When you attend a burlesque
show of clowns and standup comedians, you expect to see actors spoofing highly
placed personalities with gestures that communicate to the audience ideas that
go something like this: They may have the power that you or I don't have, but
we can pretend to be them, do the things they will not do, and laugh at
ourselves, thus make believe that we’re laughing at hem.
Suppose now that you are
invited, not to a burlesque, but a serious show featuring medical experts who
will discuss contemporary problems of health, and how to minimize their harmful
effect on you and your family. You go to the show, and what you see is a
burlesque kind of atmosphere where the subjects they discuss pertain to health
alright, but the actors are not experts in the field. They are clowns and
standup comedians pretending to be experts.
From the little that you know
about the subject, you can already determine that what they say is laughable, which
is the intent of the show of course, but you still feel cheated because you
were sold one thing and given another. Yes, there is an adage that says
laughing is the best medicine, but you came not to be healed by laughter; you
came to be lectured by medical experts, not entertained by clowns and
comedians.
That story is a metaphor which
applies to every form of communication because communicating is done via one
form of artistic expression or another. It is done through theater, poetry,
painting, essay writing, oratory and what have you. Each time the practicing
artist can choose to strictly purvey information to the audience, or simply
entertain it, or do both at the same time.
This suggests that
communication is given such a wide latitude, it is practically a case of
anything goes. But can the act of deceiving others by selling them something
and delivering another, be an acceptable form of communication? This is a
tricky question because it pits free speech against intellectual honesty. It
makes us wonder which of the two must be given the greater weight?
We can attempt to answer that
question by parsing the article which came under the title: “Harvard Names
Serial Liar and Failed Diplomat Saeb Erekat as a Fellow to Lecture on
Diplomacy,” written by Elder of Ziyon and published on August 31, 2020 in the
online Jewish publication Algemeiner.
To begin with, Algemeiner is a
publication that wants you to believe it is as solemn as you must be when
discussing the Holocaust. It does, however, give space to Elder of Ziyon which
is a burlesque post at par with the irreverent “Onion.” It has several actors,
none of whom gives out their real name but who, from time to time, come up with
an outrageous piece that does not deserve being critiqued even when it is fanatically
one-sided and lacking the humorous element which would have added relief to the
stench that’s released by the mentality of the hidden authors.
Today's piece, however,
requires a response despite everything because it is so exceptionally
foul-smelling, it brings into the fore the competition that sometimes exists
between free speech and intellectual honesty. It is that the writer says he is
incensed by the fact that Harvard University has named four new fellows to
lecture on diplomacy, one of them being the Palestinian Saeb Erekat. As you can
see, this good man was singled out and described with characteristics of the
kind that the Nazis would have attributed to the Jews.
Here is what the Elder of
Ziyon has detected in Netanyahu, and attributed to Saeb Erekat: “He has a long
history of the most egregious lies. He's even lied about his own life and his
family's history. He is not a respected global leader. He is a failure at
everything he has ever done”.
And what follows is what the
Elder of Ziyon has detected in the leaders of Israel as a collective, and has
attributed to Saeb Erekat. In the interest of telling it like it is, I added in
square bracket what should restore to the text, the honesty that Ziyon has
failed to inject into the work. Here is what the end result looks like:
“He [They] has [have] been
instrumental in painting the (Palestinians) [Israelis] into a corner, stopping
negotiations with (Israel) [Palestine]. (He) [They] turned the (Arab) [whole]
world from (pro-Palestinian) [philosemitic] to lukewarm or hostile. Why would
Harvard [not] hire a proven (serial liar) [truth teller], a (failed)
[successful] negotiator and a politician who has (not) [greatly] helped his own
people in (any) [every] way”.
As an exercise in free speech,
and when it is taken lightly, this burlesque style of essay-writing might have
worked. The trouble, however, is that before saying anything, this is what
Elder of Ziyon had asked us to do:
“Remember when actions taken
by Harvard University actually meant something?”
The answer to that question is
yes, we do remember, and we also know that nothing has changed with Harvard. It
is today what it was yesterday and before that for as far back as the memory
goes.
But we also remember that Algemeiner
is a publication that wants us to believe it is as solemn as when someone
discusses the Holocaust.