The above photo shows, l. to r., Dr. Michael Mason, Dr. Catherine Charrett, me, and Dr. Jeroen Gunning just before our LSE event March 10
In mid-March, I visited the U.K. for the London Book Fair and decided to add a few days to my visit to catch up with colleagues, friends, and family there. On learning of my visit, my esteemed colleague Dr. Jeroen Gunning of Kings College London and the London School of Economics suggested he could invite me to an event at LSE where we could present and discuss the book that we– along with others– had worked together on, Understanding Hamas And Why That Matters.
I eagerly accepted his invitation. LSE’s Middle East Center agreed to host the event on March 10, and billed it as a “book launch” for our book. Palestinian scholar Mouin Rabbani, who had also contributed to the book, agreed to take part remotely from his home in Canada and University of Westminster scholar Dr. Catherine Charrett agreed to serve as our discussant. We were set to go, and on February 24 LSE/MEC opened public registration for the event.
All hell broke loose. Local pro-Israeli organizations and even the Board of Deputies of British Jews, mounted a strong protest and called on the LSE leadership to cancel it. LSE stuck to its (figurative) guns, and did so even after, on March 7 or 8, Israel’s ambassador took the The Daily Telegraph to call openly for the event to be canceled.
It is to the credit of the LSE leadership that they refused to bow to that grossly unwarranted external pressure. But the form and content of the speech policing they imposed on me and my fellow presenters as their condition for continuing to host the event was truly Orwellian. Here’s my recollection of how it went.
An early step the organizers took was to restrict in-person attendance at the event to staff and students of LSE only. Perhaps, in the circumstances, that was wise. Other people interested in seeing and– from a distance– “participating” in the event could do so only via Zoom.
Another step they took was to ban many of the normal kinds of interactions I might have expected at what was still being billed as a “book launch.” LSE/MEC head Dr. Michael Mason informed participants in an email he sent the week before the event that:
- We could not sell books at it.
- He and his colleagues in LSE leadership would need to pre-vet any other print materials we wanted to make available at the event.
- He would also need to “brief” us all before the event regarding LSE policy for an event that the School deemed to be high-risk, and to highlight in that briefing relevant obligations under UK law.
- We would each have just five minutes to talk, and his introduction would also run about five minutes. This, he wrote, was to allow plenty of time for audience participation in an event that he did not want to have run much over one hour.
Mason informed us of the time and place of that briefing. I sent him the JPGs of the materials I wanted to make available at the event. Of those, he “accepted” the image of the book cover and the QR code through which people could buy it. But he rejected the JPG of the main promotional postcard we’ve been using for the book. He told me they would have the two “accepted” materials available on a slide that would be shown during the event…
Mason had established a time 90 minutes before the event’s scheduled 6:30 pm opening for the mandatory pre-event briefing. Gunning and I arrived a little early and were ushered by a specially designated security person to an upper-floor room in the same building where the launch would be held on the ground floor. Mason arrived, accompanied by his deputy Dr. Robert Lowe. Charrett participated in the briefing mainly via Zoom as she walked toward us from a just-completed commitment at her university, and Rabbani never really did get the whole briefing.
Mason and Lowe made clear, early on in their briefing, that they/LSE were still prepared to axe the event even at that late stage unless we agreed to comply in full with the measures they would describe. They said that if we should contravene these rules at any point during the event, they would be ready to stop the event then and there. They said they were acting in the interests of “risk management” and in line with advice they had received from LSE’s legal team, which had been in contact “at the highest level” with the relevant government authorities.
One of the additional goals they specified was to avoid “triggering” members of the community who might be very upset with some of what we had to say.
The two specific words/concepts that Mason and Lowe instructed us we should not use during the event, due to their potential for “triggering” sensitive community members were “demonization” and “solidarity.” One of them explained that they had heard particular opposition– presumably from pro-Israel people– to an online description of the book’s content in which Hamas is described as a “widely demonized movement.” (It was on that same ground, they said, that they had vetoed the use of our postcard, which carries that same characterization.)
Regarding “solidarity”, Lowe said that he, and also apparently some other people, had been very upset to see a video of something I had said at a previous event in which I had mentioned the concept of “solidarity.” Asked which event he was referring to, he said he could not specify it, but it was one in which I had been “sitting at a table with a man.”
Mason and Lowe also reiterated to us that we would be allowed no direct contact or interaction with members of the audience. The implication there was that this was for our own protection– not that any of us had asked for such protection. At the end of the event, Mason and Lowe told us, we would have to leave the lecture hall without interacting with the audience, all of whom were instructed to stay in their seats until after we had left. (That felt very, very weird for a book launch.)
Mason also gave us a broad preview of what he would say in his introductory remarks, and said that he would be asking the first question after our presentations– which, he warned me, might be one that I would find challenging.
Fair enough. I am quite happy to engage with challenging questions. I am not some delicate snowflake who is easily “triggered” by goodness-only-knows-what and needs to have other people’s speech strictly censored in order to avoid that possibility.
