Ottawa universities to host 'Israel Apartheid Week'

"Two Ottawa universities are going ahead next week with a controversial campaign that links Israel's treatment of Palestinians to the treatment of blacks in apartheid South Africa, despite facing objections by the province's MPPs.

Beginning March 1, both Carleton University and the University of Ottawa will host Israel Apartheid Week (IAW), an international event held annually in cities and campuses around the world. Other Canadian cities hosting IAW this year include Toronto, Hamilton, Montreal and Edmonton.

The weeklong series, which features lectures and discussions criticizing Israel's policies toward Palestinians, has faced criticism in the past. Groups like the Institute for Global Jewish Affairs and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies have condemned the annual event as being anti-Semitic."

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2010/02/26/ottawa-israel-apartheid.html#ixzz0gwbrZEUu

This news was also appended.

"Ontario MPPs voted unanimously Thursday on a motion to denounce this year's IAW. Peter Shurman, the MPP who moved the resolution, said he had no issue with debating the Israel-Palestine conflict, but is concerned with the use of the word "apartheid," which he feels is inflammatory."

Yet, in this article, Canada's neoconservative turn (The Electronic Intifada, 26 February 2010), Yves Engler describes a dramatic shift in Canadian foreign policy toward Israel under the right wing conservative government of Stephen Harper, which implicates Canada in helping Israel build an Apartheid state for the Palestinians.

Engler's book, Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid, was recently released and describes how deep the right wing conservative Canadian government is into helping Israel achieve Apartheid.

Read about it here at Booman Tribune: http://www.boomantribune.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2010/3/1/93954/92331

There's some interesting information on there, much of which (I'm assuming) is not widely available in English. But I definitely think the stories there should be taken with a grain of salt -- I hesitate (somewhat) to call it propaganda, but it sure ain't journalism.

EI has the best and most experienced writers on the IP conflict, and while most of their articles are Op-eds, the information they provide is reliable and valid. As for stories about events happening on the ground in the Palestinian territories, their featured reporters who are on the scene provide adequate objective detail.

So I challenge you to take apart any Op-ed or report published on EI and show it too be unreliable.

Israel has been carrying on a military occupation for over 40 years whose sole purpose is to support the colonization of the Palestinians territories. What may seem biased toward the Palestinian side, is just a consequence of not being able to put lipstick on a pig and expect it to be anything more than a pig.

roughly since the Israeli incursion into the West Bank in March 2002, so almost exactly 8 years (though less so in the past 3 or so years -- once every few months -- before that I was a more regular visitor). Like I said, they do present some interesting information, but without even the semblance of balance or context -- they seem intent on presenting Zionism and all of its supporters in an exclusively negative manner. Thus while I'm sure much of their information functions well in a 'vacuum,' it is often not tested or weighed (on there, at least) against information or opinions that are not expressly 'pro-Palestinian.' Thus, IMO, one will not gain an entirely accurate appraisal of the whole situation by viewing this site alone (though nobody should depend on one source for all of their information on a particular topic).

Like I said, it's been awhile since I was a regular visitor, but from what I remember, the consensus of most of their writers seems to be that Israel has no right to exist as a state with a Jewish character and thus they eschew the 'two state solution' and any manifestations of 'liberal Zionism,' preferring one state with (lo and behold) an Arab majority, seeing as they also support the right of return. They also seem to like the idea of an academic boycott of Israel, which I find abhorrent. No doubt if one day we see two states (with 1967 borders), EI will reject this and continue to agitate for one state with an Arab demographic majority, which will never happen without cataclysmic events of holocaust proportions.

Do you think that Uri Avnery, a soft Zionist, is a one state supporter. He has posted many articles on EI, and so have many others who are two state advocates.

There is a wide range of opinion as to how this conflict should end.

In general, I interpret the one staters as taking it one step beyond Apartheid, where it will inevitably lead, and that Israel, via world condemnation, will have to relent at that point. Israel has had many chances to stop the colonization and negotiate a two state solution. Yet, except for a few months during the Rabin administion, its colonization of the Palestinian territories has been relentless. So when you read a one state sentiment, it is usually from someone who is way ahead, historically, of the pack.

But that doesn't make EI a one state site. And its content certainly exceeds discussion about resolutions.

Looks like the Canadians, following the US COngress, are sucking up a storm.

From Phil Weiss, Mondoweiss, by permission:

March 1, 2010

"When people tell me that in harping on the Israel lobby, I am seeing a conspiracy, I say they are correct, and respond that in 1858, Lincoln pushed the rise of the Republican Party because he saw a "conspiracy" of all the existing political structures– northern Democrat, southern Democrat, Whig, presidency, Supreme Court, Congress, the eastern press– in the racist colonization of Kansas/Nebraska in violation of the affirmed US policy, the Missouri compromise, which is a very neat parallel to the complete cooperation of the American power structure in the racist colonization of the West Bank in violation of stated U.S. policy. You simply cannot talk about foreign policy in that region without talking about the influence of the lobby.

And things are even worse now in Canada, where the orthodoxy is more extreme (and the conservative power structure is solidified by the Canadian hockey victory last night). Here is an amazing piece in Maclean’s showing how the Canadian human rights organization Rights and Democracy was taken over by neoconservatives with one concern, Israel.

In the midst of this process, the president of the organization–Remy Beauregard, who had been accused of palling around with terrorists– died. Note Beauregard’s distinguished career, and note that he had never experienced this type of scrutiny before.

