McWhorter: I’m a Columbia Professor. The Protests on My Campus Are Not Justice.

2024/04/25 Leave a comment

Valid contrast if similar protests were against other groups or issues:

Last Thursday, in the music humanities class I teach at Columbia University, two students were giving an in-class presentation on the composer John Cage. His most famous piece is “4’33”,” which directs us to listen in silence to surrounding noise for exactly that period of time.

I had to tell the students we could not listen to that piece that afternoon, because the surrounding noise would have been not birds or people walking by in the hallway, but infuriated chanting from protesters outside the building. Lately that noise has been almost continuous during the day and into the evening, including lusty chanting of “From the river to the sea.” Two students in my class are Israeli; three others to my knowledge are American Jews. I couldn’t see making them sit and listen to this as if it were background music.

I thought about what would have happened if protesters were instead chanting anti-Black slogans, or even something like “D.E.I. has got to die,” to the same “Sound Off” tune that “From the river to the sea” has been adapted to. They would have lasted roughly five minutes before masses of students shouted them down and drove them off the campus. Chants like that would have been condemned as a grave rupture of civilized exchange, heralded as threatening resegregation and branded as a form of violence. I’d wager that most of the student protesters against the Gaza War would view them that way, in fact. Why do so many people think that weekslong campus protests against not just the war in Gaza but Israel’s very existence are nevertheless permissible?

Although I know many Jewish people will disagree with me, I don’t think that Jew-hatred is as much the reason for this sentiment as opposition to Zionism and the war on Gaza. I know some of the protesters, including a couple who were taken to jail last week, and I find it very hard to imagine that they are antisemitic. Yes, there can be a fine line between questioning Israel’s right to exist and questioning Jewish people’s right to exist. And yes, some of the rhetoric amid the protests crosses it.

Conversations I have had with people heatedly opposed to the war in Gaza, signage and writings on social media and elsewhere, and anti-Israel and generally hard-leftist comments that I have heard for decades on campuses place these confrontations within a larger battle against power structures — here in the form of what they call colonialism and genocide — and against whiteness. The idea is that Jewish students and faculty should be able to tolerate all of this because they are white.

I understand this to a point. Pro-Palestinian rallies and events, of which there have been many here over the years, are not in and of themselves hostile to Jewish students, faculty and staff members. Disagreement will not always be a juice and cookies affair. However, the relentless assault of this current protest — daily, loud, louder, into the night and using ever-angrier rhetoric — is beyond what anyone should be expected to bear up under regardless of their whiteness, privilege or power.

Social media discussion has been claiming that the protests are peaceful. They are, some of the time; it varies by location and day — generally what goes on within the campus gates is somewhat less strident than what happens just outside them. But relatively constant are the drumbeats — people will differ on how peaceful that sound can ever be, just as they will differ on the nature of antisemitism. What I do know is that even the most peaceful of protests would be treated as outrages if they were interpreted as, say, anti-Black — even if the message were coded, as in a bunch of people quietly holding up MAGA signs or wearing T-shirts saying “All Lives Matter.”

And besides, calling all this peaceful stretches the use of the word rather implausibly. It’s an odd kind of peace when a local rabbi urges Jewish students to go home as soon as possible, when an Arab-Israeli activist is roughed up on Broadway, when the angry chanting becomes so constant that you almost start not to hear it and it starts to feel normal to see posters and clothing portraying Hamas as heroes. The other night I watched a dad coming from the protest with his little girl, giving a good hard few final snaps on the drum he was carrying, nodding at her in crisp salute, percussing his perspective into her little mind. This is not peaceful.

I understand that the protesters and their fellow travelers feel that all of this is the proper response, social justice on the march. They have been told that righteousness means placing the battle against whiteness and its power front and center, contesting the abuse of power by any means necessary. And I myself think the war on Gaza is no longer constructive or even coherent.

However, the issues are complex, in ways that this uncompromising brand of power-battling is ill suited to address. Legitimate questions remain about the definition of genocide, about the extent of a nation’s right to defend itself and about the justice of partition (which has not historically been limited to Palestine). There is a reason many consider the Israel-Palestine conflict the most morally challenging in the modern world.

When I was at Rutgers in the mid-1980s, the protests were against investment in South Africa’s apartheid regime. There were similarities with the Columbia protests now: A large group of students established an encampment site right in front of the Rutgers student center on College Avenue, where dozens slept every night for several weeks. Among the largely white crowd, participation was a badge of civic commitment. There was chanting, along with the street theater inevitable, and perhaps even necessary, to effective protest — one guy even laid down in the middle of College Avenue to block traffic, taking a page from the Vietnam protests.

