Israel's Critics Have Canceled Themselves

"Over the past year, activists who accuse Israel of war crimes and other misdeeds have faced unfair charges of anti-Semitism and attacks on their free speech from the Trump administration. Now these advocates are being silenced by a new scheme: a grassroots petition to keep some 300 vociferous champions of the Palestinian cause from publishing editorials in The New York Times. You might wonder why such an insidiously illiberal maneuver has produced no outcry from the left. The answer is that the effort to keep these voices out of the Times is in fact the brainchild of the activists themselves."

"The writers threaten (if that is the right term for it) to withhold their writerly contributions from the Times op-ed page unless the paper meets three demands: "conduct a review of anti-Palestinian bias and produce new editorial standards for Palestine coverage," publish an editorial endorsing a U.S. arms embargo on Israel, and retract the paper's investigative feature about how Hamas "weaponized sexual violence on Oct. 7," the veracity of which these activists dispute."

More than 300 writers, academics, and public figures signed a letter urging The New York Times to change its editorial approach to Palestine. The signatories demand a formal review of alleged anti-Palestinian bias, new editorial standards for Palestine coverage, a Times editorial endorsing a U.S. arms embargo on Israel, and a retraction of a Times investigative piece about Hamas and sexual violence on Oct. 7. The petition aims to withhold op-ed contributions until those conditions are met. The move represents activists using collective refusal to influence editorial policy and publication access.

Read at The Atlantic