FROM COLUMBIA, TO HARVARD, TO U. OF TORONTO, CAMPUS ANTI-SEMITISM & ANTI-ZIONISM MUST BE CONFRONTED

UNIVERISTY OF TORONTO GRAD STUDENTS ENDORSE BDS

Jewish Tribune, Dec. 27, 2012

A pro-Israel student has confirmed a report by Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) that the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) has passed a motion to endorse boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. The student, who asked to remain anonymous, described the machinations of the anti-Israel activists as a “blindside.”…The anti-Israel motion was not on the agenda, but it was accepted as additional business by the meeting chair after the meeting began. He said the room appeared to be stacked with students who supported the BDS movement and knew about the motion in advance.

According to the report by SAIA, which was posted on the far-left website Rabble.ca, the resolution states, “Be it resolved that the Graduate Students [sic] Union endorse Palestinian civil society’s 2005 call for boycotts, divestment and sanctions by calling on the University of Toronto to refrain from investing in all companies complicit in violations of international law. This includes any company that: profits from the illegal occupation of Palestinian land; directly benefits from the construction of the Wall [sic] and Israeli settlements; is economically active in settlements, and profits from the collective punishment of Palestinians. “This would include the companies BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and Hewlett Packard.”….

Top of Page

PRO-ISRAEL STUDENTS CRITICIZE BDS ENDORSEMENT

Cara Stern

CJN, Dec. 28, 2012

Pro-Israel students are criticizing the process that led the University of Toronto Graduate Student Union (GSU) to officially endorse the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. The motion was passed at a Dec. 10 council meeting that included an annual general meeting (AGM), in which all graduate students who attended were allowed vote.

The move follows three other university student councils that officially adopted the campaign in the past year – Carleton University, the University of Regina and, most recently, York University. When the motion was brought up at a council meeting last year with due notice and fair representation of the graduate student population, it failed, said Jason Dumelie, academic and funding commissioner for the GSU.

This time, there was no advance notice of the motion, so nobody except the people pushing for the endorsement knew about it, said Israela Stein, a political science graduate student and Hillel spokesperson. “Obviously, that changed the balance of the vote.”

Dumelie said the success of the motion demonstrates the passion and conviction of the people who organized graduate students to come and vote on the motion. “However, it is not at all clear that it represents the views of a majority of graduate students at the University of Toronto, since no notice of the motion was provided prior to the meeting,” he said.

Stein said it’s this lack of transparency that leads to arbitrary and illegitimate decisions. And “every student should be bothered by arbitrary decisions.” The AGM is open to all graduate students, where anybody can bring forward any motion, said Erin Oldynski, the GSU’s external commissioner. The membership then decides whether to discuss a motion.

According to the union’s website, a general meeting “is an opportunity to discuss and guide the work of the students’ union, along with approving and scrutinizing audited statements and bylaw amendments.” Therefore, this issue was not suitable for the AGM, Stein said.

At the meeting, Dumelie said he raised a point of order with this concern. Additionally, he said some students questioned the lack of due notification. However, the chair allowed the motion based on the fact it was voted onto the agenda.

Dumelie said it isn’t clear people understood the motion had to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when they voted for it and that some thought it had to do with anti-corporatization. Even with a clear description, it was impossible for the vote to be defeated due to the sheer number of people in attendance in support of the motion, as all graduate students who attend have voting rights during an AGM, he said….

Shirin Ezekiel, associate executive director for Hillel of Greater Toronto, said Hillel has been in contact with university administration and is confident the university is taking the matter seriously and will “deal with the GSU in the appropriate manner to ensure procedures are followed.”

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) is examining the GSU’s bylaws and is determining what recommendations it can make to Hillel in “pursuing the apparent violation of bylaws,” said Howard English, CIJA’s senior vice-president. Ultimately, the problem with this kind of campaign is that it doesn’t challenge Israeli policies, but rather denies Israel’s right to self-determination, said Stein. “It’s beyond radical.”

In response, Oldynski said the motion calls for the university to divest from all companies worldwide that violate human rights – not just Israel. However, the resolution specifically urges the university to “refrain from investing in all companies complicit in the violations of international law,” singling out companies that it says “profits from the illegal occupation of Palestinian land, directly benefits from the construction of the wall [security barrier] and Israeli settlements, is economically active in settlements, and profits from the collective punishment of Palestinians.”

Now that the motion has passed, the GSU membership will decide the direction it will take, Oldynski said, adding that it may involve lobbying the university administration to divest from companies that violate human rights, organizing discussions on the topic and working with other organizations dedicated to promoting human rights.

The university’s statement to The CJN said that although the GSU resolution has endorsed the BDS campaign, “the GSU has no authority to bind its members to any particular course of action at all regarding Israel and Israeli products or academic interchanges or international companies doing business with Israel….

