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.

November 26, 2012: Things could have been so very different in Gaza

By Michael Regenstreif

As I write, on the morning of November 16, just before this issue of the Bulletin goes to press, the attention of the Jewish community here in Ottawa, and in Jewish communities around the world, is nervously focussed on Israel and its latest conflict with Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip.

Hopefully, by the time you read this column a week or so after it was written, Operation Pillar of Defense will be finished and Israel will have accomplished its goal of ending the ongoing barrage of rocket fire from Gaza aimed at Israeli civilians with minimal loss of life.

As I write, the conflict is in its third day. Rockets continue to fly out of Gaza and have reached as far as Rishon Lezion, just south of the Tel Aviv area, and three civilians were killed when a Hamas rocket hit an apartment building in Kiryat Malachi.

So far, Israel has been conducting the operation from the air. But 30,000 reservists were called up and troops have been massed near Gaza. Whether or not there will be a ground operation like Operation Cast Lead almost four years ago remains, at this writing, to be seen.

Operation Pillar of Defense was launched in response to a severe escalation of rocket attacks on Israel, which have recently reached levels not seen since before Operation Cast Lead – more than 120 attacks just in the three days prior to the operation.

As then-U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama stated during his 2008 visit to Sderot, “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”

The operation began with an amazingly precise hit on Ahmed Jabri, the head of Hamas’ military wing. Jabri, who was behind the recent escalation of rocket fire from Gaza, was a leader of the Hamas forces in its violent overthrow of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza and was the mastermind behind the kidnapping and long imprisonment of Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit. The air operation then continued, targeting rocket launchers and other military installations belonging to Hamas and other terrorist groups.

It should be stressed that, while Hamas specifically targets Israeli civilians, Israel has acted with restraint in this operation and the loss of life by Palestinian civilians, while tragic, has been minimal (and stands in great contrast to the massive loss of civilian life almost every day in the Syrian regime’s war against its own people).

And, while there has been great outrage towaard Israel from much of the Arab world, democracies like the United States, Great Britain and Canada have stood solidly behind her right to self-defence in the wake of the ongoing attacks.

“We fundamentally believe that Israel has the right to defend itself and its citizens from terrorist threats,” said Foreign Minister John Baird in a statement released after the first day of the operation.

“Far too often, the Jewish people find themselves on the front lines in the struggle against terrorism, the great struggle of our generation. Just last weekend, more than 100 rockets rained down on civilians in southern Israel from positions in the Gaza Strip.

“Canada condemns the terrorist group Hamas and stands with Israel as it deals with regional threats to peace and security.”

I yearn for peace in the Middle East and am convinced the two-state solution is the only way it can be achieved. The two-state solution is the key to both Israel’s long-term future as a Jewish and democratic country, and to the long-term future of a democratic and prosperous Palestine. But, to be sure, Hamas is an enemy of peace. Its terrorist acts are aimed at preventing peace and provoking Israel into conflict.

Israel, in a move that many – including, I believe, its top leadership of the day – hoped would help pave the road to peace, unilaterally ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005. It was an incredible opportunity for the Palestinian people to show the world they, too, were ready for peace, for statehood, for the future. Instead, Gaza has been the launching pad for thousands of rockets and other terrorist attacks.

Things could have been so very different in Gaza. Hopefully, someday sooner than later, they will be.