A Bookstore Brouhaha Confuses Whose Speech Is Being Curtailed

Ari Paul

The New York Times (8/21/24), knowing that "outrage" sells, saves for the last paragraph the information that a supposedly canceled author turned down an offer to reschedule his talk in the same bookstore.

Author and journalist Joshua Leifer is the latest scribe to be—allegedly—canceled. A talk for his new book, Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life, at a Brooklyn bookstore was canceled when a member of the store’s staff objected to Leifer being joined by a liberal rabbi who was also a Zionist, although still critical of Israel’s right-wing government (New York Times, 8/21/24).

Leifer’s book is doing well as a result of the saga (Forward, 8/27/24). Meanwhile, the bookstore worker wasn’t so lucky, when the venue’s owner said “he would try to reschedule the event” and said “that the employee” responsible for canceling the event “‘is going to be terminated today’” (New York Jewish Week, 8/21/24).

It's worth dissecting the affair and its impact to truly assess who can gain popular sympathy in the name of “free speech,” and who cannot, and how exactly Leifer has portrayed what happened.

'One-state maximalism'

To Joshua Leifer (Atlantic, 8/27/24), opposition to platforming Zionists is "straightforwardly antisemitic."

Leifer is a journalist who has produced nuanced coverage of Israel and Jewish politics for Jewish Currents, the New York Review of Books and other outlets. Reflecting on the bookstore affair, Leifer said in the Atlantic (8/27/24) that Jewish writers like him are in a bind because of the intransigence of the left, saying “Jews who are committed to the flourishing of Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora, and who are also outraged by Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, feel like we have little room to maneuver.”

He added:

My experience last week was so demoralizing in part because such episodes make moving the mainstream Jewish community much harder. Every time a left-wing activist insists that the only way to truly participate in the fight for peace and justice is to support the dissolution of Israel, it reinforces the zero-sum (and morally repulsive) idea that opposing the status quo requires Israel’s destruction. Rhetorical extremism and dogmatism make it easier for right-wing Israel supporters to dismiss what should be legitimate demands—for instance, conditions on US military aid—as beyond the pale.

The new left-wing norm that insists on one-state maximalism is not only a moral mistake. It is also a strategic one. If there is one thing that the past year of cease-fire activism has illustrated, it is that changing US policy on Israel requires a broad coalition. That big tent must have room for those who believe in Jewish self-determination and are committed to Israel’s existence, even as they work to end its domination over Palestinians.

No 'destruction' required

For me, personally, canceling Leifer’s talk was a bad move. No one would have been forced to listen or attend, and if someone wanted to challenge the inclusion of a moderate Zionist at the event, they could have done so in the question and answer session. Speech should usually be met with more speech.

But Leifer is somewhat disingenuous about a “zero-sum” game that forces people into the “morally repulsive” concept that “requires Israel’s destruction.” Many anti-Zionists and non-Zionists believe that the concept of one state, “from the river to the sea,” means a democratic state that treats all its people—Arab, Jew and otherwise—equally. Leifer's counterposing being “committed to Israel’s existence” with "one-state maximalism" suggests that the Israel whose "existence" he is committed to is one in which one ethnic group is guaranteed supremacy over others. People who are committed to the preservation of Israel as an ethnostate are probably going to have a hard time being in a “big tent” with those who “work to end its domination over Palestinians.”

It is understandable, given the context, that some people might object to a Zionist speaker on a panel while a genocide is being carried out in Zionism’s name. Would the Atlantic have reserved editorial space if an avowed Ba’athist was booted from a panel on Syria?

And Leifer is hardly being censored, and he has much more than a “little room to maneuver.” He has access to a major publisher and the pages of notable periodicals, and is pursuing a PhD at Yale University. His book sales are doing fine, and the event’s cancellation has, if anything, helped his reputation. (It got him a commission at the Atlantic, after all.)

Free speech protects everyone

Osita Nwanevu (New Republic, 7/6/20) writes in defense of "freedom of association, the under-heralded right of individuals to unite for a common purpose or in alignment with a particular set of values."

