Discourse suppression – Globalities

I was at an in-person event here in Washington yesterday, and I raised the matter of Hamas, noting that the title of Rami Khouri’s and my recent book Understanding Hamas And Why That Matters is still very relevant. One of the speakers was the Egyptian-American Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid. He responded by making a few fairly smart observations– but then he loudly repeated the injunction that has been his watchword throughout the past two years: “We must condemn Hamas!”

I guess that is the price Hamid feels he must pay to have access to the pages of Jeff Bezos’s failing, but still influential, rag here in the U.S. capital. Maybe he even believes it. But why? What does it actually mean to “condemn” an entire movement– and one, moreover, with which our national government has been negotiating, with varying degrees of intensity, for more than 18 months now?

A movement, therefore, whose inner workings and worldview it would presumably be very useful for both government officials and informed citizens to understand as well as possible…

The above photo shows, l. to r., Dr. Michael Mason, Dr. Catherine Charrett, me, and Dr. Jeroen Gunning just before our LSE event March 10

In mid-March, I visited the U.K. for the London Book Fair and decided to add a few days to my visit to catch up with colleagues, friends, and family there. On learning of my visit, my esteemed colleague Dr. Jeroen Gunning of Kings College London and the London School of Economics suggested he could invite me to an event at LSE where we could present and discuss the book that we– along with others– had worked together on, Understanding Hamas And Why That Matters.

I eagerly accepted his invitation. LSE’s Middle East Center agreed to host the event on March 10, and billed it as a “book launch” for our book. Palestinian scholar Mouin Rabbani, who had also contributed to the book, agreed to take part remotely from his home in Canada and University of Westminster scholar Dr. Catherine Charrett agreed to serve as our discussant. We were set to go, and on February 24 LSE/MEC opened public registration for the event.

All hell broke loose. Local pro-Israeli organizations and even the Board of Deputies of British Jews, mounted a strong protest and called on the LSE leadership to cancel it. LSE stuck to its (figurative) guns, and did so even after, on March 7 or 8, Israel’s ambassador took the The Daily Telegraph to call openly for the event to be canceled.

It is to the credit of the LSE leadership that they refused to bow to that grossly unwarranted external pressure. But the form and content of the speech policing they imposed on me and my fellow presenters as their condition for continuing to host the event was truly Orwellian. Here’s my recollection of how it went.

Category: Discourse suppression

On ‘Condemning Hamas’

Speech policing, LSE style