An oped by Omar Mosleh recently in
the Vaughan Citizen, called “Province believes in freedom of oppression,
not expression” caught my eye. Not just because its topic – the Israeli/Arab
conflict – is of interest to me, but because of the column’s flaws in argument,
out of context quotes and wobbly logic.
Differing opinions are one thing. I
gobble up the Toronto Star and New York Times coverage of the Middle
East, noting the same single-minded politics as say, the Wall
Street Journal or National Review.
It’s a whole other issue when an
opinion writer corrals a litany of data to back up their case that, with a few
minutes of investigation, reveals the data is erroneous.
As a critical thinking exercise, I
put together this piece to take a magnifying glass to the article, line by
line. Its purpose is to help others spot potential problems in future editorials.
Mr. Mosleh begins by discussing MPP
Peter Shurman’s denouncing of Israeli Apartheid Week’s name. He then goes on
characterizing Ontario’s
government as indulging in "oppression".
As cute as the turn-of-phrase is in
the headline, no one to my mind is trying to oppress anyone in Ontario.
A political condemnation is different than oppression.
He writes, "This month,
Edmonton-Sherwood Park Conservative MP Tim Uppal had a similar motion blocked
by members of the NDP and Bloc Quebecois in the House of Commons. While
opposition called it a freedom of speech issue, Mr. Uppal said: "This
House is concerned about expressions of anti-Semitism under the guise of
Israeli Apartheid Week." The labelling of IAW as hateful is consistent
with attempts by B'nai Brith and the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs
Committee to discredit any criticism of Israel by classifying it as anti-Semitism."
I think that's a tremendous
mischaracterization of what B'nai Brith and CJPAC do. It is
wildly inaccurate, and I dare say outrageously false - to say that those
organizations perceive "any" criticism of Israel
as anti-Semitism. For example, CJPAC is busying itself getting people connected with politics of every stripe. They almost never make it their business to jump on people's criticism of Israel.
I'm guessing Mr. Mosleh might mean Canadian Jewish Congress...more outspoken in these matters. In which case, heck, even Peace Now - one of the
most outspoken Jewish mainstream Israel
criticizers in the world - has been a part of CJC's coalition.
I'd hardly think they'd join up if
CJC - one of Canada's
foremost fighters against Jew-hatred - thought "any criticism" of Israel
was anti-Semitism. In any case, such a broad, generalized swipe at two major Jewish organizations should not be taken lightly. Sadly, Mr. Mosleh offers no proof of his claims.
"Criticizing Israel
as a political entity is not anti-Semitism. Equating anti-Zionism with
anti-Semitism assumes all Jews support Israel's
actions, which is untrue."
What does, "criticizing Israel
as a political entity is not anti-Semitism" mean? I read and reread this
line several times over and presume "political entity" is a euphemism
for Israel's
existence. Dozens of invented nationalities have their own countries and no one
blinks. They include Pakistan,
Liberia, Jordan,
Iraq and the quasi-state
of Palestine. I have no idea why
when Jews seek to reconstitute their 3,000-year-old homeland, there's so much condemnation. Further, equating anti-Zionism with
anti-Semitism has never "assumed all Jews support Israel's
actions." I have no idea who made up that faulty premise. It's just never
been true. Besides, there are such thing as self-hating Jews. In fact, some
people use anti-Zionism as a disguise for anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is far
broader than the strictest definition of "hates Jews."
Anti-Zionism is long believed to be
a form of soft anti-Semitism because to say that every other nationality on
Earth should have a homeland - except for the Jews - smacks of discrimination,
bigotry and a double standard.
"After hearing Mr. Uppal's motion was defeated,
Sid Shniad, a spokesperson for Independent Jewish Voices, a Jewish group that
partakes in IAW said, "This shows courage to stand up to the Orwellian
attempts by Israel's supporters to bully Israel's critics into
silence.""
