Israel -- Apartheid?

Islamist Peace.. Israeli Apartheid?

In 2005, Toronto became dubiously distinguished as the first city in the world to host “Israeli Apartheid Week” (IAW).  Much as flames kindle by a smoldering fringe, the popularity of IAW events in Toronto ignited from year to year.  In 2009, rallies and other IAW-related demonstrations at Toronto’s York University began combusting well organized, un-spontaneous riots.

Alas, if 2009 IAW sparked borderline riots – then 2010 became the water bucket in which IAW damped and fizzled.  Perhaps inevitably so after concerted denunciation of IAW events by Toronto media – and after highly profiled members of all three major Canadian political parties unprecedentedly, simultaneously condemned IAW itself as illicitly seeking to undermine and delegitimize the state of Israel.

IAW had grown too large for mainstream Canadians to continue ignoring.  Consequently, Canadians expressed their disgust for IAW.

Yet, even if mainstream Canadians would much prefer Toronto give up on IAW – IAW is not prepared to give up on Toronto.  Of course not.  This is where IAW began.  From IAW’s perspective, Toronto must feel like home.  IAW will not leave quietly.

That’s why, in 2011, IAW organizers have outdone themselves gathering the brightest fringe luminaries they could find – then charged their luminaries with proselytizing Toronto’s main university campuses.  They have outdone themselves gathering fringe luminaries so bright, even mainstream Canadians may already have heard their names.  Judy Butler’s, for instance.

That’s right.  Judy Butler, the brightest luminary in the IAW arsenal, is coming to town.  And there can be no doubting that Ms. Butler proselytizing on their behalf is a tremendous coup for IAW organizers.

Possibly no one has done more, famously, to license anti-Israeli expression than Judy Butler.  When the President of Harvard University argued that some forms of anti-Israeli expression are anti-semitic “in effect, if not in intent,” Butler retorted, “No, it’s not anti-semitic”.  And while she did not argue particularly well – the bulk of her retort was devoted to groping for the meaning of “in effect” – the mere fact she argued as a progressive Jewish luminary made pseudo-academic headlines.

Three distinct contentions emerged, legibly if not clearly, from Butler’s retort.  First, that identifying any expression as anti-semitic in effect if not intent damages academic freedom – in effect even if not intent.  Thereby, from the first, Butler perhaps intentionally mis-construed the fundamental significance of academic freedom.

Because free and democratic societies must value knowledge, understanding  and, above all, truth – therefore expressions of truth should not be curtailed any time the truths expressed are unfamiliar, frightening, inconvenient, even dangerous.  This is the sort of value academic freedom reflects.  When academics, however, persist spouting spectacular contradictions in the name of truth?  Then no sanctuary can or should obtain in the name of truth and academic freedom against charges of incompetence – or worse.

This is precisely the case when it comes to alleging Israeli apartheid – as, no doubt, Butler most passionately will this coming Israeli Apartheid Week in Toronto.  For Israel always fights only in self-defense.  That’s a fact Butler not only does not deny but tacitly affirms in opposing the view, as she put it, “.. that anything that Israel does in the name of self-defense is legitimate and ought not to be questioned.”  Yet nothing can be more offensive than apartheid. Apartheid is totally offensive.  Apartheid logically cannot be – whether wholly or even partly – in self-defense.  Hence, the equation of apartheid with Israel logically cannot be.  It is too obviously glaring a contradiction.

No academic freedom can account for so obviously glaring a contradiction – so belligerently and dogmatically expressed to exclude any possibility of rational dissent.  To the contrary.  One can only wonder whether those academics equating Israel with apartheid are merely, utterly incompetent – or, worse, if they are thoroughly anti-semitic.

Butler’s second discernible contention, essentially, is that no nation or state can be immune to criticism due only to victimhood and past suffering of its peoples.  As another state among nations, there must be space allocated in the public sphere to critical commentary on Israel.  Yet this second contention fails even to qualify as a straw-man.

No country can be immune to fair criticism.  Of course not.  But the singular unfairness of anti-Israeli criticism begs the question why criticism of Israel cannot be fair – not why Israel should not be criticized.  For when criticism constitutes only glaring contradictions blaring in near or full riotous belligerence?  Then criticism long ceases to be fair.  It does not begin to be fair.  It ceases even to be criticism.  It becomes a celebration of hatred.  A hate-fest.

