A casualty of war
By James M.
Dorsey
The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey depends on
the support of its readers. If you believe that the column and podcast add
value to your understanding and that of the broader public, please consider
becoming a paid subscriber by clicking on the subscription button at http://www.jamesmdorsey.substack.com and choosing one of the
subscription options. Thank you.
To watch a video version of
this story on YouTube please click here. An audio podcast is available on Soundcloud.
Israeli
footballer Sagiv Yehezkel was deported from Turkey this week after being detained by
police and fired by Super Lig club Antalyaspor for expressing support during a
soccer match for more than 100 hostages kidnapped by Hamas during its October 7
attack on Israel.
A second
Israeli player, 23-year-old Eden Kartsev, awaits a similar fate after his club, Istanbul
Bashakshehir, said it was investigating him for "violating the
sensibilities of the country" by reposting on X, formerly known as Twitter,
an image with the hashtag "BringThemHomeNow.”
Assuming Mr.
Kartsev will also be deported, Ramzi Safuri, a Palestinian Israeli, who plays
for Antalyaspor alongside 28-year-old Mr. Yehezkel, will be the last Israeli
footballer standing in Turkey.
Bashkakshehir
maintains close ties with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling
Justice and Development Party (AKP), staunch Hamas supporters. Mr. Erdogan has described Hamas as a “liberation
group.”
The hashtag
is the slogan of a movement, driven by the hostages’ families, demanding that
Israel prioritise the release of the hostages above pursuit of the Gaza war.
Israel’s
more than three-month-long devasting campaign against Gaza has so far failed to
militarily free the hostages. In November, Israel achieved the release of more than 100 hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinians
held in Israeli prisons during a ceasefire mediated by Qatar.
A senior US
official, Brett McGurk, visited Qatar in recent days for “very serious and intensive
discussions” on a
possible new prisoner exchange deal, White House national security spokesperson
John Kirby said on Tuesday.
Senior US official,
Brett McGurk. Photo: Mandel Ngan Via Getty Images
Meanwhile,
Qatar and France brokered a deal for the exchange of medicine for the hostages
in return for the increased entry into Gaza of medical supplies and
humanitarian aid.
Turkey’s
backing of Hamas is likely one reason why it, unlike Qatar and Egypt, the two
other Middle Eastern states with links to the group, has not played a role in
efforts to achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza war and the freeing of hostages.
Hamas
released a video on Monday that appeared to show the dead bodies of two hostages after warning Israel they might be
killed if it did not stop its bombardment of Gaza. An Israeli military
spokesman denied the hostages were killed in air strikes targeting Hamas.
Turkey’s
disciplinary action against the Israeli players raises troubling questions.
It suggests
Turkey cares about Gaza’s human carnage caused by Israel’s indiscriminate
bombing of the Strip but not about the lives of innocent Israelis.
To be fair,
a “substantial” number of the remaining hostages are
Israeli military personnel. Even so, Hamas videos released since the November
exchange have featured mostly women and elderly captives.
By
disciplining the Israeli players on political grounds rather than by invoking
world soccer body FIFA’s banning of political
expressions on the pitch, Turkey punctured one more hole in international sports associations’
fiction that sports and politics are separate rather than Siamese twins
inseparably joined at the hip.
Ironically,
the Turkish Football Federation last month cancelled a Super Lig final between clubs Galatasaray and
Fenerbahce scheduled to be played in Riyadh after Saudi authorities banned
players from wearing jerseys portraying Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the visionary
who carved modern Turkey out of the ruins of the Ottoman empire.
Galatasaray‘s Kerem Akturkoglu, right, challenges for the ball
with Fenerbahce‘s Alexander Djiku, during a Turkish Super Lig match
between Fenerbahce and Galatasaray at Sukru Saracoglu stadium in
Istanbul, Turkey, Sunday, Dec. 24, 2023. Photo: AP
The
disciplinary actions touch on one more major casualty of the Gaza war beyond
the shocking 24,000 Gazan death toll, including 55 footballers; the hostages; and the mass Israeli arrests of West Bank
Palestinians:
freedom of expression.
Irrespective
of one’s attitude towards the Gaza war, disciplining the Israeli players
amounts to curtailing their freedom of expression.
That is no
surprise. Turkey is the fourth most prolific jailer of
journalists globally
behind Iran, China and Myanmar.
Even so, the
disciplinary measures are part of a global crackdown stretching from Israel and
the United States into Europe on freedom of speech accelerated by the Gaza war
but shaped long before Hamas’ October 7 attack by Israel and its supporters seeking to label criticism of the
Jewish state as anti-Semitism.
Israel and
pro-Israeli groups have skillfully exploited a blurring of the lines between
anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic expression to try to squash
criticism of Israel while ignoring, if not encouraging blatant racist and dehumanizing
anti-Palestinian language.
Increasingly,
the upshot is a clampdown on free speech in democracies in which calls for a Gaza
ceasefire and an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel are denounced as
anti-Semitism.
Public
outrage in Europe has defeated attempts in countries like France,
Germany, and Austria to ban pro-Palestinian protests, the waving of Palestinian flags,
and/or the wearing of a keffiyeh, the chequered black-and-white scarf that symbolises
Palestinian nationalism.
Similarly,
Israeli far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir failed to ban anti-war protests organised by a minority of Israelis
opposed to the assault on Gaza.
Itamar Ben-Gvir
speaking to the press ahead of a weekly cabinet meeting, Jerusalem, March 19,
2023. Photo: Abir Sultan—POOL/AFP/Getty Images
The war has sparked
debates in multiple democracies on the right to peaceful protest, with the
media and human rights organisations weighing-in on the repercussions of
silencing war critics.
In the
United States, the clampdown has involved censorship, putting college campuses at the centre of a
debate on free speech
and what constitutes anti-Semitism.
In December, a US House of Representatives
resolution, adopted by a wide margin, equated anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism.
Thirty-seven
of the 50 US states have passed legislation banning state offices from investing
in or doing business with companies that support the Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions (BDS) movement in what amounts to curtailing freedom of choice. Various states have
incorporated the ban in their contracts.
BDS protest in
Montreal, Canada. Photo: Tadamon.ca
Germany’s parliament passed a resolution in 2019
denouncing BDS as anti-Semitic.
Inspired by
the South African anti-apartheid movement, BDS campaigns for boycotting Israeli
products imported from occupied Palestinian lands and embargoing and divesting
from companies doing business in occupied territory.
To be sure
anti-Semitism is on the rise as is anti-Muslim sentiment since October 7.
The New
York-based Anti-Defamation League reported anti-Semitic incidents had risen by 388
per cent in the first
two weeks of the war, compared with the same period last year.
The Council
on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said requests for help and reports of anti-Palestinian and
anti-Muslim bias increased by 172 per cent in the first two months of the war.
In Israel, Meir Baruchin, a history and civics teacher, was
fired from his job, investigated for intent to commit treason, and put in
solitary confinement in Jerusalem’s notorious Russian Compound prison for
Facebook posts mourning Gaza civilians killed, criticising the Israeli
military, and warning against wars of revenge.
Israeli rights
groups and lawyers say a crackdown on speech has resulted in scores being fired from their jobs,
disciplined or expelled from their universities, and even arrested, often for
posts on social media in support of Palestinians or critical of Israel's
operations in Gaza.
“Make no
mistake: Baruchin was used as a political tool to send a political
message. The motive for his arrest was deterrence – silencing any criticism or any hint
of protest against
Israeli policy,” Israel’s Haaretz newspaper said in an editorial.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior
Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of
International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The
Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.
Comments
Post a Comment