Syracuse University severs ties with Palestinian Al-Quds University

Students at al-Quds hold a Nazi-style demonstration. Supported by donations from Western nations, al-Quds has a reputation as the most moderate Palestinian univeristy

Syracuse University “indefinitely” suspended its relationship with Al-Quds University on Thursday, making it the second American university to sever ties this week after students held a Nazi-style demonstration on the Palestinian university’s campus.

“We are very disappointed and saddened to have learned of these recent events at Al-Quds University,” said Kevin Quinn, Syracuse’s senior vice president for public affairs, in an email to The Jerusalem Post.

He said Syracuse’s Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism would end its ties with Al-Quds. The decision by Syracuse came three days after Brandeis University severed its relationship. (See here.)

Students at al-Quds University stage Nazi-style rally; Brandeis University suspends academic partnership

Brandeis University President Frederick Lawrence announced Monday that Brandeis has suspended its partnership with Al-Quds University following a Nov. 5 demonstration on the Al-Quds campus in east Jerusalem where demonstrators wore black military gear, were armed with fake automatic weapons, and raised the Nazi salute.

Off campus, the students demonstrate with real automatic rifles, but not on-campus, as the university has a no guns policy.

After President Lawrence contacted Al-Quds President Sari Nusseibeh and requested an unequivocal condemnation of the demonstration, Nusseibeh responded with a statement complaining of “vilification campaigns by Jewish extremists.”

Al-Quds is funded by donations from western nations. It was established by Israel in 1984, one of several universities Israel helped set up for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank with the aim of increasing the educational level of Palestinians.

Brandeis is a quintessential liberal university, placing a heavy emphasis on programs such as Peace Studies. Al-Quds and Brandeis formed their academic partnership a decade ago.

Students clad in black military gear step on Israeli flags and give fascist salute

Photos of suicide bombers and other terrorist martyrs held up as heroes

Note that the group's symbol includes the territory they lay claim to and it includes all of Israel

Demonstrations like this - at the supposedly moderate al-Quds University - tend to convince Israelis that the Palestinians will never keep a peace treaty, regardless of any piece of paper their leaders may sign.

Noa Shaindlinger, graduate student and psychopath

Let me introduce you to Noa Shaindlinger, PhD student at the University of Toronto and psychopath. Earlier this month in a tragic training exercise, two Israeli reserve soldiers lost their lives in a helicopter accident.  Shaindlinger tweeted that this was “good news.”

In another tweet, Shaindlinger refers to a soldier injured in a different accident and says, “A shame he didn’t die.”

In another, Shaindlinger directs her followers to a “feel good” video of a Palestinian hurling a Molotov cocktail at an Israeli soldier.

Let me repeat that: Watching someone being hit by a gasoline bomb makes her “feel good.”

Perhaps psychopath is too kind a word. After all, psychopaths can’t help themselves, and Shaindlinger chooses to be a terrorist groupie. She identifies herself with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which Canada, The European Union, Japan, the United States and Israel all designate as a banned terrorist organization.

For very good reason.

Back in the 1970s, the PFLP pioneered the hijacking of passenger jets and has continued acts of terrorism ever since. Nor has is it confined its aggression to hapless tourists aboard hijacked airlines. The PFLP ignited the Black September conflict between Palestinians and Jordan, in which thousands of Palestinians were killed, and also took part in the Lebanese Civil War, in which thousands more were killed.

These days the PFLP is part of the rejectionist front – Palestinian groups who reject the notion of peace with Israel and forthrightly declare that their mission is to wipe Israel off the map.

Shaindlinger is currently pursuing her politics courtesy of our tax dollars. Her bio at U of T’s Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies identifies Shaindlinger’s area of interest as “(neo)coloniality in the Middle East and North Africa.” That is, for her PhD, she is busily inventing a tale of Israel as an evil colonial power, so evil that when an Israeli is hit by a flaming bottle of gasoline, we should “feel good.”  