I don’t recall South Africans on campus feeling personally targeted, but the bigger difference was that though the protesters sought to make their point at high volume, over a long period and sometimes even rudely, they did not seek to all but shut down campus life.

On Monday night, Columbia announced that classes would be hybrid until the end of the semester, in the interest of student safety. I presume that the protesters will continue throughout the two main days of graduation, besmirching one of the most special days of thousands of graduates’ lives in the name of calling down the “imperialist” war abroad.

Today’s protesters don’t hate Israel’s government any more than yesterday’s hated South Africa’s. But they have pursued their goals with a markedly different tenor — in part because of the single-mindedness of antiracist academic culture and in part because of the influence of iPhones and social media, which inherently encourage a more heightened degree of performance. It is part of the warp and woof of today’s protests that they are being recorded from many angles for the world to see. One speaks up.

But these changes in moral history and technology can hardly be expected to comfort Jewish students in the here and now. What began as intelligent protest has become, in its uncompromising fury and its ceaselessness, a form of abuse.

Source: I’m a Columbia Professor. The Protests on My Campus Are Not Justice.

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

OPINION: University of Ottawa equity, diversity, inclusivity discussion ‘an abject failure’

2024/04/22 Leave a comment

Does appear to be an unbalanced selection of panelists:

Let’s say you are the vice president of Equity, Diversity and Inclusive (Excellence?), VP EDI, at a Canadian university and you organize an event to have a “courageous conversation” about anti-Palestinian racism, Islamophobia, and anti-Semitism that ends up being a uniform rant against Israel and Zionism with no equity, no diversity, or inclusion for Jews.

This is exactly what happened on March 27 during the two-hour Zoom panel convened by the Vice-Provost of Equity, Diversity and Inclusive Excellence at the University of Ottawa, professor Awad Ibrahim.

With the declared goal of addressing in a balanced and unbiased manner the problem of increasing discrimination against Muslims, Palestinians, and Jews in Canada, especially in light of the conflict between Israel and Hamas after the massacre perpetrated by Palestinian Islamists on Oct. 7, the convened panel theoretically sought a balance: two people would discuss issues linked to anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia, and two would talk about anti-Semitism.

In reality, the four speakers spoke with a unified biased voice minimizing the precipitous rise in anti-Semitism in Canada and around the world, because, according to them, many of the events that are reported as anti-Jewish are simply “legitimate” (sic) expressions against Zionism, Israeli colonialism, and the defense of the struggle of the Palestinians against the “Zionist occupation” and do not really target the Jewish community.

The activist Dalia El Farra (senior advisor, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion – Centre for Human Rights, York University) and professor Jasmin Zine (Wilfrid Laurier University) represented the pro-Palestinian and anti-Islamophobia views. Two members of the Jewish Faculty Network (an anti-Israel organization), professor Sheryl Nestel and professor Alejandro Paz (University of Toronto), both anti-Zionists Jews, were invited to talk about anti-Semitism.

The main function of both Jewish panelists was to assert that the increase in antisemitic incidents is inflated by the “Jewish lobby,” because they dare to count as anti-Jewish events those that are actually demonstrations against the “Western colonial enterprise” (sic) known as Zionism and against Israeli “genocide” (sic).

Although Vice-Provost Ibrahim was asked during the event’s Q&A why he had decided to invite only two anti-Zionist Jewish speakers to talk about anti-Semitism, the VP EDI made only brief mention of the question towards his closing remarks and did not answer the question…

…In French, one might have described the event by exclaiming, “Quel gâchis!” (What a flop!) to qualify this EDI event (by the way, if we are talking about inclusion, it should be noted that only English-speaking panelists were invited, thus failing the bilingual mandate of the University of Ottawa). It was certainly not a courageous conversation, nor was it diverse, not equitable, and lacked the inclusiveness of multiple viewpoints. It offered only a single, ahistorical, hateful chorus of anti-Israel propaganda.

Perhaps professor Ibrahim, the vice president of Equity, Diversity and Inclusive Excellence, thought he was promoting balanced perspectives because he had hosted an event as part of the same series on March 21 about Anti-Semitism in Healthcare, University and our Larger Society. Instead, the panel on Demystifying Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian racism and anti-Semitism of March 27 was a missed opportunity for the University of Ottawa’s EDI office to fulfill its mandate, failing to meet the most basic standards of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

The false moral equivalence between these two events, the former being grounded in scholarly research and fact, the latter being grounded in one-sided bias attempting to delegitimize Judaism and Israel, undermines inclusive excellence in the academy and further contributes to Jew hatred on Canadian campuses.

This is an abject failure of leadership of the VP EDI at the University of Ottawa and a direct assault on the protection of all minorities on Canadian campuses. It is a betrayal of trust with the Jewish community, and it undermines the core mission of the University to reveal and disseminate truth.

