Lawrence Hart: Demonizing Israel – ‘Apartheid Week’ About Hostility, Propaganda

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http://www.thespec.com/printArticle/731656

The recurring slander that seeks to brand Israel as an “apartheid” state finds expression around this time of year in a format that has come to be known as Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW). This blight on the campus landscape made its first appearance in 2005, at just one location — University of Toronto — but since has spread to the extent that it now infiltrates some 40 colleges and universities across the globe. Many of these are in the U.S. and Canada.

The aim of IAW, we are told, is to “educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system,” purportedly using a series of educational and cultural events as the medium for doing so. All well and good on the surface, some might say but, in effect, when the basic premise of the entire exercise is bogus and when “educational and cultural events” manifest mostly as quite obvious propaganda, there is cause for skepticism.

What we see with each succeeding IAW is not so much a battle for the hearts and minds of either the Muslim/Arab groups or their Jewish counterparts, but rather an increasingly rancorous standoff between those who claim the right to unrestrained and often hostile rhetoric and behaviour under the guise of promoting and defending free speech, and those who expect that the privilege of free speech needs to be exercised responsibly and with due regard for the sensibilities of all members of the academy, principally in this case, Jewish students and faculty.

Apartheid, as we’re well aware, is a highly charged term with odious connotations. But aside from its often careless application colloquially, it carries with it a far more sinister inference when more definitively linked, as it should be, to the time and place that spawned its usage. When this connection is made — to South Africa before 1994 — it comes as no surprise that apartheid was declared a crime by the United Nations in 1973 and designated as a crime against humanity by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 2002.

Therefore, blaming any country or any group for apartheid practices confers criminality on those so accused. With such an assumption of criminality, marginalization and ostracism frequently follow, and dehumanization may not be far behind.

In addressing the fallacious association between apartheid and Israel, Gideon Shimoni, professor emeritus of the Hebrew University’s Institute of Contemporary Jewry in Jerusalem, emphasizes that the historical context of the Jewish-Arab conflict in the Middle East is fundamentally different from that between the Afrikaner ideology of apartheid as it pertained to the Black population in South Africa. He stresses that the charge that Israel is an apartheid state is an insidious tool in the hands of those who deny the entitlement of Jews to a viable national home.

It is his contention that “those who use the apartheid accusation employ the old anti-Zionist arguments… applying identifiable double standards of judgment to Israel, traceable to the characteristic anti-Semitic premise that all things Jews do are inherently evil, including their nationalism.”

Thus, by relating “apartheid” constructs to Israeli policies and practices, Israel’s enemies have found the ultimate vehicle by which to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state and its supporters around the world.

When this tactic begins to pollute the campus landscape, as it does not only during IAW, but also through a concerted “abuse of the podium” at various points throughout the school year, it comes as no surprise that what academics refer to as a “chilled” atmosphere has seriously fractured relationships that might otherwise occur between Arab-Muslim and Jewish students and faculty in our campus communities.

The heated, ugly invective that defines IAW does not go unheeded or unmonitored. In fact, what may be encouraging is that politicians, both at the federal and provincial levels, are beginning to take note of the disruptions that IAW causes year after year.

In March 2009, Federal Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney expressed his concern, stating in a press release that “it is disconcerting that university student groups would promote these gatherings in a manner that demonstrates a complete disregard for the safety and security of Jewish students and professors and the general well-being of campus life.”

And just within the past few days, in what has been described as “a rare show of unanimity,” members of the Ontario legislature, from across the political spectrum, passed a resolution condemning IAW.

It remains to be seen whether moral suasion or some degree of pressure from our political leadership will have any impact on university administrators who have seemed unable, so far, to curb, or preferably to remove from their campuses, this highly abusive, intimidating and intellectually dishonest series of events that causes so much divisiveness and distrust in the very groups where understanding and bridge-building are most urgently needed.

Dr. Lawrence Hart is a professor at McMaster University. He chairs the planning committee of McMaster’s Jewish Faculty Association.

Benjamin Kalmanowicz, a School of Management freshman and member of BU’s Arab-Israeli Peace Alliance, said he believes the term apartheid is illegitimate.

“The word choice of this has to be very carefully examined,” he said. “It is an attempt to compare and show people who have no idea about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that Israel is the evil part, but I think everybody can agree that both countries have a part in this conflict.”

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines apartheid as “a policy of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race.”

Kalmanowicz said IAW should be protested because it is wrongly comparing Israel to the formerly apartheid state of South Africa.

AIPA, founded in 2005, is another campus group dedicated to bringing peace in the Middle East. Their goal, according to their Facebook page, is to “educate students on the complex situation between the Israeli and Palestinian nations, show their commonalities and allow co-existence to thrive on a campus.”

AIPA doesn’t take a standpoint on IAW because the organization’s intention is to promote peace, not tension and separation, Kalmanowicz said.

Some students are skeptical about the IAW’s intentions.

“Having this week is turning the campus into more of a battleground than any awareness booster,” said College of Arts and Sciences freshman Rachel Kessler.

Others said they believe it will help raise awareness.

“It’s a great opportunity to educate the public about an important issue and to clarify some misconceptions about the situation at hand between Israelis and Palestinians,” said College of General Studies freshman Sebastian Filgueira-Gomez.

SJP says IAW is important to have on college campuses because it is part of a global effort.

“The debate on this campus has been deliberately skewed to condemn the victim of occupation by the occupier,” Chinich said. “We are part of an international movement to change that.”

Lawrence Hart: Demonizing Israel – ‘Apartheid Week’ About Hostility, Propaganda

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