More than 26 thousand Palestinians - mostly women and children - died so far in the deadliest military operation of the 21st century, and the unwritten rules of newspaper reporting dictate that this sentence should end, if not with a ritual condemnation of Hamas, then at least with the information that Israel's military operation provoked the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7. This does not mean that unwritten rules do not exist for no reason, but it also does not mean that unwritten rules should not be written about. Because it is precisely the unwritten rules that determine who, when, how and where is allowed to step forward and perform these days. We mean, of course, the proxy war that is raging in the cultural field of the West and whose victims are mainly pro-Palestinian artists, intellectuals. And the list of their cancellations and bans just got longer by three new cases.
Case one: Laurie Anderson, the heroine of the musical avant-garde, was supposed to make her debut as a visiting professor at the German Folkwang University of the Arts on April 2021st, succeeding Marina Abramović there. But the artist will not be present: the university administration subsequently learned that Anderson co-signed an open "Letter Against Apartheid" in XNUMX warning of massacres, lynchings and forced evictions of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, and accordingly, the administration is now demanding that the unsuspecting professor testify does he still take the same stand. Her answer is to refuse such a conversation: "For me, the question is not whether my political views have changed. The real question is: why is such a question being asked at all?", she said, canceling cooperation.
Case two: Roger Waters, ex-Pink Floyd, is removed from the payroll by one of the world's largest record companies, Berlin's BMG. The news was only recently published by the American Variety, although the record label refused to release Waters' re-recorded album of the former band "Dark Side of the Moon" in the middle of last year, under new management. Sam Waters, it's no secret, has been testing the limits of freedom of speech in the West for a long time, he has supported the Palestinian struggle for almost 20 years and is one of the loudest promoters of the non-violent BDS movement, which advocates a boycott, withdrawal of economic investments and sanctions against Israel. And this time - as always before - he publicly rejected accusations of anti-Semitism, explaining that he has nothing against Jews, but there is much against today's Zionist project.
Case three: Palestinian activist and university professor Amin Husain was suspended from New York University precisely because of accusations of anti-Semitism, and scant records of a hearing before the Human Resources Department say that his involvement in the initiative "Decolonize This Place" was on the wallpaper. By the way, Husain started the initiative with a group of activists back in 2016, reacting to the exhibition "This Place" in the Brooklyn Museum, which under the guise of objectivity - they claimed - relativized the suffering of Palestinian civilians under Israeli occupation. Like Waters, he regularly reminds us that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are not the same. Like Waters, it doesn't help him either: the American right has been publicly persecuting him for years, dutifully declaring him a terrorist.
Three different cases, then, but the same unwritten rules. The lesson is the same, it seems: the three most recent cases, quite by chance, remind us that in the Middle East, despite the unwritten rules, something was happening even before October 7. And that someone, like Laurie Anderson, was still talking about massacres, lynchings and forced evictions in Gaza in 2021. And that someone, like Roger Waters, has been warning about the deadly Israeli occupation for almost 20 years. And that someone, like Amin Husain, has been classified as a terrorist for years because of such attitudes.
There are, as we said, strong reasons for the unwritten rules of newspaper reporting that dictate that every article about Gaza begins with a reference to the Hamas attack. But there are even stronger reasons - at least for the sake of those 26 thousand dead Palestinians and at least for the sake of those who await their death today - that the text should not end like that.
And to keep writing about unwritten rules.
Case by case, just in case.
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