— Isaac Nahon-Serfaty is an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa and Deron Brown is an MD in Toronto

Source: OPINION: University of Ottawa equity, diversity, inclusivity discussion ‘an abject failure’

Filed under Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

‘The Antisemitism Is Absolutely Disproportionate’ – Intv with UC Regent John Pérez

2024/04/20 Leave a comment

Worth reading:

….UC Berkeley, in particular, is in the national imagination as a place of protests — during the Vietnam War in particular. Do you feel like these current protests on campus are different than protests in the past? And if so, how?

I do think they’re different.

In each of those waves of previous protests, there was a notion from students that engaging in the protest had to serve the purpose of bringing people along in an area of debate, creating space to protest, but also to change minds and bring people in the direction of the justice that they were trying to seek. But there was also a concept of consequences associated with protest. If you want protest without consequence, what you really want is performance. And I think that right now we’re seeing folks engaging in disruption, without an understanding or appreciation for what consequences can come up with it, which I think can sometimes be performative.

Second, it feels like much of the protest now isn’t, at least from my perspective, effective in trying to move debate and create space to find a new common ground that aligns with the justice that the protesters are seeking. When it’s disruption for the sake of disruption, as opposed to civil disobedience to capture attention and create space for debate, I think it serves a fundamentally different [purpose].

When you look at the Free Speech Movement, it was about creating the space for all debate, including debate that one disagrees with. What we’ve seen of late is something very different, which is shutting down debate. Last year, at Berkeley Law School, student groups passed a series of resolutions, essentially banning debate, saying that holders of “Zionist viewpoints” would not be allowed to come [to their events]. That’s very different. It’s one thing to say any given organization shouldn’t be compelled to invite somebody who has a viewpoint that’s contrary to theirs. But to say that we want to ban a whole section of debate is inherently problematic in society. It’s particularly problematic in law school, and particularly problematic in a law school centered in a place that in many ways was the birth of the free speech movement on university campuses.

There has been a horrible spike in antisemitic activity across college campuses across the country, but particularly at elite universities, and there’s been a spike in the community more broadly as well. And I don’t think that we, societally and we, as university leaders, have done enough to push back against this spike in antisemitism.

Source: ‘The Antisemitism Is Absolutely Disproportionate’ – POLITICO

Filed under Antisemitism Tagged with ,

Reaction in Canada to Israel-Palestine war has me feeling spiritually homeless and disconnected

2024/04/13 Leave a comment

Thoughtful reflections, although it would appear that the activists on the Palestinian side have been engaging in more anti-Jewish community activities than vice-versa and her social media posts are more one-sided than this commentary:

The last few months have shown me that the Israel-Palestine war has changed what diversity, inclusion and respect for freedom of speech and religion means in Canada.

Whether these changes are permanent are yet to be determined. It is a sad waiting game and I wonder if my children will grow old in the Canada that is the only home they know.

Suffice to say, two things are true: Almost all Canadians have some opinion on this war, and almost all Canadians have zero control over what is happening in Gaza right now. The same applies to what happened in Israel on Oct. 7.

Where does that leave us? Are broken professional and personal relationships salvageable? Is there any way we can find our way back to one another? Is this the actual hill that professionalism and respect for religion will die on?

Everyone (including me) says this is not a Muslim and Jewish issue. My quivering voice is losing conviction, and here is why:

The social media campaigns are stronger than ever. The protests and public outcry (on both sides) around the atrocities in the Middle East are still making headlines (and they should). People continue to remain obsessed on what qualifies as hate speech conflating freedom of expression with the same. Furious onlookers continue to call for arrests at protests, conflating the right to demonstrate freely with targeted hatred toward a group of people.

People are angry and while they cannot control what is going on there, they are trying hard to control what is happening here. 

Jewish and Muslim businesses, places of worship and neighbourhoods are being targeted. Antisemitism and Islamophobia are rapidly on the rise. Those angry about the war are only targeting members of the Muslim and Jewish communities. That makes this a Muslim and Jewish issue in a morbidly tangible sense.

Our politicians have contributed to this religious divide. Put another way, even when they whisper about respecting religious values, their actions contradict them — loudly.

In the holy month of Ramadan, certain Canadian politicians have failed to offer customary Ramadan well wishes to Canadian Muslims. They have publicly solidified their anger toward Muslim communities. Conversely, other politicians say nothing to remind Jewish communities that they cannot and should not be targeted. They have left Jewish communities feeling painfully isolated.

The silence has incensed both sides, because these politicians care far more about their voter base and less about Canadians in general. A true failure as elected officials.

In my legal community, the divide is vicious and the criticism is relentless. The professional advocates on LinkedIn have spoken and in comparison to your average Canadians, they say they know best. They hold zero sympathy for anyone who disagrees with their view and I know with certainty that some relationships of many years are over — forever.

