Happy in Israel by Fabian

You know, the other day I was counting the things I have here, and yes I am very happy. Actually these are the best and happiest years of my life and I know it. Funny how - in spite of being a recent immigrant - I would answer yes, I am happy, like the rest of the Israelis.

The feeling of safety here compared to Argentina is one of the things you cannot value enough. No need to watch your back when entering your home at night, or when extracting money from an APM. No need to put your backpack on the front when you get on the bus.

Parks with games for children everywhere. And with grass even. The cranes everywhere, building more places to live and you know, you can feel, touch and see that your city is progressing and getting nicer every day (as opposed to Buenos Aires where you cannot see or touch or feel any of these things).

I haven’t been much to the beach this summer cause of the baby, but the beach, man! The beach 10 km away instead of 500! The mountains at the same distance, not 1000 km away! The children learning Hebrew, and every day a new aspect of Judaism I wasn’t aware of is mentioned by someone, a friend, a coworker, the TV, etc.

The forest I pass by on my way to work. And when you know that Jews planted and each and every tree you see, helped by the Jewish National Fund, man the forest is worth a hundred times more in your eyes.

And finally, the knowledge that you being here is a miracle after 2000 years of Exile. Can’t put a price on that - but of course you can rank it.

I heard that the Palestinian government in the West Bank is planting lots of trees nowadays. Good for them. I wish that will help them see more green instead of red.

This posting is re-blogged from Harry's Place. Fabian from Israel blogs here.

The happiest people in the world

I originally published this piece in the National Post, Tuesday, Aug 17, 2010.

Canada and Israel have much in common. We're both big believers in democracy and in fairness, we're both highly diverse multicultural societies and both of us have dynamic economies.

But I was tickled to learn this summer that Canada and Israel have yet one more thing in common: We're tied for eighth place among the happiest people on Earth.

Some people might be surprised to find Israelis at the top of the happiness charts. After all, Gallup conducted this poll from 2005 to 2009, and during that time, Israel fought two wars.

On top of that, Israel is often protrayed as a monstrous, apartheid state. Surely Israeli Arabs must live in utter misery -- and since they make up 20% of the population, their despair ought to pop the happiness bubble, right? Apparently not. It seems Israeli Arabs are pretty happy, too.

Arab-Israeli soccer star Beram Kayal has an easy explanation for misconceptions about Israel. "People watch too much television," he recently told Scotland's Sunday Herald.

"What the television shows about Israel is totally different [from] what happens. The life between the Jews and the Arabs is very good. I'm an Arab and my agent is Jewish but we're like family ... Maccabi Haifa has seven or eight Arab players and that's normal. The only difference is their religion, but there's no conflict."

But what about all those wars in Israel? Shouldn't they make Israelis miserable? Not really.

The 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon lasted just 34 days. The operation in Gaza against Hamas, in 2008-2009, lasted just 22 days. In total, that's only eight weeks of war.

For the other 252 weeks in the last five years, Israelis spent their time pretty much like Canadians: working, raising their families and enjoying themselves. That's normal life in Israel, but what's normal isn't news, so we don't hear about it.

Besides, being at war doesn't necessarily make people unhappy. During the first hours of the Lebanese War, Israel destroyed all of Hezbollah's long-range missiles, making Israel's major cities safe for the duration.

Hezbollah did fire thousands of missiles into northern Israel, trying to kill as many Jews as possible. But Hezbollah's missiles caused few injuries, as a million Israelis simply

evacuated to the south, and those who stayed waited out the bombardment in bomb shelters.

Meanwhile, the country was absolutely behind the war. Overseas, people may have been confused over what the war was about, but Israelis all knew they'd been attacked without provocation, with missiles striking Israeli towns and an ambush on an Israeli patrol that left three soldiers dead and two more kidnapped.

Standing together in the face of aggression doesn't make people miserable; quite the contrary. It puts fire in the belly and the warmth of fellow feeling in the heart.

Similarly, while people overseas may have been confused by the media coverage, Israelis know that their operation against Hamas in Gaza was one of the most justified wars in history -- that it was an answer to naked terrorism after all other solutions had been tried and failed.

For years, Hamas had tormented the townsfolk of Sderot with daily rocket and mortar attacks that struck schools, homes and health clinics. The purpose of the war was to allow Sderot and other Israeli towns coming under terrorist attack to enjoy the same peace and happiness as the rest of Israel. And whole country supported the cause.

Israel isn't paradise of course -- except in comparison to most places in the world. For example, the Palestinian-controlled territories rank 96th on the happiness list. Which brings me to a modest proposal: Among other intractable issues, the status of Jerusalem is one of the major stumbling blocks to an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

Why not hold a referendum? Ask Jerusalem's Arabs if they want the continuing happiness of being part of a compassionate and caring liberal democracy or if they prefer the abject misery of living under the infinitely corrupt Palestinian Authority.

No one can seriously doubt the result of such a referendum. During the Camp David talks, it was proposed that, as part of a peace agreement, some Israeli Arab towns should be placed on the Palestinian side of the border.

So the Israeli Arab weekly Kul Al-Arab polled the Arabs of Um al Fahm to ask what they thought of their city joining a Palestinian State. Only 11% were in favour; 83% said they preferred to remain Israeli.

A referendum among Arab Jerusalemites would have a similarly lopsided result. And allowing Jerusalem's Arabs to tie themselves permanently to Israel of their own free choice would be an excellent way to begin a new stage in the relationship.

Final(?) arguments re The Shepherd's Granddaughter

The Toronto School Board committee struck to consider The Shepherd's Granddaughter finally got around to issuing their report a few weeks ago. As expected, it was long, carefully worded and about as intelligent as one should expect from any report written by a committee of bureaucrats. The committee sent the report to me and to the Director of Eductaion, Chris Spence, for his final decision.

I sent a note the Chris Spence, as well...

Dear Mr. Spence,

I believe the committee struck to consider The Shepherd’s Granddaughter has gone astray; though with reservations, I support eight of their nine recommendations.

I do hope that, in future, school librarians spend scarce dollars on better books, but I am not concerned that the committee recommends The Shepherd’s Granddaughter simply be available. The book has a large cast of poorly developed characters whom the reader can’t keep track of, while the author is utterly humorless, incapable of irony and possessed of an earnestness that’s exceeded only by her ignorance. Few children will ever read the book without encouragement.

My complaint was never about whether The Shepherd’s Granddaughter should be available to students, but rather that the schools shouldn't have been recommending this book to students. Unfortunately, the committee simply ignored this objection.

If schools are going to promote a list of 10 books to all students in grades 7 and 8, the schools should ensure that the list of such highly recommend books are actually good. I would have thought it obvious that the standard must be higher than for a book that is merely available to students in the library.