"......Last June, Rémy Beauregard, the president of a federal government-funded human rights organization called Rights and Democracy, read aloud to his fellow board members from a long memo he had written. The memo was his response to an evaluation of his job performance written by two members of the federal government-appointed board, Jacques Gauthier and Elliot Tepper. The board’s chairman, Aurel Braun, had sent along his own note endorsing the evaluation, which was highly critical of Beauregard….

Beauregard’s written response to the performance evaluation, obtained by Maclean’s and revealed here for the first time, makes clear the extent to which this extraordinary controversy at Rights and Democracy was about the stance the organization, and by extension the government of Canada, should take with regard to Israel. Beauregard got into trouble with Braun and the others for disbursing grants that seemed to take sides in the Middle East conflict. Paradoxically, the Rights and Democracy board is now predominantly composed of people who have devoted much of their life to an unequivocal position: that no legal challenge to Israel’s human rights record is permissible, because any such challenge is part of a global harassment campaign against Israel’s right to exist….

He had spent 40 years working in government and non-profit organizations, after all, often in human rights. In 1986 he became the first person to run Ontario’s Office of Francophone Affairs, trying to figure out how to extend services to the province’s French-language minority. His work in that post has made him a nearly heroic figure among Franco-Ontarians. Later he ran the Ontario Human Rights Commission before working on a new constitution for Rwanda and human rights legislation for the Democratic Republic of Congao. He’d seen his share of tough fights.

But he’d never seen anything like this. His antagonists on the board were accusing him-in a secret memo they had fought to keep out of his hands-of failing to "improve the communications and interactions" between his office and the board. In his accompanying memo, Braun wrote that all this was "constructive criticism and it is hoped that it will be viewed in that light by Mr. Beauregard." Braun had then spent three months trying to ensure Beauregard would not be permitted to view it in any light at all.

That was the June meeting. Donica Pottie, the government representative, resigned from the board in September. Still short of a workable voting majority, Braun cancelled the October board meeting on two days’ notice. Three weeks later, the government appointed two new board members, Michael Van Pelt and David Matas. Van Pelt runs a Christian-oriented think tank. Matas is a former federal Liberal candidate who volunteers as legal counsel with B’nai Brith Canada.

When the board finally met again in January, Matas, who had already served on the board in the 1990s, and Van Pelt showed themselves to be reliable allies of Braun, Gauthier and Tepper. The removal of another board member and the resignations of two more gave Braun an unbeatable majority. And then Rémy Beauregard died. Of course nobody can know whether he would have lived longer in other circumstances. But his death throws more public scrutiny on Rights and Democracy than any of the players expected.

Two public statements published simultaneously in Israel and Canada, days after Beauregard’s death, hint at the broader strategy behind the changes at Rights and Democracy. The first is an op-ed in the National Post signed by Braun and six of his allies on the board. Referring to the grants to Al-Haq, B’Tselem and Al-Mezat, they write that two of the groups "are active in the lawfare movement, which is a strategy of abusing law to achieve military objectives-in this case, to punish Israel for anti-terror operations."

The same day in the Jerusalem Post, Gerald Steinberg, a political scientist at Bar Ilan university, published an op-ed congratulating the Canadian government for "reversing course" on a policy of abusing human rights and international law "as weapons to demonize Israel....."

See the following:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/opinion/20bernstein.html?_r=2&ref=global

The human rights abuses conducted by Israel against the Palestinians are obvious to everyone. Yet he seems willing to overlook them. It is the worse example of "exceptionalism" we have ever seen.

That doesn't seem like a long time to me and certainly doesn't diminish the point he makes (is it less salient now than in October?).

One person's unfair 'exceptionalism' is another's misplaced 'equivalency.' The point is that it's rather disingenuous to issue more condemnation of Israel than you do of places such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc.

Now if the founder were just complaining that those other countries with human rights issues, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, were not covered adequately, it would be one thing. But what we are seeing here is an attempt to draw equivalency between a inhumane siege and then a massacre that killed 1,400 mostly innocent people, and policies in countries steeped in conservative Islam that do not sit well with democracies. Cast Lead was really a third act, the previous one being Summer Rains of 2006 when "only" 600 Palestinians were killed in Gaza. I recall one incident that reached the outside world: an artillary shell or bomb blew up a home, and a headless baby was found draped outside in a tree. But for Gaza, since the US-Israeli engineered coup failed to unseat Hamas, a brutal siege has been in place leading to further deaths of medical patients unable to leave for proper care and UN reports of malnutrition among children. Collective punishment is contrary to international law.

So griping that HRW's is "biased" in its coverage is somewhat absurd. There is no bias. Gaza is what it is and HRW could not ignore it lest it lose its credibility.

Word to the wise, contrary to what I was told by one commenter, the Electronic Intifada, one of the best sources on IP on the internet, is apparently not permitted as a source.

I would suggest that the Palestinians have only a small voice on the site. Ma'an News Agency, based in Palestine, is allowed as a source, however. At least one diary survived based on a Ma'an story.

The Mod-In-Chief here certainly has a 'leaning' in that direction, but I don't know if the ban-lock/delete is absolute or just frequent.

There is nothing in the published rules that suggest EI is completely banned, although some articles may be in violation. jpost.com, a RW operation allied to Murdoch and Black, is commonly used as a source, and I've seen nothing from there locked, no matter how insane, so different standards do seem to apply.

Maybe Lithos will say if jpost is always OK and EI never, or something in between. but I doubt it.

I know! Let's test this theory out....

on edit: Okay, let's see if this thread gets locked or deleted and we'll have the answer :)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x303412

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