First, is there any merit in boasting about freedom of speech or condemning its supposed absence elsewhere if one’s response to any inconvenient observation is “you’re lucky to be able to say that”? Logically, asserting that someone is lucky to have the freedom to criticize Israel is not a rebuttal but an evasion – an evasion with the subtext “if it were up to me…”

Implicit in Fidlon’s view is the notion that freedom of speech is a touchstone of civilization, a reliable indicator of the presence of every less delicate right. But if you were a patient dying in Gaza, would you not give up the right to speak about your pain in exchange for the possibility of medical treatment? If you were a Palestinian held for years without charge in an Israeli prison, would not the mere denial of free speech be a positive improvement? If you were a refugee in Lebanon, how much value would you put on your freedom of speech when even the voice of the UN is ignored? If you were a Palestinian living near the Wall or a settlement then would you not consider trading freedom of speech for freedom of movement, the freedom to earn a living from your own land, the freedom to live in your own house without fear of it being demolished at any time?

Implicit also is the assumption that Israel, in contrast to those dreadful Arabs, actually allows free speech. Yet just last month, Salam Fayyad asked the EU not to upgrade its relations with Israel until Israel improved its human rights record. How did the Israeli government respond? With contrary arguments? No: they responded by withholding the PA’s taxes. This reprisal for words said clearly: Your speech is not free; your money is under our control and if you complain about us then we can make things even worse for you.

Israeli Jews, of course, do enjoy a good measure of free speech. Some use it courageously to defend those less fortunate in this respect. Thus when Norman Finkelstein was deported earlier this year the Association for Civil Rights in Israel was able to say: “The decision to prevent someone from voicing their opinions by arresting and deporting them is typical of a totalitarian regime. A democratic state, where freedom of expression is the highest principle, does not shut out criticism or ideas just because they are uncomfortable for its authorities …”

For Palestinians, naturally, it gets worse: a brutal police attack on a peaceful procession at Saffuriya; journalists reporting the reality of the occupation subject to treatment ranging from harassment through torture (Mohammad Omer) on up to murder (Fadel Shana, who filmed his own death). These examples and those above are all from just the past few months.

Fidlon writes that “anti-Israel” (i.e., pro-human-rights) MPs should consider themselves lucky that they have the “privilege” of speaking out. Maybe they already do. Maybe they feel that with that good fortune comes a duty to speak out. Maybe Fidlon too should reflect on his luck not to have been born a Palestinian.

It should be needless to say that a lot of us disagree with your own very partisan appraisal, Paul. If by “anti-Israel” you mean they are actually even handed on I-P and show a skerrick of understanding and outrage at the treatment of the Palestinians, then your opinion is not at all widely shared and could hardly be called objective, if that is what you are intimating.

As for “speaking up for Israel”, I personally would love to be given a reason to do so, as would most Arabs I know whose countries you collectively impugn in your comment above (what about the dearth of Israelis speaking up for the Palestinians in Israel and how they are outcast in Israel, Paul? So much so that I can readily name half a dozen whom felt they had to live in exile: Ilan Pappe, Tanya Reinhart, Gilad Atzmon, Avigail Abarbanel, and many others).

The Israeli state’s actions continue to appall and disgust all thinking people of conscience and until and unless it ends the military occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the criminal siege of the Gaza Ghetto and stops building illegal settlements to name but a few of its major crimes, it will not attract people “speaking up for it” in a region where it refuses to be a peaceful part of the neighbourhood.

I agree with the hundreds of Jews who signed a letter in the London Guardian in April. The letter stated, in part: “We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people … We will celebrate when Arab and Jews live as equals in a peaceful Middle East.”