By Sam Sokol

Last week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was booed at a conference organized by the Jerusalem Post in New York, prompting the Forward’s J.J. Goldberg to accuse the venerable Israeli newspaper of letting its annual gathering “turn into a rowdy, divisive hate-Obama rally.”

The Post, he mused, should “think about how its stable of vituperative far-right columnists helps to generate [such] hate.” He went on to write that the event is filled with “the Post’s core readership of aging pro-Israel hardliners” and that popular columnist Caroline Glick is a “poison-penned right-wing scourge.”

“In addition to the volatile stew that it cooks up at the Marriott every spring when it unites thoughtful analysts with hot-headed roughnecks, it might want to consider its role in helping to generate that sort of hostility in the first place, through its publication of a constant stream of vitriolic, over-the-top, ad hominem attacks on Obama, liberals, peace talks, and even Israel’s generals in its regular lineup of incendiary hard-right columnists. There’s only so many times that a newspaper can publish accusations of self-hate, treason, and anti-Semitism against fellow Jews, Israelis, and Israel’s essential allies before the witches’ brew blows up in our collective face,” he wrote.

I think that the calls for silencing of conservative voices at the Post should take into account how Israel’s pro-settler politician Naftali Bennett was attacked, both verbally and physically, at a conference organized by the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper. Bennett was struck in the back, and hecklers repeatedly called him a “murderer” and “fascist.”

The loud voices braying for the silencing of the Jerusalem Post were nowhere to be found when an Israeli government minister was attacked at a conference dedicated to peace. Nobody stated that Haaretz’s stable of left-wing columnists should be culled.

A former editor of Haaretz once famously asked a senior American official to “rape Israel,” while recent articles in the newspaper have called on America to punish Israel if it does not accept an American peace plan and have stated that boycotts are a light punishment for our sins.

I don’t see anyone on the left bemoaning the end-run around the Israeli electorate being proposed by Haaretz’s columnists. Democracy for me and not for thee.

I don’t see anyone decrying the bigotry expressed in Gideon Levy’s 2013 Haaretz column in which he condemns racism against African migrants only to state that some Russian immigrants were “found to have a degree of alcohol and crime in their blood.”

Is it only racist if a conservative says it?

Let’s leave aside the fact that the Jerusalem Post has a large collection of columnists who span the gamut from right to left and everything in between. The act of calling for the Post to censor its more hawkish voices is, in essence, an example of the regrettably increasingly common opinion that free speech only extends to that which makes one comfortable and which doesn’t challenge one’s assumptions. Think trigger warnings at university lectures.

In fact, the more objectionable one finds an opinion, the more it deserves our protection. Calling every opinion on the other end of the political spectrum incitement because of the brash actions of a few hotheads is not civilized debate, it is delegitimization.

J.J. Goldberg is not the only one to seek to stifle debate. His words remind me of a recent case in which a Jewish candidate for a student-government position at an American university was asked if her Judaism caused a conflict of interest that would disqualify her from serving. Obviously Goldberg would disagree with such a litmus test, but the underlying idea is the same: conform and express “socially acceptable” sentiments or be marginalized.

As a society, we are becoming ever more intolerant of anything we see as personally offensive. It should be understood that freedom of speech is a fundamental right, not freedom from offense.

Our rush to become ideologically pure has even outrun our ability to effect social change through reasoned discourse and gradual persuasion.

In a recent article, the science and technology news website Ars Technica described research into how “sleep-based counter-bias and sound exposure can reduce the effects of biases for up to one week after treatment,” noting that “given the current national discussion about racial biases, this finding has the potential to have real-life applications.”

“Looking forward, there are still barriers to the use of this type of training. Further research is needed on the most effective length of training and on the effects of repeated training. However, for now, this study presents a promising new approach for addressing the slippery challenges of changing implicit biases–an approach that could be useful for generating changes in other types of ingrained-yet-unwanted behaviors, such as selfishness or poor health choices,” the author of the article wrote in an unwarranted laudatory paean to brainwashing that would make the Soviets blush.

Have we reached the point that we have given up on discourse and the hard work of enacting on-the-ground changes to push our social agendas and now look to ways to literally change people’s minds?

That is an extreme scenario, but the very fact that such research is lauded shows just how little we care anymore for personal autonomy and a vibrant debate. Such disgraceful sentiments start with advocating the censorship of those with whom we disagree.

Sam Sokol covers the Jewish World beat for the Jerusalem Post.

 

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