opinion
BY BEN COHEN | JNS
O ne of the main differences between
the American and European systems of
democratic government is the absence, on the other
side of the Atlantic Ocean, of a First Amendment-
style guarantee of free speech. In the United States,
for example, it’s perfectly legitimate for a neo-Nazi
or an Islamist to deny the Holocaust and display
hateful symbols at the same time, while in Europe
such activities could theoretically land one with a
prison sentence.

Europe, in general, regards hate speech and
hate gestures as a form of criminality; it eschews
the American approach that such outbursts should
be protected, however off ensive the words or
images might be. And so, it’s worth examining
whether anti-Zionist expressions of antisemitism
— denying Israel’s right to exist, comparing Israel
with Nazi Germany and so forth — should also
fall under the rubric of the European courts,
rather than being tested by public opinion. Two
distinct questions arise here: Are legal penalties
for anti-Zionism feasible? And are they desirable?
These issues are not entirely abstract. In
Germany and the United Kingdom, for example,
the annual “Al Quds Day” (“Jerusalem Day”) rally
sponsored by the Iranian regime has been banned
in recent years, largely because its open call for
the destruction of Israel is invariably accompa-
nied by vulgar antisemitic rhetoric. The last time
the rally was staged in Berlin, in 2019, one of its
organizers told a Jewish counter-demonstrator
that “Hitler should come back and kill all the
Jews.” Meanwhile, in London in 2017, calls for
Israel’s elimination served as the perfect cover for
one speaker, who told the crowd that “Zionists”
were directly responsible for the devastating fi re
that tore through a public housing complex in the
west of the city during the same year. After sev-
eral years of lobbying and complaints from Jewish
representatives, the authorities fi nally realized
that, at least in the case of the “Al Quds Day”
rally, anti-Zionism was not some liberal appeal
for the human rights of Palestinians but a vehicle
for attacking local Jews and the State of Israel
simultaneously. That observation should serve as a reminder
that the main victims of anti-Zionist activism,
particularly the BDS campaign seeking to quar-
antine Israel from the international community,
have not been Israeli companies, but Jews living
in Diaspora communities. Especially in campus
settings, calls to boycott Israel have frequently
involved harassment of individual Jews who,
16 JULY 14, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
A 2010 protest against Israel’s Gaza blockade
and attack on a humanitarian fl otilla, Melbourne,
Australia while they might well sympathize with the Jewish
state, are not its citizens.

Since the 11-day confl ict in Gaza between Israel
and Hamas in May 2021, that harassment has
increasingly taken on a violent form. On both
sides of the Atlantic Ocean last year, the slogan
“Free Palestine” became inseparable from the
physical attacks on Jews, anti-Semitic chants and
other horrors that accompanied these ostensible
demonstrations of “solidarity.”
What these examples suggest is that the
boundary between anti-Zionist rhetoric and hate
speech is blurred indeed, while the causal rela-
tionship between such rhetoric and antisemitic
violence has, sadly, become fi rmly established.

One European politician is now calling for anti-Zi-
onist incitement to be prosecuted in much the
same way as expressions of traditional antisem-
itism or racism.

Meeting last week with a group of visiting
American Jews, the head of the city govern-
ment in the Spanish capital Madrid, Isabel Díaz
Ayuso, informed them that she had submitted an
amendment to the European Union’s comprehen-
sive strategy to combat antisemitism that would
criminalize calls for Israel’s destruction. While
the exact details of the proposal have not been
explained, it’s reasonable to assume that a slogan
like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be
free,” which is precisely a call for Israel’s destruc-
tion, would theoretically fall foul of the law. Ditto
with fl ags and banners showing Israel’s Star of
David crossed out or replaced with a Nazi swas-
tika. As we know from the “Al Quds Day” rallies
and the pro-Palestinian demonstrations last year,
wherever such slogans are visible, antisemitic
violence is not far behind.

Not every aspect of this problem is so eas-
ily analyzed, however. Should the organizations
sponsoring these activities also be banned?
Again, that is not an abstract question; in March,
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin banned
two pro-Palestinian organizations for promoting
“hatred, violence and discrimination,” although
that decision was later overturned through a legal
appeal. Essentially, Darmanin was compelled to
realize that his concerns about antisemitic incite-
ment were matched by the concerns of others
about freedom of speech and assembly.

Those rights cannot easily be dismissed, even
when the subject is something as outrageous as
the BDS movement, which is built upon a series of
fabrications about the nature of Israel — that it is a
racist and colonial entity in which Jews segregate
and oppress Palestinians through a framework of
apartheid. Whether Díaz Ayuso’s proposal would
criminalize those who advance this argument is
unclear, but regardless, doing so is inadvisable.

Those academics and pundits who demean Israel
as an apartheid state, carefully making clear at
the same time that they scorn anti-Semitism in all
its forms, will not be silenced by such measures
and will wear any bans or restrictions as a badge
of pride.

Rather than seeking to criminalize anti-Zionism
in toto, European governments would be better
off carving out those aspects that can uncom-
plicatedly be dealt with by the law, such as pre-
venting the public display of Hezbollah or Hamas
fl ags on the grounds that these incite violence
and promote antisemitic organizations, and allow
civil society to adjudicate the broader political
debates. The depiction of Israel as an apartheid state
is wrong and immoral, but it shouldn’t be illegal,
for the simple reason that banning certain types
of speech is a gateway to further, unexpected
restrictions. Additionally, the cause of defending
Israel would be severely compromised, perhaps
fatally, by the shuttering of anti-Zionist associ-
ations. As we’ve discovered over the last two
decades, debates and arguments with these
groups are frustrating and often pointless, and
yet there is no substitute for them. If the goal is to
persuade the wider public that Israel’s existence
marks a positive for the world, then clamping
down on the free speech of Israel’s adversaries
sends the signal, however much we might wish
otherwise, that the Jewish state’s allies have lost
the argument. JE
Ben Cohen is a New York City-based journalist
and author.

Photo by Takver / Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
Banning anti-Zionism:
Feasible? Desirable?