December 12, 2016: Ontario legislature stands against the BDS movement

By Michael Regenstreif

On December 1, the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, voted overwhelmingly to condemn the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

Motion 36, submitted by Conservative MPP Gila Martow (Thornhill), said the legislature should: “Stand firmly against any position or movement that promotes or encourages any form of hatred, hostility, prejudice, racism and intolerance in any way; Recognize the longstanding, vibrant and mutually beneficial political, economic and cultural ties between Ontario and Israel, built on a foundation of shared liberal democratic values; Endorse the Ottawa Protocol on Combating Antisemitism; And reject the differential treatment of Israel, including the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.”

The motion passed with a vote of 49 in favour and just five opposed. The governing Liberals and the Progressive Conservative Party – the official Opposition – supported the motion while the New Democratic Party was opposed.

Almost half the members, including three-quarters of NDP members, and almost all Ottawa-area MPPs were not in the legislature at the time of the vote. The only Ottawa member present was Progressive Conservative Lisa MacLeod (Nepean-Carleton), who spoke in favour of the motion during the debate.

With the vote, the Ontario legislature follows the House of Commons, which passed a similar motion in February. Comparable motions have also been passed by the United States Congress and 16 U.S. states.

Among the criticisms of the BDS movement is that it unfairly places entire responsibility on Israel for lack of progress in resolving Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, and completely absolves Palestinians – both the Palestinian Authority, which holds power in the West Bank, and Hamas, which holds power in Gaza – of any accountability at all. This is despite the fact that the Palestinians walked away on numerous occasions from nearly completed agreements and have used every subterfuge at their disposal to avoid further negotiations – despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated invitations to sit down without preconditions and negotiate a peace agreement and Palestinian state.

And, while I don’t believe that all BDS activists are antisemitic, or, antisemitic in their intent, antisemitism is at the root of the BDS movement in that it unilaterally stigmatizes the world’s only Jewish state with all responsibility for the situation. This is what renowned human rights activist and former justice minister of Canada Irwin Cotler has referred to as “the new antisemitism” in which Israel is singled out as “the Jew among nations.”

Pro-BDS groups, though, like to paint themselves as the true human rights activists and deny there is any element of antisemitism in their actions or intent. But, just two days before the BDS vote in the Ontario legislature, pro-BDS groups at Ryerson University in Toronto prevented the Ryerson Student Union from even voting on a motion put forward by Ryerson Hillel in support of Holocaust Education Week at the school.

Holocaust Education Week was not about Israel. It was about education and commemoration of the worst genocide in history – a genocide that was perpetrated just over seven decades ago, in the lifetime of many students’ grandparents, against the Jewish people. To stand against Holocaust education and commemoration is nothing but antisemitism.

If those pro-BDS groups were truly about human rights activism, and if they were not at all antisemitic, they would be among the first standing up in support of Holocaust education and commemoration – not blocking it.

As mentioned, pro-BDS groups like to paint themselves as human rights activists, or as peace groups. But, really, their entire raison d’être is to delegitimate the State of Israel. No less a figure than Norman G. Finkelstein, the former DePaul University professor who is perhaps the world’s most vocal and visible Jewish anti-Zionist, agrees. In a 2012 interview, he attacked the BDS movement, which he repeatedly referred to as a “cult,” for its “silliness, childishness, and a lot of leftist posturing,” in seeking to hide its true goal: the elimination of the State of Israel.

Although the Ontario motion rejecting BDS was put forward by an opposition member, it’s important to note the support it received from the government was unequivocal.

“I want to make this clear,” said Minister of Transport Steven Del Duca, “the Ontario provincial government does not support the BDS movement, or any other positions or movements that attempt to divide our society. Rejecting the boycott of Israel is in keeping with Ontario and Canadian tradition.”

Our legislature has done the right thing.

March 5, 2012: Norman Finkelstein rips the BDS movement to shreds

By Michael Regenstreif

It’s that time of year again. Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) is scheduled to take place from March 5 to 9 at several Canadian campuses, including the University of Ottawa and Carleton University. The annual IAW events were first organized eight years ago in support of the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement against Israel. The claim that Israel is an apartheid society is a cornerstone of the BDS movement – and one that has been refuted often. See, for example, a Huffington Post column by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz for a cogent analysis. tinyurl.com/dershowitz-IAW

This year, the BDS movement is in a late-breaking uproar because American political science professor Norman G. Finkelstein sat down, February 9, with a pro-BDS interviewer at Imperial College in London and ripped the BDS movement to shreds.

Make no mistake: Finkelstein is no friend of the State of Israel. For the better part of three decades, Finkelstein has been the most prominent Jewish anti-Israel activist – with the possible exception of his mentor Noam Chomsky.

Denied tenure at DePaul University in 2007, Finkelstein has made a career of lecturing on behalf of anti-Israel groups around the world and by writing a string of anti-Israel books. A son of Holocaust survivors, Finkelstein’s best-known book is The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, in which he claims that Israel has exploited the Holocaust in achieving its aims.

In this surprising video – which you can see in its 31-minute entirety at vimeo.com/36854424 – Finkelstein exposes the BDS movement, which he repeatedly refers to as a “cult,” for its “silliness, childishness, and a lot of leftist posturing” that seeks to obfuscate its true goal: the elimination of the State of Israel.

