Dennis Fox’s Weblog

Three months ago I reported on Joel Kovel’s new book, Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine. Despite my decades-long reassessment of my early Zionist assumptions, the book was an often disturbing read. It’s powerful and pointed. I’ve recommended it to several people since then.

Yesterday, Jewish Voice for Peace’s MuzzleWatch reported efforts to halt distribution of the book in the US:

Inside Higher Education reports, in A Book on Hold, that “University of Michigan Press last month halted distribution of Overcoming Zionism, which argues that the creation of Israel was a mistake and urges adoption of the “one state” solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which Israelis and Palestinians would form a new country, without a Jewish character.”

When Bard professor Joel Kovel’s new book, Overcoming Zionism, caught the attention of the Michigan chapter of Stand With Us, a right wing Israel group, they launched a campaign to press the University of Michigan Press for “an explanation of the arrangement with Pluto Press”, the left wing UK-based publishers of the Bard book. They charge the Univ of Michigan Press with distributing over thirty “anti-Israel” and 50 “anti-American” texts.

That Stand With Us is out to censor Kovel is no surprise. That the director of the University of Michigan Press decided to pull the book because of Kovel’s alleged “hate speech” is much more disturbing. The book is strong medicine, but hate speech it’s not.

According to Kovel, writing to Dissident Veteran for Peace, which highlighted the controversy, U of M has now resumed distribution. That’s good news for American readers as well as for the independent Pluto Press, which specializes in books presenting critical takes on controversial issues. As Kovel notes, “Pluto, in particular, is very edgy about the situation, as their survival is at stake.”

I’ve mentioned before a couple of other Pluto Press books I’ve read: Alice Rothchild’s Broken Promises, Broken Dreams: Stories of Jewish and Palestinian Trauma and Resilience and Jonathan Cook’s Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State. Both, though different in focus and tone from each other as well as from Kovel, are excellent treatments of difficult issues. I’m not endorsing every point each author makes, but each deals with important issues in a serious way.

I’m now reading another Pluto book, Mazin Qumsiyeh’s Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle. By coincidence, Qumsiyeh will be speaking Sunday night a few blocks from my home, at Brookline High School. At least that’s the plan. According to Peaceworks, the group sponsoring the event, members of CAMERA (the mis-named “Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America”) are trying to prevent Qumsiyeh’s appearance. So far the Superintendent of Schools is coming down on the side of free speech, but CAMERA no doubt will make its own appearance. It could be an interesting evening.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 at 5:45 pm and is filed under Israel/Palestine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.