While I have no interest in debating the politics (to what end?), I would be the first to sit with my fellow Canadians to work toward a solution on how we continue forward with respect and professionalism. This has become imminent in my view. It our right as Canadians to continue to protest, to continue to advocate and to continue to support the causes that are nearest and dearest to us.

Let us also work to repair the damage to relationships preventing us from working together, learning together and respecting one another. Without a commitment from all sides to simply pause and forgive before saying something hateful here about what is happening there, the continued erosion of our Canadianness will continue.

We can protest and disagree, but not in a way that creates hate and division for any group in Canada. This present-day Canada has me feeling spiritually homeless and disconnected. If you are a leader of any kind, take a moment and ask yourself what steps you can take to cultivate safety in your home — if in fac fact, you still consider Canada to be your home.

Muneeza Sheikh is an employment lawyer.

Source: Reaction in Canada to Israel-Palestine war has me feeling spiritually homeless and disconnected

Filed under Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Contrast: Anti-Muslim bias reports skyrocket after Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Stephens: The Appalling Tactics of the ‘Free Palestine’ Movement

2024/04/04 Leave a comment

Starting with anti-Muslim bias complaints:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released its annual Civil Rights Report today. The organization says that last year it received the highest number anti-Muslim bias complaints ever.

CAIR says it took in 8,061 bias reports in 2023 and that nearly half of them came in the final three months of the year, following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

“I was stunned by the sheer volume of complaints we got,” says Corey Saylor, CAIR’S Director of Research and Advocacy.

“In 2022, our numbers showed the first ever drop since we started tracking incidents,” he says. “And then to see all of that erased, it’s real insight in to how easy it is for someone to just flip the Islamophobia switch back to on.”

The report, titled “Fatal: The Resurgence of Anti-Muslim Hate,” says 15% of complaints the group received involved employment bias. 8.5% of bias reports involved schools — including colleges and universities. And 7.5% of complaints involved allegations of hate crimes, including the case of 6-year-old Palestinian American Wadea Al-Fayoume who was allegedly stabbed to death by his family’s landlord near Chicago.

“I just don’t know how much hate it takes to drive an adult to target a child,” says Saylor. “And I think it’s also fair to say that hate did not originate last October.”

Prosecutors in that case have charged suspect Joseph Czuba with first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder for allegedly stabbing the child’s mother during the attack as well. Authorities have also charged Czuba with two counts of hate crimes.

Additionally, the CAIR report highlights a controversy highlights a controversy in Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools. The district allows parents to opt out of a Family Life and Human Sexuality unit, but it does not allow parents to opt out of books assigned for English classes that portray LGBTQ+ characters. A number of Muslim parents protested, saying the books were not in line with their religion’s teachings.

“The sincerely held religious beliefs of parents were completely ignored, disregarded, and even in a couple of instances criticized,” says Saylor.

The report also relays the story of how a regional airline accidentally posted to the internet part of the U.S. Government’s so-called No Fly List. CAIR’s analysis of a downloaded version of the list found that nearly all the names on it – 98.3% — were what the organization calls “identifiably Muslim.”

CAIR’s report also included mention of some bright spots. In 2023, New York City and Minneapolis permitted the call to prayer to be broadcast over loudspeakers. New Jersey and Georgia began recognizing Muslim Heritage Month. And school districts in at least 6 states added at least one Muslim holiday to academic calendars so students will have the day off from class.

Source: Anti-Muslim bias reports skyrocket after Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel

Brett Stephens in the NYT how many pro-Palestinian protesters have crossed the line into anti-semitism and being anti-Jewish (American examples but comparable ones in Canada):

Last week, Susanne DeWitt, an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor who later became a molecular biologist, spoke before the Berkeley, Calif., City Council to request a Holocaust Remembrance Day proclamation. After taking note of a “horrendous surge in antisemitism,” she was then heckled and shouted down by protesters at the meeting when she mentioned the massacre and rapes in Israel of Oct. 7.

At the same meeting, a woman testified that her 7-year-old Jewish son heard “a group of kids at his school say, ‘Jews are stupid.’” She, too, was heckled: “Zionists are stupider,” a protester said. At the same meeting, others yelled, “cowards, go chase the money, you money suckers” and “you are traitors to this country, you are spies for Israel.”

Protest movements have an honorable place in American history. But not all of them. Not the neo-Nazis who marched in Chicago in 1978. Not the white supremacists who chanted “Jews will not replace us” at their Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.

And not too much of what passes for a pro-Palestinian movement but is really pro-Hamas, with its calls to get rid of the Jewish state in its entirety (“from the river to the sea …”), its open celebration of the murder of its people (“resistance is justified …”) and its efforts to mock, minimize or deny the suffering of Israelis, which so quickly descend into the antisemitism on naked display in Berkeley.

