Illiberal behaviour

In 2017, responding to pressure from anti-Israel advocates to cancel a concert in Israel, Radiohead’s frontman, Thom Yorke, expressed frustration that artists he respected had questioned his band’s ability to make informed moral choices.

Yorke said there were a lot of artists who didn’t agree with the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) coalition, and that it was upsetting that rather than seek engagement, detractors chose to smear him and the band in public forums.

I mention Yorke specifically because last week, he walked off stage in Melbourne after being heckled by an anti-Israel protester, and similar protests targeted Australian singer Nick Cave’s recent concert in Scotland. Although Cave doesn’t have upcoming shows in Israel, he stated in an interview that it’s “difficult” to “punish ordinary people because of the acts of their government”. Both Yorke and Cave aren’t vocally pro-Israel, they simply disagree with the tenets of cultural boycott.

In South Africa, we aren’t immune to the type of illiberal behaviour that has come to define the spaces that should be the most open to free thought and expression. In September, academic Ivor Chipkin, the director of African Global Dialogue, took the bold step to host a conference titled “Narrative Conditions Towards Peace in the Middle East”. Chipkin has previously publicly stated his disagreement with the South African case at the International Court of Justice, and as such, the BDS movement launched a smear campaign which ultimately led to the non-participation of a number of attendees as well as the shocking decision by Constitution Hill to rescind its hosting of the event. Chipkin criticised the BDS response, stating that it revealed an “authoritarian political culture” undermining democracy under the guise of protecting it.

The limitations placed on Jewish voices within South Africa continue. This week, Jewish poet Professor Elisa Galgut was removed from The Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Collective, which claimed that it was due to her defence of Zionism rather than her Jewish identity. The bizarre thing about this statement is that Galgut has never publicly declared her views on Israel. Deplatforming a Jewish poet by replacing the word “Jew” with “Zionist” because she has failed to meet some ideological purity test, one she didn’t know she was being subjected to, is really just antisemitism in its latest guise.

The restriction on pro-Israel expression extends globally. In March, Pushkin House and the University of London asked Russian-Israeli author Dina Rubina to clarify her stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict after receiving critical messages. Rubina cancelled her event – not allowing herself to be cancelled – noting that academia had become “the main nursery of the most disgusting and rabid antisemitism, hiding behind so-called ‘criticism of Israel’.”

The knee-jerk reaction of the anti-Zionist lobby to silence any potential dissenting voices has created an environment of fear and anxiety and promoted illiberal behaviour, the type of which is synonymous with the most authoritarian governments. Last month, author Sally Rooney joined a growing number of writers refusing to allow their books to be translated into Hebrew. It’s hard to imagine a more active step to close down the open transfer of ideas.

In fact, in response to this type of boycott and the news last week that 1 000 writers and publishers plan to boycott Israeli cultural institutions, Israeli author Fania Oz-Salzberger commented that her father, the late celebrated writer and peace activist, Amos Oz, would have been “sad, disgusted, but proud” to be included in the boycott. Oz-Salzberger, who was an attendee at the Chipkin conference, said that though her father cared deeply for Palestinians, he would have reminded the “virtue signallers” of their historical and political ignorance.