If I were to amend the list of recommendations, I might simply amend recommendation #8 to read that in considering whether a book should be actively promoted to students (as in the Forest of Reading program, for example), The Shepherd’s Granddaughter should be taken as an example of a book that should be excluded, because:

- The book’s obvious bias throws into doubt its veracity. That is, in the absence of certainty about contested events, a book that is so obviously one-sided should be assumed to be both unfair and untruthful. Rather than being a good faith attempt to portray a complex situation, the book should be recognized as being mere propaganda.

- The book portrays people of a certain nationality (Israeli) as arbitrarily violent, as child murderers. The presence of a few exceptions to the norm who show they are good Jews by siding with the Palestinians does not mitigate the hateful depiction.

- The book defames a religion, depicting Jews as commanded by their God to steal and kill. It must be noted that this depiction is voiced by the novel’s main character and confirmed by the only developed Jewish character.

- The author clearly prefers non-violent “resistance” to the evil Israelis, but the book represents violence as a legitimate option. While there are many purely villainous Israelis in this book, the author depicts dear Uncle Hani – who champions suicide bombing and declares no Israeli is innocent – as a sympathetic character. The book also refers to friends of Omar who are engaged in violent “resistance” in an approving way.

The committee agrees the book is biased but underestimates the extent of that bias and overestimates the practical ability of teacher-librarians to deal with the problem. For example, I strongly concur with recommendation 7: “that school libraries provide students with access to a variety of resources which give them an understanding of the contexts of the controversial issues contained in their independent reading.”

This recommendation restates what’s already contained in the Board document on dealing with controversial material. But in fact, school libraries don’t have resources that might provide context and act as a corrective to the bigoted portrayal of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict contained in The Shepherd’s Granddaughter.

Nonetheless, after the Board designated this book as controversial, schools continued to promote it as part of the Forest of Reading program, even in the absence of corrective resources. Indeed, schools still continue to make the book available to students without providing resources that could place the book in context and act as a corrective to the book’s bias – contrary to Board policy.

When schools make controversial books available (never mind actively promoting them), resources that can provide balance and act as a corrective to bias must be in place first.

In dealing with The Shepherd’s Granddaughter, the Board was clearly at fault in that it’s failed to withdraw the book until corrective resources can be provided.

Of course, for that to happen such age-appropriate resources need to exist, and in regards to the Middle East, I don’t think they do.

Moreover, for all that we have many marvelous teachers in the Toronto Board, very few of them have any expertise in the Middle East, and while they might be able to support critical reading of The Shepherd’s Granddaughter, they’ll be unable to provide context and will be just as clueless as the students as to which parts might be true or half-true and which parts are wholly false.

The committee acknowledges "that the novel portrays the Palestinians in a sympathetic light as compared to the Israelis depicted in the novel." But to pretend that Israelis are merely portrayed less sympathetically is a gross understatement, a whitewash. The Israelis are depicted as villains, as continually and mindlessly violent, as child-murderers.

The committee engages in special pleading on behalf of the book. They claim the book can be defined as "oppositional reading"; that is, as a work that encourages readers to see events from a viewpoint in opposition to the preferred, mainstream or dominant perspective. The committee evidently means to suggest that Canadians don't usually get a Palestinian perspective; rather that they usually get a perspective sympathetic to the Israeli point of view. This is wrong in three ways:

First, it's simply untrue. In general Canadian media give the Palestinian narrative at least as much weight as the Israeli view.

Second, it's out of touch with the reality of children in grades 7 and 8. The overwhelming majority of twelve- and thirteen-year-olds aren’t familiar with some dominant perspective of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; they've had almost no exposure to the issue at all. For nearly all of them The Shepherd's Granddaughter will have been their first substantial exposure to the issue and for most will be their last substantial exposure, as well. As such, this book, which the committee agrees is biased, will likely form the students’ perspective.

Third, The Shepherd's Granddaughter does not give a Palestinian perspective. It shows the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as appropriated by a Canadian anti-Israel activist; and there's no reason to suppose that its depiction of Palestinians is any more authentic than its depiction of Israelis. If "oppositional reading" simply means propaganda, if it means the book shows an off the wall perspective not taken seriously by anyone outside the Libby Davies wing of the NDP, then this is indeed "oppositional reading," and as such certainly should never be recommended to students.

The committee claims a good feature of the book is that it represents characters from different religions. But in regards to Jews, the committee is confusing representation and defamation. In The Shepherd’s Granddaughter the main character “represents” Jews as having a God who commands them to steal and kill and the only significant Jewish character confirms this defamation as being true.

The committee chose a member of the Urban Alliance on Race Relations to aid them in their deliberations, a woman named Tam Goossen. It’s a pity they didn’t choose someone with some knowledge of Jewish issues. On the contrary, Goossen is prominent in Toronto NDP circles, and as it’s well-known that most NDP activists have an anti-Israel bias (see here), her inclusion on the committee cannot generate confidence.

The Committee claims a good feature of the book is that it addresses issues from a variety of perspectives. This is facile. Which perspectives are chosen is obviously far more important than the mere number of perspectives. The book does not represent any mainstream Israeli perspective. Rather, a group of murderous religious settlers are depicted as the Israeli norm.

Another supposed Israeli perspective depicted in the book is voiced by the Israeli soldier who claims that "We [Israel's soldiers] kill Palestinian boys." Again, this is defamation, not representation. The committee fails to recognize the difference.
In addition to these false and grossly negative portrayals there are a couple very minor Jewish characters who don’t represent any distinct Israeli position but simply side with the Palestinians. The main Jewish character is an American boy who, we’re told, doesn’t know enough Hebrew to take a bus.

On the Palestinian side, there is no perspective represented that is in the least critical of the Palestinian leadership; no Palestinian character wishing that their own leaders would pursue peace.

Rather, the perspectives provided all conform to the author’s vision of Palestinians as victims, unable to do anything but resist the evil Israelis who are intent on cleansing them from the land. In short, the book is a mere a collection of anti-Israel clichés.


It’s good that the committee confirmed the earlier recommendation that someone from the Board should actually read these books recommended by Ontario Library Association before encouraging students to read them. What’s needed is a clear statement from the Board that The Shepherd’s Granddaughter is an example of the kind of bigoted text that teachers and librarians should never recommend to students, either within the Forest of Reading program or elsewhere.

Yours,…

P.S. I have lots more to say, but no time to say it.

Update on The Shepherd's Granddaughter

This update is long overdue - my apologies. But I expected the whole process of complaining to the school board about this book to be over long ago - which just goes to show how badly I underestimate bureaucracy. But there has been progress.

First and most importantly, the Toronto Board has decided that in future it won't assume that the Ontario Library Association recommends good, wholesome books. Instead, the Board will do it's own assessment to make sure books recommended by the librarians meet the board's anti-racism standards. As far as I'm concerned, this is the most important step for the Board to take and anything beyond it is gravy.