According to Finkelstein, the BDS movement does not come out and state its true goal because it knows the public will not buy into a movement seeking the dismantling of Israel.

“No Israel. That’s what it’s really about. And you think you’re fooling anybody? You think you’re so clever that people can’t figure that out for themselves?

“No, they understand the arithmetic perfectly well. Are you going to reach a broad public which is going to hear the Israeli side [say] ‘They want to destroy us?’ No, you’re not. And, frankly, you know what, you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t reach a broad public because you’re dishonest. And I wouldn’t trust those people if I had to live in this state. I wouldn’t. It’s dishonesty.”

Finkelstein also rips the BDS movement for taking its marching orders and following the lead of “Palestinian civil society.”

Recalling earlier movements he’s been part of, Finkelstein said the anti-Vietnam War movement did not take its marching orders from Hanoi, and Latin American solidarity movements (in the Reagan era) did not take their orders from Nicaragua. They acted, he said, on their own initiative.

He went on to describe “Palestinian civil society” as a collection of mostly one-person NGOs in Ramallah completely incapable of mobilizing more than a few hundred Palestinians.

Toward the end of the interview, Finkelstein suggests that a solution to the conflict is possible. A solution, he said, that would not be perfect, but which would satisfy most Israelis and most Palestinians. Although he does not explicitly say so, the obvious conclusion is the two-state solution. And that flies in the face of what IAW and the BDS movement are all about.

March 23, 2009: Isn’t it ironic – Boycott Israel event at Azrieli Theatre

By Michael Regenstreif

In her letter to the editor about the recent Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) events in Ottawa, Evelyn Greenberg notes how ironic it is that the IAW lecture on boycotting Israel was held in Carleton University’s Azrieli Theatre, a facility endowed by and named for David J. Azrieli, an Israeli-Canadian businessman, architect and philanthropist, and a past-president of the Canadian Zionist Federation.

Azrieli was born in Poland in 1922 and was 17 when the Second World War broke out. He managed to escape from Poland and made his way through Russia and Central Asia before arriving in Palestine in 1942. He served in the Israel Defense Forces, fought during the 1948 War of Independence and studied architecture at Technion in Haifa before coming to Canada in 1954.

In addition to his business activities in Canada, Azrieli has been one of Israel’s most prominent developers. He built Israel’s first enclosed shopping mall and the massive Azrieli Center in Tel Aviv bears his name. You’d think that IAW organizers would have wanted to avoid the symbolism of holding an event specifically aimed at furthering the movement to boycott Israel in that specific venue.

For 14 years before coming to Ottawa, I hosted a weekly folk music program on CKUT, the community radio station based at McGill University in Montreal. The station’s format is similar to Ottawa stations CKCU at Carleton and CHUO at uOttawa.

The CKUT schedule included programs produced by and for members of certain cultural communities, including a weekly Jewish magazine show. There was also a Palestinian program I listened to a number of times. The show was typically devoted to anti-Israel propaganda. Occasionally, for a Jewish perspective, they’d interview someone like Norman G. Finkelstein. The show often called for a boycott of Israel and companies that do business in Israel.

One day, I happened to see one of the producers of the Palestinian community radio show in a coffee shop. I couldn’t help but notice that, when he turned on his laptop, it was running Microsoft’s Windows XP, an operating system developed in Israel. Israel is the location for one of Microsoft’s three international research centres. Microsoft’s Bill Gates has referred to Israel as “a high-tech superpower.”

He connected to the Internet and headed straight for Google. The technology that runs Google ads – which is what finances the search engine most of us use – was developed in Israel, a centre for Google R&D. I don’t know whether or not his computer was running on one of the Pentium class chops that Intel developed in Israel.

Then he took a cell phone call. I can’t be sure that his particular phone was using any technology developed in Israel, but chances are it was.

I’m willing to bet that the IAW organizers who held their Boycott Israel event at the Azrieli Theatre all probably use lots of technology developed in Israel.

* * * * * * * * * *

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. It was on March 26, 1978 that Menachem Begin, then Israel’s prime minister, and Anwar Sadat, then president of Egypt, signed the historic treaty in Washington climaxing a process that began with Sadat’s unprecedented trip to Jerusalem and his address to the Knesset on November 20, 1977.

Beginning with the War of Independence in 1948 – and continuing with the Suez War in 1956, the Six Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973 – Israel and Egypt fought four major wars in the first 25 years of Israeli statehood. Some time after the Yom Kippur War, Sadat came to the conclusion that enough was enough, that Israeli statehood was a reality that wasn’t going away, that enough blood had been spilt, and he made the bold choice to pursue peace.

Peace between Israel and Egypt has not been a peace borne of friendship and warmth between their peoples. Rather, it’s been a pragmatic peace, often described as a cold peace, between two countries that have wisely concluded that the alternative is not – and should not ever again be – acceptable.

Sadly, Sadat was assassinated in 1981 by Egyptian peace rejectionists, just as Yitzhak Rabin would be assassinated by an Israeli peace rejectionist 14 years later.

* * * * * * * * * *

Like so many in the community, the thoughts of all of us at the Bulletin have been with Terry Schwarzfeld and her family since we first heard the news of the assault and terrible injuries she suffered while on vacation in Barbados.