Category Archives: Free Speech

The Solomonic State Censors Speech

Free Speech, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Lebanon

Thanks to reader Dr. Frank Zavisca for sending a link to what appears to be an endorsement here of the arrest of “Javed Iqbal, suspected al-Manar TV agent,” for broadcasting al-Manar television from his home.

According to the New York Times, Iqbal’s

“house and storefront were raided by federal agents, and Mr. Iqbal charged with providing customers services that included satellite broadcasts of a television station controlled by Hezbollah — a violation of federal law.
Yesterday, Mr. Iqbal was arraigned in Federal District Court in Manhattan and was ordered held in $250,000 bail. The Hezbollah station, Al Manar — or ‘the beacon’ in Arabic — was designated a global terrorist entity by the United States Treasury Department in March of this year. Hezbollah was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department in 1997.”

Al-Manar, as footage provided by Michelle Malkin clearly demonstrates, is unadulterated, vicious propaganda — a one-stop shop for every anti-Semitic canard in the book. However, and as Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit notes, “There’s a pretty good argument that this sort of prosecution violates the First Amendment.”

Although “The Beacon” does appear to be far and away worse than MTV, reader Frank’s libertarian (American) instincts are alive and well: “If you believe in freedom of speech,” he writes, “you would have to support [the right to access this channel].”

The notion that government (often pressured by sectional interests) should decide what speech Americans access is offensive and un-American, although it’s in the best of European and Canadian traditions, where the state has long since adjudicated speech. That Americans have accepted government’s role in screening such subject matter is even more disturbing.

Compiled by Malkin for “Hot-Air,” the horrible segments al-Manar broadcasts are indeed atavistic — a medieval throwback. But it’s good for people to see this stuff for themselves.

Avi Jorisch, author of “Beacon of Hatred: Inside Hizballah’s al-Manar Television,” warns that “al-Manar’s programming puts American lives at risk, both in Iraq and elsewhere, and hinders the prospects for peace and stability throughout the region.” Jorisch wants Washington to “expand its efforts to alter or silence the station’s message.”

Most Americans will recognize al-Manar’s message for what it is. That we have a sizeable community in the US that believes or is open to this message — that Jews use Muslim children’s blood to make matzoth, or that Israel was behind 9/11 — is a separate matter, to be tackled through immigration policies, not by limiting American liberties.

Letter of the Week by Professor Paul Gottfried

Anti-Semitism, Classical Liberalism, Free Speech, Individual Rights

Letter of the Week is by Paul Gottfried, Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College, and author of The Conservative Movement, Carl Schmitt: Politics and Theory, After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy. Professor Gottfried’s new book is The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millennium.–ILANA

Ilana,
This commentary, “One Man’s ‘Malady,’ Another Man’s Fetish,” is entirely on target. Gibson’s stupid remarks while under the influence are grist for the mills of the leftist social engineers and coercive anti-fascists who run our cultural industry. Although Foxman may care about Jewish women who fall victim to Arab terrorists, he cares much less about such embarrassments than he does about the opportunity to play up the anti-Semitic faux pas of an avowedly conservative Catholic, who dared to make a film on the crucifixion.
By the way, the Passion, which I did see, was not only unbelievably gory but totally implausible. It is impossible for any human being, outside of the Catholic iconographic imagination, to endure so much suffering and blood loss and to survive for an entire day. A German Protestant friend who saw the movie thought it was the greatest advertisement for the Puritans that he had witnessed. The Reformation did away with such gory depictions, together with most other depictions, of religious figures. Watching the Passion was like revisiting a Sicilian shrine that I once stumbled upon in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

—Paul

P.S. I’ve always considered Gibson to be a bit of a loud-mouthed exhibitionist, and his movies have been anything but consistently rightwing. Remember the movie he played in with Danny Glover, in which American agents are trying to foil the machinations of powerful Nazi drug-dealers based in apartheid South Africa?

Mel’s ‘Malady,’ Foxman’s Fetish

Anti-Semitism, Free Speech, Hollywood, Judaism & Jews, Media

[Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League] “had more to say about Gibson than he had about Seattle’s jihadist du jour, Naveed Afzal Haq. Last week, Haq murdered a Jewish woman and critically injured five other women at the downtown Jewish Federation building…
As a representative of the Jewish community, albeit self-appointed, Foxman needs lessons in etiquette. It’s bad form to coerce or manipulate people into liking, hiring, renting, or apologizing to you. So long as haters keep their mitts to themselves, insulted parties should, if anything, rise above the fray, act gracious—even turn the other cheek. Subjecting people who don’t like you to reeducation programs smacks of busybody social engineering. Gibson may be uncouth, but Foxman is equally grubby…”

The complete column, “Mel’s ‘Malady,’ Foxman’s Fetish,” is here. In it, I also take a good long swipe at the “The Delphic oracles of the disease theory of delinquency,” vis-Ã -vis Mel Gibson’s so-called disease.

Mel's 'Malady,' Foxman's Fetish

Anti-Semitism, Free Speech, Hollywood, Judaism & Jews, Media

[Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League] “had more to say about Gibson than he had about Seattle’s jihadist du jour, Naveed Afzal Haq. Last week, Haq murdered a Jewish woman and critically injured five other women at the downtown Jewish Federation building…
As a representative of the Jewish community, albeit self-appointed, Foxman needs lessons in etiquette. It’s bad form to coerce or manipulate people into liking, hiring, renting, or apologizing to you. So long as haters keep their mitts to themselves, insulted parties should, if anything, rise above the fray, act gracious—even turn the other cheek. Subjecting people who don’t like you to reeducation programs smacks of busybody social engineering. Gibson may be uncouth, but Foxman is equally grubby…”

The complete column, “Mel’s ‘Malady,’ Foxman’s Fetish,” is here. In it, I also take a good long swipe at the “The Delphic oracles of the disease theory of delinquency,” vis-Ã -vis Mel Gibson’s so-called disease.