we think you a hater...

one of my friends sent me a link to a really great article written by rick salutin over at rabble about the accusation that israeli apartheid week(and its organizers, and those involved and attending events) are anti-semitic.

i was only able to attend the last event of the week: Turtle Island, South Africa to Palestine: The Struggle Continues, where Mike Krebs and Ronnie Kasrils discussed struggles for indigenous peoples in canada and the anti-apartheid movement in south africa in the context of israeli apartheid policy.

what i saw were deeply engaged and passionate people who had extensive knowledge of a complicated and complex issue--a knowledge and a passion that those accusing them of anti-semitism don't seem to possess.

these are people who welcome questions and dialogue, who have sacrificed so much to raise awareness and protect their and others right to hold events like this.

unlike the organizers and participants of IAW, Jason Kenny or Michael Ignatieff simply painted the entire week as a series of hate crimes without attending a single event themselves.

yet again we see the liberals and the conservatives align to show themselves as cowards and idiots who might as well be members of the same party.

prorogueing parliament, denying the coalition government's democratic right to govern, trying to push a sneaky budget that punishes students/allocates funding in a totally inappropriate way, a budget that makes it harder for women to access pay equity legislation, repressing student and labour movements and introducing dangerous legislation that undermines the right to strike, and using the economic crisis as justification for all of this are just a few examples of what we can continue to look forward to under the new liberal/conservative coalition.

and now this. calling israeli apartheid week anti-semitic is dangerous because it makes critique of israel's state policy off limits and as rick salutin writes at the end of his article critique of israel is important "because Israel is now a state among nations and must be held to account, not absolved for fear of igniting a new Holocaust"



""
Israel, apartheid, anti-Semites

by rick salutin

What is the sound of one side condemning? It's the media rendering of Israel Apartheid Week, now under way. B'nai Brith ran full-page newspaper ads asking universities to "prevent" it and the attendant "anti-Semitism on campus." There were no ads from organizers, so we didn't hear them being anti-Semitic in their own words -- or denying the charge.

Here's the Toronto Star's Rosie DiManno: "That detestable, despicable annual campus hate-fest ... Jew-bashing cloaked in self-righteousness ... students who don't recognize racism when they're spewing it."

I don't know if she meant to be ironic, spewing hate at the spewers. But I've talked with friends, Jewish and non, about these claims. They're disturbed, they don't want to witness the rise of a new horror. Here's my take.

Cabinet minister Jason Kenney calls Israel Apartheid Week "a systematic effort to delegitimize the democratic homeland of the Jewish people" by linking it to racism, a line virtually mouthed by Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff. That is way too cute. Any "settler state," such as Canada, which took someone else's land, can be seen as illegitimate. But it's an abstract point. "Apartheid" became widely used in this context only when Israel began building what came to be called an apartheid wall, looming over Palestinians, sequestering more land, cutting them off from each other.

The usage grew as Israel expanded settlements, built Israeli-only roads and set up checkpoints so Palestinians would at best be left with "Bantustans," such as those that apartheid South Africa offered blacks, rather than a true state of their own. A small but real Palestinian state would be accepted by almost everyone. The Arab League has offered peace in return for Israel just leaving the West Bank. Even Hamas has a (nuanced) position on living with Israel. You can look it up.

What of the "new anti-Semitism" that Jason Kenney says is "based on the notion that the Jews alone have no right to a homeland"? Well, who are these new anti-Semites? I never see names or quotations. Canada has always had anti-Semites, but they've felt no need to hide their hate behind a screen of anti-Israel criticism. Think of David Ahenakew. A cartoon banned from hallways at the University of Ottawa showed a helicopter marked Israel rocketing a kid in Gaza holding a teddy bear. It's crude, but that's cartooning. There's no anti-Semitism in it. A front-page National Post cartoon showing CUPE Ontario's Sid Ryan offering David Ahenakew a job was far more scurrilous. No one can say Sid Ryan embraces anti-Semites, though he criticizes Israel strongly. Opposition to Israel seems well delineated from anti-Semitism to me.

Most of the specifics come down to shouts at protests. As in: "Cries of 'Die, Jew' and 'Get the hell off campus' were heard." The Canadian Jewish Congress's Bernie Farber says he's "never" seen it this bad "on the streets of Toronto and university campuses." Well, I spend lots of time on streets in Toronto and it doesn't look like Kristallnacht to me. But wait, that's glib. It's these images that scare my friends: They evoke Nazi Germany. I know that.

But Nazi Germany wasn't about name-calling and group hate. Those will persist, perhaps always. The Holocaust occurred largely because anti-Semitism was historically rooted and respectable there: religiously, socially, intellectually, politically. Writers and politicians were proudly anti-Semitic. Here, anti-Semitism is unacceptable in all those ways. This whole debate proves it. We should be glad for that, and keep it in perspective.

Why does perspective matter? Because Israel is now a state among nations and must be held to account, not absolved for fear of igniting a new Holocaust. Israel Apartheid Week should be gauged on its critique of its subject, not anathematized due to shadows and terrors from another time.""