How did this happen?

It wasn’t a response to the human suffering in Gaza in recent months. A coalition of Harvard student groups issued a statementon Oct. 7 holding “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” Pro-Hamas demonstrations broke out worldwide on Oct. 8. A Black Lives Matter chapter posted a graphic on Instagram of the Hamas paragliders who murdered hundreds of young Israelis at the Nova music festival. A Cornell professor said he found the massacre “exhilarating,” and demonstrators rallied in his support.

This is only a partial list. But it reveals the bullying mentality at the heart of the pro-Hamas movement. It isn’t enough for them to speak out; they must shut other voices down. It isn’t enough for them to make a strong or clear argument; they also aim to instill a palpable sense of fear in their opponents. American civil libertarians of the past once understood that inherent in the right to protest was the obligation to respect the right of people with differing views to protest as well. That understanding seems to be wholly absent from the people who think that, say, heckling Raskin into silence is also a form of democracy.

In this sense, critics of Israel who claim that American Jews must choose between Zionism and liberalism have it backward. The illiberals aren’t the people defending the right of an imperfect but embattled democracy to defend its territory and save its hostages. They are the people who, like the former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, want Israel wiped off the map and aren’t ashamed to say so. Not surprisingly, they also seem to share Ahmadinejad’s attitudes toward dealing with dissent.

It’s true that in nearly every political cause, including the most justified, there are ugly elements — the Meir Kahanes or the Louis Farrakhans of the world. But the mark of a morally serious movement lies in its determination to weed out its worst members and stamp out its worst ideas. What we’ve too often seen from the “Free Palestine” crowd is precisely the opposite.

Source: The Appalling Tactics of the ‘Free Palestine’ Movement

Filed under Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Irwin Cotler: Canada needs to fundamentally rethink its approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict

2024/04/03 Leave a comment

Missed opportunity in not addressing the blockage by the current Israeli government over many years and the need for political renewal on the Israeli side and reduced political influence by religious hardliners and extremists, although I agree on how the debate reflects poorly on parliamentarians:

The debate, amendment and passing of the NDP motion on Palestine on March 18 was a perfect representation of the current state of discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Canada today: chaotic, toxic, reactive and polarized; grounded in disinformation and misrepresentations; and performative rather than productive.

From a procedural standpoint, the motion made a mockery of the parliamentary process. After hours of polarized debate, it was amended significantly. These amendments were presented with mere minutes to spare, leading to parliamentarians raising concerns about the lack of debate on the substantially changed motion. Notably, the amendments were initially tabled without any French translation, characterizing the chaotic and ad-hoc nature of the process.

The substance of the debate was similarly flawed. Members of Parliament speaking in favour of the motion consistently relied on statistics provided by the Gaza Health Ministry — an arm of Hamas, a listed terrorist group in Canada. Even the text of the motion itself relies on these flawed statistics. Sadly, this is emblematic of the preponderance of disinformation and misrepresentations in current Canadian discussions on Israel and the Palestinian territories.

The ultimate result — the adoption of a watered-down motion that served primarily to inflame sectarian tensions and incentivize the anti-democratic behaviours of a domestic mob — is representative of Canada’s unproductive, performative and harmful approach to this issue.

It is clear that Canada needs a new framework for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — one that is coherent, principled, fact-based and characterized by long-term strategic thinking; one that promotes both coexistence in Canada and peace in the Middle East.

This new framework should encompass four dimensions: (1) it must be informed by, and anchored in, the global context; (2) it must contribute to a new regional reality; (3) it must centre on justice and accountability in Israel and the Palestinian territories; and (4) it must involve responsible leadership here at home.

The first dimension is necessary because the global context plays a substantial role in shaping the conflict and our perceptions of it. We are in the midst of a new global struggle between liberal democracies and authoritarian regimes that are seeking to undermine liberal democracies and dismantle the rules-based international order.

The new authoritarian “axis of evil” — led by Iran, Russia and China — is using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a powerful tool to further their destabilizing agenda. They are spreading Hamas propaganda and disinformation, co-opting international institutions, weaponizing international law and directly funding, arming and supporting Hamas and other terrorist groups.

This facilitates their efforts to weaken and divide liberal democracies, undermine international norms and distract the West from their ongoing crimes — including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Uyghur genocide in China and the horrific repression of Iranian women.

This authoritarian destabilization campaign is aided by pervasive, systemic, global antisemitism, which has been used by autocrats to further their repressive ends for centuries. Antisemitism is responsible for Israel being held to higher levels of scrutiny than any other country, and enables hatred of, and lies about, Israel to spread with unparalleled ease. Canada’s new policy framework on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must both account for, and actively counter, these harmful global factors.