As we discussed the possibility that some audience members might be “triggered” by the discussion, I noted that I am a Quaker and that sometimes when potentially divisive issues are being discussed Quakers, or others, like to call for a moment of silence to help everyone re-center and bring us all (back) together. I proposed that I could call for a moment of silence during the event “to give everyone a chance to honor the memory of everyone who’s died during the current conflict.”
No! That was absolutely verboten! Mason mumbled something about, “If you do that then everyone else will want to introduce their little rituals.” (Not that calling for a moment of silence is any kind of a “religious” ritual.)
So, no moment of shared commemorative silence.
Then at a certain point, their “risk management” briefing having been duly delivered, Mason and Lowe exchanged a meaningful glance and exited the room together. It was unclear whether, after exiting, they conferred only with each other, or also with someone higher up in LSE’s leadership. Unclear too, whether those consultations concerned only the Inquisition-style examination of our attitudes and behaviors that they had just conducted with Gunning, Charrett, and me or whether it was also concerned with the prospects of a possible disruption of the event from the two contesting sets of protesters who’d been making their presence loudly heard all this while, at street-level just by the building’s entrance.
Well, regardless of how they (or their LSE bosses?) made their decision, after a while the two men came back into the room we’d met in and informed us that the event would now be going ahead.
Gunning, Charrett, and I were fairly pleased. Mason visibly less so.
A short time later– and just a few minutes after the event’s scheduled start of 6:30– the four of us were led downstairs by the security guys and ushered through a dark back room directly onto the stage of the lecture hall, where four chairs were set up in a line under a large-ish screen (for Rabbani’s Zoom participation.) The lecture hall was probably less than one-third full. Around 40 or 50 members of the (LSE-only) audience were bunched up together near the front and were ostentatiously prevented by crowd-control belts from having any access to the low stage on which we were seated. In the audience, a few people were wearing keffiyehs, including two older guys over at one side who, it was later explained to me, were Jewish faculty members. Near to them, in the first or second row, was a woman with a slightly red face and a too-tight green dress who was wearing earbuds and consulting frequently with an iPhone or similar device that seemed to be airing video fairly constantly throughout the event for her ingestion.
Mason opened the event with an extremely lengthy introduction that noted among other things that:
- He recognized that the event had been controversial but that it was going ahead as a symbol of LSE’s unwavering commitment to academic freedom and freedom of speech and enquiry. (George Orwell, turning in his grave at that point.)
- He/LSE recognized that some of the topics we were talking might be triggering for some attendees and thus, in an effort to be responsive to everyone’s needs there was a “safe room” available where people could go if they felt badly triggered. (I’m guessing the attendees had been informed of the location of this safe room before we trooped in?) I believe Mason also mentioned that trained mental-health professionals would be available to minister to anyone who became triggered. He also certainly noted that there was a QR code widely available throughout the room that attendees could use to access any needed mental health support very speedily.
- The four speakers had each agreed that they (we) would not speak for more than five minutes, in order to allow time for discussion and Q&A with attendees.
I honestly don’t recall whether Mason uttered any words at all of welcome to me for coming to speak about the book, or any words about the book and its possible timeliness, or indeed the name of the book at all. I do believe that his “introduction” seemed to last for quite a bit more than five minutes… But I will need to be able to see the (still not-released) video of the event to ascertain whether that was so.
And then, with no further ado (as they say), he handed the floor over to me. I, and then sequentially, Gunning, Rabbani, and Charrett each delivered our strictly tailored five minutes of wisdom to the discussion.
Mason then asked the promised first question. That, too, was pretty lengthy, and it was far more hostile in both content and tone even than he had earlier led me to expect. In it, he referred at length to the fact that three Hamas leaders had been charged by the International Criminal Court with an extensive and, he claimed, well-documented, litany of atrocities and asked whether in light of that fact it might be justified for people to deem our call for people to “understand Hamas” to to be nothing more than a whitewash?
I admit I was a bit taken aback by the hostile way that question was posed. In my answer I noted that the charges the ICC Prosecutor had brought against the three Hamas leaders were still only allegations/accusations and had never been proven or even tested in an open court, and now would never be tested given that Israel had itself summarily killed all three indicted Hamas leaders… whereas the parallel indictments the ICC Prosecutor had brought against Israeli leaders Netanyahu and Gallant could and should still be tested in open court.
I also remarked that in my view, the judgments of the International Court of Justice carry much more weight than mere indictments from the ICC and that the ICJ had recently issued some very strong rulings against Israel’s conduct in Gaza as well as its continuing presence in all of the territories occupied in 1967…
Mason then opened the room to questions from the attendees. He explained that he hoped to take one round of three of four questions from the in-person attendees, after which we panelists would have a chance to respond; then one round from the online attendees; then a final round from the in-person attendees.