  

"Welcome to the University of Victoria, a.k.a. Che Guevara U" by Michael Ross

From the National Post

At an espionage symposium at the University of Victoria in 2011, I spoke after a history professor who gave a lecture on the history of the CIA. I realize the CIA has had its share of shady moments, but this was an hour-long diatribe that could have been written by Fidel Castro. When I took the lectern, I told the audience that I’d be talking about the world of espionage, minus the politics, seeing as they’d endured enough ideological indoctrination for one day.


Were I asked to define the mission of a university, I would say it is the pursuit of truth and the dissemination of knowledge through research and teaching. Universities should enjoy autonomy as institutions, governing their own affairs internally and making their own decisions on academic matters. Having said that, some university departments have discarded the ideals of eternal truth in favour of mindless relativism and anti-Americanism/anti-Zionism; essentially existing as moral dead zones where faculty do little more than indulge their basest political biases and engage in what I can only describe as ivory-tower intellectual onanism.

Take for instance, the University of Victoria’s Social Justice Studies Department. (On the departmental website, a nostalgic photo of Che Guevara fades in and out, and readers are reminded that UVic is situated on the “territory of the Coast and Straits Salish people.”) A quick scan of the event list for February includes presentations on the gendered politics of militarization and globalization, the question as to whether the global justice movement is colonial, and of course that “social justice” staple that appears with the frequency of a bad penny: “Israel’s Blockade of Gaza — Canada’s Role.”

That’s right. Syria’s civil war, in which thousands have been killed, including hundreds of children tortured and murdered, apparently is a non-issue on campus. Iran’s nuclear ambitions and terrorism-sponsoring in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria aren’t a priority. Robert Mugabe’s megalomaniacal destruction of Zimbabwe is off the syllabus, and Nigeria’s worsening religious-ethnic bloodshed is outré.

What is important to the UVic Social Justice Studies Department, however, is Ehab Latoyef — this being the Captain Ehab of the “Freedom Waves to Gaza aid flotilla” — who will be speaking at the university later this month. The university describes Mr. Lotayef as a “Montreal-based poet and long-time solidarity activist, who was on board the Canadian humanitarian aid boat, the Tahrir, which was heading to Gaza when it was hijacked by the Israeli navy in international waters.”

This is what the university considers social justice: A ridiculous pantomime that sailed last November to ostensibly break the Israeli blockade of Gaza, but instead made fools of themselves after the UN Inquiry found that Israel’s blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza is entirely legal under international and maritime law.

It’s a sad reflection on any university that it has allowed its core principles to be subsumed into a self-perpetuating political and cultural subset of its faculty that is less intent on illuminating young minds than perpetuating their own ideological control of the syllabus.

Michael Ross is a former deep-cover officer with the Israel Secret Intelligence Service (Mossad).

We're funding politcal extremists

In Canada, almost no one supports those who hold extreme political views – they comprise perhaps 0.1 per cent of the population. But despite this near total lack of popular support, extremists continue to thrive.

Why? Because universities and granting agencies give them money.

The latest example of this comes from Queen’s and Simon Fraser universities, where professors Dorit Naaman and Dana Olwan have received a $223,000 grant to set up a multimedia installation in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Qatamon (also spelled Katamon).

Before the establishment of Israel, Qatamon was a well-off Christian Arab neighbourhood. However, in 1947, the UN mandated the creation of two Palestinian states – one Jewish, the other Arab. The Jewish community accepted this deal, but the Arabs rejected it. Instead, Arab militias and armies from the surrounding Arab countries attacked the new state of Israel, intending to kill it at birth.

During the war that followed, Israeli forces captured Qatamon, and most of the neighbourhood’s residents fled – mainly to Beirut, Damascus and Alexandria, cities where they used to vacation. Those who remained became Israeli citizens, as happened throughout the territories Israel controlled.

However, the Jordanian army captured the old city of Jerusalem, including the Jewish Quarter, and the rest of the West Bank. The Jordanians expelled all Jews from their territory. A thousand or more of these refugees moved into Qatamon, and it has been a predominantly (though not exclusively) Jewish neighbourhood ever since.

