The Committee for the Open Discussion of Zionism (CODZ) was formed in September, 2007, in response to the efforts of certain Zionist organizations in the United States to suppress criticism of Israel and /or Zionism. These efforts, often successful, have included: pressuring academic institutions to deny tenure to faculty who have criticized Israeli policy; demanding the dismissal or suspension of pro-Palestinian teachers and administrators; instigating the denial of lecture and performance venues to critics of Israeli policy; and attempting to suppress distribution of books critical of Israel or Zionism.
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In September of 2007, the University of Michigan Press, in response to pressure from Zionist organizations, withdrew from distribution Professor Joel Kovel’s book: Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine, and declared its intention to reconsider its distribution contract with the book’s publisher, Pluto Press of London, U.K. CODZ organized a mass, grass-roots, protest, eliciting hundreds of support letters, that forced the University to reinstate distribution of Professor Kovel’s book and to drop reconsideration of its distribution contract with Pluto Press. This was a rare and important victory in the struggle against Zionist suppression tactics.
CODZ will continue to promote the open discussion of Zionism, Israeli government policies, and U.S. complicity in those policies, through publication, education and debate, and will continue to resist any efforts to suppress the public examination of these issues. We want to enable and protect those people who are experiencing the suppression of their rights of open speech about Zionism, by connecting them with others and by making help available.