More than five years ago, university president David Naylor called academic boycotts “antithetical to academic freedom, counter-productive, and likely to do more harm than good as regards any issue of human rights and political or military conflict.” In its most recent statement on the endorsement, the university reiterated that it stands by that assertion.

The GSU’s endorsement focuses on economic boycotts. However, the larger BDS campaign includes both economic and academic boycotts, Stein said. Although these endorsements have been called symbolic, since student unions themselves tend not to have actual investments in Israel, Stein said students should still care about what it could lead in the future.

“This is a fight on public opinion and on slander,” she said, adding that they are trying to stop it before it leads to action. “Every U of T student should be deeply concerned that this is what is done with their money and, most importantly, in their name.”

Top of Page

ANTI-ZIONISM IS A COVER FOR ANTISEMITISM: MIDEAST EXPERT

Alexandra Markus

Jewish Tribune, Dec. 20, 2012 |

Shortly before Israel engaged in Operation Pillar of Defense, and college campuses erupted in a spate of anti-Israel rallies, Jonathan Spyer, a senior fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliya, Israel, addressed an audience in a packed boardroom at McGill University in Montreal telling them that the notion of anti-Zionism has become a cover for antisemitism, and that pro-Israel students on campus have a duty to debunk it.

“The mantra in the Middle East has become ‘anyone whom I do not like is a ‘Jew,’” Spyer said.

This culture, he claimed, is brought to North American university campuses, where it is used to promote antisemitic ideology in a way that is palatable to many on the left, who see Jews as the powerful and Palestinians as the powerless.

“Anti-Zionism is a lie,” Spyer said forcefully. “Anti-Zionism used in 2012 is an attempt to obfuscate that fact to pretend that the desire to destroy a people and a culture is a political philosophy challenge. If you have a political movement that wishes to bring a state into existence, then you can support or opposite it, but to seek to destroy it once it exists is an extremist demand.”

Spyer’s advice for Israel advocates on campus? “Get the truth out. It’s the best way to discredit them by proving that while we have historical knowledge, facts and intellectual rigour, the other side has a lie at the centre of all its claims.” He elaborated on the nature of the extremism by saying that “the unique desire to destroy the only country in the world that is Jewish, after it was formed and ratified by the UN, is antisemitic.”

He distinguished between criticizing the Jewish state and denying its right to exist, stating that, “It is legitimate to criticize the actions of the Israeli government, for example, if you have concluded that Netanyahu’s government has made wrong decisions. But if the person wants the state of Israel to cease to be, that is antisemitism.”

Spyer cited a Pew Research Survey that found that about 95 per cent of people in Middle Eastern countries have unfavourable opinions of Jews. When students from these regions study on North American university campuses, he said, they often bring their hatred with them.

Despite the dark message that he brought to McGill, Spyer ended on an optimistic note. Ultimately, he thinks that the pro-Israel side is bound to emerge victorious. “No lie can prevail for long,” he said…. 

Top of Page

YES, ANTI-SEMITISM IS STILL A PROBLEM ON CAMPUS

Roz Rothstein, Roberta Seid

Jerusalem Post, Nov. 6, 2012

Mitchell Bard and Jeff Dawson’s new study, Israel and the Campus: The Real Story, led many newspapers to trumpet that anti-Semitism is not a problem on American campuses. They pointed to the study’s finding that significant anti-Israel incidents occurred at only about three percent of schools, with most occurring in only a handful of colleges. But the headlines got the wrong take-away message from the study, given the implications of these numbers, the study’s other findings, and our experiences on the front lines of anti- Israel campus activism over the past 11 years. Fortunately, not all schools are a problem, but the challenge is serious and should not be minimized.

Nearly half of the students interviewed for the study – 43% – reported that anti-Semitism is a problem at their schools. The authors acknowledge this is a “shockingly high” level. If a similarly high percentage of any other campus minority reported experiencing prejudice, most people would consider it unacceptable, and mobilize to take action.

The authors suggest that campus anti-Semitism/anti-Israelism have been with us since the 1950s, so there is no reason for undue concern. But this long-range view misses the great difference between earlier decades and today. Israel simply had not been the burning issue on campuses in earlier decades. That changed abruptly in 2000 when Palestinians launched the terrorist war known as the second intifada.

Simultaneously, an alliance of extremists launched an aggressive anti-Israel propaganda campaign to disparage Israel. The campaign came to be known as the new anti-Semitism, with “Israel” replacing “Jew,” but with the same accusations, irrationality and fanaticism that characterized traditional anti-Semitism. In the West, its epicenter was college campuses. The Palestinian-Israel conflict became the most inflammatory campus issue, the focus of student activism and of panels, demonstrations and agitprop….

