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Roger Thomas looks at the commotion in Davos stirred up by the publication of an article entitled �Boycott Israel� in the World Economic Forum�s official organ, Global Agenda.

What do you call a man, effectively the proprietor of a magazine called Global Agenda in one of his roles, who attempts to censor an article in his publication after it has already been printed and circulated to a large part (perhaps 3,000 people) of its intended audience?

More than that, the author of the offending article holds an electronic file of its final form sent to him as a proof and is happy to circulate it more widely.

And what if the �proprietor� attempts to impose his retrospective censorship under the gaze of the world press at one of the world�s highest-profile forums, the annual Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF)?

Maintaining a certain level of self-censoring decorum, you would probably have to call Professor Klaus Schwab, the Swiss founder and executive chairman of the WEF, misguided.

Less politely, you might call his effort to turn back the clock quixotic. You might say he has shot himself and his organisation in the foot, seriously damaging its credibility.

To be fair, it�s also quite likely that he was put under unbearable pressure to make his embarrassing move by lobbyists that we will never find out about.

On 26 January Schwab felt compelled to make an abject apology after a WEF delegate, an American businessman, drew his attention to an article in Global Agenda entitled �Boycott Israel� by Palestinian-American activist Mazin Qumsiyeh.

Schwab told delegates: �With great concern and pain, I just learned that Global Agenda, a publication distributed to our members at the Annual Meeting 2006, contains an article calling for a boycott of Israel. This article is totally in contradiction to my own, and the Forum�s, mission and values.

For 36 years I have been committed to fighting for mutual understanding in the world. The Forum has been deeply involved in the efforts to create better relations and reconciliation in the Middle East and throughout the world.

�As soon as I learned about this article, I immediately investigated how this situation could have developed. I concluded there was an unacceptable failure in the editorial process, specifically an insufficiently short period for review of content � for which there is no excuse. I, on behalf of the Forum, profoundly apologize and express my regrets to everyone. I can assure you that appropriate steps have been instituted to ensure that this will never happen again.

�I would like to confirm to all our friends in the Middle East, and throughout the world, that the Forum will continue, under my leadership, to do everything possible to foster dialogue and open communication among all parties, based on mutual respect and recognition, and not on confrontation.�

It having been demonstrated that the best way to propagate free expression and debate was to do some book-burning, copies of the magazine were then retrieved wherever possible. Qumsiyeh�s article on the website version of the magazine was flagged as unavailable and then his name was removed from the list of authors.

The whole issue of Global Agenda was then set to be reprinted without Qumsiyeh�s article, which was to be replaced with advertisements and another abject apology from Schwab.

And in a 3 February letter to American Jewish Committee executive director David Harris, Schwab described Qumsiyeh�s article as �inflammatory and venomous�. After the reprinted 2006 Global Agenda, Schwab promised Harris, no further annual issues would be produced for World Economic Forum meetings. �Following the appalling article in Global Agenda, it is best to close the magazine,� he wrote.

Pressure groups

What, then, was so offensive about Qumsiyeh�s article and was it really beyond the pale of acceptability when compared with other articles published in the same and previous issues of Global Agenda? And did far from disinterested pressure groups seek to ram home the point that his arguments were unacceptable whereas arguably equally controversial views in this and previous issues of Global Agenda have gone unchallenged?

Global Agenda, an annual one-off magazine that ran to 232 pages this year, is indeed the official organ of the World Economic Forum�s main conference, held in Davos, Switzerland, every January. The magazine�s website notes that, like the WEF itself, Global Agenda seeks to lead opinion and debate on all the key issues facing the world. It aims to be thought-provoking and controversial, but balanced and fair. And it tries to make room for voices from all sides of society.

�We live in deeply unsettled, challenging times,� it reads. �Many of the certainties on which we have come to depend in recent years are in doubt. In place of trust lie scepticism, suspicion and fear. It is more vital than ever that all sides of the debate are heard � from the worlds of business, civil society and government. Like the World Economic Forum itself, Global Agenda aims to be a forum for discussing issues, testing ideas and initiating change.�

However, although the magazine is published under the aegis and imprint of the WEF, it is produced by a team of experienced journalists � some staff members, some freelance � who work for World Link Publications, a company that has been owned by London-based trade publications publisher Euromoney Institutional Investor plc since 1999.

Articles for Global Agenda are commissioned by the magazine�s editor and senior editors but ultimately under the overall supervision of an editorial director, Mark Adams, who is the head of communications of the WEF in Davos.

This structure does present certain logistic problems. Global Agenda staff have grown wary of material that might upset the sensitivities of the WEF and so a certain amount of self-censorship is built into their editing strategy.

And the WEF does have the opportunity to vet articles before they go to press. Schwab might well be right in arguing that there was �an insufficiently short period for review of content� but the opportunity was certainly there.

And the unapologetically in-your-face headline of Qumsiyeh�s article ought to have alerted Schwab�s staff to the fact that they had something potentially explosive on their hands. Had they demanded the removal of the article before publication, Global Agenda�s editor would not have demurred.

That said, Global Agenda has not been a stranger to controversial points of view. Last year�s issue, for example, included an article by Mahmood Mamdani pointing to the way in which the aggressive strategies of a succession of US governments had played a large role in bringing extremist Islamic terrorism down on their citizens� heads.