No one to my knowledge has ever
tried to bully Israel's
critics into silence on campus IAW events. In particular, "Israel's
supporters" generally have protested, demonstrated, and written letters to
the editor. I'm unsure of any kind of bullying, however, let alone by Israel's
supporters as a whole. Mind you, there quite possibly were small, marginalized
groups who endeavoured to zealously monitor any hate speech of IAW. But it
seems to me the very opposite was true: time and again the media reported on
anti-Israel groups who bullied Israel's
supporters on campus.
"The motions proposed by two
Conservative members illustrates the government's unconditional support of [Israel] and continued attempts to mute any
criticism of Israel."
Conservative MP Lawrence Cannon,
Minister of Foreign Affairs has on several occasions vocalized his vehement
disapproval of Israel's
settlement policy. He called them "illegal." That doesn't sound so
"unconditional" to me. The government, as a whole, could not muster a
majority vote in the House of Commons to denounce IAW. That doesn't sound so
"unconditional" to me.
I have yet to see examples of when
and where the government has been proactive in "muting any criticism of Israel."
"For example, in 2008, Canada
was the only country at the UN Human Rights Council to vote against a
resolution calling for "urgent international action to put an immediate
end to Israel's
siege of Gaza".
Those who know the UN Human Rights
Council's members would know that, with rare exception, they compete for
bragging rights of who can be most totalitarian. Hardly a good barometer for
determining what is good and right. In 2008, the members were: Azerbaijan,
Bangladesh, Canada,
Cameroon, China,
Cuba, Djibouti,
Jordan, Malaysia,
Mauritius, Nigeria,
Russian Federation,
Saudi Arabia, Senegal,
and Uruguay.
The resolution, said the Canadian ambassador, made no mention of the Hamas
rocket attacks against civilians in Israel.
Curiously, the majority of these
countries have never seen a UN Resolution against their own human rights
abuses.
"B'Tselem, an Israeli non-governmental
organization, estimated the conflict killed more than 1,300 Palestinians,
including about 700 civilians, 400 of which were women and children. The total
Israeli casualty was 13."
The wording here is interesting.
"The conflict killed" 1,300 Palestinians.
In any conflict the number of deaths - of combatants and civilians - is a
highly sensitive topic.
Numbers can be used for propaganda purposes by all sides. Even B'Tselem also
said that half the casualties were enemy combatants. Unfortunately, any war
takes with it collateral damage, as careful as Israel
was to minimize innocent loss of life. Former British Army Colonel Richard
Kemp, who thoroughly investigated the conflict, said that Israel
went above and beyond to minimize innocent casualties.
The International Institute for
Counter Terrorism had done extensive research on the casualties and weighed in
Hamas and Palestinian reports. They say that three quarters of the casualties
were some form of enemy combatant.
B'Tselem's statements carefully
sidestep Hamas' use of human shields, its use of mosques and schools for
military purposes, and its indiscriminate 10,000 rocket attacks on Israeli
civilians. I'm not so sure B'Tselem is the right place to go for unbiased
reports.
"In 2006, after Hezbollah launched missiles
into Israel
that killed five Israeli soldiers, Israel
responded with a massive bombing campaign in southern Lebanon"
How many thousands
of rocket attacks should Israel see before it responds? Hezbollah, a terrorist
organization, has been a clear and present danger to Israelis for over three
decades. Hezbollah stepped up attacks even after Israel left Lebanon in 2000.
As for the
"massive bombing campaign," - a subjective term, intimating barbarism
no less - in 1999, NATO carpet-bombed Yugoslavia, and no one said a peep. Often, self-defensive
measures mean bringing a gun to a knife fight, to ensure that the decades-long
antagonists don't come back tomorrow.
"The Associated Press estimates more than 1,000
Lebanese civilians died as a result. The total loss of Israeli life was under
200, including military and civilians. The bombing severely damaged civilian
infrastructure and caused the largest oil spill in the history of the Mediterranean.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper called this response "measured"."
I've never believed
that the relative number of casualties determines justice.
Several reports have said that of the 1,000 Lebanese killed, about three
quarters were Hezbollah guerrillas. An interesting fact: Hezbollah were using
Russian-made anti-tank guided missiles that damaged 52 Israeli tanks. That's
what Israel had been working against.
