Palestine exception

The Palestine exception, otherwise known as the Palestine exception to free speech, is a pattern of institutional discrimination and selective enforcement of policies and laws that restricts the voices, scholarship, and advocacy of Palestinians and their allies, contrary to principles such as the freedom of expression or the right to protest. Especially since the onset of the Gaza war, academics, lawyers, free speech and civil liberties advocates, journalists, and pro-Palestinian activists have raised concerns about censorship and suppression of protests against the war, calls for a ceasefire, criticism of US military and diplomatic support for Israel, and criticism of Israel's invasion of Gaza and its military conduct there. The term has also regularly been used to criticize university policies which restrict pro-Palestine campus protests, including those which call for disinvestment from Israel.

Steven Salaita suggests that, beyond Palestinians themselves, suppression of pro-Palestinian discourse particularly affects Arabs, Muslims and ethnic minorities. Jairo I. Fúnez-Flores says that many pro-Palestinian advocacy groups have changed social media platforms in order to evade what they claim is institutional censorship or punishment for their pro-Palestinian comments, and that calls for suppression have been amplified by traditional media. United Nations Special Rapporteur for freedom of speech Irene Khan has recognized the discrimination and double standards that protests for the Palestinian cause have faced in Europe and the United States, which include bans on, and even criminalization of, public displays of Palestinian flags and the keffiyeh.

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