A Voice of Reason From Canada

Coming to a street or campus near you


I am pleased to cross-post this impressive essay by Josh Xiong, a University of Toronto undergraduate on the topic of this week's so-called Israel Apartheid Week being held in various places around the word. As I have mentioned many times before, Canada is experiencing the same wave of radical pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah activity that we in the US are.

"In the first week of March this year cities around the world will hold the annual Israel Apartheid Week, or IAW for short. Organized by the Students Against Israeli Apartheid, or SAIA, it is a Molotov cocktail of political intolerance, illiberal personal attacks, and lurking, latent antisemitism.

The purpose of the event is to dupe the general public, especially impressionable students, into thinking that Israel is an apartheid state akin to South Africa before the ANC’s triumph in 1994. Never mind that Israel affords all of its Arab citizens equal political and legal rights, something noticeably absent in South Africa. Never mind that access to public institutions, such as education and health care, is granted to all equally. Of course, if one repeats a lie a thousand times, people will recognize it as truth.

The week also features a series of events and speakers pinning every imaginable crime the Palestinian people have suffered at the hands of Israel, from ethnic cleansing to labor exploitation. No mention of the radical Hamas, or the brutally corrupt Fatah. No mention of Camp David in 2000, or the various efforts among Israeli doves to give Palestinians their own state. The objective is clear: Israel - the refuge for Jews, the state that could have provided safe haven from the countless pogroms and the Holocaust had it existed earlier in human history - can only do wrong.

Proponents of IAW argue that they are not antisemitic, but merely anti-Israeli. Sure, criticism of any state’s policies and actions are necessary, even welcome. But why is it that those who claim to represent Palestinian interests in North America will ignore all the other problems the Palestinian people face in order to target Israel and Israel only? Surely, some of the blame has to fall to Hamas, who is more interested in launching rockets than providing basic services to its own people. And surely some of the responsibility lies with Yasser Arafat, who walked away from a deal for Palestinian sovereignty and half of Jerusalem, and who stole from the Palestinian people’s own coffers as they were dying for his “Intifada”. How far can we single out a state and attribute it responsibility for all the world’s ills before we approach the territory of antisemitic paranoia akin to the Protocols of Zion?

If IAW is not antisemitic in name, its supporters have done a poor job of arguing the case. They are an illiberal, intolerant, and racially charged bunch. My personal experience bears witness to paranoid old women whispering of possible “Mossad agents” lurking about at their events. For arguing against IAW, I have been labelled racially confused, as if it were the duty of “colored people” to stand with the agenda of radical politics. Jewish friends of mine who have dared to criticize SAIA’s actions have been spat at. IAW organizers routinely block the press from investigating their events - no photography or video recording is ever allowed (though SAIA provides its own photographers at every event - Big Brother has it taken care of). One wonders why they have to hide from the media if they are so righteous in their cause.

In an age where one can pass off charges of a Jewish cabal in American foreign policy - whether they are the Neoconservatives or the Israel Lobby - as critical scholarship, one begins to see the contours of the new antisemitism creeping into the public consciousness. It reveals itself in efforts to prevent Israeli academics from engaging in exchanges with their colleagues around the world. It reveals itself in the suppression of free speech on campuses such as Concordia, where the reception of public figure Benjamin Netanyahu for a speech was drowned out by glass-shattering violence from hostile students and the harassment of Jewish students who wished to see the speech. It reveals itself recently in the intimidation of Jewish students at York University, where SAIA members disrupted a Hillel news conference, called the Hillel president a “dirty Jew”, and prevented students from exiting the Hillel building.

This is the new antisemitism we live with. It manifests itself in Israel Apartheid Week, where we will see a state singled out and impugned beyond all reason, students of differing political opinions intimidated and suppressed, and Jews on all university campuses alienated and marginalized. Mark your calendars everyone."

Fousesquawk comment: Thank you, Josh. I have linked Josh's blog (joshxiong.com) to my own. I invite my readers to check out Josh's blog.