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Support free speech? Of course you do. So you support people defaming Israel as an apartheid state? Hmmm. Tricky, isn't it? Freedom of expression is a core western value which has been turned into a battleground.
This month, students at Rutgers University were left so traumatised they had to be assisted by psychiatric services, the police and victim support. What had posed such a threat to their safety and mental health? A lecture on how various groups were destroying the free exchange of ideas on campus by the creation of "safe space" and "trigger warnings" against offensiveness.
University "safe space" censors anything that might upset certain groups. Free speech is sacrosanct until it causes offence. Whereupon it is banned as hate speech. Let me qualify that. Only some groups, it seems, are capable of being offended. These are victim groups. Only some groups are entitled to claim victim status. These are people deemed to be without power. The "powerful" are white men, heterosexuals and Christians. Oh, and America and Israel. They cannot be victims. You cannot be a victimiser if you are brown or black, belong to a religion from the developing world or have an irregular sexual identity - because all these are "powerless".
Anything disobliging said about such groups is hate speech. So traditional Christians have had their collars felt by the police for speaking against homosexuality. And to criticise Muslim extremism is Islamophobia.
"Safe space" is in fact not safe at all but deeply threatening and intimidating. No safe space, though, for Jewish students on campus who constantly run the gauntlet of anti-Israel demonisation, incitement to hatred and bigotry against Jews while having their own pro-Israel initiatives disrupted.
At King's College London last month, a meeting of pro-Israel students addressed (ironically) by the Israeli peacenik Ami Ayalon was attacked by anti-Israel activists. They smashed windows, set off a fire alarm, threw chairs around and chanted "Nazis!" at those attending. Their reason? Pro-Israel sentiments caused them distress.
A few days ago, the co-chair of Oxford University's Labour Club resigned in protest at its anti-Israel and anti-Jewish behaviour, denouncing the left more widely for having a problem with Jews.
So where should the free-speech line be drawn? The principle of a liberal society is that everything should be permitted unless it does harm. You are not harmed if you are offended. But we now prohibit giving offence while allowing speech that can incite real harm. What, though, constitutes incitement? The key is the distinction between truth and lies.
The vilification of Israel causes attacks on Jews. That's because it is based on diabolical lies, such as that Israel wilfully kills Palestinian children or practises apartheid, which clearly incite hysterical hatred.
As Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, no one has the right falsely to shout fire in a crowded theatre. There is no right to lie and thus incite violence. On the other hand, speaking the truth about a real threat to life can save life.
Lies about Israel or Jews should not be banned. To do so, after all, would entail banning the New Testament and much of Eng Lit. But there is equally no right to disseminate anti-Israel lies, and editors or university vice-chancellors should not make their platforms available for such incitement. There's a need for social responsibility, intellectual integrity and moral decency. Such self-policing measures, alas, have been largely lost in the myriad confusions of our times.
Melanie Phillips is a Times columnist
