Bottomless hypocrisy

Editorial

Progress toward press freedom in the Arab world may be at hand, if Monday's editorial in the Egyptian government's mouthpiece is to be taken at face value. Some Israelis have called for a boycott of things Swedish because of a reprehensible article in a leading Swedish newspaper recently, in response to which al-Ahram declared: "Israel is trying to use blackmail against freedom of expression in the West."

Suddenly the Egyptian government's daily organ is the defender of Western concepts of free media and expression? And we thought that day was a long way off. This is laughable, given the failure to comprehend press freedom during the Danish cartoons jihad of 2005.

The idea of an Israeli boycott of such Swedish fixtures as furniture store IKEA, the clothing outlet H&M, the Volvo automotive firm or the vodka company Absolut arose after the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet ran an unsourced, unsubstantiated allegation that Israeli soldiers kill Palestinians to harvest their organs. Anyone with the faintest knowledge of medieval anti-Semitism sees in this story a rebranding of the old fable that Jews kill gentiles to use their blood in Passover matzah. The Aftonbladet libel leaves out a few key elements – no holidays, no baked goods – but the gist is precisely the same: Jews will kill you to get what they want.

Donald Bostrom, the "journalist" who wrote the piece, said he based the story on accounts he had heard and that even though he didn't check the veracity, he considered them worth investigating. But he didn't investigate.

The editor responsible (if this term can be applied) for running the article said he allowed the publication because he felt it posed relevant questions.

Investigative journalism is expected, by definition, to investigate and to answer questions, not raise them. Yet the only media outlet that seems to have done any investigation into the story was the Jerusalem Post, which sent one of its top reporters to interview the family of one of the alleged victims. The family has no evidence that such an atrocity was perpetrated on their loved one.

Meanwhile, outrage spread around Israel, including calls for the Swedish government to condemn this sort of atrocious defamation and – this is amusing – to boycott Swedish products.

Are Israelis as foolish as those who lashed out at Denmark and everything Danish when a newspaper in that country published cartoons that allegedly defamed the Prophet Muhammad? Clearly not. After all, no Israeli is perpetrating violence, attacking property or killing people over this.

But boycotts, in a case like this, are silly to start with and are almost invariably carried to ridiculous extremes. In the wake of France's decision to stay away from the American-led invasion of Iraq, remember, the unhealthy American cafeteria staple was renamed "freedom fries." During the First World War, German measles were dubbed "liberty measles." This seems all the more silly, since wouldn't an enemy country's name be ideal for something feared and detested? Why rename German measles "liberty measles?" Why not instead rename chickenpox "schnitzelpox"?

All this is as ridiculous as (though less amusing than) the incessant attempts to isolate the Israeli academy through boycotts, which is the eternal frontrunner for the Nobel Prize in cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. Israel being the world leader in research in countless scientific fields with the highest per capita rate of academic publishing, this form of book-burning is not only despicable morally, it is simply bad pragmatically, if you care about human health and welfare, global environmental progress or the advancement of humanity generally.

But boycotting products from a particular country, even if it is not the world leader in scientific research, is invariably going to lead to bad policy. While it may do some reporters good to lay off the Absolut, there is no more logic in boycotting Sweden for besmirching Israel than there was in boycotting Denmark for depicting the undepictable Prophet.

And, while we cannot expect the government of a democratic state to intervene in the publishing of anything, however egregious, a democratic government can absolutely condemn anything they choose to condemn. When a Swedish newspaper fabricates a horror story that plays on the most hackneyed medieval conspiracies, fears and myths, everyone – the democratic government included – has not only a right but an obligation to condemn it.

The real lesson of this case is that there are people who will accept the most implausible, fantastical and plain made-up stories – if the antagonist is a Jew. This is what the Swedish government and every other Swede or humanitarian should be condemning. Free speech and press is a sacred trust that those who condemned Denmark may not have comprehended. But free speech is not limited to those who express offensive ideas or outright lies. For those who understand the implications of such libels, there is not only a right to speak out, but an obligation to do so.

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