who are actively in solidarity with the heroic Palestinians who are struggling to be under the most difficult conditions.

The Right to Be Is Inviolable!
No to Silencing of the Palestine Solidarity Movement!

* Jamilé Ghaddar is a Canadian of Lebanese descent and founding member of McMaster Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights. She is a recent graduate of the Anthropology and Linguistics program at McMaster University, and has worked within the immigration settlement sector as a youth coordinator and settlement worker. She is a member of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada and a journalist with TML Daily. Her work has focused on democratic renewal in Canada and defending minority rights and the rights of peoples to self-determination as an integral part of upholding the general interests of society.

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