Many pro-Israel students tell our campus professionals that they have become too uncomfortable to openly admit they support Israel. The study overlooks this progressive radicalization of dialogue and atmosphere. The study seemed to suggest that anti-Israelism on campus is not so serious because there were only 674 incidents from 2010 to 2011, and they were clustered in the spring. This number, which in any case is unacceptably high, doesn’t accurately reflect the situation….

Nor should we take comfort from the finding that anti-Israel events occurred at “only” 108 out of 4,000 schools, and that one-third occurred at only 10 schools. These were not obscure schools. The list included some of the largest, most prestigious and influential schools in the country: Harvard, Columbia, four University of California campuses including UCLA and the University of Maryland.

Activities at these schools make national media headlines. When an anti-Israel student wrote a Harvard Crimson op-ed in October that accused Israel of deliberately preventing SAT tests from reaching Palestinians in Ramallah to deprive them of educational opportunity, the incident hit mainstream newspapers. The US State Department itself felt compelled to publicly explain that the tests had been held up in customs because the office was closed during the Jewish holidays, and the test had simply been rescheduled.

Indeed, anti-Israel activists try to get their events and propaganda associated with big-name schools. In November [2012], for example, Students for Justice in Palestine will hold its second national convention at the University of Michigan. One of the scheduled sessions is a video conference with Khader Adnan, a West Bank leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad who had been caught on tape in 2007 inciting a crowd, saying, “Who among you will be the next suicide bomber?”

The campus study reports that student government resolutions calling for divestment from companies doing business with Israel have been defeated at all but one school. This is good, but not reassuring. The purpose of such resolutions is not passage, but rather forcing debate to spread anti-Israel canards and make them seem familiar and even normal.

The study cites Dr. Sam Edelman’s observation that, “The delegitimizers have adopted Nazi Julius Streicher’s strategy of throwing mud at Israel in the expectation that some of it will stick.” In addition, pro-Israel students had to devote enormous time and effort to counter these resolutions, which were only narrowly defeated, and Jewish students keenly felt the fallout of embittered relations on campus. More divestment resolutions and boycott efforts are expected for this academic year.

More importantly, as Bard and Dawson point out, the most serious problem is anti-Israel faculty. Their numbers have grown for several reasons: the vogue of post-modern, post-colonial ideology leavened with the Israeli “new historians”; active recruitment since 9/11 of faculty from the Middle East to teach about the region; and the Saudis’ infusion of hundreds of millions dollars to set up special Middle East study programs.

Often, these professors lead the anti-Israel charge, and co-sponsor anti-Israel events, as Harvard’s Middle East Studies department has. They hire other faculty who share their views. They use their classrooms and reading lists to spread their bias against Israel, sometimes bullying students in their classes who disagree with them. Students are captive audiences, and dependent on their professors for their grades.

The study indirectly suggests that these professors and campus activists may have had an impact: 25% of students interviewed believe Israel is an apartheid state; 48% are not sure whether Israel protects the rights of its Arab minority while only 10% said that Israel does protect minority rights.

It would be naive to minimize the impact these professors have on broader society. Their prestigious positions lend credibility to their op-eds, textbooks, books, speeches, tours and media interviews. Many are involved in outreach programs to teachers in K-12 who take courses for continuing education credits, as they do at Georgetown University. Through these outlets, anti-Israel professors can normalize the worst canards against Zionism, Israel and Jews.

However, the situation is not all bleak. As Bard and Dawson point out, pro-Israel organizations and students have mobilized to respond.….In many cases, the anti-Israel campaign backfired, producing pro-Israel student leaders motivated to teach their campus communities about Israel. Several organizations now work with these students. Some pro-Israel faculty have also stepped forward to insist on restoring academic and professional standards, and to sponsor Israel education events.

Despite the positive developments, we should not let misleading interpretations of the study or glib headlines lull us into complacency. The challenge remains, and we must do all we can to meet it. Israel and our pro-Israel students deserve no less.

Top of Page

On Topic

Visit CIJR’s Bi-Weekly Webzine: Israzine.

CIJR’s ISRANET Daily Briefing is available by e-mail.
Please urge colleagues, friends, and family to visit our website for more information on our ISRANET series.
To join our distribution list, or to unsubscribe, visit us at https://isranet.org/.

The ISRANET Daily Briefing is a service of CIJR. We hope that you find it useful and that you will support it and our pro-Israel educational work by forwarding a minimum $90.00 tax-deductible contribution [please send a cheque or VISA/MasterCard information to CIJR (see cover page for address)]. All donations include a membership-subscription to our respected quarterly ISRAFAX print magazine, which will be mailed to your home.

CIJR’s ISRANET Daily Briefing attempts to convey a wide variety of opinions on Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world for its readers’ educational and research purposes. Reprinted articles and documents express the opinions of their authors, and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.