Second, the Board has classified The Shepherd's Granddaughter as a "controversial book." This means that students are alerted that the book may be biased if not downright bigoted and teachers are to guide students before, during and after they read the book.

In addition, teachers are supposed to supply students with other books that provide differing(and more accurate) views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unfortunately, the Board hasn't carried through with this last bit, probably because they can't: for children in this age group, there aren't any good books about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or even about the broader Arab-Israeli conflict.

This isn't a big surprise. Take any contemporary conflict and you'll find very few children's books about it - for the obvious reason that most authors can distinguish between their own obsessions and children's actual interests. Unfortunately, anti-Israeli activists are an exception to this rule and feel no shame about attempting to propagandize children. (For a report on another example, of Israel-haters trying to propagandize students, see here.)

I do know of one Young Adult book on the Palestinian Israeli conflict which does an excellent job of humanizing people on both sides: A Bottle in the Gaza Sea by Valerie Zenatti. But it's for kids in high school, not grades 7 and 8.

But back to my update: The York Region School Board also put a caution on The Shepherd's Granddaughter so that it's only available in the context of teacher-guided reading, and the Niagara Board "red-flagged" the book so that librarians and teachers will warn students that the contents aren't to be believed. To me these seem to be reasonable steps and better than banning the book outright, which I don't favour.

Still better would be to spend precious library dollars on books that are actually good and don't tell students that the Jewish God commands them to kill and steal and that Israelis are child-killers. But for most school libraries in Ontario, it's too late for that.

(My complaint to the Board has nothing to do with banning the book. I objected to the schools promoting The Shepherd's Granddaughter to grade 7 and 8 students as a book they should read - which I'm sure the Board would never have done on its own account. The book got distributed on the recommendation of the Ontario Library Association, without anyone from the Toronto Board reading the book first.)

Meanwhile, The Shepherd's Granddaughter did not win the Red Maple Award. No surprise there, as the book is not only bigoted, it's boring. It was nominated by a committee of librarians, obviously on the basis of its politics, not its literary qualities. The winner of the Red Maple for 2010, as chosen by Ontario children is Word Nerd, a great book by Susin Nielsen.

And the Toronto Board continues its formal review of The Shepherd's Granddaughter. It's been a couple months now, but I'm not complaining. The board conducted its initial, informal review very quickly and slapped the "controversial" label and all the restrictions that go with that label within in days of receiving my complaint.

Every few weeks someone from the board phones me to assure me that they haven't fallen off the planet and that the bureaucracy's slow grind is continuing. Doubtless, sooner or later, they will issue a very cautiously worded report. But in the meanwhile, the chief victory - making sure that in future books recommended by the Ontario Library Association are vetted first - is already won.

Note: For my original complaint to the Toronto School Board (and to the Ministry of Education), see here.

Let's keep political propaganda out of our elementary schools

When teachers enter a classroom – especially an elementary school classroom – they leave their political agendas at the door. They're not allowed to use our schools to preach their own views. Neither are they allowed to bring their agenda in through the back door by having the kids read a book that just happens to present their views and no other.

However, in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this is exactly what the Ontario Library Association has done – twice. If you want to know what it's all about, read my open letter to the Minister of Education, below.

In response, the Minister has chosen the path of least courage and is pretending the issue doesn't exist. So, as she's useless, it's up to us. Please help keep our elementary schools a politics-free zone. Google your school board, (you don't need to have a child in school to do this) and email the Superintendent of Education (or the Director of Education) or a Trustee. Tell them:

– We don't want our schools used to promote anyone's political agenda.
– We don't want our schools to recommend books to our kids that might promote hatred of any people or of any religion
– Ask the Board to investigate whether The Shepherd's Granddaughter is an appropriate book for our teacher-librarians to be promoting and whether it should be removed from the Red Maple program
– Ask that, in the future, the school board vet books recommended by the Ontario Library Association, as they've shown they can't be trusted.
– Urge them to act quickly. For a few weeks now, teacher-librarians across Ontario have been innocently urging our children to read all the books in the Library Association's Red Maple program, including the odious Shepherd's Granddaughter.

Note: In Toronto, school board trustee Sheila Ward has vowed to get the Shepherd’s Granddaughter off the shelves. See here.
And in York Region, access to the book has been restricted. See here.

The Shepherd's Granddaughter, an open letter

Dear Leona Dombrowsky, Minister of Education:

I have a child in a Toronto elementary school, and it's come to my attention that children in her class and children across Ontario in grades 7 and 8 are reading The Shepherd’s Granddaughter by Anne Laurel Carter, a book that seems designed to teach kids to hate Israelis.

The book is part of the Red Maple program – ten supposedly outstanding books selected by the Ontario Library Association and which teacher-librarians across the province are innocently encouraging children to read.

The heroine of The Shepherd’s Granddaughter is an adolescent shepherd girl named Amani. In her first encounter with an Israeli, he shoots one of her sheep. Amani flees before the Israeli can kill any more of her sheep – or her. Later, the Israelis poison her whole flock.

What provokes them to do this? Nothing at all. In this book, it’s just the sort of crime Israelis commit – all the time. Indeed, I can barely begin to list the atrocities these fictional Israelis heap on an innocent Palestinian family.

They build a settlement on the family’s grazing land, and when the Palestinians stage a peaceful sit-down protest, the Israeli army punishes them. They chop down the family orchards, crush their houses and barns with bulldozers, and shoot the heroine’s dog.

The father rides up on a donkey, shouting at the Israelis to stop, so they shoot the donkey out from under him. Then they beat the father, kicking him as he lies on the ground and striking him with their rifle butts.

When Amani throws a stone at one of the bulldozers, the driver pursues her, attempting to crush her to death.

The author has Israelis speak, too, but only to reinforce her damning portrayal of them. At a roadblock outside Hebron, an Israeli soldier informs the family: “We shoot Palestinian boys.”

But the main Israeli spokesperson is the son of one of the settlers, a sixteen-year-old American kid who befriends Amani. He explains to her that the Palestinians should simply leave because God gave this land to the Jews.

Amani says, “Your God says kill us? Steal our land?”

“They don’t see it as stealing,” the Jewish boy replies. “They’ll provoke you, kill you if that’s what it takes to get back their Holy Land.”

Note that the boy doesn't deny that the Jewish God commands Jews to kill; he rather confirms it.

In fairness, there is also a very minor second sympathetic Jewish character in this book - a rabbi. However, again, this character does not present the Israeli side of the debate. Rather, he's a good Jew because he takes the side of the Palestinians.

Also, anyone familiar with anti-Israel propaganda will recognize the theme of ethnic cleansing enunciated by this book. Of course, that Israel's supposed policy of forcing Palestinians to leave is pure fantasy can be seen by the population explosion in the West Bank over the past 40 years. But the depiction of Israelis as not merely brutal but genocidal helps build the rationale for terrorism – as it does in this book.

