ISRAEL & ITS FANS ARE THE BIGGEST THREAT TO FREE SPEECH Words by Stasi Kapetanos The State of Israel was established in 1948 by the Zionist movement with the goal of creating a homeland for the Jewish people in light of centuries of European and to a lesser extent Middle Eastern antisemitism, in particular the Holocaust of World War Two. While many Zionists and supporters of Israel claim that their detractors take issue with this history, that being the seemingly noble if not understandable goal of finding a refuge for the Jewish people and the Jewish ‘right to self-determination’. However, the vast majority of Israel’s critics and anti-Zionists are vehemently opposed not to a Jewish homeland per se but to the fact that this one is constructed on top of another one – that of the Palestinians. Not unlike other settler countries established in the wake of colonialism, including Australia, Israel by enlarge, did not obtain its territory with consent, but rather stole it from the people that previously lived there. I say stole as a past tense but Israel to this day continues to do so, by regularly absorbing and de facto annexing
Palestinian land; evicting Palestinian families; , destroying Palestinian livelihoods and ending Palestinian lives. The Palestinian people are the real victims of Israeli Zionism, this should be undisputed. To cover for Israel’s unconscionable and illegitimate activities, many of its supporters and indeed its own propaganda arms, such as state twitter accounts, diaspora organizations and political lobbying groups whom are unable to actually defend Israel’s actions on their own merits shift the conversation to more favourable terrain or try to shut it down altogether. One infamous example of this is Bari Weiss, a former New York Times oped editor who is synonymous with complaining about the first world problems of cancel culture and political correctness. This is despite the fact that Weiss herself began her life in the spotlight as a Columbia University Zionist student activist who participated in campaigns to discipline or remove Arab and Muslim academics whose stance on Palestine had offended her
43