That’s the history. Here’s what Dana Olwan said about her $223,000 multimedia project in the Queen’s University Journal:

“It’s important to understand that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict hasn’t ended yet.... Palestinians are being dispossessed from Jerusalem right now through the building of apartheid walls.... Understanding and challenging the contemporary nature of the occupation is a key aim of this project.”

Notice how extreme Olwan’s language. The "apartheid wall" is a security barrier Israel built to keep out suicide bombers. It's actually mostly a fence, but is a wall where needed to prevent Palestinian snipers from firing at Israelis as they walk down the street.

Notice also that Olwan’s language is entirely political. There’s nothing academic about her project – no spirit of inquiry or even pretence at open-mindedness. It’s purely a propaganda exercise.

The project’s aim, she said, is to challenge “the occupation,” which to Olwan’s mind includes Qatamon, even though this neighbourhood has been part of Israel since its founding.

Professors Olwan and Naaman have long been involved in anti-Israel politics. They both support Israel Apartheid Week, an annual campus event intended to exclude Israelis from humanity, and have both been speakers at Apartheid Week at Queen’s.

For her part, Professor Naaman has trouble grasping that terrorism is a bad thing. She signed a petition supporting Tali Fahima, an Israeli convicted of aiding Zakariya Zubeidi, who was a chief of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades during the height of the terror war against Israel.

In more recent years, Zubeidi has put away his bombs in return for amnesty from Israel and has even applied to enter Israel for medical care. Because he’s abandoned violence, Tali Fahima now calls Zubeida a “whore” and has transferred her allegiance to Raed Salah, an unreconstructed Jew-hater and a leader of the extremist Islamic Movement.

In an apparent bid for the useful idiot of the year award, Professor Naaman describes Fahima as merely “seeking dialogue with Palestinians.”

Professor Naaman also wrote a learned paper titled In the Name of the Nation: Images of Palestinian and Israeli Women Fighters.

In this paper, Naaman puzzles over why Israeli women soldiers are “considered a sign of progress, equality and modernity” while Palestinian women suicide bombers are considered “monsters.”

To Naaman, this reflects bias, a “serious cultural discrepancy.” She’s unable to grasp the difference between a soldier who protects the innocent and a suicide bomber who deliberately murders men, women and children.

As for Professor Olwan, she believes that Israel’s creation “was legitimized through racist Zionist narratives” and is dedicated to reversing that original sin.

In 2008, Olwan was a speaker at the Israel/Palestine: Mapping Models of Statehood conference at York University. Although dressed up as an academic conference, its purpose was political, aimed at promoting a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conference – a solution that replaces Israel with a majority Palestinian state.

Like Olwan’s and Naaman’s proposed propaganda exercise in Jerusalem, the conference at York was also funded by me and you through our taxes. And that is what I really object to.

Why is the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council giving Olwan and Naaman $223,000 of our money to create what looks to be pure propaganda?

All I ask is for universities and granting agencies to distinguish between academic projects and propaganda exercises. If they did, the extremists would disappear for lack of funding and there would be more money for scholars genuinely interested in expanding human knowledge. It would be a win-win all around.

This article was originally published in the January 31, 2012, issue of the Jewish Tribune.

The OISE cult of conformity

OISE, the Mordor of Education

The Ontario Institute for studies in education trains teachers. Unfortunately, its been largely taken over by a far left cult that believes white people, particularly straight men, are oppressors.  Sociologist Werner Cohn has written an excellent series of blog postings about this. See here.

Below, I've pasted in one student's report of her year spent at OISE. I suspect my views on many matters might be closer to the views of her far left professors than to hers. For example, I think it's important that all children feel at home in our schools, which means our school must affirm their identities.

So it's important for kids to see their holidays recognized: Christmas for Christians, Rosh HaShannah for Jews, Eid for Muslims. Gay kids should be able to be who they are without being bullied. Girls should be able to walk the halls of high schools without having their asses grabbed. And no kid should ever have to put up with being harassed about their race. 

