Anti-Semitism, YorkU & IAW

More Israel Apartheid Weeks will be coming to the York University community.

If 2010 organizers can repeat their 2009 performance, IAW will be coming to most any university campus nearby.  All over North America.  And, again as in 2009, by any measure, YorkU will probably undergo the peak IAW experience anywhere .

Certainly in 2009, Israel Apartheid Week caused clashing, bitterness and ongoing dispute concerning anti-Semitism on campus.  But is it true, though?  Is there really anti-Semitism at York?

Thorny question.  Let’s face it.  Protesting one’s complete lack of racism, chauvinism or anti-Semitism these days?  It raises suspicions.  Admittedly having experienced all above – it’s clearly best not protesting too much.  More honest, in every event.

However.  What takes place in privacy and solitude of the mind alone – however racist, chauvinist or anti-Semitic – is humdrum.  Not worth confessing absent express hatred or violence ensuing.  It isn’t worth confessing, it isn’t worth reporting – it’s no ground for dispute.

So there’s anti-Semitism.  Big deal.  Who cares to dispute what’s secluded in people’s heads?  The real concern emerges if anti-Semitism spews out of private seclusion.  When it gets out of heads.  When the hatred becomes express in words and deeds.  Where it can instigate violence.

Rosie DiManno, the prominent Toronto Star columnist, had no doubts that during 2009 IAW at York the hatred did spew out.  Zealously.  In her view, even though “the grove of academe traditionally venues for controversial ideas run ideologically amok”, the IAW “malice afoot segues into a far more disturbing platform for Israel-bashing, which is often Jew-bashing cloaked in righteousness.”

Rick Salutin, another Toronto columnist, disagreed.  Vehemently.  Why?  For at least three reasons.

First, because we shouldn’t confuse anti-Semitism with anti-Israel criticism.  They are different.  They are unrelated.  “Canada has always had anti-Semites, but they’ve felt no need to hide their hate behind a screen of anti-Israel criticism”, wrote Salutin.  For example?  “Think of David Ahenakew”, he urged.  Thus, presumably, expressing anti-Jew hatred like David Ahenakew did is bad.  Whereas expressing anti-Israeli hatred is completely different.  It’s fine.  It’s actually good.  It qualifies as good criticism.

How odious.  Most anything illegitimate – not just express hatred – is bound to don legitimate cloaking.  However such cloaking gets patched and contrived.  Salutin is plain wrong.  What’s odious is how far Salutin went picking that one cherry to distract how wrong he is.  Only think of David Ahenakew, indeed.

David Ahenakew sought neither to disguise nor to distinguish his anti-Jew hatred from anti-Israeli criticism.  Either way, Ahenakew’s example is precisely not representative.  While most hatred struggles for some guise of legitimacy, Ahenakew’s ridiculous escapades stick out so singularly inept precisely because no effort to legitimate them was made.  Indeed, not only didn’t Ahenakew disguise his hatred as anything remotely legitimate – his hatred didn’t even qualify as such in the first place.  Not according to Saskatchewan provincial court Judge Wilfred Tucker, anyway.

Could be Salutin never realized.  How his handpicked cherry example of guileless anti-Jew hatred didn’t qualify as hatred.  How Ahenakew was found not guilty of willfully promoting hatred – about two weeks prior to Salutin promoting Ahenakew as the face of Canadian anti-Jew hatred.

Absurd example.  Of course hatred gets disguised as legitimate.  Most anything illegitimate is bound to seek legitimate disguise.  And the discrimination Salutin attempts between Jews and Israelis?  It boils to insinuating that hatred of the former be expressed as if legitimate criticism targeting the latter.  Since expressing anti-Jew hatred is bad – but expressing anti-Israeli hatred under critical disguise can substitute as entirely legitimate and just fine.  We don’t hate Jews any more – we only hate, vilify and lie about Israelis now.  Too bad distinctions such as Salutin’s are anything but fine.  Too bad by this day and age we must know how racist they are.  How would it play were Salutin to contend that he’s not against blacks – just Africans?  That he’s got nothing against Muslims – just Middle-Eastern Arabs?  That he doesn’t hate whites – just Europeans?  Right.  It wouldn’t play.  Too odious.

Next, Salutin contended Israel Apartheid Week hatred didn’t seem so bad to him.  “[I]t doesn’t look like Kristallnacht to me”, he wrote.  And anti-Jew hatred could never get that bad in Canada anyway.  Since “Nazi Germany wasn’t about name-calling and group hate.”  Over there, “Writers and politicians were proudly anti-Semitic”.  Whereas here – in Canada – “anti-Semitism is unacceptable”.

How sordid.  How blatantly unCanadian.  Salutin doesn’t seem to understand why in our tolerant, multicultural Canadian society, we stand on guard against express hatred.  Why we don’t just say, “Oh, it isn’t so bad – not like it was over there.”

Express hatred is unacceptable to Canadian society – even before it gets that bad.  Even before it becomes entirely respectable.  If express hatred can’t turn violent in Canada as anywhere else in geography and history?  It’s precisely because Canadians never say “Oh, it isn’t so bad.”  Because Canadians remain on guard whenever hatred becomes express.

Salutin failing to comprehend what he asserts – that anti-Semitism is unacceptable here in Canada – is too reminiscent how it used to be over there.  Not in Canada.  How they used to say, “Oh, it can’t be that bad.  We are civilized people, after all.”  Too sordid.

Finally, Salutin mainained we must be able to criticize Israel.  We must be able to speak critically about Israel – just as we would about any other nation.  “Because Israel is now a state among nations and must be held to account, not absolved for fear of igniting a new Holocaust.”

