By Michael Regenstreif
Reporter Liana Shlien has a story on page 13 of this issue of the Bulletin about a visit to Ottawa on November 20 by Israel Siriri, the chair of the small Abayudaya Jewish community in Uganda, and a talk that he gave about his community at the Soloway Jewish Community Centre. The primary sponsor of Siriri’s visit here was Hillel Ottawa – the Foundation for Jewish Campus Life.
In advance of Siriri’s visit, Hillel approached the Ontario Public Interest Research Group at the University of Ottawa (OPIRG-Ottawa), a group funded by a $3.38 annual levy on every uOttawa student, and asked for assistance in promoting the event with the African Jewish leader.
OPIRG-Ottawa states that its “mission is to bring together and build upon a broad-based community dedicated to social, economic and environmental justice. OPIRG is concerned with the contribution that students, the university and the community can make towards social change.”
Given OPIRG-Ottawa’s mandate, it is quite logical to assume they would be anxious to lend their support to a presentation by the leader of a small community in Africa about the history of his community, and about the kinds of projects it undertakes to sustain the community, its infrastructure, its schools and its outreach to other communities in the region.
Hillel didn’t hear back from OPIRG-Ottawa in advance of Siriri’s visit. Later, though, Hillel received an e-mail from the OPIRG-Ottawa board of directors explaining they had decided not to offer their endorsement of the event or to promote it.
The OPIRG-Ottawa email went on to say they rejected the event because of Hillel’s “relationship to apartheid Israel” adding that “Zionist Ideology [sic] does not fit within OPIRG’s mandate of human right’s [sic], social justice.”
Leaving aside the nonsense about “Israeli apartheid” – for that, see the article by Dan Schloss, Hillel Ottawa’s Israel advocacy coordinator on page 26 – OPIRG-Ottawa’s flapping about Zionist ideology wouldn’t have been a surprise had Hillel been asking for their support for an appearance by Benjamin Netanyahu. But other than the fact that Siriri’s first name is ‘Israel,’ his talk had absolutely nothing to do with Israel or Zionism. One of Hillel’s co-sponsors of the event was the Kurdish Youth Association of Canada, hardly a Zionist organization.
By promoting a Jewish-oriented event perfectly in tune with its proclaimed mandate, the evening with Siriri would have provided OPIRG-Ottawa with the perfect opportunity to show that the perception that leftist campus anti-Zionism is not tinged with the antisemitism many people perceive. Instead of seizing the opportunity, OPIRG-Ottawa reinforced that perception.