For the most part, Toronto schools seem to be doing a do good job - particularly on the multicultural front (though I do hear extremely disturbing things about bullying, sexual harassment and violence in some schools).

But to get back to OISE, while supporting a diversity of identities, OISE draws the line at allowing diversity in thinking.  There is a party line at OISE that's taught to new teachers. It includes explicit support of the NDP, hatred of Israel and tolerance of antisemitism if it's dressed up as anti-Zionism, and hostility toward straight white males as oppressors. (Again, see Cohn's postings here.)

With teachers being educated in bigotry at OISE, is it any wonder that now we have a Toronto teacher connecting his students to antisemitic websites, as I noted in this recent article.
 
Here's one woman's experience of her year at OISE....

OISE, Indoctrinating the Teachers to Indoctrinate the Children
By: Ruthann Attia

I am sure that many of you have heard about the liberal and leftist agenda that has taken over our institutions of higher learning. I would like to share some of what I experienced attending the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE).

It was my first real experience in a Canadian public education institution as I had previously attended a small private high school, followed by attendance at a university in the United States. I can say now that I am very thankful that the time I did spend in the Canadian public education system was not lengthy.

I began my year at OISE with my mind open and ready to learn, with no previously conceived notions about the political atmosphere of teachers college; I had simply heard that, in general, it was often boring and easy. However, my experience at OISE was anything but boring. In fact, it left me feeling angry, deflated and, most of all, deeply saddened about the direction in which Canada is headed.

Initially, I was entirely shocked by the blatantly obvious political agenda. On the first day I noticed that my classroom wall had a poster listing the main Canadian political parties. It then listed each party’s supposed track record with major Canadian issues, such as health care and education. Unbelievably, the poster went on to proclaim, that, as future teachers, we should be sure to “Vote NDP.”

I looked around for other posters proclaiming the same for Conservatives and Liberals: I could find none. I was so shocked that I pulled out my cell phone and took a photo of it, as proof of the propaganda! Sadly, this poster was the least of my concerns by the year’s end.

Classes began and I was repeatedly baffled by the content of discussions being held in my classrooms. Such issues included why universities and high schools lacked transgendered washrooms, how to not stand for the national anthem, and censoring the celebration of Christmas in schools because it is too “painful of an experience for non-Christians”.

After speaking out numerous times and trying to create a more even-keeled discussion about several issues raised in class, I realized that what was most upsetting about this whole situation was that the door to discussion had been closed. Permanently.

My classmates and professors at OISE had absolutely no “tolerance” for anyone who opposed their views on tolerance, equity, diversity and social justice. I was fighting a losing battle. It was obvious that my classmates and professors were on a mission.

This mission involved indoctrinating each student teacher, and eventually each high school student, with the tenets of their secular religion. The religion’s highest objective was to attain “equity, diversity and social justice” in all aspects of education and social life.

While it sounded great, when seen through an OISE lens it was actually a very totalitarian policy, with a complex language and some very self-righteous believers. I could not even speak about a possible doubt without being cast out of the group altogether and labeled a diversity-hater and an enemy of social justice.

I desperately tried to fight this belief that I did not care about the issues discussed in class, simply because I approached them from a different angle. I was consistently shut down by shallow arguments and silly comments that implied I simply hadn’t developed as far as the rest of the group on the “progressive path”.

One of my classmates even began crying and told the class she found it very hurtful when people (looking in my direction) did not pay attention to issues she found to be of profound importance (this particular class focused on homosexual education). It was all very demeaning and, by the end of the year, I had mentally and emotionally checked out and no longer spoke in class at all.

Fighting against 30 classmates every day took its toll. The last comment I made in class was to let my peers and future colleagues know that it frightened me that they could not deal with my questions or my disbelief in their policies without ostracizing me, for how would they treat the high school students that disagreed with them? As you can imagine, this did not lead to an increase in my popularity.

