Radhika Sainath in Jacobin: The Anti-Palestinian Censorship Machine Runs on Racism

Senior staff attorney Radhika Sainath published an op-ed in Jacobin on how censorship of Palestinian rights advocacy isn’t just a free speech issue — it’s often a manifestation of anti-Palestinian racism:

“The effort of Israel’s newest far-right government to overhaul its judiciary has apparently made it okay to criticize and even threaten to boycott or divest from the state. In the past couple weeks, thousands of Israeli soldiers have declared their intent to refuse should Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu go through with his plan, the largest association of trade unions in Israel has threatened mass strikes of historic magnitude, and Israeli universities have shut their doors. Three companies have moved their money outside of Israel, and others have vowed to leave if the reforms become law.

As a recent +972 Magazine essay by Amjad Iraqi notes, it is ‘telling that BDS [Boycott, divestment, and sanctions] tactics are currently being legitimized in the name of helping Jewish Israelis protect a status quo ante in which racial supremacy and military occupation were the norm, albeit wrapped in more democratic clothing; using BDS in the name of equality, freedom, and justice for Palestinians, though, is an existential threat.’

The same double standard when it comes to Palestinian rights is happening here in the United States. And we need to call it what it is: anti-Palestinian racism. How else would you describe two people doing the exact same thing, yet the person who acts in the name of Palestinian human rights is punished and the person who does it in the name of ‘Israeli democracy’ is lauded?

Today most people on the Left understand that advocacy for Palestinian rights is often a free-speech issue. Indeed, my office, together with the Center for Constitutional Rights, coined the term ‘The Palestine Exception to Free Speech,’ the name of our 2015 report documenting the phenomena. And as a new report by my office, Palestine Legal, shows, the censorship machine against those who speak out for Palestinian rights is still running at full speed.

But it’s important to name the deep-seated anti-Palestinian racism that goes beyond mere censorship.

For example, it was an anti-Palestinian pressure campaign that led the president of Florida State University to blast a statement condemning Palestinian undergraduate student Ahmad Daraldik for ‘anti-Israel’ speech after he was elected student senate president and posted a video of himself talking about what it was like to be a child living under Israeli military occupation — resulting in him receiving a barrage of messages calling him ‘dirty ass towelhead,’ ‘monkey ass piece of Arab shit,’ and ‘Muzzlit.’)

And it was anti-Palestinian racism that prompted George Washington University to cancel a virtual healing space aimed at helping Palestinian students process their trauma while Israel was bombing Gaza in 2021 (when classes were virtual due to the pandemic) after the university Hillel group complained. When staff pointed out that similar services had been provided to black, brown, Asian, and Jewish students, the university effectively shut down the office that attempted to provide the virtual healing space.”