2.26.2009

Perils of criticising Israel

Excerpt:

In the 60 years since the establishment of the state of Israel, attempts to present in print an account of Palestinian history and Palestinian rights have usually been met by swift and highly organised protests. Protesters have written in their hundreds to journals and newspapers, often using arguments supplied by a central publicity machine and phrased in suspiciously similar terms. These campaigns, and similar campaigns launched against publications that print material critical of Israel, seem fundamentally different from the normal discourse between readers and the publications they read. The constant use of denial rather than argument; the demands for an apology or even the editor’s resignation; the enlisting of people who have never read, or even heard, of the publication in question; and the recourse to obscenity and accusations of antisemitism all go far beyond the average heated but civilised debate one expects to find in a scientific or medical journal.

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