Needless to say, the year passed by at a dreadfully slow pace. I found myself sitting through classes on how to get hetero-normative language out of the schools, reading countless documents that had been reviewed for “equity”, and reading mandatory Marxist and feminist literature.

I was urged to attend equity/diversity workshops, and asked to volunteer in Gender Construction workshops that were mandatory for grade 10 students, where issues like “straight supremacy” would be discussed by curious 15-year-olds.

At one point, a classmate asked the professor: “So, are we supposed to be activists, or teachers?” and the professor promptly replied, “Can the two really be separated?”

...

Looking back on my experience now, I realize that, as a student attending OISE, I was subject to what should be described as indoctrination. This indoctrination is of great concern not only to me, but also to all Canadians, no matter what side of the political spectrum.

It is institutions such as OISE that educate the educators, who will in turn educate the nation. It is scary and sad to think of the thousands of students who will be indoctrinated in the classrooms of all my like-minded, unquestioning, and intolerant OISE-educated peers.

Who's Silencing Whom?

Professor David Noble of York University died recently. I wrote a piece for the Engage website about Noble back in 2006 concerning a pamphlet he distributed accusing members of York U's fundraising foundation of being an evil influence because of their connections to various Jewish community organizations - in effect damning them solely because they were Jewish...


Toronto. Dec 6, 2006. I won’t say anything about History Professor David Noble of York University in Toronto; I can’t afford to. However, the Toronto Star (22 Nov 2006) reports that Noble "is suing York University's fundraising foundation and several Jewish organizations for defamation, claiming they suggested he is anti-Semitic".

Noble’s suit is for $25 million. This is in addition to his original "union grievance seeking an apology and $10 million in damages for defamation".

It began in 2004 when Noble distributed a flyer titled, "The York University Foundation: The tail that wags the dog".

According to the Star, "members of Hillel of Greater Toronto sent a fax to the university expressing concern that the flyer suggested 'Jews control York University' … [And] The university later issued a news release condemning what [York University President] Marsden called 'this highly offensive material, which singles out certain members of the York community on the basis of their ethnicity and political views.'"

According to the Star, Noble says that he only "criticized York figures for their political views on Israel, not their ethnicity or religion".

Specifically, Noble claims in his flyer that the York University's fund-raising foundation "is biased by the presence and influence of staunch pro-Israel lobbyists, activists, and fundraising agencies".

Among others, Noble names:
MARSHALL A. COHEN, chair of Board of Governors, YU [York University], former Molson [Brewery] CEO, former director, MSHF [Mount Sinai Hospital Federation], Cassels Brock law firm

JUDITH COHEN, chair of YU Fiftieth Anniversary Committee, wife of Marshall.

Does Professor Noble consider Molson’s Brewery a political affiliation? Or was it Marshall’s fund-raising for Mount Sinai Hospital that prompted Noble to add the Cohens to his pro-Israel list? Who knows.

Professor Noble outs additional members of the York University Foundation as being affiliated with other Jewish organizations, such as the United Jewish Appeal – or if not connected to the UJA themselves, for having a brother who is. For example:

H. BARRY GALES, director, MSHF [Mount Sinai Hospital Foundation]; Midland Group, business partner and brother (?) of Leslie Gales, chair of the board, UJA.

The UJA spends most of its money on Jewish education and other local community services, but it does put a fraction of its budget toward pro-Israel lobbying and sends a whack of money to Israel for university scholarships, development of the Negev, settlement of recent immigrants, etc.

So perhaps we should indeed suspect anyone involved with the UJA of supporting Israel’s existence. Indeed, some of these people could be Likudniks – no one knows what their politics are!

Here's my question: Should people with such political views be allowed to raise money for a university? For that matter, should they be allowed to raise money for hospitals? Or to donate money?

This is a serious issue, because it's not just Jewish hospitals. Peter Munk recently gave $37 million to Toronto General. The Kimel brothers donated $15 million to the Baycrest Geriatric Care Centre. Leslie Dan gave $13 million to the University of Toronto's school of pharmacy. Seymour Schulich donated $27 million to York University's school of business and $20 million to McGill's faculty of music. And the list goes on.