The second dimension is that discourse and policy on Israel and the Palestinian territories must both acknowledge and support the new regional reality in the Middle East. The Abraham Accords provide new opportunities for working towards peace. Canada should encourage these new and potential allies to play a key role in regional peace-building.

As part of this, Arab countries must take greater responsibility for supporting and aiding the Palestinian people, rather than simply criticizing Israel. They should provide funding, humanitarian aid and other forms of assistance to Gaza and the West Bank. Arab countries should also be held accountable for their cynical treatment of Palestinians within their own countries, keeping them stateless and dispossessed as a political tool against Israel.

Crucially, Canada must also work with its regional partners to counter the malign influence of Iran and its proxies — the greatest enemies of peace in the Middle East — which are currently instigating a multi-front war against Israel, an asymmetrical dynamic that is noticeably absent from Canadian discourse.

The third dimension is the most important: ensuring justice and accountability for actors on the ground in Israel and the Palestinian territories. The status quo — for international institutions, governments, the media, human rights organizations and grassroots activists — is to hold Israel to an inequitably high threshold of accountability, while allowing the Palestinian leadership to shirk accountability altogether.

While it is true that democracies can be expected to demonstrate greater adherence to international laws and norms, it is an inversion of justice to impose stringent accountability on the lesser rule-breaker, and minimal accountability on the greater rule-breaker. Basic principles of fundamental justice demand the precise opposite — graver crimes and more persistent rule-breaking must result in greater sanctions and more accountability.

In addition to being unjust, the status quo creates perverse incentive structures that facilitate a continuous cycle of hatred and violence. Although, like any other state, Israel must be held accountable for any violations of international law, it is demonized and attacked no matter what it does, which contributes to its threat perception and domestic support for leaders who are obstacles to peace.

Hamas is able to garner global sympathy no matter how abhorrent its crimes, thus enabling its continued criminality, which culminated in the heinous mass atrocities of Oct. 7. Furthermore, Hamas is incentivized to ensure maximum Palestinian casualties and suffering, because it knows that all the blame will be placed on Israel.

This informs and emboldens Hamas’s comprehensive strategy of using its own citizens as human shields, including by placing its headquarters, weapons arsenals and rocket launchers under hospitals, next to mosques and in schools.

To bring justice and accountability, Canada must dedicate vastly more resources and energy towards holding Hamas, other Palestinian terrorist groups and the Palestinian Authority accountable for their contraventions of international law, their role in the continuation and deepening of the conflict, and their repression of their own citizens.

For Hamas, this requires more than lip-service condemnations. It requires pressure to be put on its allies in Qatar, Iran, South Africa and elsewhere; the mobilization of international legal mechanisms to put Hamas, rather than Israel, in the docket of the accused; and combating the spread of Hamas propaganda and disinformation on social media and in the mainstream media.

For the Palestinian Authority, accountability means refusing to accept its continued corruption and refusing to ignore the fact that its leader is in the 19th year of his four-year term and frequently engages in antisemitic incitement and Holocaust denial.

Accountability means ensuring that terrorism is not incentivized through the PA’s infamous “pay-for-slay” program. Accountability means the media shining a light on how Hamas and the Palestinian Authority repress their own citizens. Accountability also means putting strict conditions on funding for organizations such as UNRWA, which was not only complicit in the Oct. 7 crimes against humanity, but has indoctrinated children with hate and helped to keep Palestinians stateless for decades.

The fourth and final dimension is that of responsible leadership here at home. Responsible leadership means actively combating hatred and incitement rather than merely condemning it. A simple way for policymakers, pundits, the media and activists alike to embody responsible leadership on this charged and complicated issue is by always “starting with the endpoint.”

Hopefully, Canadians broadly agree that the ideal endpoint is: (a) peaceful coexistence in Canada, characterized by lowering tensions, reducing hate and polarization, and bridging communities; and (b) peace in the Middle East, characterized by a two-state solution, with mutual acknowledgement of each other’s legitimacy — two democratic states for two peoples.

When making statements or taking policy actions, responsible leadership means stopping to consider whether those statements or actions will bring us closer to that endpoint, or move us further away from it. Divisive and polarizing motions, such as the NDP’s opposition motion, fail this test by creating greater rifts between Canadians and perpetuating the perverse incentives that feed the cycle of hatred and violence in the Middle East.

Source: Irwin Cotler: Canada needs to fundamentally rethink its approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict

Filed under Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Lederman: Israeli-Palestinian groups bring their hopeful fights for peace to Canada

2024/03/30 Leave a comment

On a more optimistic note:

….Unlike some in the pro-Palestinian space, Standing Together in no way downplays, denies or justifies the atrocities of Oct. 7. But it also says the occupation cannot continue and is strongly opposed to Benjamin Netanyahu. It is calling for an end to the war and the return of the hostages.

