2010 Apartheid Weeks Fizzle

Instead of exploding all over North American campuses as in 2009? 2010 Israel Apartheid Weeks are fizzling.

The official website urges:

Mark your calendars – the 6th International Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) will take place across the globe from the 1st to the 14th of March 2010!

But in likely non-event the second week also fails to detonate? Then calendars the world over were marked for naught.

Reports are now being confirmed that U.S. students ignored IAW in droves — preferring to protest rising tuition costs instead.  Meanwhile, at YorkU — site of the peak 2009 IAW experience — there is peace, quiet, cordiality and extra sunshine.  So what happened since last year?  Such extreme loss of faces can only be devastating for IAW organizers boasting that “IAW 2010 takes place following a year of incredible successes”.

Haroon Siddiqui is right to bitterly bemoan the unanimity of condemnation against IAW.  Condemnation crossing every major party line in Canadian governance.  Like, how and when, ever, do Conservatives, Liberals and NDPs all unanimously agree? “Yet both opposition parties have joined the Conservatives in condemning Israeli Apartheid Week,” laments Siddiqui.

Indeed.  Not only federally — where the Liberals’ Michael Ignatieff said, “Labelling Israel as an “apartheid” state is a deliberate attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish state itself.”   Also more provincially in Ontario.  NDP’s Cheri DiNovo said, “What we need to build peace… are not inflammatory words like ‘apartheid,’ particularly used inappropriately in the case of Israel”.    And the Conservatives’ Peter Shurman said,

The use of the phrase “Israeli Apartheid Week” is about as close to hate speech as one can get without being arrested, and I’m not certain it doesn’t actually cross over that line.

However.  What Rosie DiManno referred to as an “annual campus hate-fest” could not have been dampened by official condemnation.   Official condemnation could only incense the most radically riotous rallies — such as at YorkU in 2009 — since participants are motivated to oppose what is perceived as official injustice in the first place.

So what happened?  Why have 2010 Israel apartheid weeks sputtered and failed like soggy fuses?

Clearly, IAW organizers made a big mistake.  Like audio jockeys overplaying a top-ten hit, they pushed their hatred too hard.  International audiences did not exactly get tired of hearing it — there’s probably enough anti-Semitism to have kept IAW near the top of the charts for a very long time.  But once IAW became too loud and too proud for pleasant background noise?  Once the volume got raised to foreground in everyone’s face?  That’s when people had to wonder what IAW really meant.  People had to actually think about IAW.  And, of course, IAW cannot bear rational thinking.

Right?  There cannot be apartheid in self-defense. The contradiction is too transparent for anyone not to see right through it.  Therefore, IAW organizers, allies, followers and sympathizers had to claim that Israel does not fight in self-defense.  That Israel has nothing to fear from Islamist societies.  That, to the contrary, Islamist societies must always defend against Israeli aggression.  Unfortunately, the only mileage such claims traverse is from blatant absurdity to patent falsehood.

Israel insists it fights in self-defense.  That even to survive it must win all wars Islamist societies always start.  Israel claims it has no interest to colonize, cleanse, genocide or otherwise molest Islamist societies.

Islamist societies, on the other hand?  Islamist societies keep no secrets.  They do keep bragging how they will genocide Israel.  One Islamist society is actually chartered on genociding Israel.

Who to believe?  It doesn’t matter.  Whether international audiences credit everything Israel claims.  Or whether international audiences can’t believe anything Israeli and place full faith in Islamist societies forever boasting Israel’s genocide.  Either way.  Israel must fight in self-defense.

This is how IAW became too sordid for merely casual gazing or listening — nevermind participating.  For if one cannot avoid actually thinking about it?  There’s no help concluding Israel must fight in self-defense.  And if Israel must fight in self-defense?  Then screaming “Israel Apartheid” entails not just contradiction — but almost inconceivable hatred.

Why?  Because those screaming “Israel Apartheid” seem to really mean it.  They really seem to be all that offended by Israel defending against Islamist societies out to genocide her.  As if self-defense by Israelis were equivalent to South-African apartheid.  And that goes beyond discrimination.  It goes beyond contradiction.  It goes beyond incoherence.  It goes to the kind of hatred most of us cannot readily conceive.

When you really hate someone for defending against attempted genocide?  That’s genocidal hatred.