Nurit Peled-Elhanan: Is what she said okay?

Israel must look long and hard at what we consider legitimate and legal speech protected by laws ensuring freedom of expression versus speech that crosses the line into incitement and sedition.

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Oct 7th brought out the best and the worst in us. The best was the unity the country showed in light of the atrocities, slaughter, and abduction of Israelis (Jews and non-Jews) and foreign nationals.

One of the worst things is our inability agree on what is or is not permitted to say regarding the government waging war against an enemy that wants us dead and our, perhaps, knee-jerk reactions to those whose utterings seem, rightly or wrongly, to support that enemy.

For example, on page 3 of the Academia for Equality’s report, they write [emphasis added]:

… several hours after she sent a message in the private WhatsApp group of lecturers at Jerusalem’s David Yellin College of Education, Professor Nurit Peled-Elhanan already received an email notifying that she was suspended. Grounds: “Expression of support and justification of the terrorist acts of Hamas”. Incriminating evidence: Her paraphrase of philosopher Jean Paul Sartre’s words.

What could be so incriminating about paraphrasing Sartre’s words? I would expect a report published by scholars to be accompanied by enough information for readers, supposedly other scholars in this case, to make up their own minds about whether or not this was grounds for sanctioning her.

Human rights lawyer Michael Sfard provides that evidence for us in an op-ed article in the New York Times, in which he wrote:

In response to another lecturer’s message, she wrote that “the massacre,” referring to the actions of Hamas, reminded her of something the French philosopher and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote about race relations, adding a paraphrased quote: “‘After so many years that the neck of the occupied has been suffocating under your iron foot and suddenly was given a chance to raise his eyes, what kind of gaze did you expect you would see there?’ We saw this gaze,” Ms. Peled-Elhanan wrote to her colleagues.

In both instances, and likely in all documents or articles discussing her case, readers are told that she won the Sakharov Prize for human rights and freedom of thought, and that she is a bereaved mother. This is neither here nor there when we look at what she said.

Nurit Peled-Elhanan in 2001. Image Credit: Wikimedia

I congratulate her for that prize.

And, while our hearts go out to bereaved family members of terror victims, their status as bereaveds does not necessarily mean they have anything to add to our attempts to make sense of our place in the violent neighbourhood in which Israelis live.

For example, all the speakers, Jews and Arabs, in the Parents’ Circle-Family Forum (founded by Peled-Elhanan and her husband and about which I wrote here) speak with one single voice: Israeli occupation, bad; Israelis need to be ashamed of themselves. Being bereaved does not make them correct and it does not mean that what they say has merit.

With this in mind, let us once more look at what Peled-Elhanan wrote:

“‘After so many years that the neck of the occupied has been suffocating under your iron foot and suddenly was given a chance to raise his eyes, what kind of gaze did you expect you would see there?’ We saw this gaze,”

Is that not the same as UN Secretary General Anthonio Gueterres having exclaimed that Oct 7th did not happen “in a vacuum?”

Is that not the same as saying Israel got what she deserved?

Peled-Elhanan is quoted as having said, after her daughter’s murder in a suicide bombing: “Terrorist attacks like this are the direct consequence of the oppression, slavery, humiliation and state of siege imposed on the Palestinians.”

Is that not justification for terrorism? Is justifying acts of terror not a form of supporting them?

Just how much are we supposed to bend over backwards in allowing people to express their opinions when they justify the actions of our enemies? Need I add: especially during a war for our survival, which is how much of the nation regards the current war?

Please, do not come back at me — as some have — by saying that right-wing fascists get away with expressing genocidal thoughts toward the Gazans without repercussions. That is the kind of bothsidesism that I contest wherever I find it. Let us examine each statement and proclamation on its own and judge each against the same measure of law without comparing them with each other.

In this case, the statement for which she was sanctioned was not an example of incitement or sedition. She did not ask for anyone to go out and act against the government or the people. In the end, she was reprimanded for having expressed solidarity with Israel’s enemies and she did not lose her job.

On Oct 25, when she wrote that, the country was still in a state of shock from the horrors of Oct 7th. So, even if not incitement or sedition, it certainly was insensitive and best left unsaid, at least back then.

Now, months later, perhaps we are less in shock but still working hard to synthesize what happened as well as dealing with the intense pain of hostages still in Gaza, grief over the deaths of our soldiers, and fear for those still fighting — we are experiencing a myriad of emotions. By now, we have perhaps become somewhat desensitized to hearing others say that we deserved Oct 7th because of “the occupation.” That does not mean it is smart to make such declarations.

Just like investigating the failures that left us open to Oct 7th, discussing whether or not we deserved it is best left until after the war is over — unless the utterers of such an idea think we should lose. Let us hope that that is not what they wish for. (That might lead to truly seditious statements.)

Feature Image Credit: EPP-ED Group, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons