February 18, 2013: Ontario Human Rights Tribunal rules on offensive IAW poster

By Michael Regenstreif

Many will recall the offensive poster used to advertise the so-called Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) in 2009. While the argument could be made that IAW posters are always offensive, that year’s version was particularly offensive, coming just after Israel’s Operation Cast Lead aimed at stopping the incessant rocket fire from Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza, which was constantly targeting communities like Sderot in Southern Israel.

The poster read “Israeli Apartheid” while showing an Israeli helicopter shooting a missile directly at a small Palestinian child holding a teddy bear and standing alone behind the walls of Gaza.

The implication of the poster was unambiguous: Israel deliberately targets Palestinian children. An allegation that is patently untrue.

The poster was propaganda created to deceive and to offend – and, by association, to cast pro-Israel students as supporting a racist regime that murders innocent children. Several universities – including Carleton University and the University of Ottawa – recognized the poster for what it was and banned it from their campuses.

The Carleton chapter of Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) brought a complaint against its university to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, alleging the university’s actions were unjustified and discriminatory and, as noted in the judgment in the case rendered by the Tribunal last month, almost four years after the incident, “motivated by an anti-Palestinian animus, and a preference for concerns expressed by Jewish students over the rights of Palestinian students and their supporters.”

In his judgment – which can be read in its entirety at tinyurl.com/SAIA-Carleton – Michael Gottheil, the Tribunal adjudicator, dismissed the complaint brought by SAIA against Carleton, noting there was no evidence of anti-Palestinian bias on the part of the university (all of the IAW activities scheduled on campus were allowed to take place) and removal of the posters, which had been posted without the required approval, was reasonable in that they had been posted without approval, which is contrary to university regulations.

Gottheil rejected the SAIA claim of preferential treatment of Jewish students over Palestinian students and their supporters, noting SAIA “presented very little direct evidence to support its claim of differential treatment, and no direct evidence that ancestry, ethnic origin or place of origin were factors in the respondent’s decisions to remove or ban the posters.”

Gottheil also noted the university’s concern that the posters were contributing to the highly strained atmosphere on campus at the time. Gottheil quoted Carleton SAIA leader Ben Saifer, who said the posters were “provocative and meant to be provocative.” Several incidents of harassment of Jewish and students had been reported and some Jewish students were feeling threatened because of the poster.

“I am satisfied,” Gottheil wrote, “that [Carleton University] had a good faith concern about student safety, and the possibility that the situation on campus might further deteriorate. Its evidence that the number of reported hate-reacted incidents was unprecedented in Carleton’s history was not challenged. ... The reported incidents, if true, were sufficiently serious to raise concerns by the university’s Equity Services department, and warrant a response.”

The boundaries of freedom of speech have become a complicated issue in society – and, particularly, it seems, on university campuses in recent years. While universities should be places of rigorous debate on important issues – including the Israeli’s conflict with the Palestinians – the term ‘Israeli apartheid’ and the boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) movement are not meant to encourage debate or find solutions to the conflict. They are simply meant to demonize and delegitimize Israel in order to shut down debate.

In a letter to the New York Review of Books (October 22, 2009) rejecting a boycott of Israeli films at the Toronto International Film Festival, veteran pro-Palestinian activists Vanessa Redgrave, Julian Schnabel and Martin Sherman dismissed the term “apartheid regime” to describe Israel.

“We oppose the current Israeli government, but it is a government. Freely elected. Not a regime. Words matter,” they wrote.

“If attitudes are hardened on both sides, if those who are fighting within their own communities for peace are insulted, where then is the hope? The point finally is not to grandstand but to inch toward a two-state solution and a world in which both nations can exist, perhaps not lovingly, but at least in peace.”

While there are people and supporters of goodwill on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide who are earnestly trying to move toward a two-state solution, the IAW crowd and the aligned BDS movement are, sadly, not among them.

This year’s edition of IAW is set to take place on Canadian university campuses in early-March.

February 4, 2013: Speculation has begun on Israel’s next coalition

By Michael Regenstreif

As I write, on January 25 just before this issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin goes to press, the negotiations to form a governing coalition following Israel’s January 22 election are in their earliest stage.

The process is expected to take as long as six weeks after President Shimon Peres receives the formal results on January 30. By then, the emerging coalition will need to prove it has the confidence of the Knesset.

While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is all but certain to continue in office, his cabinet is likely to be very different given the weakened position of the Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu alliance and the surprising success of the new, centrist Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party under leader Yair Lapid.

Conventional wisdom over the past several years, and during the campaign leading to the election, told us that Israeli society was continuing to move further to the right.

If anything, the results indicated a move to the political centre – not just in the surprising strength of Yesh Atid, but on the centre-left with the somewhat stronger than expected showing of the Labor Party under Shelly Yachimovich and the survival of former Kadima leader Tzipi Livni as leader of the new Hatunah Party.

And, with the emergence of Naftali Bennett’s new Jewish Home party sharply to Likud’s right – a party whose key plank is rejection of the two-state solution and annexation of much of the West Bank – Likud itself would be on the centre-right in comparison.

With the election results in, it will be fascinating to see what kind of coalition will emerge. Most likely, Yesh Atid will be Netanyahu’s main coalition partner.

By this writing, Netanyahu and Lapid have already begun talking. Both indicated they will work together to form a coalition and have started informal talks. But, with Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu’s 31 seats and Yesh Atid’s 19 combining for 50 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, another coalition partner, if not partners, will be necessary to form a government.

And this is where the really interesting horse-trading begins. All kinds of scenarios quickly emerged, some more plausible than others.

Does Netanyahu look to the right, to Bennett’s Jewish Home party with its 12 seats and/or one or both of the ultra-Orthodox religious parties, Shas with 11 seats and United Torah Judaism with its seven?

Or does he look to the centre-left, to Labor with 15 seats (despite Yachimovich’s pre-election insistence she would not participate in a coalition with Netanyahu), and possibly Livni’s Hatunah with six, and Kadima hanging in with two seats?

Or does he look in all directions at the same time?

What will make the negotiations so interesting are the seemingly common and seemingly incompatible positions of the different parties on some of the key issues Israel’s next government will face.

Reports following a two-hour meeting between Netanyahu and Lapid on January 24 suggested Lapid has advanced two basic conditions: legislation implementing national service requirements for haredi Jews and Israeli Arabs; and resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians.

Looking to the right, Bennett’s Jewish Home party would be supportive of the first condition, but would reject the second. If both conditions are ultimately make-or-break conditions, it’s hard to imagine Lapid and Bennett sitting together at Netanyahu’s cabinet table. And the religious parties would almost certainly fight the first condition.

The strongest possible coalition would embrace a centre-right to centre-left combination of Likud, Yesh Atid and Labor. The three parties together would have 65 seats. Bringing Hatunah and Kadima into the coalition would bring it to 73.

Such a coalition, without the religious parties in cabinet, would be in a much better position to settle the national service issue. Such a coalition would also be a strong signal to the world that Israel is serious about peace with the Palestinians (and would, hopefully, force the Palestinian leadership to stop looking for reasons not to negotiate).

The question for this possible scenario, at least as of this writing, is whether Yachimovich can be lured into the coalition following her campaign promise that she wouldn’t be.

Without Yachimovich, would Lapid be willing to give up one or the other of his two conditions to remain in the coalition?

If not, Netanyahu could move sharply right with a 61-seat coalition of Likud, Jewish Home and the two religious parties. Such a scenario would suggest no imminent progress on the peace front, on the religious-secular divide, and on the social issues which drove the success of the centrist parties.

The next few weeks will be most interesting.