Butler’s last and least contention seems to be that it’s just too hurtful to label Jews with anti-semitism – whether in intent or in effect – for expressing criticism of Israel:

If we think that to criticise Israeli violence, or to call for economic pressure to be put on the Israeli state to change its policies, is to be ‘effectively anti-semitic’, we will fail to voice our opposition for fear of being named as part of an anti-semitic enterprise. No label could be worse for a Jew…

This last can be summarily dismissed.  For anti-semitism is all about hatred – not reason.  Charges of anti-semitism pertain to mongering hate – not expressing fair criticism.  And just as Butler’s participation in the anti-Israeli IAW hate-fest utterly ignores the feelings of all individuals who recognize Israel as the sole bastion of democracy in the Middle-East – just so, in fairness, Butler’s feelings ought to be equally ignored.  It becomes surreal to lock steps with the utmost in public hate-mongering – then become entirely plaintive that anyone should be so insensitive to point it out.

In any event, IAW is too obviously and stridently anti-semitic in effect to leave much room for wondering how anti-semitic it is in intent.  Even more importantly, while Islamist societies mow down their own citizens daring to stand up for some democratic reforms, IAW participants frenzy to delegitimize the only true democracy in the Middle-East where Muslim citizens have real human rights.  And that’s just plain evil.

Last modified on 2011-05-30 09:44:37 GMT. 181 comments

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.

Last modified on 2011-12-12 00:08:02 GMT. 1 comment

Apartheid in self-defense

Israel Apartheid Week is coming to YorkU town again.  And, again, Israel will get charged with apartheid.  No doubt it will be another riot.

Seems like a joke, though.  How any nation can be charged with apartheid in self-defense.  Since no one could even conceive charging any other country or people fighting to defend themselves with apartheid.

What can it mean?  Where’s the coherence?  If, for example, you fight back to defend yourself when getting assaulted?  It can’t be discrimination.  You don’t fight back in self-defense because of who assaults you.  You fight back in self-defense to stop the assault — regardless who assaults you.

Imagine you keep getting assaulted — yet always manage effectively defending yourself.  Imagine your assailants demanding why you keep defending yourself.  What’s wrong with you?  Can’t you understand how right they are when assaulting you?  Imagine they accuse you defend yourself only to discriminate them.  Imagine they run around the world charging you with apartheid.  All outraged you won’t simply lie down and take it like you should.  All bewildered you don’t seem willing to get into the spirit of their assaulting.  Where’s the coherence?  It would be comedy — if there was not so much tragedy.  Because it isn’t merely assault Islamist assailants are into.  Whether in terms of “liberating Tel-Aviv” or “pushing into the sea” or “wiping off the map” — god willing — Islamist assailants have never made their ultimate goal secret.

Israel Apartheid Weeks are no joke.  They are turning into regular, yearly campus riots — nowhere more so than at York University.  How come?  Is there no understanding how offensive apartheid is?  How it can’t conceivably be defensive?  Why it can never be done in self-defense?

Where’s the coherence?  Here’s the coherence.  The coherence not of apartheid — but of anti-Semitism.  The coherence of absolute hatred.  Hatred so absolute it cannot fail to construe anything — including self-defense — as offensive.  The kind of hatred Rick Salutin attempted to pass-off as legitimate criticism of Israel.  Far more explosively coupled by the sort of anti-Jew hatred Palestinian children have learned not only from Farfour.

Not that Farfour can account why Islamist societies must keep promising and attempting to genocide Israel.  Farfour could not have emerged from cultural and historical vacuum.  To the contrary — Farfour was vividly representing and instructing the established discourse.  This is what must be understood.  How the ideology of anti-Jew hatred grew so absolute that even self-defense has become offensive.  Why Gazans have chartered themselves on genociding Israel.  Why they must keep trying to destroy someone else’s country — instead of building their own.

Someone had better explain how, why and what Naqba really means.  Just to give peace a snowball’s chance in the Middle-East.  Because even the most absolute hatred can be addressed — if only it can be understood.  Meanwhile, though?  Check the peak Israel Apartheid Week experience anywhere.   Feel it.

Last modified on 2010-03-16 03:34:42 GMT. 24 comments

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.

Last modified on 2011-12-20 17:49:48 GMT. 13 comments