I haven’t conducted the sort of research Professor Noble has, so I don't know if these philanthropists have also donated to Mount Sinai or to the UJA or if maybe their brother did. But these philanthropists are Jewish, and on that basis, I believe we should suspect them of supporting Israel's existence.

So what's to be done?

Professor Noble appears to believe ... [Disclaimer: I'm not asserting this as fact, only as my understanding. Readers should look up Noble's actual words] ... but, as I was saying, Noble seems to think that people who countenance Israel shouldn't be part of York University's fundraising foundation.

Noble writes: "The York University Foundation (YUF), which was established in 2002, is the tail that wags the dog that is York University". And: "The recent decisions by the YU President and Board of Governors to discipline pro-Palestinian activists ... and otherwise to clamp down on campus protests, appear to reflect the strongly pro-Israel orientation of the YUF".

I think it's safe to say that not everyone agrees with Noble. Some people doubt that the fund-raising foundation tells the university what to do about student politics, and Noble doesn't seem to offer any evidence for his suggestions. Nor does Noble explain if members of the foundation who haven't been fund-raisers for a Jewish hospital go along with this supposed pro-Israel influence. But, who knows, the lobbyists may have covered up these details.

After all the lobbyists squash all contrary voices, don't they?

According to the Star, Noble is "claiming they [York University Foundation, Hillel, et al] suggested he is anti-Semitic to try to gag [his] criticism of their activities".

Noble also goes on about the pro-Israel influence on student elections (an Israel-hating clique got voted out of power) and the pro-Israel influence on the building of a football stadium on campus (I’m not joking). However, although I'm sure Professor Noble would never dream of trying to gag his critics, I can't afford to go into all of that, lest I say something he finds objectionable.

Being a Nazi is no longer cool

January, 2010. I confess I’m still shocked when I see a university professor spitting out Israel-hatred. You’d think I would have learned that education doesn’t guard against fanaticism.

After all, this isn’t new. The people driving the new antisemitism are the same people who have driven it in the past.

They’re an elitist group who see themselves as more politically advanced than most people, more “progressive.” As such, they think it’s their job to define our political morality.

The new antisemites call themselves leftists. But when it comes to Israel, they happily team up with the right. There is, for example, nothing leftwing about Hamas or Hezbollah.

Yet in a conflict between a liberal democracy and these fascistic terrorist groups, the far left identifies with the fascists. Why? Because their movement isn’t about what they’re for; it’s about who they’re against.

Two heroes of the new antisemites are John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of The Israel Lobby. They describe Israel as a shitty little country with no oil and claim the U.S. supports Israel only because a Zionist lobby controls America’s Middle East policy.

Mearsheimer and Walt call themselves foreign policy realists, in the same school as Kissinger and Nixon. They wouldn’t dream of describing themselves as “on the left.”

Indeed, David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, pointed out that he’s been saying the same thing as Mearsheimer and Walt all along!

There’s nothing leftwing or rightwing about Israel-hatred. In our time, it’s emerged on the left because of historical accidents.

Back in the 1930s, being a Nazi was cool. They looked at themselves as a progressive movement that was going to wipe away Jew contamination and create a glorious 1,000-year Reich.

As everyone knows, the Nazis enlisted street thugs. But the Nazis also appealed to German intellectuals. At the Wannsee conference, called to discuss the logistics of murdering the Jewish population of Europe, eight of the fourteen participants held doctorate degrees.

Indeed, the Nazis took over the universities more easily than they took the streets. Martin Heidegger, rector of Freiberg University and the foremost German philosopher of his time declared: “The Fuhrer alone is the present and future German reality and its law.”

Some people argue that Heidegger’s Nazism merely reflected his ignorance of reality. But in that case, why did Heidegger attach his enthusiasm to the Nazis?

If it wasn’t because he understood the Nazis, then it was because it was the in thing. All the coolest professors were sporting swastikas in their lapels, and students were wearing their brown shirts to class to show their love of fascism, much as students today wear the Palestinian kefiyeh.

