{"id":124,"date":"2025-01-11T01:48:43","date_gmt":"2025-01-11T01:48:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.makedemocracywork.org\/?p=124"},"modified":"2025-01-12T04:43:34","modified_gmt":"2025-01-12T04:43:34","slug":"free-speech-and-the-palestinian-exception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.makedemocracywork.org\/index.php\/2025\/01\/11\/free-speech-and-the-palestinian-exception\/","title":{"rendered":"Free Speech and the Palestinian Exception"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The libertarian Goldwater Institute prides itself in “advancing the principles of limited government, economic freedom, and individual liberty, with a focus on education, free speech<\/a>, healthcare, equal protection, property rights, occupational licensing, and constitutional limits.” For instance, when it comes to wealthy people, the Goldwater Institute has sought to enable big money campaign spenders to be hidden<\/a> to protect their ability to spend their fortunes to “speak” without fear of being revealed and facing consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet in a post entitled, “University of Arizona \u2018Art\u2019 Exhibit Demands Destruction of Israel<\/a>” a self-identified “queer”, “crip” (crip is a means of identifying as part of the disabled community) artist was not just attacked by the Goldwater Institute, but the entire University of Arizona was accused of supporting the annihilation of 8 million Jews in Israel for allowing this artist’s work to be displayed. To get there a conflation contortion used the art as an illustration to indicate the university’s support of anti-semitism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s start with the “offending” work and the caption below it by the artist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Below the piece are two bilingual placards. One related to another piece by the artist and the second related to the one above. For this piece it says, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“they\/them<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Queers Demand Justice, 2024 (watercolor and gel on paper)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Safety Spell for Queer Palestinians (after Ching-in Chen<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You in your radiant queer and trans beauty. You who I do not know in name, but in spirit. You who have a thousand beautiful names, some of which may never have been spoken. You who are fighting on multiple fronts. You who are my family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You are deserving of all the joy in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You will be safe in your own land. You will smile and laugh and dance. You will be known not as terrorists, but as peacemakers. Your land will be known as…. (the image cuts off but one might presume it says ‘Palestine.’)”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Goldwater Institute claims<\/a>, “If Palestine should extend from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, then it follows that the country that controls much of this territory must be destroyed. This slogan literally calls for wiping Israel\u2014the world\u2019s only Jewish state\u2014off the map.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given that nothing in the placard suggests such an interpretation, why such an extreme interpretation? It goes to the Palestinian exception when it comes to free speech. Israel, we are told repeatedly, has a right to exist and a right to defend itself. The United States has provided extensive weapons and intelligence to help it do so. Palestinians, though, apparently do not have the same rights–so to advocate on their behalf is tantamount to saying 8 million Israeli Jews must be expelled. Repeatedly, those saying “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” have been accused of using hate speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are two significant problems with this line of reasoning. It ignores the reality on the ground and it ignores aspirations for a better one-state solution than the defacto one-state solution at present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This focus on only the most offensive interpretation of an expression, pretends that the expression, which originated in the 1960s by the Palestinian Liberation Organization, is being used without any context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israel’s ruling Likud Party’s founding documents in the early 1970s after Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 says the entire area “between the Sea and the Jordan will only be Israeli Sovereignty.”<\/a> In other words, from the River to the Sea, Israel will be free. Israel has endorsed and expanded settlements in the West Bank since the 1970s (referred to by Likud as Judea and Samaria) and condoned further expansion by settlers who have terrorized Palestinians and taken their land since October 7, 2023. For Palestinians, that they are under Israeli sovereignty has been a fact of life. The policing, abuse and military suppression of Palestinians is consistently framed as a matter of Israeli security–despite the fact that it goes well beyond what might be justified simply in the name of security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Hamas Oct. 7, 2023 incursion into Israel led to the killing and brutal massacres of about 800 Jewish civilians and approximatley 400 soliders, along with aournd 250 people who were kidnapped–many of whom are now dead or feared dead. As Middle East scholar Michael Reimer <\/a>put it, “For most Israelis, it was a vile and gratuitous offensive against Jewish civilians, impelled by the fanatical anti-Semitic annihilationist program of the Hamas movement.” <\/i>As another scholar of the conflict Eyal Mayroz<\/a> framed it, “By magnifying old, festering feelings of isolation and victimization within Jewish society, the callous or insensitive reactions to the October 7 attack ended up inflicting damage on the Palestinian cause. . . As emotions in Israel continued to run high, more and more people adopted the view that if the world hates us so much (evoking the days of the Holocaust), we will forever have to live by the sword.<\/em>”  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Living by the sword has wreaked havoc upon Palestinians in Gaza and growing numbers in the West Bank. More than 450 days of Israeli reprisal for October 7th has been no less cruel and dehumanizing. Palestinians have been mercilously bombed, invaded, occupied, seen their homes and livelihoods destroyed. Most of the 2 million inhabitants have been forced to move multiple times, often now living in building shells or tents. More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli assaults (a recent Lancet Study <\/a>suggests the number of traumatic deaths (from violence) in the first 8 months exceeded 60,000–and is likely now 70,000<\/a>), which does not include what will likely eventually be revealed to be a huge number of Palestinians, especially children and older adults, whose deaths have been caused due to lack of clean water, inadequate food supplies, and the destruction of healthcare facilities. Hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, universities, and historical rhelics have all been targeted and destroyed. Noncombatant Palestinians have been arrested and tortured. These actions by Israel many observers characterize as “genocide.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For reference, under the Geneva Convention, genocide is \u201cany of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n