“There is a very big difference between being in favour of the people living in Israel and the Israeli government,” says Ms. Daood.

“We need to build a society that understands that the benefit of having real peace and real agreement is for both sides. Having peace does not just benefit the Palestinians. It also benefits the people in Israel. Because then you don’t have to be in a place where you’re scared of your neighbours, where we’re at constant wars.”

Two days after the Oct. 7 attacks, I wrote that your Jewish and Palestinian friends are not doing okay. I can tell you with great certainty that we are doing much, much worse now. In this ceaseless and dark panorama of death, despair and polarization, groups like Women Wage Peace and Standing Together offer a different path, bringing in a bit of light and something that feels impossible now: hope, for peace, in spite of it all.

Source: Israeli-Palestinian groups bring their hopeful fights for peace to Canada

Filed under Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Germany set to add citizenship test questions about Jews and Israel

2024/03/28 Leave a comment

Of note (similar in a sense to ensuring new Canadians know about Indigenous peoples and the various harmful actions of Canadian governments):

Those seeking German citizenship could soon have to answer test questions about antisemitism, Germany’s commitment to Israel and Jewish life in Germany.

The catalogue of more than 300 questions from which citizenship test questions can be selected is to be amended shortly, the interior ministry said in a statement, pending final approval. New questions, German magazine Der Spiegel reported, are to include: What is a Jewish house of prayer called? When was the State of Israel founded? What is the reason for Germany’s special responsibility for Israel? How is Holocaust denial punished in Germany? And, somewhat mysteriously: Who can become a member of the approximately 40 Jewish Maccabi sports clubs in Germany? (Anyone, according to the organization’s FAQ.)

The move comes months after the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt made a written commitment for the “right of the State of Israel to exist” a requirement for naturalization.

Germany has cracked down on pro-Palestinian voices and on antisemitism amid Israel’s war in Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Germany and German institutions have come under criticism in recent months for enforcing strict speech policies affecting pro-Palestinian protests. Museum shows, book talks and other art events have been canceled.

“One thing is particularly important to me,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told Der Spiegel. “As a result of the German crime against humanity of the Holocaust comes our special responsibility for the protection of Jews and for the protection of the State of Israel. This responsibility is part of our identity today.”

“Anyone who doesn’t share our values can’t get a German passport. We have drawn a crystal clear red line here,” Faeser said. “Antisemitism, racism and other forms of contempt for humanity rule out naturalization.”

The 33-question citizenship test is one of several prerequisites to becoming a German citizen. To pass, applicants must correctly answer at least 17 multiple-choice questions within an hour.

A wave of more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents logged by authorities since Oct. 7 has prompted German leaders to call for better enforcement of the country’s antisemitism laws in recent months.

“Antisemitism has no place in Germany,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in an address to German parliament in late October. “We will do everything to oppose it. We will do this as citizens, and as bearers of political responsibility.”

This includes enforcing existing laws, Scholz said.

While antisemitism itself is not a crime in Germany, antisemitic motivation for a crime can be considered in sentencing. In April 2023, the government announced that it would increase annual payments to the Central Council of Jews in Germany to almost $24 million, in part “to further strengthen the safety and security of Jewish communities.”

Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany, and punishable by prison time.

Source: Germany set to add citizenship test questions about Jews and Israel

Filed under Antisemitism, Citizenship Tagged with , ,

Judy Weissenberg Cohen: Does ‘MeToo, unless you’re a Jew,’ hold true?

2024/03/08 Leave a comment

Valid question:

…Then Oct. 7, 2023, happened. Hamas, a listed terrorist entity in Canada since 2002, launched a surprise armed attack on Israel. They massacred more than 1,200 innocent civilians, they kidnapped children, and they raped women. Victims hiding for their lives witnessed the stunningly savage atrocities committed against women and children. The survivors shared their eyewitness accounts. The butchery was meticulously catalogued by the soldiers and first responders — and by the terrorists themselves, who proudly shared footage of their murderous assaults.

Although intentionally documented, the sexual violence has since been denied by Hamas. Many human rights groups — even those with feminist leanings — were either slow to respond, made false equivalencies, or remained silent. It was only after weeks of pressure that Mélanie Joly, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, finally condemned Hamas, in early December. Human rights organizations whose focus is on the protection of women also remained silent for months. It took the UN eight weeks to put out a statement. And yet, when a report with unsubstantiated accusations of sexual violence levied against Israel was published, Joly and many others commented within hours.