It’s no longer cool to be a Nazi. It’s difficult to even imagine a time when it was. That’s why David Duke gets no respect. But his ideas of a Zionist conspiracy aren’t out of fashion – they’ve just migrated to the other side of the political spectrum.

The other bits of history that put the new antisemitism on the Left are its roots in Soviet antisemitism and in the radical politics of the 60s and 70s.

What’s new about antisemitism is the focus on Israel, and the depiction of Israel as uniquely evil – a colonial project and a racist entity – and the claim that the Jews have become Nazis.

These slanders were the handiwork of Soviet propagandists, who spread them through Europe and the third world.

More than anything, though, our Israel-haters are the bastard children of the radicals of the 60s and 70s. But on top of the old quasi-left, anti-war, anti-American ethos, our new extremists have added a layer of antisemitism.

In an earlier age, they might have adopted the anti-clerical and antisemitic politics of Voltaire. Before that, the religious and antisemitic politics of Martin Luther. Before that, the Catholic and antisemitic politics of the Inquisition.

Antisemitism, it seems, has a special attraction for those who believe they’re entitled to define the political morality of their age.

This makes it different from other forms of bigotry. Racists hate blacks, but they don’t define them as the enemy of mankind. However, that’s exactly how antisemites define Jews.

They create a fantasy of good and evil. They modestly cast themselves in the role of upholding everything that is progressive and holy, and they portray Jews as representing all that is unenlightened and evil. And they try to impose their beliefs on society.

This conflict is again playing itself out. The new antisemites define Israel – and those who support it – as representing the worst political evils: imperialism, racism, apartheid and Nazism. And they’re trying to inflict their twisted vision on the rest of us.

So far, they’re failing. But they can’t be ignored. History shows that whole societies can come to embrace even the most extreme beliefs.

Brian Henry is a Toronto writer and editor and a refugee from the NDP – Canada’s social democratic party. This article previously appeared in the January 14, 2010, Jewish Tribune, a community paper published weekly by B’nai Brith Canada and on Harry's Place blog in Britain.

Academic circus

Gary Goodyear, Minister for Science and Technology, recently called for the reconsideration of a $20,000 grant for a conference about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict at York University. In response, James Turk, president of the Canadian University Teachers Association, called for Goodyear’s resignation.

The two men are just doing their jobs. Goodyear represents the people of Canada. He had reason to believe that “Israel/Palestine Mapping Models of Statehood and Paths to Peace” might be more a propaganda exercise than an academic conference, and so he questioned whether Canadians should pay for the event.

For his part, Turk represents university teachers. His job is to get as much money as he can for the country’s universities and professors, preferably with no questions asked and no strings attached.

Speakers at the supposedly academic conference represented a rogue’s gallery of anti-Israel activists. For example, no one would mistake Ali Abunimah for an academic. He’s a professional propagandist and the co-founder of Electronic Intifada, a website that glamorizes terrorism as "resistance" and considers all of Israel occupied Palestinian territory.

Abunimah didn’t merely give a talk at the York conference. He was a member of the advisory committee, responsible for recommending the conference speakers. I'm not as familiar with the other organizers, but I'm confident that if David Duke (former Grand Wizard of the Klan) were on a committee recommending speakers for a conference about the future of the American South and what to do about tensions between Blacks and Whites, nobody would be saying, "But he's only one of the organizers – the rest aren't as bad."

Of course, when he called for Goodyear’s resignation, Turk didn’t go into details about what Abunimah and other anti-Israel activists were doing at a supposedly academic conference. He simply wrapped himself in the banner of academic freedom. This isn’t a convincing stance.
First, there’s bad blood between the CAUT and Goodyear. When the government budgeted an extra $2 billion for university infrastructure, the CAUT chose to complain about a $148 million cut to research funding. The CAUT met with Goodyear to press their case, but according to a CAUT official, Goodyear eventually: “stormed out of the room warning that we’ve burned all our bridges with them.”

