How is censorship considered the complementary and decisive element in genocide?

Professors Rebecca Lopez (left) and Rebecca Zapien were replaced by the University of Arizona for allowing a discussion of the Israeli war in their classroom. Image source (The College Fix)

As the genocide in Gaza continues unabated, we all have a responsibility to include “Palestine” and “Palestinians” in every conversation.

Last month, writer and journalist Howard Eric Jacobson complained on the BBC's flagship news programme, Newsnight, that the public broadcaster was showing too many images of Palestinian suffering in Gaza.

He added that by broadcasting Palestinian suffering on television in this way; The BBC "takes sides", and that while it was "painful to see what is happening, there are reasons for it".

This was not the first expression of this feeling. A few weeks ago, there was an ongoing discussion on the professional networking platform LinkedIn about whether there were “too many posts related to Israel and Palestine” on the site, and whether that should change. Many responded that it should, because they wanted people to stop talking about starving, bombing, and burying Palestinians under rubble.

It may seem strange for people like Jacobson to acknowledge the enormous levels of suffering in Gaza, but at the same time demand that the world hear less about it. But this is not at all surprising; Censorship has always been a necessary complement to genocide. As the genocide in Gaza continued, efforts to silence those who sought to sound the alarm took various forms.

In November in the United States, the University of Arizona “temporarily replaced” assistant professor Rebecca Lopez and community liaison Rebecca Zapien for facilitating a classroom discussion on the Israeli war on Gaza.

Much has been said and written about Israel's refusal to allow foreign journalists to freely enter Gaza to cover the genocide and its attacks targeting Palestinian journalists, who risk life and limb to show the world the truth about what is happening to their people. Even journalists thousands of miles away from the Palestinian Strip have been punished for daring to speak about Genocide.

Last December, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) fired broadcaster Antoinette Lattouf. Because of the republication of a Human Rights Watch publication stating that “Israel is using famine as a weapon of war in Gaza.” The ABC itself reported on Human Rights Watch's claim, which has since been repeated by the United Nations.

Lattouf - who is believed to be the first Arab-Australian woman to work as a correspondent on commercial television - says she fears the ABC will back down under pressure from pro-Israel groups who accuse it of “anti-Semitism and bias.” Because of her support for Palestinian rights and criticism of Israel since her first appointment, she has filed a lawsuit against ABC; Due to unfair dismissal.

Throughout this genocide, teachers and university professors around the world who tried to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians were also silenced. An Israeli teacher was fired from his job, arrested, and placed in solitary confinement for criticizing the actions of the Israeli military.

Meir Paruchin's only "crime" was his Facebook post the day after the Hamas attack on Israel in which he said: "Horrific images are pouring out of Gaza. Entire families have been wiped out... Anyone who thinks this is justified because of what happened yesterday, should... To give up his friendship. I ask everyone to do everything possible to stop this madness. Stop it now. Not later, now!!"

Earlier this month, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem suspended law professor Nadra Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a Palestinian citizen of Israel; Because of her criticism of Israel's war on Gaza and Zionism in general.

The silencing of teachers and university lecturers was not limited to Israel either. In November in the United States, the University of Arizona “temporarily replaced” assistant professor Rebecca Lopez and community liaison Rebecca Zapien for facilitating a classroom discussion about the Israeli war on Gaza.

Pro-Israel groups claimed that their lecture was "biased, anti-Semitic, blatantly false and supportive of terrorism." Two first-grade teachers at a Los Angeles-area public charter school were also placed on leave after they shared a social media post about a lesson they taught about “genocide in Palestine.”

Politicians and civil servants, in Israel and in countries that support Israel's war on Gaza, are not immune from such oversight. In January, Ofer Cassif, an Israeli member of the Knesset from the left-wing Change Front party, announced his intention to join South Africa in its legal proceedings against Israel under the UN Genocide Convention. In response to Cassif's decision to support the cause of genocide in South Africa, 85 members of the Israeli parliament (out of 120) accused him of "treason" and signed a petition to expel him from the Knesset.