Meanwhile, a bookstore worker who expressed a questionable opinion got fired. Free speech debates tend to value the importance and rights to a platform of the saintly media class—the working class, however, doesn’t get the same attention, despite the fact that “free speech” is meant to protect everyone, not just those who write and talk for a living.

And expressing the opinion that a bookstore should not be promoting Zionism is just as much a matter of free speech as advocating Zionism itself. The First Amendment doesn’t stop publications, university lecture committees, cable television networks and, yes,  bookstores from curating the views and speech they want to platform. As FAIR has quoted Osita Nwanevu at the New Republic (7/6/20) before:

Like free speech, freedom of association has been enshrined in liberal democratic jurisprudence here and across the world; liberal theorists from John Stuart Mill to John Rawls have declared it one of the essential human liberties. Yet associative freedom is often entirely absent from popular discourse about liberalism and our political debates, perhaps because liberals have come to take it entirely for granted.

Whose speech is punished?

eLife's Michael Eisen's approval of an Onion headline ("Dying Gazans Criticized for Not Using Last Words to Condemn Hamas") was deemed to be "detrimental to the cohesion of the community we are trying to build" (Science, 10/23/23).

Worse is what Leifer leaves out. While his event should not have been canceled, he fails to put this in the context of many other writers who have suffered more egregious cancellation because they exercised free speech in defense of Palestinians. Those writers include Masha Gessen (FAIR.org, 12/15/23), Viet Thanh Nguyen (NPR, 10/24/23) and Jazmine Hughes (Vanity Fair, 11/15/23).

New York University has “changed its guidelines around hate speech and harassment to include the criticism of Zionism as a discriminatory act” (Middle East Eye, 8/27/24). Artforum fired its top editor, David Velasco, for signing a letter in defense of Palestinian rights (New York Times, 10/26/23). Dozens of Google workers were “fired or placed on administrative leave…for protesting the company’s cloud-computing contract with Israel’s government” (CNN, 5/1/24). Michael Eisen lost his job as editor of the science journal eLife (Science, 10/23/23) because he praised an Onion article (10/13/23).

Leifer’s Atlantic piece erroneously gives the impression that since the assault on Gaza began last October, it has been the pro-Palestinian left that has enforced speech norms. A question for such an acclaimed journalist is: Why would he omit such crucial context?

'Litmus test'

The lead example of "antisemitism on...the left" offered by the Atlantic (3/4/24) was a high school protest of the bombing of Gaza at which "from the river to the sea" was reportedly chanted.

Leifer has allowed the Atlantic to spin the narrative that it is the left putting the squeeze on discourse, when around the country, at universities and major publications, it’s pro-Palestinian views that are being attacked by people in power. The magazine’s Michael Powell (4/22/24) referred to the fervor of anti-genocide activists as “oppressive.” Theo Baker, son of New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, claimed in the Atlantic (3/26/24) that his prestigious Stanford University was overrun with left-wing “unreason” when he came face to face with students who criticized Israel.

Franklin Foer used the outlet (3/4/24) to assert that in the United States, both the left and right are squeezing Jews out of social life. Leifer is now the latest recruit in the Atlantic’s movement to frame all Jews as victims of the growing outcry against Israel’s genocide, even when that outcry includes a great many Jews.

Leifer’s piece adds to the warped portrait painted by outlets like the New York Times, which published an  op-ed (5/27/24) by James Kirchick, of the conservative Jewish magazine Tablet, that asserted that “a litmus test has emerged across wide swaths of the literary world effectively excluding Jews from full participation unless they denounce Israel.” A great many canceled pro-Palestine voices would have something to add to that, but they know they can barely get a word in edgewise in most corporate media—unlike Kirchick, Foer or Leifer.

Leifer’s event should not have been canceled, and I would have been annoyed if I were in his position, but he continues to have literary success and is smartly cashing in on his notoriety. He should not, however, have lent his voice to such a lopsided narrative about free speech.