The heroine’s uncle Hani declares: “They want our land, our water. They want to drive us out, village by village.” Significantly, this character continually urges violence and applauds news of a suicide bombing that kills 11 young people, aged 14 to 21.

“No Israeli is innocent,” he declares.

It should go without saying (but apparently doesn’t) that the Israeli army doesn’t go around shooting children – boys or girls – and doesn’t favour crushing girls with bulldozers. This depiction of Israeli evil is so over the top it’s medieval, though admittedly the Jews in this story don’t poison wells, just sheep.

Further, Israel hasn’t built new settlements since 1999, and most settlements were built in the 1970s and 1980s. Continuing disputes about the settlements concern building within the boundaries of existing settlements.

Back when the sort of isolated settlements described in this story were being built, they were generally situated on barren, unused land, and contrary to the claims of this book, Palestinian villages were not mowed down to make way for them.

Israel has indeed torn down Palestinian houses – in particular the homes of suicide bombers in an attempt to discourage further mass murder, but not as this book claims, to punish Palestinians leading peaceful protests.

It must be noted that the heroine’s father is appalled by Uncle Hani’s enthusiasm for murder as a political tool, and the book’s author clearly prefers peaceful opposition to Israel. Nonetheless, Carter portrays terrorism – “resistance” as she calls it – as a legitimate side of the Palestinian dialogue. Indeed, with this book, Carter has made her own small contribution to the legend of Israeli evil, which is the narrative that fuels terrorism.

On “Goodreads” a website where readers review books, I came across this comment from a girl calling herself Madeline: “Reading this book made me want to go to Palestine and kill Israelis” (here). Unfortunately, that’s a perfectly natural reaction to this book which our kids are being encouraged to read.

You must realize that for the large majority of our children, this book will be their first substantive introduction to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and having read the book, its contents will comprise their entire knowledge of the subject. And not only are they not being encouraged to also consult better and more even-handed sources, but for this age group, such books don’t even exist.

I don't want to this book banned, but our teacher-librarians should not be encouraging our children to read a biased, one-sided and prejudicial account of such a complex and sensitive issue.

The Shepherd's Granddaughter should be withdrawn from the Red Maple program immediately.

Moreover, this is the second time in a few years that the Ontario Library Association has slipped anti-Israeli propaganda into their Forest of Reading Program. Two years ago, the OLA recommend Three Wishes, a book that normalizes terrorism, including an interview with a girl who admires her older sister for having become a suicide bomber and murdering two Israelis. The OLA recommended this book for 10- and 11-year-olds.

Generally the Forest of Reading is a wonderful program. But as the OLA seems determined to to use our schools to promote a particular extremist political view, the school boards must review how they vet books recommended by the OLA.

Finally, on a personal note, as a parent I’ve always known that my children will eventually encounter anti-Israeli propaganda, but I'd hoped it wouldn't be something we'd have to deal with in elementary school. I’m sick at heart to see that I was wrong.

Yours truly

…

Post script: "Madeline," the girl who wrote: "Reading this book made me want to go to Palestine and kill Israelis" turns out to be 21, not a teen as I'd supposed, and she had the good sense to realize the book's depiction of Israelis couldn't possibly be right. I guess this shows the difference between a 21-year-old and the 12- and 13-year-olds who were being encouraged to read this book.

To see how the kids in grades 7 and 8 reacted to the The Shepherd’s Granddaughter, we can go to RedMaple OnLine, a site maintained by the Ontario Library Association where Ontario students reading books in the Red Maple program make comments.

There are only 18 comments about the Shepherd's Granddaughter, because students were much more interested in the other, much better books in the Red Maple program. But of those 18, only one student, book_freak1011, noticed the possibility of bias. I think we can assume this student was already aware of the Israeli-Palestinian issue beforehand and, from the vehemence of his/her response, perhaps felt the book as an assault.

The other students all accepted the book as a factual depiction of the supposed cruelty Israelis inflict on Palestinians, expressing no awareness of the possibility of bias or misrepresentation. See the student remarks below:

Taylorgirl Dec 20, 2010 BORING! But I guess they want us to kno how bad the Jwsh are.

McDj27 Apr 22, 2010 looked at it didnt read but want too

Ecogirl101 Apr 20, 2010 This book was ok, but I found it too sad. I liked how it was about real life, though, because it can help people understand what's happening in the real world.

robin15 Apr 06, 2010 This book was an amazing book! it brought tears into my eyes to see how human biengs like us are bieng treated like this in palestin! This book got me thinking, that we take soooo many things for granted. But in this book, it opened a new point of view for me.

1knigh Mar 26, 2010 I think that the sheperds granddaughter is a great book for beginner readers. This book is really interesting when the girl that wants to be a sheperd but her uncle and her father thinks that it is to risky and she might get shoot by the settlers and the armys trying to build the highway on top of the property.

Silvy Mar 25, 2010 A very gripping story. I'm glad the piano got saved :) On April 22, it's either this one, or submarine outlaw!

zezedaoui Mar 25, 2010 The Shepherd's Grand-daghter is a pretty good story. I thought it was sad. And i cannot believe that events like that happen today aswell. I really recommend this to people , and i think everyone would really enjoy this book.

darkdaughter2 Mar 24, 2010 boring

bhaloon Mar 23, 2010 This book was pretty good and eye-opening for me, but I found it kind of boring.

patmunroe Mar 23, 2010 The Shepherd's Granddaughter is a story of faith and fearlessness in times of trial. It's about a young girl who follows her dreams and brings with them the true meaning of friendship and family. Her story is very sad, but her strength is admirable.

spookum Mar 11, 2010 I think it was so sad but very realistic for those living in Palestine.The relationship between Amani and Johnathon was very lifelike and is amazing for the language barrier between the two.

Nixknox Mar 10, 2010 A very lifelike and realistic book. You could believe it was true, and the read wasn't bad.

GlobalGenius Mar 05, 2010 didn't really like this book much, it had a slow writing style and took me a week to read (I can read the Harry Potter series in one day, so that means I was morer then a bit bored by it. This was the #10 book in all the Red Maple books, i honestly think they should've switched this book with Vanishing Girl, by Shane Peacock, he's an awesome Canadian author. One of the few parts I found entertaining in this book was when the house collapsed, but the piano was unharmed. Overall I wasn't a big fan of this book, but I did read it all the same.

Aberacadabera Mar 04, 2010 This is a saddening book, but really opens the eyes of the reader.

peacebellreads Mar 04, 2010 this book was really sad. i cant beleive this is still happening today. it really opened my eyes i definitely recommend it

Hermione905 Mar 03, 2010 Report This not a great book it was just boring

book_freak1011 Mar 03, 2010 This book was very horendous, it was boring and i don't agree with the author!

beloved12 Mar 02, 2010 this book was good, really good and although it was sad it had a ----- ------

(Shepherd's Granddaughter at RedMaple online: here)

Our Quebecois Problem

Toronto, February 2007. A recent poll by Sun Media (Jan 2007) indicates that anti-Jewish feeling in Quebec is again on the rise. Thirty-six percent of Quebeckers have a bad opinion of Jews. That’s double the rate elsewhere in Canada.

In part this is no surprise - polls always show anti-Jewish feeling as higher in Quebec. But not this high, not for a long time.

As it happens, anti-Israel feeling is always much higher in Quebec, as well. To give one example: this past July at the outset of the Hezbollah War, a poll for CanWest News Service found that across the county two-thirds of Canadians supported Israel - except in Quebec where 62% condemned Israel’s response to the attack by Hezbollah.

Quebeckers who instantly disapprove of Israeli action aren’t all Israel haters. But many are. Their loathing for Israel is unstained by any tincture of rationality. They see Israel as having been conceived in sin, as evil in its very nature, criminal in its every action and deserving of any outrage committed against it.


People who put their faith in coincidence will see no relationship between the high incidence of anti-Jewish and of anti-Israel sentiment in Quebec. The rest of us, though, can point at a pair of surveys by the Association for Canadian studies.


In early July the ACS polled Canadians on their attitudes toward religious groups. The ACS found that Canadians held Christians and Jews in equally high regard, with 79% having a positive view of Jews and 81% having a positive view of Christians. Outside Quebec, only 6% had a negative view of Jews. In Quebec, the number was three times as high, at 18%.


In late August, the ACS conducted a second survey, asking identical questions, but this time only of Quebeckers. It turned out that in one month, anti-Jewish feeling in Quebec had jumped by a third - to 24%.


Why? Because in between the two surveys the Hezbollah War was fought.


Obviously many Quebeckers can’t distinguish between their hatred for Israel and animosity toward Jews. Frankly, I can’t tell the difference either.


We should of course keep in mind that nearly two-thirds of Quebeckers have no problem with Jews, and that Quebec isn’t the only source of bigotry - especially bigotry against Israel.


For example, although Hezbollah is a terror organization that preaches genocide against Jews, 90% of the delegates to the New Democratic Party policy convention this past September voted for a resolution that castigated Israel for the war initiated by Hezbollah and declared Hezbollah a legitimate political organization deserving a seat in any peace negotiations alongside the legal government of Lebanon.


Few NDP delegates come from Quebec.


Education is the usual antidote to prejudice, and indeed the ACS study found that Quebeckers with only primary education were the ones most likely to have a negative view of Jews. The Quebeckers most likely to spurn antisemitism, though, had only high school education, while university educated Quebeckers were more likely to view Jews negatively.


In 2001, Dr. Conrad Winn of COMPAS found an even odder result in a survey he conducted for B’nai Brith Canada. Rather than asking how Canadians felt about Jews as religious group as in the ACS study or about Jews as an ethnic group as in the Sun Media poll, Winn asked whether Jews have too much power - a question that’s been used to gauge levels of racism for fifty years and one with political overtones.


Winn found that in Quebec 26% of respondents perceived Jews as having too much power. Elsewhere in Canada only 10% shared this perception. This skewed response wasn’t a surprise. However, the distribution of antisemitic sentiment within Quebec was.


Winn found that among Francophones with high school education or less, the rate of anti-Jewish feeling had plummeted from 40% as measured in a 1986 survey to 21% in Winn’s 2001 survey. But among Quebeckers with higher education, levels of antisemitism had risen. Better educated Quebecers were now more likely to be prejudiced, with the level of anti-Jewish feeling now at 29% for college graduates and 30% for those with university degrees.


It appears Quebec’s old xenophobic antisemitism may be literally dying off. The new antisemitism, though, which expresses itself as hatred of Israel is a fashionable form of bigotry. It looks like the cure for this prejudice might be to keep kids out of university - especially in Quebec.

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I'm just getting around to posting it on my own blog now, but a slightly shorter version of this article appeared in the February 8, 2007, Jewish Tribune, a community paper published weekly by B'nai Brith Canada. The article also appeared on the anti-racist blog, Engage. For a collection of my articles on Engage, see here.

Worse than bias

The media commonly commits two sins: slanting the news and writing the news. Of these two, writing the news is worse, because by its nature, news has a problematic relationship with the truth.

Slanting the news, or bias, can be illustrated by a recent CBC.ca article, “Is Netanyahu's promised moratorium coming undone?”

This article was slanted to suggest – incorrectly – that Israel is reneging on its moratorium on construction in the West Bank and that it wasn’t a significant concession to begin with.

The CBC article also claimed that, in his Cairo speech in June, US President Barack Obama called on Israel to freeze settlement construction: “as a precursor to good-faith negotiations.”

Obama did call on Israel to freeze construction but he didn’t suggest that this needed to happen as a precursor to peace talks or that, without a freeze, Israel’s good faith was in doubt. The CBC reporter added those bits herself.

The CBC doesn’t usually twist the news so obviously, especially not since Tony Burman, the CBC’s former editor-in-chief, switched jobs and started working for al-Jazeera.

I think the Toronto Star now tries to play fair, too, although its stories about Israel used to be at least as twisted as the CBC’s.

However, even without deliberate bias, reporting on Israel will always be negative. It’s in the nature of journalism.

Israel is a multi-cultural marvel, a high-tech giant, a world leader in medicine, but news about Israel will always focus on war and conflict. Consequently, the media will create the impression that Israel is the place where people are always fighting.

The media treats both sides in a conflict as if they were equally legitimate. In consequence, news stories blur the distinctions between a liberal democracy like Israel, a corrupt regime like the Palestinian Authority and a terrorist death cult like Hamas. Over time, the news tends to make them look pretty much all alike.

The media also treats the spokespeople for the various actors as if they were all equally reliable. Of course, this is nonsense. Palestinian spokespeople lie all the time.

Any journalist with illusions on this score was surely cured of them years ago when Palestinian sources, including chief spokesman Saeb Erekat, repeatedly claimed that Israel had massacred at least 500 Palestinians civilians in Jenin and bulldozed them into mass graves.

Of course, the “Jenin massacre” turned out to be a fairy tale, and since then Palestinian spokespeople haven’t grown any more reliable. Journalists know this, but in the name of being even-handed, they report what the Palestinians say and what the Israelis say, as if these sources were equally reliable.

The media has to work fast and reports breaking news before they have time to check whether it’s true. This gives liars a huge edge, and because the Israeli Defence Forces investigates what happened before making statements, they’re at a fatal disadvantage.