Further, imagine if Israel did what Hamas and Hezbollah have done - fire
missiles by the thousands indiscriminately from, and to, densely populated
areas.
As for civilian
infrastructure targeted by Israel, Hezbollah used Beirut's Rafiq Hariri International Airport to import weapons. For its part, Hezbollah rained
rockets in the direction of two of Israel's hospitals, seriously injuring eight. Luckily, more
weren't injured.
About 400,000
Israelis fled northern Israel because of the random terror inflicted by the
Hezbollah rockets.
Further, it’s quite
easy to Google a keyword and pull out a convenient proof to prove anything.
Rarely does paraphrasing such a proof give it requisite context. Harper also
said that “both sides” should “cease fire” – morally equating the antagonists
and defenders.
"Residents of Gaza and the West Bank are not
permitted to vote in Israeli elections, must routinely cross checkpoints and
are not allowed to use the same roads or water sources as Jewish settlers in the
West Bank."
Residents of Gaza
and the West Bank vote for their own leaders in the
Palestinian parliament. The US and Canada
have checkpoints, too - they're called border crossings, a normal procedure
when moving from one country to another. I'm not saying it's as easy as
shopping off to Buffalo. But so
long as Israel
perceives outside threats, there's little choice.
Sadly, a few roads are closed due
to security considerations. It really is sad, but if citizen safety is at
stake, there are poor choices, and even poorer choices. I wish it were
different.
"Even Jamal Zahalka, an Arab member of the
Israeli legislature, said while Israeli-Arabs technically enjoy equal rights as
Israeli-Jews, they face racism from Israeli policemen and civil servants."
That's a hugely damning charge
against Israeli policemen and civil servants. Has Jamal Zahalka done a study on
this kind of racism? Does he have numbers of back it up, or was it strictly
hearsay or his own experiences?
This kind of throwaway line should
never be used to prove anything unless there is serious documentation to back
up the claims.
"Furthermore, the 500-mile separation wall that
runs around the West Bank has been decried by the
International Court of Justice and Amnesty International as a violation of
humanitarian law because it encroaches into pre-1967 Palestinian territory,
limits mobility and annexes farmers from their fields."
I guarantee that 500 miles isn't a
"wall," particularly since the barrier is only about 400 miles. Of
it, 99% is not an actual wall, but fence. Since the erection of this separation
barrier, the number of terrorist homicide bombings against Israeli civilians
has dropped precipitously.
Upon Israeli-Palestinian final
status negotiations, Israel
can tear down parts of the barrier - as it has already - to accommodate court
decisions and peace agreements. Peculiarly, the ICJ and Amnesty have been
pretty quiet when it comes to Palestinian militants' activity.
"Serious humanitarian issues are occurring in Israel
that need to be discussed openly and candidly. We should have the right to
criticize any country."
There is no shortage of
organizations and groups who openly discuss serious humanitarian issues in or
about Israel.
No one's ever taken away anyone's right to criticize a country. But is IAW
strictly just about "criticism", or, as Natan Sharansky put it, is it
singularly focused on the 3Ds: demonization, delegitimization and double
standards?
"Just because the Conservatives are more
concerned with identity politics and appeasing powerful Jewish lobby groups
like the Canadian Jewish Congress, doesn't mean we should ignore Israeli human
rights issues."
He sneaks in a premise - that the
Conservatives are puppets of the "powerful Jewish lobby" - and ask us
to believe it's self-evident. Whenever I put forth an accusation, especially
one of such damning generalizations, I always back it up with an example or
two. And particularly if it's conspiratorial sounding - such as an apparent
cabal of needling Jews dictating to our elected leaders, who apparently march
in lockstep. Of course, this is just a tendentious assumption.
Nevermind, Rick Salutin of the
Globe seems to think that Stephen Harper's fondness for Israel
comes from his church - not the Jewish lobby. Notwithstanding, it could also be
possible that the Conservatives stand by Israel because they believe she tries
very hard to take the moral high ground, not necessitating any outside coercion
to state the case. To wit, it's Conservative ideology-driven, rather than the
cart-horse of any lobby. Its predecessor, the Reform Party, and the Canadian
Alliance, were pro-Israel even before Jews began voting for them!
