By Daniel Smajovits
Tribune Correspondent
MONTREAL – Israel Apartheid Week, which last year reared its ugly head on the University of Toronto campus, is now set to stage a repeat performance. Only this time around it has spread its reach to include the Montreal campuses of Concordia and McGill.
Before Montreal’s version of the Israeli Apartheid week began, it became clear that students were not the only target being misled, but Concordia University as well.
According to a source close to the Concordia Student Union, the Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) organization along with the Women’s Studies department at the University had reportedly misinformed and deceived the proper authorities into holding major events from this controversial week at the Samuel Bronfman Building, formerly the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) headquarters in downtown Montreal.
By using the Women’s Studies department as the group which requested the facility and subsequently providing a very general description of the event, the SPHR effectively booked and was prepared to hold two major events at the site. The Concordia Security department is responsible for all event bookings.
“The intifada, the Unilateral Israeli Disengagement from Gaza, the Hamas Victory and Beyond: A Political Lecture and Slideshow on Israel’s tactics of Colonial Control” and “Living in exile: Memories of the Nabka, Ethnic Cleansing, and the Right of Return” were both scheduled to take place in the former head office of the CJC.
The symbolism of holding anti-Israeli events at this building is inescapable. The National Archives of Canadian Jewish Congress are located on the ground level as well as the complex still bears the name of its main contributor, Samuel Bronfman. Additionally, the building still has Jewish artwork, highlighted by a stained glass panel which commemorates the Holocaust and is visible to all guests upon entering the building.
The events were to take place beginning on Monday, February 13th and continue throughout the week. It is unknown how the fury of the Jewish community was brought to the attention of Concordia officials in order for the venue to be changed from the Bronfman building to another location.
Concordia University has become infamous throughout the world for its heated Arab-Israeli conflicts on campus, most notably, the riot of over one thousand demonstrators which took place in September 2002, preventing former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking at the University. The latest development represents the continuation of the on-campus hostilities aimed at dehumanizing Israel and its Jewish citizens.
Eric Abrams, a McGill University student, felt that they have the right as citizens to express their views, but they are humiliating themselves for holding such an event. “[It’s] Freedom of expression, they have the privilege to do whatever they want in terms of expressing themselves,” he said. “Due to the fact of all the disengagements and concessions Israel has made. It’s a shame they decided to go on the offensive and demonize Israel, it’s a shame on their behalf”.
Students at both McGill and Concordia Universities were stunned and dismayed when they were informed about the planned anti-Israel week. “Associating apartheid to Israel is a hypocritical denial of democratic values” said McGill Biology student Michael Roskies “Free speech and propaganda seems to go hand in hand for some”.
The same sentiments were felt on Concordia’s campus about the event and its organizers. "Using the term Apartheid is not only a blatant misrepresentation of the realities of the Middle East, but an affront to the memory and struggle of those who died in the battle against the true Apartheid regime of South Africa,” said one Concordia student. “The organizers of this week need to go back and do their homework - they fail to grasp what Apartheid was and what Israel is".
Hillel Montreal, including the chapters at McGill and Concordia, was conspicuously silent on this issue. It did not have and would not produce an official comment regarding the Israeli Apartheid week, the choice of venue by the SPHR or the change of venue by Concordia University.
Meanwhile, the Toronto Hillel effectively held to its position of last year, by choosing not to protest the U. of T. event. Tilly Shames, Israel affairs director for Hillel of Greater Toronto, in an interview with the Canadian Jewish News said that “It’s the name that we take issue with. That’s what we find offensive.”
By contrast, the national Jewish human rights group, B’nai Brith Canada, publicly protested the event, and queried why the University would lend its premises yet again to a conference whose very mandate and content amount to a “hate fest”, and whose radicalized agenda delegitimizes the right of the Jewish people to self determination in their ancient homeland
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