On the other side of the world, in Canada, Sarah Jama, a member of the Ontario Provincial Parliament, was forced to apologize for a statement she made following the Hamas attack on Israel in October; It called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and an end to the Israeli occupation and apartheid. Gama's apology came after Ontario Premier Doug Ford called for her resignation.

The director of organizational performance and equity for the city of Evanston, Illinois, in the United States, was fired after he expressed sympathy for the Palestinians in Gaza on social media.

In January, Liam Byrd filed a federal lawsuit against his former employer. The lawsuit also alleges that senior city officials "inflamed" public anger toward Byrd over the proposed resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza before it was presented to the Equity and Empowerment Commission in November.

The efforts to censor and intimidate anyone and everyone who speaks out against Israel's genocide in Gaza are undoubtedly sad, but they are by no means surprising.

A look at global history reveals that silencing critical voices has helped create an environment that has been permissive of mass atrocities, and the worst atrocity of all, genocide, for at least a century.

In the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, led by Slobodan Milošević, numerous measures were implemented to suppress and monitor all independent publications, as well as television and radio stations that dared to speak out against, or even mention in a normal way, the atrocities committed by Serbs against Albanians, Bosniaks and Croats throughout the region.

In 1998, five independent newspaper editors were charged with “spreading misleading information”; Because their leaflets referred to Albanians killed in Kosovo as “people” and not “terrorists.”

When NATO eventually threatened to invade Kosovo to put an end to the atrocities, the Serbian government redoubled its determination to silence all dissenting voices. “If we cannot seize all of their (NATO) aircraft, we can seize the ones that are within our reach, such as the various Helsinki committees, the Quisling groups,” said a member of Milošević's coalition. He added that those who were found to have “participated in serving foreign propaganda... should not expect any good from the state authorities.”

Two decades after the genocide in Bosnia, which was accompanied by the dark shadow of censorship across the country, authorities in China launched a “tough campaign against violent terrorism,” targeting Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

According to a Chinese official quoted by Human Rights Watch; The purpose of the campaign against Muslim minorities in the autonomous region is: “to sever their lineage, sever their roots, sever their ties, and sever their origins.” Human rights organizations estimate that one million Turkish Muslims have been sent to “political education” camps, pre-trial detention centers, and prisons since the beginning of the “operation.”

Here too censorship accompanied atrocities; As authorities cut off internet service across the region for several months, they imprisoned Uyghur website founders, writers and editors on charges of crimes such as: “dissent, leaking state secrets, organizing an illegal demonstration or endangering state security.”

They also subjected the region to intense levels of social media surveillance; They deleted an estimated 25 percent of all social media comments. They also suppressed pro-Uighur speech elsewhere in the country.

Censorship and suppression of freedom of expression were also major features of the Nazi Holocaust. These included the banning of Jewish literature, and the systematic burning of “unwanted books” labeled “un-German”; Seeking “moral renewal.”

The Nazis closed or took control of all opposition newspapers in Germany early in their tenure, and until the end they controlled all news—about the Nazi Party, its policies against Jews, and the war effort in general—that appeared in newspapers, on the radio, and in the news.

Germans were forbidden from listening to foreign radio stations, and only very limited – and strictly censored – information about the country and its war efforts was allowed to be shared with the rest of the world. The party even controlled what German soldiers wrote home from various fronts around the world.

The end result of these strict censorship efforts was that the overwhelming majority in the international community did not learn of the true extent of Nazi atrocities, and Jewish suffering in German-controlled territories, until after the end of World War II.

Now another genocide is taking place in Gaza, and censorship is at play again. In the age of camera phones and social media, it has proven more or less impossible for those who commit and facilitate genocide to prevent Palestinians from sharing their reality, and those around the world from raising their voices in support of them.

But that is precisely why there are relentless efforts to silence and censor journalists, academics, politicians and activists who stand with Palestine – efforts to ensure that graphic images of pain and suffering in Gaza stop reaching our screens.

This is precisely why it is our collective responsibility to include “Palestine” and “Palestinians” everywhere, in every article, every work of art, and every discussion.

Our only chance to stop this genocide is to learn from history and keep talking about Palestine.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.