The same issue in 2 countries - Britain and the USA. Curbing freedom of speech where it involves Israel.
First, Ralph Nader writing on CounterPunch in "Don't Suppress Carter (or the Opportunities for Middle East Peace)":
"Now that the season of electoral expediency is over, Barack Obama owes Jimmy Carter an apology.
At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, the Party denied Jimmy Carter the traditional invitation to speak that is accorded its former presidents.
According to The Jewish Daily Forward, “Carter's controversial views on Israel cost him a place on the podium at the Democratic Party convention in late August, senior Democratic operatives acknowledged to the Forward.”
Silencing Carter, who negotiated the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement, involved behind the scenes tensions between supporters of the hard-line AIPAC lobby and those Democrats who argued both respect and free speech to let Carter join Bill Clinton on the stage and address a nationwide audience.
First, there was a compromise offer to let Carter speak but only on domestic policy subjects. This would have kept him from mentioning his views on securing peace between the Israelis and Palestinians through a two-state solution essentially back to the 1967 borders. He previously elaborated his analysis and recommendations in his 2006 bestseller titled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid..
Even this astonishing restriction on the former president was unacceptable to the dictatorial censors. They wanted nothing from the deliberate, candid Georgian short of complete exclusion."
Over at Leeds, in Britain, an even more extraordinary situation has arisen at the University there - as reported on The Electronic Intifada in "Leeds University referendum threatens to silence Palestinian activists":
"Leeds University Union agreed last week, by a vote of 12 to 11, to send a motion to referendum which will label anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism and silence pro-Palestinian groups on campus.
The motion, shrouded in the language of combating anti-Semitism, is a reversal of a motion passed two years ago which gave Palestinian activists at Leeds University the rights enjoyed by their counterparts throughout the country. If passed, organizations which have an anti-Zionist platform, such as the Socialist Workers Party and the Palestine Solidarity Group, will be prevented from receiving funding from the union and prevented from holding many of their events.
The motion claims, without providing any supporting evidence, that "anti-Semitism is increasing significantly both across the country and within universities and student unions" and resolves to adopt the seemingly innocuous EUMC working definition of anti-Semitism. The EUMC working definition, which the British government has so far refrained from explicitly adopting, has been seized upon by pro-Israeli groups across the country and used to silence criticism of Israel by claiming that anti-Semitism includes "Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination."
If adopted, the motion will be shut down debate on the extent to which Israel should label itself as a state for the Jewish people as opposed to a state for all its citizens, such as the United Kingdom and all other liberal democracies. Thus an issue, which is openly discussed in academia, civil society and even within the Israeli government itself, will become forbidden on the Leeds campus."
First, Ralph Nader writing on CounterPunch in "Don't Suppress Carter (or the Opportunities for Middle East Peace)":
"Now that the season of electoral expediency is over, Barack Obama owes Jimmy Carter an apology.
At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, the Party denied Jimmy Carter the traditional invitation to speak that is accorded its former presidents.
According to The Jewish Daily Forward, “Carter's controversial views on Israel cost him a place on the podium at the Democratic Party convention in late August, senior Democratic operatives acknowledged to the Forward.”
Silencing Carter, who negotiated the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement, involved behind the scenes tensions between supporters of the hard-line AIPAC lobby and those Democrats who argued both respect and free speech to let Carter join Bill Clinton on the stage and address a nationwide audience.
First, there was a compromise offer to let Carter speak but only on domestic policy subjects. This would have kept him from mentioning his views on securing peace between the Israelis and Palestinians through a two-state solution essentially back to the 1967 borders. He previously elaborated his analysis and recommendations in his 2006 bestseller titled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid..
Even this astonishing restriction on the former president was unacceptable to the dictatorial censors. They wanted nothing from the deliberate, candid Georgian short of complete exclusion."
Over at Leeds, in Britain, an even more extraordinary situation has arisen at the University there - as reported on The Electronic Intifada in "Leeds University referendum threatens to silence Palestinian activists":
"Leeds University Union agreed last week, by a vote of 12 to 11, to send a motion to referendum which will label anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism and silence pro-Palestinian groups on campus.
The motion, shrouded in the language of combating anti-Semitism, is a reversal of a motion passed two years ago which gave Palestinian activists at Leeds University the rights enjoyed by their counterparts throughout the country. If passed, organizations which have an anti-Zionist platform, such as the Socialist Workers Party and the Palestine Solidarity Group, will be prevented from receiving funding from the union and prevented from holding many of their events.
The motion claims, without providing any supporting evidence, that "anti-Semitism is increasing significantly both across the country and within universities and student unions" and resolves to adopt the seemingly innocuous EUMC working definition of anti-Semitism. The EUMC working definition, which the British government has so far refrained from explicitly adopting, has been seized upon by pro-Israeli groups across the country and used to silence criticism of Israel by claiming that anti-Semitism includes "Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination."
If adopted, the motion will be shut down debate on the extent to which Israel should label itself as a state for the Jewish people as opposed to a state for all its citizens, such as the United Kingdom and all other liberal democracies. Thus an issue, which is openly discussed in academia, civil society and even within the Israeli government itself, will become forbidden on the Leeds campus."
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