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 22, 2010: Israel Apartheid Week is not about working for peace

 By Michael Regenstreif

 Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) is coming soon to a campus near you.

Carleton University and the University of Ottawa will be among campuses in about 40 cities worldwide on which fervent anti-Zionist groups will be hosting speakers and performers and showing films aimed at delegitimizing the State of Israel during the first week of March.

I believe strongly in the need for Israel and the Palestinians to continue working toward a peace agreement and a two-state solution that will allow both sides to live peacefully and securely, free from repression and free from terrorism. There are Israelis and, yes, Palestinians who are working toward that goal and I applaud their efforts.

But IAW is not about working toward peace or solutions in the best interests of the Palestinian and Israeli peoples. It is a propaganda week in support of destroying Israel’s right to exist.

Apartheid was a system in which only the minority white population of South Africa enjoyed all political and state power. The majority Black population was denied the vote and all other manner of democratic and human rights. South African-style apartheid is not the system in place in Israel.

Israel is a western-style democracy in which all of its citizens have an equal vote. Arabs are elected to the Knesset and serve in the diplomatic corps and the judiciary (including the Supreme Court). Arabs are students and professors in Israeli universities and patients and doctors in Israeli hospitals. Israel has a free press and Arabic is an officially recognized language there.

To be sure, Israel is not a problem-free society – what country is? – but, it is not an apartheid regime.

Vanessa Redgrave, long a pro-Palestinian activist, agrees. Redgrave – who used the 1977 Academy Awards ceremony as a platform to denounce Israel – now recognizes Israel as a legitimate democracy and points out that referring to Israel as an apartheid regime is counterproductive to peace and to justice for the Palestinian people.

“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,” wrote Redgrave last October in The New York Review of Books.

I suppose it’s ironic that the IAW opening event this year is being held at Carleton’s Azrieli Theatre. The venue was endowed by, and named for, David J. Azrieli, an Israeli-Canadian businessman, architect and philanthropist. A past-president of the Canadian Zionist Federation, Azrieli is a Holocaust survivor who fought in the 1948 War of Independence. As a developer, Azrieli has been active in both Canada and Israel. Among the other facilities that bear his name is the massive Azrieli Center in Tel Aviv.

You’d think that IAW organizers might want to avoid the symbolism of holding their event in a theatre named for such a staunch Israeli-Canadian Zionist.

There really isn’t anything to be gained in trying to shut down IAW activities or in arguing with IAW activists. You can’t have rational discussions with ideologues. And the pro-Israel student leaders at Carleton and uOttawa understand this.

The focus of pro-Israel students needs to be on the great majority of their fellow students who not already enveloped by anti-Zionism. The pro-Israel students also understand this and that’s why they’re holding their own series of positive events this week – Israel, A Partner Week.

October 19, 2009: Interfaith dialogue – Building bridges between our communities

By Michael Regenstreif

Last month, I attended a lecture and panel discussion at Library and Archives Canada that featured Bruce Bawer, author of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within and Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom.

It was a disturbing, thought-provoking evening.

Bawer is an influential gay American author and cultural critic who left the United States in 1998 because of the increasing influence of fundamentalist Christianity on the public discourse in that country. But, in moving to Europe – he now lives in Norway – he says he found an even more insidious brand of fundamentalism there in the form of radical Islam, which has misappropriated multiculturalism and used it to stifle western liberalism and openness. Bawer warned that the influence of radical Islam has also been growing here in North America in recent years.

Bawer pointed out that the stifling of western liberalism is being accomplished in various ways from overt terrorism and violence – for example, the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh after he made a short documentary, Submission, detailing the abuse of Muslim women – to abusing human rights tribunals. Recent examples of that in Canada have included complaints against Ezra Levant at the Alberta Human Rights Commission for publishing the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad, and against columnist Mark Steyn and Maclean’s magazine at the Ontario Human Rights Commission for Steyn’s article, ‘The Future Belongs to Islam.’

Bawer also pointed to the new book, The Cartoons That Shook the World by Jytte Klausen, about the Danish cartoons controversy, mentioning that the publisher, Yale University Press, was intimidated into removing the cartoons from the book, thus depriving readers of actually seeing what the book was talking about.

Brigitte Gabriel – an Arab Christian who grew up in Lebanon and is now an American – is another speaker with a message similar to Bawer’s. As noted in the article on page 4 of this issue of the Bulletin, Gabriel will be in Ottawa on November 5 as keynote speaker at this year’s Choices event presented by the Federation’s Women’s Division.

But, while the threats from radical Islam that Bawer and Gabriel warn us about are real, and we must remain vigilant against them, we must not lose sight of the fact that extremists do not represent the Muslim mainstream and that there are people and organizations dedicated to building bridges between our communities.

Two such people from Jerusalem, Rabbi Ron Kronish and Mohamad Sibdeh, a kadi (Sharia court judge), will be in Ottawa on Sunday, October 25 to talk about how Muslims and Jews, as communities and individuals, can, and do, talk and work together. As noted in the articles on page 13, there will be Rabbi & Kadi events in the morning at Temple Israel and in the evening at the Soloway Jewish Community Centre.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Last month, I wrote about the tiff at TIFF – the Toronto International Film Festival – over the selection of Tel Aviv as this year’s featured city in its new City to City program spotlighting the cinema of a different international city each year. A group led by John Greyson and Naomi Klein protested the selection of Tel Aviv with a declaration painting Israel as a brutal, repressive apartheid regime.

A number of major film artists lined up behind the protesters and a number of others lined up in support of Tel Aviv.

Surprisingly, given her long record of pro-Palestinian activism, one of the major film artists supporting Tel Aviv is Vanessa Redgrave. In a letter she co-authored for publication in the October 22 issue of The New York Review of Books, Redgrave opposes the TIFF protest saying the “citizens of Tel Aviv and their organizations and their cultural outlets should be applauded and encouraged.”

Redgrave and co-authors Julian Schnabel and Martin Sherman, all noted leftists, slam the protesters for referring to Israel as an apartheid regime. “We oppose the current Israeli government,” they write, “but it is a government. Freely elected. Not a regime. Words matter.”

Redgrave further parts company with leftists like Klein who seek to delegitimize Israel. “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.”

The same crowd that protested Tel Aviv at TIFF also tried to intimidate the masterful singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen into cancelling his September 24 concert in Tel Aviv. Cohen, whose grandfather, Lyon Cohen, was the founding president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, stood up to the negativity of the anti-Israel boycotters and turned his concert into a benefit that raised $2 million for groups promoting peace and dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians.