MPPs unite to condemn "odious" Israeli Apartheid Week
In a rare show of unanimity, Ontario MPPs of all political stripes have banded together to condemn "Israeli Apartheid Week."
I didn't know we elected MPPs to tell us what to think. The reason I'm posting this is this part in particular:
"I want the name changed, it's just wrong," [Progressive Conservative MPP Peter Shurman] said, emphasizing that "respectful" debate about the Middle East is much more constructive than slinging slurs.
"Israeli Apartheid Week is not a dialogue, it's a monologue and it is an imposition of a view by the name itself--the name is hateful, it is odious," he said, adding it is also offensive to the millions of black South Africans oppressed by a racist white regime until the early 1990s.
Emphasis added. Here's one of those black South Africans in 2002:
South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has accused Israel of practising apartheid in its policies towards the Palestinians.
The Nobel peace laureate said he was "very deeply distressed" by a visit to the Holy Land, adding that "it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa".
Perhaps Peter Shurman and the rest of the members of the Ontario legislature would like to have a respectful debate with Tutu on the subject of apartheid before overstepping their jurisdiction and telling the people they're supposed to represent what to think.
Update:
I had originally included a quote from a memo purported to be from Nelson Mandela but I now have reason to doubt its provenance so I've eliminated that portion of the post. It doesn't really change my point. In dismissing Israeli Apartheid Week as "odious" and "condemning" it, the Ontario legislature has done what it pretends to challenge: calling names while refusing to actually examine the issue and "respectfully" debate the people who think apartheid is an appropriate term to describe what's happening in the occupied territories. But I'm sure they felt a moment or two of moral superiority while betraying their purpose as representatives of all of the people of Ontario and not just those on one side of an issue.
And on it goes.
If you criticize the government of Israel, you are an anti-Semite.
If you criticize the government of Canada, you love the Taliban.
I would ask if anyone seriously buys this stuff, but I think I already know the answer.
Perhaps that unanimous vote has something to with this. Whenever something like that vote comes up, I can't help but think of this line from a column by Orli Fridman: A day will come when we will be ashamed.
Or you could use Ehud Barak's quote calling Israel an apartheid state from a few weeks ago, for the other side.
Exactly Hugh! The word is used in the debate within Israel. It has now been used in a major public speech by a former Israeli Prime Minister and current Defense Minister.
Jeffery Simpson made the surprisingly good point a few weeks ago that it isn't that the current Canadian government is unusually pro Israel as it is pro-Likud and specifically identified with the Israeli hard right viewpoint on the middle east.
Discrediting the word Apartheid now is as much about the future as it is about the present. Ugly acts are being aggressively and preemptively inoculated against future criticism.
Ugly acts are being aggressively and preemptively inoculated against future criticism.
I think so, too. I've had the feeling for a while that we're building up to something nasty.
United Nations International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid,
Article II[1]
For the purpose of the present Convention, the term 'the crime of apartheid'shall apply to the following inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them:
a. Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person
i. By murder of members of a racial group or groups;
ii. By the infliction upon the members of a racial group or groups of serious bodily or mental harm, by the infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
iii. By arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;
b. Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;
c. Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognised trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;
d. Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, the prohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;
e. Exploitation of the labour of the members of a racial group or groups, in particular by submitting them to forced labour;
f. Persecution of organizations and persons, by depriving them of fundamental rights and freedoms, because they oppose apartheid.
Canada, along with the other countries of the ex-British Empire, has not signed it.
So we're not supposed to use the term 'holocaust' because it is offensive to Jews and we're not supposed to use the term 'apartheid' because it is offensive to South Africans. To what extent are we going to allow passive supporters of holocausts and apartheids to completely frame the terms of the debate?
we're not supposed to use the term 'apartheid' because it is offensive to South Africans
At least according to Peter Shurman. If you do a little googling you'll discover that Peter Shurman shares some obvious physical characteristics with ... me! He's in no position to speak on behalf of "the millions of black South Africans oppressed by a racist white regime until the early 1990s."