Finally.  At last.  Salutin is absolutely right.  While express hatred must never gain false respectability masquerading as legitimate criticism – nor should the fear that legitimate criticism will be mistaken for hatred be permitted to silence us.  Fear cannot be allowed to silence and abolish our critical faculties.  Israel is a state among nations.  We must speak – favourably or critically – of it as we would of any other nation.

Wouldn’t it be nice?  If only we would speak of Israel as any other nation?  Not calling for Israel in particular to be wiped off the map?  No longer singling Israel out as the one particular specific nation not entitled to exist — and thereby fair game to destroy?

Maybe we would – if only we could.  Speak of Israel as if it were any other nation.  But we can’t manage it.  Ever.  And there’s no better reminder how we can’t than Israel Apartheid Weeks at YorkU.  For were we to charge any other nation with apartheid?  We would probably have some half-decent clues what we meant by it.  Whereas when we charge Israel with apartheid?  Clues are not included.

We were clear what we meant when we charged South-Africa with apartheid.  And were we to charge that all Middle-Eastern nations except Israel practice gender apartheid – we’d be fairly clear what that meant.  But what does “apartheid” even mean in relation to Israel?  Is there coherence?  Is there any meaning to it?  Or has the very meaning of “apartheid” turned incoherent since we started incriminating Israel with it?  Has “apartheid” come to mean, in relation to Israel, nothing but our own hatred?  Nothing more than our own anti-Semitism?

In “Israel, apartheid, anti-Semites”, Rick Salutin concludes we must speak about Israel as if it were any other nation.  And that’s totally fair.  That’s what fairness is all about.  Yet, in the act of speaking about Israel – does Salutin speak as if Israel were any other nation?  Or does Salutin himself, when incriminating Israel with apartheid, express nothing beyond hatred?  The hatred that gets so uniquely reserved to talk about Israel.  Anti-Jew hatred.  Anti-Semitism.

Salutin urgently tries persuading us that apartheid and Israel Apartheid Weeks can’t mean more anti-Semitism when it comes to Israel.  That’s why he begins by denying there’s anti-Semitism in the first place.  Begins by denying IAW means anything like what Rosie DiManno said.  “That detestable, despicable annual campus hate-fest … Jew-bashing cloaked in self-righteousness … students who don’t recognize racism when they’re spewing it.”  And continues by denying it means anything remotely resembling what Cabinet minister Jason Kenney or Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff said.  That it’s a resurgence of the same old slander to equate Zionism with racism.  That “It is about a systematic effort to delegitimize the democratic homeland of the Jewish people…”

To his credit, though?  Salutin does not restrict himself to denial.  He tries telling us what apartheid really does mean when it comes to Israel:

“Apartheid” became widely used in this context only when Israel began building what came to be called an apartheid wall, looming over Palestinians, sequestering more land, cutting them off from each other.

It almost seems to make some sense.  If Israel had gotten up one morning and, out of the blues, started building such a huge wall?  It could make sense calling the barrier separating Egyptians and Israelis from Palestinians an apartheid wall.  However.  At least as well as anyone else, Salutin knows that isn’t what happened.  It isn’t how and why that wall got built.

Islamist leaders have never made secret their goal to wipe Israel off the map.  They routinely declare their genocidal intent.  They may never cease trying.  And there’s one Islamist society actually chartered on genociding Israel.  Consequently, under Israel’s besieged circumstances – would any other nation get charged with building an apartheid wall?  Not seriously — nor even in mockery, derision, disdain or scorn.  It couldn’t make coherent sense.

Apartheid is offensive — never defensive.  When walls are defensive life-savers, we think and speak of them as being great.  Not just when they’re huge — like the Great Wall of China.  Also when they’re relatively smaller.  Like that wall of Hadrian’s.  Even when they’re moderate castle walls.  Even when they’re relatively tiny fortifications.  They’re all great when built as defensive life-savers.  When designed, built and fortified to save lives.

Apartheid is offensive.  The Israeli wall is defensive.  And were it anywhere else?  It would just be great.  But only because it defends Israel?  We call it apartheid.

It is ridiculous, it is transparent, it is ridiculously transparent.  Why do we speak of Israeli defensive measures as if they were offensive?  Why are we offended by Israeli self-defense?  How can we become so offended when one nation – slightly less populous than New York City – keeps defending herself against all Islamist societies united only to eradicate her?  When we know how Islamist societies will not cease seeking to destroy Israel?  When Islamist leaders routinely call for Israel to be wiped from the map?  When there’s an Islamist society loudly and proudly chartered on genociding Israel?  How can we conceivably call Israel an apartheid state?

Not everything offensive is apartheid.  But apartheid cannot fail to be offensive.  There can never be apartheid in self-defense. Except only and singularly in the case of Israel.  How come?

Obviously.  Israeli defensive measures appear most offensive precisely to those most offended by Israel successfully defending herself.  To those most wrongly struck when Israel succeeds yet again in self-defense.  Equating Israeli self-defending with the most offensive South-African apartheid, therefore?  No doubt it feels just natural — given how offensive Israeli self-defense must feel.  For even while knowing all things high or low, great or small are entitled to self-defend?  When it comes particularly to Israel and Jews, no such knowing applies.  The hatred is such that only feeling applies.  And the coherence of incriminating Israel with apartheid turns transparently obvious.  It is the coherence of anti-Semitism.  It is regret that the job wasn’t finished in Germany.  It is pure rage that Israel won’t hurry up and die.

Rick Salutin was entirely right to demand we speak of Israel as we would any other nation.  His far more significant contribution, though, was showing us how and why he cannot.