overcoming zionism

Joel Kovel, author of Overcoming Zionism, talks with Amy Goodman about Zionist pressure which caused University of Michigan Press to drop his book from distribution. Only after fellow academics and civil libertarians led a campaign to get the book published did University of Michigan Press overturn their decision and agree to continue the distribution of Kovel's book.

Joel Kovel, author of Overcoming Zionism, said, "What we don’t have is any kind of real debate on this subject in our country at this time ... basically these Zionist repression groups have had pretty much a free hand ... that’s why I wrote the book. I mean, I wanted to -- I disregarded all the taboos, that you're not supposed to talk about Israel in any depth in this country."

[The distributor dropped his book after receiving threatening emails from a Zionist pressure group.] "They panicked this summer when they dropped my book. I mean, they were pressured by this Zionist watchdog team." [But the Committee for Open Discussion of Zionism

was able to convince them to continue distributing it.] "We have a committee forming, Committee for Open Discussion of Zionism, codz.org. And we’re planning a conference and all. But the committee leapt into action, and we were amazed at just how eloquent and, you know, basically fed up a lot of people were with being intimidated by these kinds of tactics. They just want to suppress an open discussion of this subject. ... I grew up in a very conventional Jewish home, except for the fact that there was a lot of division on this subject, so I think from an early age I learned to take a certain distance from it and to think critically about it."

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