[R-G] Israeli apartheid week no 'hate-fest'

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=1371577

Israeli apartheid week no 'hate-fest'

Judy Rebick and Alan Sears,  National Post

These past few weeks have seen an unprecedented attack on free  
expression on our university campuses. The poster announcing Israeli  
Apartheid Week was banned at Carleton, University of Ottawa and  
Wilfred Laurier University. B'nai Brith took out advertisements urging  
university presidents to ban Israeli Apartheid Week. Immigration and  
Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney and Liberal Leader Michael  
Ignatieff have denounced the event. Jason Kenney also threatened to  
pull funding from immigration settlement programs administered by the  
Canadian Arab Federation on the basis of their record of advocacy for  
Palestinian rights.

Nevertheless, Israeli Apartheid Week has proceeded. These attacks have  
little to do with the reality of Israeli Apartheid Week. While most  
university administrators and event organizers have not been  
intimidated by false charges of hate and anti-Semitism, unfortunately  
the mainstream media has failed to cover the events.

The demand that this week of panel discussions and cultural events be  
shut down is grounded in the assertion that Israeli Apartheid creates  
an atmosphere of anti-Semitism on campus. B'nai Brith labels it a  
"hate fest," while Michael Ignatieff states "IAW singles out one  
state, its citizens and its supporters for condemnation and exclusion,  
and it targets institutions and individuals because of what and who  
they are--Israeli and Jewish."

This is unfair and completely untrue. The organizers of Israeli  
Apartheid Week are committed to freedom of speech and to working  
against all forms of oppression, including Islamophobia, anti-Semitism  
and other forms of racism or discrimination based on religion,  
nationality, gender or sexual orientation. Israeli Apartheid Week  
judges Israel by the same standards as all other states, in terms of  
violations of international law and human rights abuses. These  
accusations of anti-Semitism are designed to shut down discussion of  
Palestinian rights by blurring the boundary between criticism of the  
State of Israel and attacks on the human rights of Jewish people.

Michael Ignatieff argues, that the use of the term "apartheid" to  
characterize Israel "goes beyond reasonable criticism into  
demonization."

The term "apartheid" is defined specifically in the Article 7 of the  
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as "inhumane acts ...  
committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic  
oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial  
group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that  
regime."

Israel has built a wall that not only separates it from the West Bank  
but separates families from each other within the West Bank. It has  
blockaded Gaza and then assaulted the mostly civilian population  
causing more than 1,000 deaths, 400 of them children. Arab citizens of  
Israel have fewer rights than Jewish citizens. It is at the very least  
legitimately debatable whether the Israeli state fits the criteria of  
apartheid. The term has been applied to Israel by former U. S.  
president Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Israeli writer Uri  
Davis.

In a statement before the United Nations, General Assembly president  
Miguel D'Escoto Brockman argued for the use of the term "apartheid" to  
describe Israeli policies: "I believe it is very important that we in  
the United Nations use this term. We must not be afraid to call  
something what it is. It is the United Nations, after all, that passed  
the International Convention against the Crime of Apartheid, making  
clear to all the world that such practices of official discrimination  
must be outlawed wherever they occur."

The attempt to shut down Israeli Apartheid Week rather than debate the  
applicability of the term fits with a long history of silencing  
depictions of the realities of Palestinian life. The discussion of  
Israel and Palestine is bound to be uncomfortable and heated, at least  
until a just peace is accomplished. At the very least, it needs to be  
governed by basic commitments to free speech and universal standards  
of human rights. This is only possible if we recognize that the  
normalization of free expression around Palestinian rights is a  
fundamental condition for open discussion and debate.