Masha Gessen: Biden is sacrificing the election for Israel

Masha Gessen is a Russian-American who once wrote a brilliant book about Putin.

Gessen told a Ha'aretz interviewer today that Biden's support for the attempts to suppress student demonstrations in favour of Palestinians will cost him the election.

"If he doesn't have the youth vote he has no hope of beating Trump. So that's another brick in the case for the incredible support for Israel. That Biden and his administration are willing to sacrifice the election to ongoing engagement with Israel is heartbreaking, shocking."

I doubt if foreign policy is important enough even for young people to swing the  election unless it is close, but it may well be.  

Gessen, who is Jewish, got into trouble in Germany, where a new book of Gessen's about Putin has won an award, because of recently writing that Gaza is “like a Jewish ghetto in an Eastern European country occupied by Nazi Germany.” 

The sponsor of the award, linked to the Green Party, declined to take part in the award ceremony.  

The German political establishment likes criticism of Russia but definitely not of Israel. 

Gessen commented, 

"I think it is possible to be very upset about that comparison. I also think that in this circumstance, it is morally necessary and politically necessary to make this very, very upsetting comparison."

At least what Gessen wrote was not illegal. I don't think it would have been illegal in Great Britain either, but a member of the Labour or Conservative Parties would be expelled for saying what Gessen said. 

 

The USA and a few odd countries in the developing world are the last ones to have free speech but Republicans have brought a bill before Congress to restrict antisemitic speech on college campuses. 

It will be ruled unconstitutional if enacted, but it is a wedge issue for the Republicans who introduced the bill.

They used strongly to favour free speech, until this year.

It's also supported warmly by the Democrats.

By comparison, there was complete freedom of speech in Germany under the Kaiser, in Russia under Tsar Nicholas II and in Great Britain until 1965.

The European Union has told Romania to introduce laws against 'hate speech', but there are already strict laws against discrimination which do the job. 

The current Mayor of Bucharest got done under them for saying that being childless meant the current President of Romania was unfit for the job.

By the way, Masha Gessen, who is non-binary and favours the pronoun 'they', was Russia’s best known homosexual activist, before returning to the USA, and hoped single sex marriage would spell the end of the institution of marriage.