Flemming Rose and academic freedom: a response to Nathan Geffen

Professor Benatar neglects a few important nuances. In his case, it was not merely that he has "not characterised Israel as a systematic oppressor of the civil rights of millions of people"; he has described Israel as a "robust liberal democracy". It's not clear to me how someone committed to human rights can describe Israel like that when, for just a start, it has dozens of harsh laws discriminating against people because they are not Jewish.

And my criticism of Rose is not merely that he's been, as far as I can tell, silent on state and institutional suppression of BDS in Europe and the US, or that his newspaper is aggressively pro-Israel. It's that he visited Israel months after the 2008 attack on Gaza that left many civilians dead and wounded, the university damaged, and the economy in ruins. In that trip, he gave succour to the Israeli government by highlighting Islamic intolerance and failing to say anything much or at all about the somewhat more salient issue in Israel: Palestinian civil liberties.

Rose's 2009 visit to Israel reminds me of those purported campaigners for freedom who visited South Africa during the 1980s to lament intolerant communists and African dictators to the north, but glossed over apartheid.

Nathan Geffen says that I ignore a few important nuances. Focusing on such details may be his way of ignoring the central important point: He thinks that Flemming Rose and I are not committed to freedom of expression because we have not criticised Israel to his satisfaction. He wants to claim that this is not “whataboutery”, but that is exactly what it is.

Israel has many imperfections but it has far fewer than any of those states and peoples that have been sworn to its destruction for longer than it has existed. Geffen objects when defenders of Israel say to its enemies, including the BDS movement, that they are hypocritical in focusing so exclusively and vociferously on Israel and ignoring the exponentially worse regimes against which it is defending itself. Thus it will not do for Geffen to offer the same charge of hypocrisy when we focus on what we reasonably take to be the larger problem. He simply cannot have it both ways.

In my initial response to him, I pointed out that that charges of hypocrisy are complicated and that he would need to do much more to make his case. I note that his letter makes no progress in that regard.

If Geffen believes that only those who share his views on Israel are suitable defenders of academic freedom, then he has not understood what academic freedom is. Many strident critics of Israel have delivered the TB Davie lecture in the past. Is Mr. Geffen really suggesting that it would be inappropriate to hear from those who might happen to have an alternative view?

Professor David Benatar misunderstands or ignores the extent of my concern about Flemming Rose. It's not only that Rose has apparently been silent on the suppression of BDS activism by European and North American governments and institutions. That by itself would have been a curious inconsistency for an outspoken free speech advocate based in Europe. It's also -- in fact primarily -- that Rose, like Benatar, has directly supported the Israeli state, as I explained in my article.

The TB Davie Memorial Lecture is usually given by people who have campaigned for freedom and against oppression. Flemming Rose was a poor choice because he has supported a repressive regime (I repeat: he nevertheless should have been allowed to proceed). Any past supporter of apartheid South Africa would also be a poor choice. I can only guess the unnamed oppressive regimes Benatar is referring to. But supporters of the governments of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Egypt and Jordan would also be poor choices to deliver the TB Davie Memorial Lecture, no matter how much they talk of their love of freedom of expression.

Nathan Geffen misunderstands my argument. He says that the “TB Davie Memorial Lecture is usually given by people who have campaigned for freedom and against oppression”. Because he takes Israel to be a repressive state he thinks that anybody who supports Israel against its enemies supports repression and is thus a poor choice of speaker. He’s happy to concede that “supporters of the governments of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Egypt and Jordan would also be poor choices to deliver the TB Davie Memorial Lecture”.

However he is curiously silent about supporters of Palestine. Both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are exponentially more repressive and less liberal than the State of Israel. Thus, those who stand against Israel are supporters of greater repression.

Let’s be absolutely clear about this. When I speak about those who “stand against Israel”, I am not speaking about those who offer balanced and nuanced criticism of Israel and who disagree with many of its policies. I fall into that camp, as do millions of Israelis. Instead, I am speaking about those, such as Geffen and a slew of previous TB Davie lecturers, who are or were involved in one-sided anti-Israeli activity. They have taken sides and their side is the more repressive, more illiberal and less democratic one. Thus, whether Geffen realises it or not, his argument applies much more forcefully to many past TB Davie lecturers than it would to Flemming Rose. Yet it is to Rose and Rose alone that Geffen has objected.