Nevermind again, really no lobby is
necessary. Jews are clueing in that the Liberals and NDP haven’t been so
friendly to Israel.
"Detractors of IAW say the event makes Jewish
students uncomfortable by creating a "hostile" atmosphere. At any
demonstration, someone will cross the line into hateful speech, but this is the
exception and not the rule."
Well, that seems to be the huge
problem. Even when the exception occurs, just a few terrible incidents of
physical assault, hatemongering, students being spat at, and shouting down
students becomes a big deal.
"Thomas Walkom, national affairs columnist for
the Toronto Star, said he did not find or hear any evidence of anti-semitism at
an IAW event he attended at Ryerson this month."
Thomas Walkom is no expert on anti-Semitism.
According to his online bio, he was the Star's Queen's Park columnist for eight
years. Before that, he wrote for the Globe and Mail - first as an Ottawa
parliamentary reporter, then as Tokyo
bureau chief. He has a PhD in economics.
Maybe he was lucky enough to have
attended "an" IAW event that contained no anti-Semitism.
"In The Citizen's sister paper, The Thornhill
Liberal, a column on IAW mentions the significant medical advances Israel has
contributed and notes that Premier Dalton McGuinty will visit Israel in May. It
concludes Ontario attendees and
organizers "may want to consider moving their venue next year to a neutral
location", just not Ontario.
So because Israel
has done such great things in the health and trade sectors, that means we
should ignore human rights issues there?"
That’s my article.
That's a straw man and mischaracterization. This is completely out of context and not what I wrote. The entire quote is
this:
'While the Ontario-based attendees and
organizers at the "Israeli Apartheid Week" will be cheerleading a
boycott of Israel, they may want to consider moving their venue to a neutral location
off territorial waters. They'd be hypocrites, otherwise: the business these
folks conduct and money they spend within the Province of Ontario may very well be channeled to an Israeli
innovation somewhere along the line. And Heaven forbid we wouldn't want that to
help underwrite any new life-saving discovery.'
I never said anyone should
"ignore human rights." That wasn't the thrust of my article.
The entire premise of my article
was missed: Basically, if you want to boycott Israel,
go whole hog - but at least know what you're getting yourself into. That is,
for example, you'd be punishing those who benefit from life-saving procedures.
It was even more simple: The point
of an economic boycott against Israel
is to stop doing business with those who do business with Israel.
As it happens, and what my article expanded on, was that Ontario
does a lot of business with Israel.
So my point, facetiously, was that just by mere optics, it looks bad if
boycotters do all sorts of business with Ontario,
a province that does business with Israel.
The line that he is referring to
was a tongue in cheek suggestion as evidenced by my "off territorial
waters" ending. I'd honestly never expect conference planners to rent a
cruise ship and sail 12 miles out for next year's event. Indeed, that's absurd.
"Not only is this idea absurd, it is also
hypocritical. Do we ignore China's
because of its contribution to the global economy? No one declares Islamophobia
when Saudi Arabia
is criticized for inequality issues, and they have a desirable stockpile of
fossil fuels."
Of course it's absurd, but that's
not what I said.
Now, onto Saudi
Arabia. It's interesting, because that
country probably qualifies in the top ten least free countries in the world,
but IAW spends an inordinate time chiding and demonizing democratic and free Israel.
I find that strange.
"I do not agree with the term "Israeli Apartheid",
but I do feel discussion surrounding human rights issues in the Palestinian
Territories is warranted as long as
the administration promotes a fair, tolerant discussion."
Now wait a second. How come when
referring to Saudi Arabia's
horrors, the word used was "inequality issues," but with reference to
the Palestinian Territories,
it's about "human rights issues"?
"But this becomes difficult, considering
perhaps the most disturbing part of this issue is that the government is
denouncing demonstrations at universities - the very institutions created to
encourage critical thought."