Were they silent about Israeli (Jewish) women because the UN’s women’s groups have aligned themselves with Hamas, whom they view as representing the oppressed? And, if they are the oppressed, they can’t possibly have committed rape?

Does the popular hashtag #MeTooUnlessUrAJew hold true?

Is the rape of women during wartime as inevitable as antisemitism?

While I am grateful for how far Holocaust studies have come in recognizing both the unique vulnerability and resilience of women, it is difficult to see silence about the weaponization of gender-based sexual violence continue. Once women suffered this in silence; we must not, 79 years after the end of the Holocaust, allow Jewish women, or any person, to ever do so again.

I am 95, and I am tired, but this is not the time to be idle. On International Women’s Day, we need to listen to women, to hear their voices, and to speak for those who have been silenced. Regardless of our politics, in this we must all be fearless.

Special to National Post

Hungarian-born Judy Weissenberg Cohen survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Death Camp and Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. She was liberated in 1945 following a four-week-long death march. Judy immigrated to Canada in 1948 and worked in the garment industry in Montreal, moving to Toronto in 1961. She is an activist in anti-racism and Holocaust education, with a focus in women’s experiences.

Source: Judy Weissenberg Cohen: Does ‘MeToo, unless you’re a Jew,’ hold true?

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Former cabinet minister Selina Robinson resigns from NDP caucus, says she felt unsupported as Jewish woman

2024/03/08 Leave a comment

Missed opportunity for much needed dialogue:

…In her remarks, Robinson said she felt unsupported as a Jewish woman in her party, and that there are antisemitic voices in the NDP caucus.

Robinson, first elected in 2013, had already announced her retirement and said she won’t be running again in the provincial election this October.

Minister claims double standard in caucus

Robinson resigned her cabinet post as minister of post-secondary education last month after saying modern Israel was founded on “a crappy piece of land.”

Speaking Wednesday afternoon, Robinson said there is a “double standard” within the NDP over how different groups are treated.

“There have been numerous colleagues of mine, intentionally or unintentionally, who have said antisemitic things,” she said. “The Jewish community heard apologies from them, they were accepted and things carried on.”

In contrast, Robinson said she faced continued backlash despite apologizing on multiple occasions and committing to taking anti-Islamophobia training.

“There’s a double standard,” she said, describing herself as the “lone voice,” providing the perspective of Jewish British Columbians within the provincial government.

Robinson also said her decision to step down as a cabinet minister was based on feedback from the premier that he did “not see a way forward” for her to continue in the role.

Asked for a specific example of antisemitism within the party, Robinson cited recent remarks from Burnaby North NDP MLA Janet Routledge. During a debate on the throne speech in February, Routledge compared accusations from opposition party members that the NDP government was incompetent to Nazi propaganda.

“The Holocaust ended in death camps,” Routledge said, attributing her words to a Holocaust survivor in England. “But it started with words. Words are powerful, so let’s use them to bind us together as a civilized society, not tear us apart.”

Robinson said that comparison diminished the reality of the Holocaust, when the Nazis systematically murdered six million Jews.

“To her credit, she apologized right away,” Robinson said, adding she accepted Routledge’s apology — but that same acceptance had not been granted to her.

She also cited comments from Mable Elmore, the parliamentary secretary for anti-racism, whom Robinson said had “outraged the Jewish community” with remarks about the Middle East conflict in November.

“She didn’t lose her role as a result of those comments that were hurtful to that community, but I did lose my role, I was asked to step down,” she said, without further describing Elmore’s remarks.

Robinson said she had asked Premier David Eby if she could work with Muslim and Jewish communities to promote dialogue between them.

She said she wanted to work with the two communities that were “in agony and pain and suffering and fear, and reduce the division that we are seeing because I think that’s the role of government.”

“The premier’s office said they weren’t interested in doing that and that really shattered my heart,” she said.

“If government’s not interested then I can’t be part of a government that chooses to be silent while people are suffering.”

Robinson, who has also previously served as finance minister, said she hadn’t heard from Eby or any other members of the B.C. NDP caucus since informing them of her decision.

NDP house leader denies claims

Speaking to media Wednesday, NDP house leader Ravi Kahlon denied Robinson’s claims of antisemitism or double standards, and said the concerns Robinson voiced during her resignation had not previously been raised by her in caucus.

In his written statement, Eby said Robinson had “made a mistake, and she was doing the work to address the harm that was caused.”

“I wish she had brought her concerns to me directly so we could have worked through them together.”

Kahlon said both the premier and other parties had spoken out on several occasions against instances of antisemitism, including as recently as the past week.

“What we can do is make sure B.C. continues to be a welcoming place for everyone,” he said.

Source: Former cabinet minister Selina Robinson resigns from NDP caucus, says she felt unsupported as Jewish woman

Filed under Antisemitism, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →