Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

124 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:115
ized wrongs, of which only Israel is guilty. One argument to the contrary—
that these claims of exceptionalism for Palestinians should not be seen as
antisemitism—is that labeling this exceptionalism in this way would generate
an undue restriction on freedom of speech.
Free-speech absolutists oppose restrictions on incitement to hatred on
even the most vile antisemitism. So advocacy of freedom of speech is not in
itself an answer to a charge of antisemitism; instead, it is an argument that,
whether antisemitic or not, the impugned discourse should be free.
A label of antisemitism, though, does have a damping effect on discourse.
Those who are not free-speech absolutists may well accept the barring
of Nazi-type eliminationist antisemitic propaganda, yet balk at the
barring of the more modern forms of anti-Jewish discourse. The issue then
becomes not so much the label as the impact of the label. Labeling has to be
instrumentalized.
Incitement to hatred has to be combated by a variety of means, from
education to criminalization, with civil remedies in between. Banning is a
last resort. The first resort should be countering disinformation with information.
Banning discourse that is antisemitic but not widely understood as
such jumps to the last step first. It can be all too easily met with incomprehension
by those who do not know.
Labeling a particular form of discourse as antisemitic raises two questions.
The first question is whether the discourse is antisemitic; the second
question is whether the discourse should be banned. If there is a general
consensus that the discourse is antisemitic, then we are left only with the
second question. When there is uncertainty about the answer to the first
question, however, then asserting that a particular form of discourse is
antisemitic looks premature, an attempt to invoke banning before the question
of whether something falls within the banned category is resolved. In
this context, the antisemitic label both illuminates and obscures. It illuminates
because it shows how problematic the contested discourse is; it also
obscures because it shifts the terrain of debate from the nature of the discourse
to the worth of banning.
The working of the law of banning of hate speech represents a consensus
by society. In order to make the law work, that consensus has to be
built. The assertion of particularized Palestinian rights and Israeli wrongs is
a packaged form of discourse that needs unpacking to explain how problematic
it is. Call that combating antisemitism or not, it needs to be done.
*David Matas is senior honorary counsel to B’nai Brith Canada and an international
human rights, immigration, and refugee lawyer based in Winnipeg, Manitoba,
Canada.