Are Palestinians victims of "cancel culture"? James Zogby makes a straw man argument to silence Jews

James Zogby writes a truly insidious piece that was published in Responsible Statecraft where he claims that Palestinian voices are being "canceled" by Zionists.

While it is shameful for the US State Department to consistently ignore Israel’s systematic violations of Palestinian human rights, it is beyond shameful to now seek to call Palestinians and their supporters anti-Semites for speaking out against these violations or calling for a non-violent boycott.

This is a violation of Palestinian human rights ­– the right to freely speak out and to act against injustice. But then, if the US officials in question can only see Israeli humanity and do not see Palestinians or Arabs as full human beings, then it follows that Palestinian rights should be subordinated to the concern that Israel be protected from criticism. 

Who is being silenced? Somehow Zogby got this piece published without anyone "silencing" him. 

No one is saying that one cannot advocate for Palestinian rights, as Zogby shamefully claims. Absolutely no one says that being pro-Palestinian is antisemitic. 

The issue is when that advocacy crosses into antisemitism. When Israel and Zionism is demonized beyond any possible crimes, when Israel is the only nation whose very existence is called into question, when the Jewish people are called a mere religion and not a nation, when the concept of a Jewish state is considered "racist" but not an Arab state - that is when criticism of Israel crosses the line into antisemitism.

No one is trying to silence pro-Palestinian voices. But articles like this are meant to silence Jews who are calling out antisemitism.

When Baruch Goldstein, an extremist Israeli settler, massacred 29 Palestinian worshipers in a mosque in Hebron, the Washington Post carried a feature article asking the question – “What happened to drive this Jewish doctor to do what he did?” There was no mention of the Palestinian victims. Nor were there interviews with the victims’ families or those who survived the mass murder. Goldstein, a troubled man, was the subject of the story. His victims were mere objects – an abstract body count, a number to be noted and then dismissed. 

But when a 20-year-old Palestinian American attempted to understand why a young Palestinian would be in such despair that he would commit suicide in an act of terror, she is condemned today. She was no more justifying the Palestinian​’s act than the Washington Post was justifying Goldstein​’s. Her’s was an effort to understand what could have led any young person to commit such an ​atrocity.  That this involved speaking about a Palestinian as a person, albeit one who was deeply disturbed, was deemed unpardonable.  

This is sick. Goldstein was condemned across the board by Israelis and Jews worldwide, while a majority of Palestinians support specific terror attacks against Jews. Goldstein was an outlier - a doctor - which is what made his actions so hard to understand, while there have been hundreds of Palestinian attacks against Jews and the terrorists are celebrated. Finally, the woman he is referring to was indeed justifying terror, and the Washington Post was not. 

To go from this to seeing all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic not only strains logic, it distorts the meaning of the word. It is also a crude effort to shield Israel from criticism, while at the same time rendering people powerless to oppose the crimes Israel commits daily against the Palestinian people. 

No one says all criticism of Israel is antisemitic. And Zogby knows it, as he shows:

To rebut this charge, advocates of this expansion of the definition of anti-Semitism say that they will allow for “legitimate criticism.” What concerns them, they say, are critics who focus exclusively on Israel or those whose criticism is “excessive.”

He made this up. The IHRA definition doesn't use the imprecise word "excessive." It says that "criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. " Zogby knows this and ignores it to make his argument:

Using that same logic, would we say that human rights advocates should be seen as Sinophobes because they criticize China’s oppression of Uighurs or its oppressive behavior in Hong Kong? Or does one become a Russophobe because they oppose​ Russian aggression in Ukraine or its threatening behavior toward its Western neighbors? Or is it anti-Arab if someone criticizes the domestic or foreign policies of Arab governments?  

Zogby makes up a straw man of "excessive criticism" and then says that criticism of Israel that is called antisemitic is exactly like criticism of Russia, China or Arab nations. But that is completely false - such criticism is not antisemitic by anyone's definition. 

Zogby is knowingly lying about the IHRA definition in order to silence Jews who call out antisemitism from the Left and from Arabs - exactly what he accuses Jews of doing.

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