The government isn't just
denouncing demonstrations; it denounced what was contained in those
demonstrations. These weren't demonstrations where people sang "Give Peace
a Chance," or chanted "God bless the people of Haiti."
There's no shortage of documented
cases at Toronto universities of
young people waving placards that encourage wiping Israel
off the map, backing of terrorist organizations and signs about the
"holocaust" of Gaza.
Here's an interesting piece from the Post.
I hardly consider any of this
"critical thought." Critical thinking skills come from a fair command
of more than one perspective. IAW has never presented the spectrum of dialog
about the Middle East. That may be why, in part, IAW
has, at least to an extent, inspired many to foment their hostility.
There certainly isn't a real open dialogue, except with each other and, that's
not really the point of free speech.
"Meanwhile, this week, American conservative
pundit Ann Coulter is speaking at Canadian universities. Ms Coulter has made
controversial statements in the past that could be construed as hateful, such
as "not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims".
At the University of Western
Ontario this week, Ms Coulter told a Muslim
student she should "take a camel" when asked about her statement
Muslims should be banned from airplanes."
First, I have yet to find any
recording, written or audio, of Ms. Coulter saying Muslims should be
"banned" from airplanes.
I was there to see Ms Coulter
speak. If he was there too, he’d know that "camel" comment was not
really what was said. A single news report abridged the two-minute response to
a twelve-word sentence. Ms. Coulter tried to answer seriously but was shouted
down by the audience to give the answer they wanted. So she made a joke.
Since then, a flurry of media
picked up the out of context quote, parroting it as a terse, intolerant
response to the Moslem student's question. (cf: Susan Cole of Now Magazine)
Meanwhile, though, people should
know that Ms Coulter and the student were trying to out-sarcasm each other.
When Ms Coulter - known for her biting satire - suggested not long after 9/11
that Moslems "take a magic carpet ride" instead of fly on airplanes,
she was telling a cheeky joke. The student in London
asked, "since I don't have a magic carpet, what mode of transportation do
you think I should use?" There you have it. Neither were taking each one
seriously.
"As a Muslim-Canadian, do I find this statement
offensive? Yes. But do I feel Ms Coulter should be banned from Canadian schools
because of her views? No. I am eager to see if the federal Tories will make a
motion denouncing Ms Coulter's words as hateful."
No, the Tories won't denounce her.
It's because I've never known a government, be it on the right or the left, who
busied themselves, ad infinitum, denouncing any select quotes from hundreds of
university campus speakers, cross-country, year after year. And they're surely
not going to set an ugly precedent with Ms Coulter.
Many offensive things are said on
campus and what we find offensive is subjective.
Mr. Mosleh’s line of reasoning is this: a) finds Ms Coulter's (out of context)
statement "offensive", and then b) slippery slopes that statement to
"hateful" - how did offensive get to hateful?
"My sneaking suspicion is they won't because
the government hasn't demonstrated much concern toward human rights issues,
unless, of course, they run counter to its own views."
The government hasn't demonstrated
much concern (at all) toward human right issues (in general)?
It's another throwaway line with a
damning assertion with no proof, that sounds incriminating but holds no water.
I'd go so far as to say that
Canada, through its government and various agencies, are indeed very concerned
about the welfare of Palestinians – which I assume is what Mr. Mosleh is
talking about.
Last year, Canada
gave $4 million for Gaza relief. Canada
contributed more than $320 million over five years in support of the peace
process and of Palestinian reform and development in the priority areas of
security, governance and prosperity. The Canadian International Development
Agency (CIDA) has provided more than $400 million for development initiatives
in the West Bank and Gaza,
assistance to Palestinian refugees and support to the Middle East Peace
Process.
(In contrast, the US
gives about a billion in aid to Israel
per year. Canada,
with a tenth the population and nowhere near the economic might, has ponied up
almost as much per capita to the PA).
And that's not even mentioning what
Canada has done
for tons of other nations and their need for various kinds of assistance. Canada's
probably up there with any industrialized nation in rallying against human
rights abuses, worldwide.
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