The media likes violence; if it bleeds, it leads. A Toronto Star story headlined: Israeli soldiers run wild in Gaza gets the front page. A follow-up about how, as it turns out, Israeli soldiers acted rather well gets buried on page 20. Because, you see, that’s not news; it’s merely true.

Finally, the media is lazy. Consequently, reporters are suckers for propaganda stunts such as Palestinians pulling down a section of Israel’s security barrier on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The Berlin Wall and the Security Barrier have nothing in common. So what? The story has good visuals and gives the media something to put on air.

The net effect of all this is that the more Israel is in the news, the more people will tend to think that the Israelis and the Palestinians are the same – bloody-handed mirror images of each other. This isn’t the result of anti-Israel bias; it’s much worse than that: it’s the nature of contemporary media.

What can be done? Well, it’s important to complain when our media does a lousy job. The CBC has no business airing idiotic stories comparing the barrier Israel built to keep out suicide bombers with the wall the East German's erected to prevent people escaping their brutal regime. We pay the CBC; we have a right to demand better.

But I’d suggest the priority is to try to take Israel off the agenda (at least as much as possible). What Israel needs is the indifference that the media shows to all other low-level conflicts in far corners of the world.

So when I write to the CBC or wherever to complain about a story – and I do that a lot – I also ask why they’re doing a story about Israel in the first place. Couldn’t they please give us more news about Pakistan, India or Russia, or other parts of the world that are vastly more important than Israel?

As Jews, we’re endlessly interested in Israel. Antisemites devour news about Israel because hating Israel is their reason for existing. And the media has a serious Israel habit, I think just because it’s their longest-playing soap opera.

But most Canadians would like to change the channel. With a bit of prodding, I think the media might oblige them.

Photo: Israeli youth wearing a One God, One Planet t-shirt

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A shorter version of this article previously appeared in the December 15, 2009, Jewish Tribune, a community paper published weekly by B’nai Brith Canada, and at the Canadian blog Dust My Broom.

"Nora Clean’s guide to boycotting Zionist entities," by Nora Clean

Now that the stars have gone back to Hollywood, I can say that our boycott of the Toronto International Film Festival was a success. True, we got tons of negative press, with lots of people observing that we’re idiots and bigots. But for two solid weeks, we got to say nasty things about Israel, and the media reported it – and after all that’s the point, right?

But, oh dear. John Greyson withdrew his little documentary on the Sarajevo queer festival in order to spark the “Boycott TIFF!” movement, and it’s not like anyone’s exactly clamouring to see his flick.

I thought it would be cool to get it shown in Gaza. But the Hamas minister of culture? He wasn’t entirely encouraging.

He’s like, “Dear, Ms. Clean: I’m afraid our policy is to ban un-Islamic activity. Normally, if anyone tries to show a movie in Gaza, we shoot him in the knee and send him to an Israeli hospital. But for Mr. Greyson’s homosexual film, we will behead him. Yours in solidarity, etc. etc.”

Oh, well. Maybe I can organize a special showing at Le Select Bistro, the Toronto restaurant that sparked the “Boycott the Royal Ontario Museum!” movement.

It’s like this: Israel lent the ancient Torah scrolls and other fragments of Hebrew holy books known as the Dead Sea Scrolls to the ROM for a special exhibit. Whoa! Talk about cultural imperialism. Those scrolls are Palestinian!

I’m so upset no other restaurant in Toronto gets this that I’m boycotting all of them!

But most especially, we’ve got to boycott the Liquor Control Board!

Listen: I’ve got two favourite groups – the Israeli Apartheid Coalition, which tries to keep Zionists apart from the rest of mankind, and Co-dependent Jewish Voices, a group for Jews who have converted to anti-imperialism but are still confused. You might have heard them called Lefty Jews for Jesus, because of their identity issues, don't you know, and because the United Church funded them (but regretted it).

Anyway, the Apartheid Coalition and the Co-dependents organized a demo against the LCBO, because it sells Israeli wines. And what happened? Hundreds of Jews showed up and bought out the store’s entire stock! That’s so not fair!

And Zionists play the same trick all the time. The Tel Aviv films at TIIF all sold out, and ticket sales for the Dead Sea scrolls skyrocketed. Now marketing people actually phone and ask to be boycotted!

Don’t let it get you down, though, because next, you’ve got to burn all your Leonard Cohen books, CDs and posters.

Whenever those of us in the movement hear that some musician plans to tour Israel, we bombard them with mail, begging them to enforce Israeli apartheid. But they ignore us! They just go and play concerts in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, as if Israelis are people, too.

And don’t forget to boycott Starbucks – though maybe you already know about this from the news. British anti-Zionists decided that the chairman of Starbucks, Howard Shultz, has a Zionist-sounding name, so they started fire-bombing Starbucks franchises. Whoa! Talk about revolutionary.

The next step was a biggy for me because I’m no longer a perky 14-year-old, but you’ve got to boycott Wonderbra. Not many people know this, but they’re a Zionist entity!

So how do you get this info? Well, the Apartheid Coalition keeps a list and so does Stormfront. But if you visit their site, don’t go thinking the swastika and the Iron Cross are anti-Zionist symbols. True, Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch thinks SS jackets and Iron Crosses are way cool, but his fetish hasn’t been approved yet.

Next, whatever you do, stay out of hospitals! Okay, maybe you’ve been in a horrific accident, but the miracle procedure that could save your life was probably developed in Israel! Better to take two aspirins and stay in bed.

In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein – who is the coolest anti-Zionist ever – she says Israelis actually like terrorism, because it creates a market for stuff they’re good at making.
I confess, at first I couldn't get my head around this, but when I thought about how important Israeli medical know-how is to the world, it began to make sense!

Finally, to enforce Israeli apartheid, we’ve got to get radical. Think about this: the first two Hebrew letters are alef and bet. Yes, Alef-bet … Alphabet! So, as of the end of this sentence, I’m taking the ultimate step and boycotting the written word – that’ll show those Zionists!

Note: Additional instructions on boycotting Zionist entities can be found on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saeky9I5T9c&feature=related

Nora Clean” was previously published on Harry’s Place here and on Dust My Broom.

The United Church has a Jewish problem

The anti-Israel activists in the United Church of Canada outdid themselves this year. For the church’s national Council, they tabled four anti-Israel proposals that were unrivalled for venom.

Three of the proposals came from Toronto (the fourth from Montreal) and were the work of a small clique of Israel-bashers who use the United Church to promote their agenda. But it’s no accident that Israel-haters find the UC a comfortable home.

Although it recognizes Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state, the UC consistently objects to Israel defending itself against attack. Instead, it spreads the lie that Israel is guilty of “collective punishment and violence … on the Palestinian people.”

There is, of course, one side in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that targets a civilian population, but it’s not Israel.