All MPPs support this move? What is their take on genocide? Our government officials have made us complicit in israel's crimes. We are killing and being killed in Afghanistan supposedly because of these same 'reported' actions by the Taliban but turn a blind eye to the actions of our most favoured land thieves?
This makes me physically ill. That our elitists at both levels of government dare to tell us what to think and then make laws to force us to think in this way is the opposite of what democracy means.
And pray tell how do we have 'respectful dialogue' about the Middle East when our lawmakers tell us what we can think and say? Could not just praising the despicable acts of israel constitute a monologue? Their main concern is that the sheeple are awakening to what we are being forced to parrot rather than thinking on our own and speaking the truth.
Most who are against IAW aren't against the use of the term to make a moral point in discussing state policies in the '67 lands-rather, the issue relates to the old Zionism is Racism movement whereby the existence of Israel as a Jewish State is itself viewed as apartheid. I don't think Zionism is Apartheid but I believe in your post you've defined away tha large segment of the IAW and BDS activists who think that it is.
When even someone like Jimmy Carter calls it Apartheid, you can bet it's Apartheid. From the WaPo:
The Ontario Legislature has no clue what it's doing, obviously.
I don't think Zionism is Apartheid but I believe in your post you've defined away tha large segment of the IAW and BDS activists who think that it is.
I would submit that if there's some kind of distinction to be made here, it's the Ontario legislature that should have made it. They didn't.
This morning I woke up wishing Mordecai Richler were still here to tell us what he thinks of all this.
http://bit.ly/cWgp6f
Thanks, Antonia, for the link. I read some excepts of Mordecai Richler's book. As someone who has never been to Israel, I found Richler's description of that country to be very complex. I also found it interesting that some of the very early supporters of a future state of Israel envisioned some sort of Jewish socialist utopia. Today, we have some of Israel's supporters in Canada envisioning some sort of Likud utopia.
Back to IAW. Should the participants in the Israel Apartheid Week events be concerned about the legitimacy of equating Israel and apartheid? No, they shouldn't. They don't need permission from anyone, including Mr. Shurman, for using terms and framing arguments. The supporters of IAW can speak on their own behalf with getting permission or "legitimate" approval from someone else.
South African leaders on Israel and Apartheid
"But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians." (1)
NELSON MANDELA
"I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about." (2)
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
"When I hear, 'that used to be my home', it is painfully similar to the treatment in South Africa when coloureds had no rights". (3)
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
”…Israel came to resemble more and more apartheid South Africa at its zenith - even surpassing its brutality, house demolitions, removal of communities, targeted assassinations, massacres, imprisonment and torture of its opponents, collective punishment and the aggression against neighbouring states.” (4)
Former South African Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils from a speech at Israel Apartheid Week 2009
"But what is interesting is that every black South African that I’ve spoken to who has visited the Palestinian territory has been horrified and has said without hesitation that the system that applies in Palestine is worse." (5)
Professor John Dugard, Former U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied Palestine
“The horrendous dehumanisation of Black South Africans during the erstwhile Apartheid years is a Sunday picnic, compared with what I saw and what I know is happening to the Palestinian people.” (6)
Willie Madisha, former head of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)
"As someone who lived in apartheid South Africa and who has visited Palestine I say with confidence that Israel is an apartheid state. In fact, I believe that some of Israel’s actions make the actions of South Africa’s apartheid regime appear pale by comparison." (7)
Willie Madisha, in a letter supporting CUPE Ontario’s resolution.
“I say with confidence that Israel is an Apartheid state. The trade union movement must move beyond resolutions, otherwise history will look back on us and spit on our graves.” (8)
Willie Madisha, at a trade union conference held in London, England.
"Indeed, for those of us who lived under South African Apartheid and fought for liberation from it and everything that it represented, Palestine reflects in many ways the unfinished business of our own struggle." (9)
Farid Esack, Writer, Visiting Professor at Harvard and Anti-apartheid Spokesperson
"They support Zionism, a version of global racist domination and apartheid based on the doctrine that Jews are superior to Arabs and therefore have a right to oppress them and occupy their country." (10)
Current COSATU President, Sidumo Dlamini
Via Pacific Free Press who provide the numbered links. I haven't checked them out.