For another month, an all-Israel edition.
What is Gaza?
For some time, I had adopted the Trope in conversation of referring to Gaza as "an open-air prison". I still believe there is large truth in this, but an intelligent friend claimed I was using a mere empty Meme, at best a gross oversimplification.
I Flash, on thinking about this more, that Gaza is an Egregious Ontological Error-- but an intentional rather than negligent one. When Israel wants it to be, it is a state, on which one can declare war; but most of the time Israel declares it Not a State (refusing a two state solution). If Gaza is part of Israel, then Israel's decimation of Gaza , already grossly disproportional under the (so-called) laws of war, becomes even more shocking, as if the Air Force had dropped 2,000 pound bombs on Watts in 1992 to put down the reaction to the LAPD beating of Rodney King.
Gaza reminds me of the eponymous city in Escape From New York, fenced, isolated and rejected by its own nation. It was perhaps the first, or at least the most complete and obvious instantiation of a really violent and dystopian idea.
Punching Down
In my endless work on the ever-sprawling Mad Manuscript on the history of the idea of free speech (now 13,000 pages, no shit), I figured out some years ago that the very first question to ask in analyzing any free speech controversy is: Who is the more powerful, and who the Weaker Speaker? In many cases, the answer is obvious: the British government jailing an author for writing about naval flogging, or the American doing so for an essay about the draft. But in a surprising number of other cases, the answer is not so obvious.
The First Amendment was created explicitly to protect the Weaker Speaker against the more powerful-- but is not being used that way. Billionaires used it as a sword to win the right anonymously to flood political campaigns with "dark money". The Trumpian right has used it as a shield to protect gangs of anonymous bullies, using the Internet to dox, bully, threaten, marginalize and silence the vulnerable.
At a private university at which I have numerous pro bono cases today, every student I am defending for pro-Palestinan expression is African American, Latino, or Arab, without exception. Speaking as a proud Jewish person appalled by the spectacle: the people (again anonymously) invoking the university's protection against their fellow students are punching down.
"From the river to the sea"
Much of the history I analyze in the MM is new to me; I did not learn it in school. One such revelation was the government's use of "Aesopian language" to convict defendants of plotting its overthrow. When surveillance after months or years, disclosed no guilty language, FBI agents or government experts testified that the defendants were hiding behind metaphor: that "Let's have lunch Tuesday" meant "let's attack Congress".
"Its happening again" (shades of Agent Cooper's hallucination in Twin Peaks)tvgfbr . As one Small Case Study, consider the phrase, "From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free". This rather bucolic-sounding sentence is being construed as if it meant "slay the Israelis and conquer Israel". It requires several mental hops to reach that conclusion. I propose a rule: we shouldn't fire people from jobs or suspend or expel them from school for expressions which require that much speculation and opinion to unpack.But we are.
In 1970 and 1971, unaware of my privilege as a Putatively White person, I chanted "Ho, ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is gonna win" at anti-war demonstrations. This slogan required fewer mental hops to declare violent. But it was never in question that this phrase deserved and earned the entire protection of the First Amendment.
Sophistry of the Adversary
I am representing many people who have been doxed, and one feature of many cases is the selective, misleading editing of the video. One individual spoke to the person filming of him of his own compassion for the people kidnapped by Hamas. This part of the conversation was not in the final edit, which consisted of isolated sound-bites out of context. People are losing jobs, careers and educations as a result of anonymous accusations which are double or triple hearsay or worse. The universities have become the willing collaborators in the doxing effort, endorsing and encouraging anonymous defamation.
I have not been doxed yet; I know however that being Jewish and an attorney provides no protection. I submit for your consideration the phrase I uttered just above: "'From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free'.... is being construed as if it meant 'slay the Israelis and conquer Israel'". I have a vision of how an anonymous troll is likely to edit that one day. Trying to write in such a way that I use no phrases which can be excerpted would be exhausting, probably impossible, and certainly exemplary of a First Amendment chill.