The UC does call on both the Palestinians and the Israelis to end all violence but the UC blames only Israel. In January, Reverend David Giuliano, Moderator of the United Church of Canada (the church’s highest official) called the violence a “consequence of the hatred and hostility bred by the occupation.”

So, according to the Moderator, not only is Israel responsible for its own deeds, but also for breeding hatred into the Palestinians. Thanks to the Israelis, the Palestinians can’t help themselves; they’re compelled to fire rockets at hospitals and lob mortars at kindergartens.
The Moderator’s stance is bad enough, but even worse, no matter how vile the Israel-haters within the church become, the UC still defends them.

The Reverend Bruce Gregerson, a spokesman for the UC, admits that seeking to undermine Israel’s existence is antisemitic. But, he says, the boycott proposals merely tried to encourage Israel “to make moves toward peace.”

Uh-huh. Israel is a liberal democracy like Canada, committed to the equality of all its citizens. Yet the proposals called Israel “evil” and compared it to apartheid South Africa – a racist state that was removed from the political map.

The proposals called on the people of Israel to be cut off from the rest of humankind, with a boycott of all Israeli athletes, scholars and cultural institutions.

They called for economic warfare against Israel, with a boycott of all Israeli products and of all “companies supporting the Zionist policies of Israel.”

The process boycotters use to identify Zionist companies is mystical but apparently productive, as the proposals listed dozens, including the Arsenal Football Club (owned by Jews, you know), Huggies diapers, and Victoria’s Secret lingerie.

As a resolution to the conflict, the boycott proposals called for the 4 million descendants of Palestinians displaced by Arab wars against Israel to be allowed to settle in Israel and thus end the “evil” of Zionism by transforming Israel into another Arab state.

On the other hand, the boycotters didn’t urge the Palestinians to do anything. They didn’t call on the Palestinian Authority to resume peace talks, even though Israel has repeatedly offered to do so.

Nor did the boycotters urge Hamas to give up on terror, recognize Israel, or even renounce their ambition to slaughter Jews everywhere, as called for in Hamas’s constitution. The boycott proposals didn’t even refer to Hamas except to confer legitimacy on it as “the newly elected Palestinian party.”

Moreover, while seeking to wipe Israel off the map and implicitly siding with the terrorists, the boycotters spread the lie that some Jewish members of Parliament are Israeli citizens and implied they’re potential traitors.

As it turned out, the Council rejected the language of the proposals – the references to apartheid, the suggestion that Jews are disloyal and so forth, and it rejected a national boycott as too divisive.

However, the Council did invite member churches to boycott Israel and reaffirmed its stance that Israel is solely to blame for the conflict, calling on its churches to “resist the occupation.”

I’m disturbed that the UC has adopted the language of terrorists.

Moreover, if Israel were to withdraw from the West Bank without a peace agreement, expecting it to become a launching pad for rocket and mortar attacks as happened with Gaza, would this satisfy the United Church?

Not for a moment. The Council declared Gaza still occupied, although every last Israeli left years ago. Apparently, like the rest of the anti-Israel crowd, the UC can’t stand to let the occupation go.

Finally, the Council committed itself to the World Council of Churches’ Amman Declaration, which calls for settling millions of Palestinians in Israel, thus transforming it into an Arab state.

At the Council, many representatives did speak in Israel’s favour, and doubtless these speakers represented the majority of ordinary church members.

However, as an institution, the United Church of Canada used this Council to assert its abiding hostility toward Israel.

Ah, well. I’ll do my bit by spending against the boycott. The kids are too old for diapers, but I’m sure my wife would like some Zionist lingerie.

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This article previously appeared on the Dust My Broom blog, and on Harry's Place in Britain. It was first published, in a shorter version, in the August 20, 2009, Jewish Tribune, a community paper published weekly by B'nai Brith Canada.

Hamas runs wild in Gaza

Another day, another tale of Israeli soldiers misbehaving. The last time this happened back in March, I was horrified when I picked up my Toronto Star and read about Israeli soldiers saying they’d witnessed deliberate murders of Palestinians. But then I took a deep breath and reminded myself that such “news” is usually bogus.

Sure enough, the next day, it began to come out that these weren’t eye-witness reports, merely rumours, and that some of the soldiers passing on stories of abuse weren’t even in Gaza.

No real surprise. The Israeli army (the IDF) has a well-deserved reputation for professionalism and decency. Most of the soldiers involved in large operations are ordinary people, like me and you. They were called up to help clear the rocket launching sites out of Gaza, and they behaved well and occasionally heroically. (See here.)

However, the Toronto Star followed up its original yarn with an article explaining how war dehumanizes, resulting in indiscriminate killing. This story tried for even-handedness in that it wasn’t just about Israel.

It noted how the Palestinians glorify terrorism and referred to Hamas’s TV programming for children in which J is for Jihad and S is for Shahid – a martyr who kills Jews for Allah.
But the Star’s premise was all wrong. In this conflict, only Hamas targeted civilians.

Indeed, not only does Hamas attempt to murder Israelis, it’s also careless of Palestinian lives. Its soldiers shed their uniforms and hid behind civilians. They used mosques as weapon depots and fired upon Israeli troops from houses.

For its part, Israel went to extraordinary lengths to spare civilians, individually phoning residents of buildings and warning them to get out – a level of care never taken by any other army in the history of warfare. (For a military perspective on this see here.)

When the IDF eventually released the results of its investigation into the allegations, the Star did report it, but as in most of the media, the article was brief and buried in the back pages.
Worse, after stating the IDF had dismissed the allegations as hearsay, the bulk of the story repeated details of some of the worst allegations. And of course it’s details that stick in a reader’s mind.

The Star also left out that the IDF had meticulously tracked the rumours back to their sources and found they were simply untrue.

That won’t happen again, because this time around, the sources of the rumours have been carefully concealed.

For Israel’s reputation, this makes little difference. If the IDF were able to investigate the allegations, the media would again report the conclusions in a paragraph buried in the back pages and would again use the IDF’s report mainly as an opportunity to refresh the original allegations.
This isn’t malice (not usually). It’s just that when the Toronto Star headlines a story: “Israeli troops run wild in Gaza,” it sells papers. A story headlined: “Israeli troops behave well” is merely true.

“If it bleeds it leads,” as the saying goes. So when a source offers them blood, journalists have a hard time saying no, even if the story can’t be verified and the source has an axe to grind.

This is the case with the latest allegations. The reports come from Breaking the Silence, an organization dedicated to blackening the image of Israel’s military. As for the allegations themselves, they’re at least third hand: Breaking the Silence saying what a soldier says that another soldier told him.

Breaking the Silence claims the stories come from soldiers who were in Gaza and claims they edited the stories only to conceal the soldiers’ identities. But because of that concealment, not a word can be verified.