With this fight over money already poisoning the relationship, it’s not surprising Turk found an excuse to call for Goodyear’s resignation.

Second, CAUT stands up for academic freedom only if it fits their self-interest or political bias. When the University and Colleges Union in Britain called for the blacklisting of Israeli scholars, most university presidents across Canada and hundreds of Canadian professors decried the move as an outrage against academic freedom (not to mention a clear cut case of bigotry). But the CAUT kept quiet.

I could understand if the CAUT felt they had no business meddling in Middle Eastern politics, but in fact, the CAUT issued a statement just this past January condemning Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

Strangely, in the year preceding the offensive, as thousands of Palestinian rockets and mortars rained down on Israeli towns, the CAUT issued no statements condemning this terrorism, nor even a friendly warning that sooner or later the Israelis were sure to respond.

The CAUT statement singled out Israel’s bombing of the Islamic University of Gaza, but didn’t object to Hamas having turned the school into a bomb-making factory. Nor did the CAUT ever condemn the Palestinian rocket attack on Sapir College in the Negev – an attack that killed a student there.

The CAUT also condemns Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank. These checkpoints have proven effective at stopping suicide attacks. But while preventing mass murder, checkpoints also make students late for school, and so the CAUT calls for Israel to take them down.

Third, politicizing the campus doesn’t enhance academic freedom; it restricts it. For Jews, York University is already hostile territory. The Canadian Union of Public Employees Ontario’s infamous motion to boycott Israel originated with the CUPE local at York, with people who consider all of Israel occupied Palestinian territory.

Two of the prime movers of CUPE’s boycott resolution were Rafeef Zadiah and Adam Hanieh, both of whom spoke at the Israel/Palestine conference.

York also hosts an annual anti-Israel hate-fest, known as Israel Apartheid Week. Jewish students have been threatened by fellow students and harassed by instructors. And in February, a mob chased a group of mostly Jewish students, shouting: “Israelis off campus,” “Racist Zionists,” “Die, bitch, go back to Israel,” “Die, Jew, get the hell off campus,” “Fucking Jew” and so forth.

The mob then besieged the Jewish students in the local Hillel office until the police arrived and freed them.

If the CAUT were really interested in academic freedom, James Turk would be battling to preserve the campus as place for open inquiry, free of intimidation. He’d be condemning professors who use their podium to indoctrinate students. And he would have been the first in line to ask whether this conference at York really met the standards of academic inquiry.

The conference turned out pretty much as everyone expected; that is, it was largely given over to demonizing Israel. According to reports (here and here for starters), speakers presented Israel as a racist, apartheid state, as a military machine intent on dominating the Palestinians, as an illegitimate entity that ought to be replaced.

At the conference, the Palestinians were presented purely as victims. The possibility that they might share some responsibility for the conflict simply wasn’t entertained. And although the conference was subtitled “Paths to Peace,” there was no discussion about re-invigorating the peace process.

“Zionists” were blamed even for domestic violence perpetrated by Palestinian men against Palestinian women.

As for the few speakers who were sufficiently well-meaning to express sympathy for Israel, they were jeered and heckled.

Before receiving funding, the conference did go through a peer review process. Evidently that process didn’t work. As Professor Martin Lockshin of York University put it: “[The peer review process] failed to distinguish between political activism and academic research” (here).

Why didn’t Andrew Turk concern himself about whether the conference at York might really be a propaganda event? Because for the CAUT, academic freedom is a rhetorical device, not a real concern.

Still, even by the light of the CAUT’s grab the money and run philosophy, Turk should notice that the shenanigans at York are turning away donors and may end up costing the university millions. Indeed, one professor at York already objects to “Zionists” being involved in fund-raising.

More generally, if it wants Canadians to be enthusiastic about funding university research, the CAUT should be doing its best to insure that money is spent well, not squandered on an anti-Israel circus.

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A shorter version of this article previously appeared in the July 2, 2009, Jewish Tribune, a community paper published weekly by B'nai Brith Canada, on the Dust My Broom blog, and on Harry's Place in Britain