You’d think that after nearly 2 years of war, we may have reached a point where this story slowed down. We may have arrived at a point where the Jewish community both in Israel and the Diaspora might be given some level of respite from the daily drumbeat of stories somehow related to Israel, Gaza, October 7 or antisemitism. But alas, here we are, three months away from the second anniversary of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and we’re still somehow being forced to deal with yet more abuse, discrimination and frankly bullshit of the sort that very few minority communities ever have to.
The events of Glastonbury last week are well known. Man says something stupid, man faces consequences or as the kids say ‘F*ck around and find out.’ The fact that Bob Vylan’s tour dates have been cancelled and they’ve been dropped from their record label is not particularly surprising. Public discourse in this country may have coarsened over the last decade, but you still probably can’t get on stage and chant for the deaths of thousands without facing a smidge of backlash. I think we’re on pretty safe ground with the general public on this one.
But since his fall, I’ve been reminded of an insidious trend that we’ve seen since the start of the war. You see it all the time, people pretending that the act of speaking out for the Palestinians is all they’re guilty of, that taking their preferred moral stance is enough to get them thrown in the gulags of cancelled gigs and lost record deals. But that’s not true, is it?
There’s no cabal of Jews who all get together and decide to banish musicians after they dare to criticise Israel. Israel is probably the most talked about state in the world and most people are able to discuss it without veering outside the boundaries of acceptable public speech. It’s only when people step over this line into, I don’t know, justifying the crimes of October 7, that people have a problem with it.
The idea that normal speech is being criminalised by the thought police is of course, a fiction. No one in this country has ever been cancelled for simply peacefully advocating for the rights of the people in Gaza. Every single day since October 7, people have chanted in the streets, posted online, rallied, organised, signed open letters, donated money, and spoken up for the Palestinians. As is their right. But more than that, people have built platforms off these views, rescued flagging Youtube channels with their opinions, and reinvented themselves overnight into experts on urban warfare, Islamophobia and the Philadelphi corridor. They have seen their followings and their bank accounts blossom as a result.
The notion that there’s this rigid, Zionist-enforced taboo against anyone sympathising with Palestinians is something that crumbles the second it encounters reality. The desperation of people like Kneecap to present themselves as martyrs, when their careers have thrived because of their politics rather than despite them is laughable. Before this year’s Coachella, they were a niche Irish group that made protest rap about a conflict that ended nearly 30 years ago. Now they are the darlings of the Keffiyeh left. There’s nothing wrong with that, but let’s stop pretending they’re suffering for their views.
The very few people who have faced consequences for their beliefs are not innocent peaceniks calling for a two-state solution. They are people like Asif Munaf, the former Apprentice candidate whose medical license was suspended for antizionist tweets and now spends his days saying things like "We can't blame Jews for having genocidal impulses.” Or people like former academic David Miller, who spends his days tweeting lists of Jewish schools for Iran’s Press TV. Palestine Action activists are not being proscribed for its views, they’re being designated as a terrorist group because they like attacking RAF planes.
It seems that after 15 years of tedious culture wars and cancel culture, many on the left have recently discovered their appetite for free speech. That, after years of trying to ban songs and restrict the ability of white hippies to get dreadlocks, they’ve finally found a hill worth dying on. And how funny that they’ve found it when more people are screaming about hating Jews than ever before.
