There are a couple of interesting articles this morning I’d like to write about, but this one was by far the most outrageous. For the last few years there have been various efforts in Britain to attack Israel politically, the most recent being an academic boycott. Yet just as it seemed the redcoats had finally given up picking fights Israel, the British government announced yesterday that Likud leader Moshe Feiglin was banned from entering the U.K. on the grounds that his actions
foment or justify terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs; seek to provoke others to terrorist acts; foment other serious criminal activity or seek to provoke others to serious criminal acts and foster hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the UK.
What continues to confound me about stories like this is that Britain is supposed to be a world leader in academics. The Ivy Leagues in the US all imitate the academic style of Cambridge and Oxford.
It is worth mentioning that I am to the left of most Zionists on this issue, as I always supported allowing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia, something that was heavily protested by many right-wing Jews.
The fact that the British government is fighting an ideological battle through the restriction of free speech and education is sickening. No government should be in the business of deciding whose viewpoints are “harmful” enough that they should be banned from expressing them at all. That being said, I have no problems with academic institutions themselves from banning speakers for the same reason.
While I may strongly disagree with such action, universities define themselves politically by the curriculum they teach, and there is a difference between allowing for differing points of view and endorsing speech with no academic value at all. That being said, I think it is very hard to justify taking such action, and I have yet to see a case where an individual has been banned as a speaker and I have agreed with the decision.
The most ridiculous part of all this is that Britain’s ban comes out of nowhere. Feiglin has not been planning a speaking tour or promoting a new book which the British found offensive. It seems the British Immigration Agency just woke up one morning and thought to themselves, “How can we best insult Israel today?”
This action is a new kind of low for British politicians, and it sickens me to think that Gordon Brown, who I respect(ed) to some degree in his political integrity would condone something like this. I still hold out hope that some British free speech advocates will condemn this action enough that the government will change its mind. I sincerely hope Israel doesn’t sink to the level of such insults and respond in kind. We have far more critical battles to fight.