Another from Jasper Becker explicitly advocated direct regime change intervention in North Korea; and another, by Ervand Abrahamian, pointed to the dangerous likelihood of direct US action in Iran. And this year arch-neoconservative Michael Ledeen has his say on the propagation of democracy � but more on that later.

What did Qumsiyeh�s article say that caused such offence? Index on Censorship�s readers can make their own judgement on the text as a whole, since it is readily available, but the author�s argument is readily summarised.

Most of the article is a historical analysis of the development of Zionism that argues that the movement�s ideas are a core part of the policies of Israeli governments of all stripes.

That, over the years, has led to a colonialist attitude to Palestine that features many of the elements of other colonial empires. In view of this, Qumsiyeh argues, Israel needs to be seen in the same terms as apartheid South Africa was, and it would be appropriate that the sort of boycotts used against that regime be also applied to Israel.

It should be stressed that at no point in his article does Qumsiyeh advocate the destruction of Israel; rather, he argues, �global civil society� needs peacefully to press Israel�s rulers (and their US supporters) to take a fresh view of the rights of Palestinians.

There�s nothing stunningly new here. By no means all Israelis would concur in Qumsiyeh�s view of the history of their country, but many would. And the same could be said of many Jews outside Israel.

Many liberal-minded non-Jewish people � not just Palestinians � would also find Qumsiyeh�s interpretation unexceptionable; without feeling that it implied that Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth, they would concur in the view that its government�s policies need a fundamental rethink.

Also unsurprisingly, though, the article�s arguments � or rather, in many cases, the mere fact that Schwab had drawn attention to them � has raised a storm of protest from US Jewish pressure groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, CAMERA (the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) and the American Jewish Committee.

Much of the criticism from these bodies is ad hominem rather than directed at the arguments expressed in this particular article. Qumsiyeh has perpetrated factual errors in previous writings, says CAMERA, and it is known that he has elsewhere advocated the destruction of Israel.

Denounced

And as the American Jewish Committee website puts it: �AJC sent a strong letter of protest yesterday to Schwab after learning about the article by Mazin Qumsiyeh, who has long opposed Israel�s existence. �We hope that you agree that the inclusion of this article was not only a mistake, but an unfortunate endorsement of bigotry that must be remedied immediately,� wrote AJC Executive Director David A. Harris, who urged the WEF leadership to denounce the article and to institute policies to insure that such hatred never again appears in a Forum publication.�

Any criticism of Israeli policies apparently amounts to anti-Semitism. As Abraham H Foxman, Anti-Defamation League national director, put it: �(the article) is permeated with anti-Semitic insinuations of Jewish craftiness, control of the media and American and international policymaking�.

And Michael Ledeen? As five minutes� web research will show, his Global Agenda article 'Freedom will Triumph' on spreading democracy in the Middle East is very much a sanitised version of his views.

If an ad hominem line is taken towards judging fitness for publication, the fact that he has provided much of the underpinnings for the Bush administration�s approach to regime change must surely disqualify him from appearing in a World Economic Forum publication.

What was that Schwab had to say? � �dialogue and open communication among all parties, based on mutual respect and recognition, and not on confrontation�.

By the close of the WEF meeting self-congratulation was in order again. Klaus Schwab had collected his honorary knighthood from UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and a new WEF press release laid on the sense of cordiality with a trowel. There�s far too much to quote here but, as the release noted:

�After the Friday night Shabbat Service at the World Economic Forum led by Chief Rabbi David Rosen and Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp the traditional Friday night dinner was attended by the highest representatives not only of the Jewish faith, but also by Cardinal Martino, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace of the Holy See, and Sheikh El Zafzaf from Egypt, Deputy of the Grand Imam.

�This historic Shabbat Dinner reinforced the spirit of Davos, as for the first time in the history of the World Economic Forum the ecomenical [sic] presence of all three Abrahamic religions demonstrated that the World Economic Forum is indeed the foremost forum where political, economic, civil society and spiritual leaders from all over the world come together in order to improve the state of the world.

�For the first time in the history of the World Economic Forum people from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith came together within the spirit of Shabbat� At a time where grave concerns about the future of the Middle East peace process have arised [sic] this event represents a remarkable milestone in the history of the World Economic Forum, as Stuart Eizenstat emphasized, reinvigorating hope for a peaceful resolution of the Middle East conflict.�

If only it were that easy.

� Roger Thomas taught history in the University of Ghana in the 1970s and is now a freelance book and magazine subeditor. He was part of the subediting team on all four annual issues of Global Agenda that have appeared since 2002.

The controversy generated a number of stories in mainstream media outlets around the world. Here are examples:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article344510.ece
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/01/28/business/news/20_04_241_27_06.txt
http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=245494&ct=1820451
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,183058,00.html
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21115
http://blogs.iht.com/tribtalk/business/2006/01/antizionism_at_davos.php
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4651334.stm
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/27/business/27forum.html?pagewanted=print
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/675281.html
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3206125,00.html
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=59815
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=97293
http://www.adl.org/PresRele/IslME_62/4852_62.htm
http://www.ajc.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=ijITI2PHKoG&b=849241&ct=1820519
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2006/01/post_4.html
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000054978&fid=942