He did not specify any limits whatsoever on the length or even– as I recall it– the content of these questions from attendees, though possibly he asked people to keep their comments civil? (When we see the video of the event we can see whether that was so.) He said people could identify themselves or not, as they chose.
The first questioner he called on was a woman dressed in dark blue, sitting next to the woman in the green dress. Ms. Dark Blue proceeded to talk for a very long time about the concept of demonization (!), which she claimed to have studied for 20 years or more. I do not recall that there was any specific question for us in what she said, but as she talked on and on and on it seemed ever clearer that her intent was mainly to fill time.
Mason may (or may not) have realized his error in having failed to specify a time limit for contributions from the floor and made two half-hearted attempts along the way to ask her to bring her remarks to a close. Finally, after she had spoken for– in my recollection– well over the five minutes allotted to each of us panelists, she stopped speaking. At Mason’s direction, the mic was then given to another member of that pro-Zionist coterie in the near-front row; and then, to another.
Reference had been made in one of those questions, I believe, to “Hamas members” having killed 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, and having carried out other atrocities. When I got a chance to respond I noted that: (a) The number killed in Israel that day was actually quite a lot fewer than 1,200; (b) Hamas members were not the only people undertaking lethal attacks that day given that numerous non-Hamas people had also entered Southern Israel after the breakout from Gaza, and also that– as attested to by numerous Israeli media reports– the Israeli military themselves had also killed unknown numbers of Israelis through their often-deadly use of the ‘Hannibal Doctrine’; and (c) That the main target for the Hamas military units in Southern Israel that day had seemingly been the Israeli military’s numerous HQ facilities and outposts arrayed alongside Gaza, as had been shown by the IDF’s own recent public revelations about the speed with which their Southern Command HQ and their Gaza Division HQ fell to the Hamas units pretty early that morning— and that targeting military targets is not a contravention of international law.
When I started mentioning the IDF’s recently released report on the many operational collapses their Gaza-adjacent facilities suffered on October 7, Ms. Green Dress and her coterie started raising an audible ruckus of protest, rising some in their seats as they verbally objected to what I was saying. Mason managed to move the event along, and I did not press my point.
Then, during the “Q&A” from the Zoom-only participants, there was a question about (as I recall) prospects for a negotiated exit of the Hamas fighters from Gaza. Well, maybe that was the question, or maybe it was another question but I chose to raise that possibility in my answer. Anyway, I noted that that possibility had been raised, but that in considering it today’s generation of Palestinian liberation fighters would certainly still have in mind that back in August 1982, Yasser Arafat and his PLO leadership had similarly agreed to leave Beirut under the terms of a U.S.-backed ceasefire under which the United States provided explicit guarantees for the wellbeing of Palestinian civilians left behind in Lebanon… And then just a month later, the Israeli military and its local Lebanese allies had undertaken the terrible massacres of civilians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps…
Once again, Ms. Green Dress and her coterie raised an audible (though once again, short-lived) ruckus of protest from the floor.
The event limped along. (I really am eager to see the video, and to see whether it had any snippets of productive discussion or other redeeming features. Was it worth doing at all, I wonder?)
Of course, my fellow-panelists also got to contribute. At one point in the discussion, Charrett said something about the “dehumanization” of the people of Gaza that is widespread in so much of the Western mainstream media. I think Ms. Green Dress and her coterie may have mis-heard that word as someone on the stage having uttered the verboten (for us) word “demonization” because as Charrett continued talk, Ms. Green Dress and four or five other people sitting near her, including Ms. Dark Blue, rose from their seats and apparently huffily exited the lecture hall.
To be honest, I didn’t see exactly what they were doing because I was looking over at Charrett to follow what she was saying; and when I turned back to look at the audience the Green Dress gang were all just exiting up at the back of the lecture hall. Charrett, Gunning, and I later concurred that we were not at all sure what that was about since none of us actually had uttered the word “demonization.”
We were all so well behaved!
Well, soon after, Mason took one last look at his watch and said– with visible relief, as I recall– that the time was up and he would have to close the event. I had to remind him that he’d promised that the slide(s) with the image of the book cover and the QR code to access it would be displayed, and after a short interval his Events Manager, sitting at her computer near the front of the audience, did manage to get those images projected.
Mason and the others speedily made it off the stage and out to the little dark room which (from the audience’s POV) is over to the left. Because of my slight vision impairment, I found it hard to navigate my departure from the stage, which involved descending down either two shallow steps or a long slope, all in the same blonde wood with none of their edges clearly marked. The last thing I want to do was take a fall there , so I departed the stage with great caution. A friend later sent me a screen-grab of how that looked on the Zoom. I think it makes me look appropriately left “high and dry” or “abandoned” by my alleged hosts at the LSE Middle East Center.
But least we got the book’s cover art up on the screen! And at a broader level, the whole brouhaha that the Zionist discourse-suppression team generated over the event brought our book considerably more attention (and sales!) than it would otherwise have had.
So there’s that.