Nonetheless, most media applied little scepticism. The Toronto Star put the story on the front page, with the sensationalist headline: “Gaza invasion: ‘If you’re not sure – kill.’” But midway through, the Star did at least get around to mentioning Israel’s side of the story.

The Globe and Mail’s article was much worse, with no pretence of even-handedness and not a whiff of skepticism.

CBC.ca did a far better job. Its story is full of the language of doubt: “Breaking the Silence…said it has testimony.” The soldiers, “say they took part in January's military operation in Gaza.” The soldiers “are claiming.” The soldiers “allege...”

The CBC article noted the difficulty of verifying any of the information, gave space to the IDF’s rebuttal starting in the second paragraph – not halfway through the article – and as befits such a dodgy story, CBC.ca buried it in the back web-pages.

By foregoing sensationalism, the CBC surely missed getting people’s attention. But they kept their integrity, and hopefully, in the long run, that counts for more, even in the news business.

Of course it's possible that some of the stories reported by Breaking the Silence are true or partially true. In every war there's a danger of soldiers abusing the civilian population. It's occasionally happened with Canadian soldiers and with Israeli soldiers, too.

We know this because, like all well-disciplined armies, the IDF investigates allegations of abuse and, when evidence of a crime exists, prosecutes. The other day, a soldier was convicted of stealing a Palestinian's credit card, and the IDF is pursuing a dozen other criminal investigations.

But by concealing the soldiers' identities, Breaking the Silence has insured that nothing can be done about their allegations - no investigation, no disciplinary action or exoneration, no changes made to do a better job of protecting civilians next time around.

But then Breaking the Silence isn't interested in protecting Palestinian civilians. The Israeli army is much more interested in doing that.

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A shorter version of this piece previously appeared in the July 28, 2009, Jewish Tribune, and on Dust My Broom.

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

The one-state conference at York University: A Rogue’s Gallery

Some serious and well-meaning academics attended the conference at York University. If they were sufficiently well-meaning to express sympathy for Israel, they were abused and heckled from the floor. “This is an academic conference or at least it’s supposed to be,” protested Na’ama Carmi, a conference speaker from Haifa University.

Carmi was brave to attend, but if she supposed it was ever seriously meant as an academic conference, she was mistaken. Really, it was a propaganda event. Discussion of any Palestinian responsibility for the conflict was excluded, while Israel was under constant attack. The conference’s purpose was political; namely, to attack the legitimacy of the State of Israel and to present the replacement of Israel with a bi-national Palestinian-Jewish state as a legitimate alternative policy goal.

The one-state solution isn’t supported by either Israelis or Palestinians. Rather, recent polls show 74% of Palestinians and 78% of Israelis would support a two-state solution. Indeed, no one seriously interested in resolving the Israeli–Palestinian conflict promotes the idea of a single Israeli-Palestinian state. Rather, the one-state solution is recognized as a rationalization for destroying Israel in order to replace it with a Palestinian state.

Here's a few of the cnfernce attendees:

Ali Abunimah: No one would mistake Abunimah for an academic. He’s a professional propagandist and the co-founder of Electronic Intifada. Electronic Intifada supports the murder of innocent men, women and children as "resistance." Abunimah demonizes Israel as an apartheid state and engages in Jew-baiting by likening Israelis to Nazis.

Abunimah won’t merely be presenting at the York conference. He’s 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."

Abigail Bakan: Bakan is Professor of Political Studies and Women's Studies at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada. She’s also a leader the Trotskyite group, the International Socialists (a Canadian branch of Britain’s Socialist Worker’s Party) and a leader of the anti-Israel group known as NION.

Bakan reportedly was one of the representatives of NION at the 2007 Cairo conference, where radical Islamist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Jamaat al-Islamiya (a branch of al-Qaeda best known for murdering 71 tourists in Egypt in 1997) sat down to talk strategy with the worldwide “anti-imperialist” left.

The Cairo Conference Declaration was big on Hezbollah’s “heroic resistance” to the “Zionist entity.” (Yes, that’s the term they use.) And the conference praised Hamas’s “refusal to surrender to… the Oslo agreements,” and called for “a revival of the Intifada and the weapon of resistance.” In other words: two states living in peace, no; human bombs, yes.
The conference also urged boycotts against the Zionist entity in order to bring about its demise, a course of action Bakan pursues as best she can.

Rafeef Zadiah and Adam Hanieh: Zadiah and Hanieh are both PhD candidates at York and leaders of the anti-Israel group, the Coalition Against Israel Apartheid. This Apartheid group also participated in the Cairo Conference, and Zadiah and Hanieh are active in the anti-Israel boycott movement. As members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, they worked to bring about CUPE Ontario’s resolution to boycott Israel.

Omar Barghouti is a professional propagandist, not an academic,. He’s a leader of the anti-Israel boycott movement. Barghouti denigrates Israel as an apartheid state and argues that Israeli scholars, artists and musicians should be blacklisted - cut off from the rest of humanity. According to Barghouti, anyone who engages in intellectual or artisitic co-operation with Israelis is guilty of “moral blindness.” “Dialogue does not work,” says Barghouti.

Marc Ellis: A professor at Baylor College, Ellis argues that Jews worship violence and that Torah scrolls in synagogues should be replaced with replicas of helicopter gunships as symbols of what Jews really believe in. At the conference Ellis is reported to have expressed the wish that Israel would suffer a catastrophe to teach it a lesson, but alas, any such catastrophe would also engulf Palestine and the surrounding Arab states.

Jeff Halper: Halper is a pro-Palestinian activist, not an academic. He runs an organization opposing the demolition of illegally constructed Palestinian houses. According to Gerald Steinberg, of NGO Monitor:

[Halper] participated in sailing a few small boats from Cyprus to
Hamas-controlled Gaza, hoping to engage in a publicity-generating confrontations
with the Israeli navy.
Halper often appears in support of Naim Ateek, whose
speeches include classical anti-Semitic references, such as accusing Israel of
"crucifying Palestinians." …
An Israeli columnist recently witnessed Halper
urging "his Muslim listeners in an American university to reject the Arab peace
initiative, because it serves the Muslim tyrants. He told his audience that
Israel is a force that serves world capitalism, in the framework of the attempt
to make enormous populations in the world disappear.

Dana Olwan is a PhD candidate at Queen’s University, but her area is English literature. She wasn’t invited to the conference as an academic, but as an anti-Israel activist, national chair of Students for Palestinian Human Rights. Olwan spreads lies such as the claim that Israel’s creation “was legitimized through racist Zionist narratives that depicted Palestinians … as “semi-savage.” She also writes that Israel “actively engages in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,” a claim that is not only unture, but absurdly so as the Palestinians have had a sustained population boom for the last 40 years. At the conference, Olwan’s was speaking on using the one-state solution as a “rhetorical strategy for activists.”