De-Normalizing Slander

Finally, one Canadian university student union has taken a stand to refuse legitimacy to the group Students Against Israel Apartheid. The University of Manitoba Students Union voted to strip that group of official club status, and one might hope that this move would signal a shift in recognition of the malign and unsavoury politics behind a movement that considers itself a righteous supporter of liberation from oppression of a people who have been 'oppressed' as a result of its own support of deadly violence against a neighbour.

Students Against Israel Apartheid enjoys cross-Canada support in universities whose student unions claim that the views and values of all students must be equally respected. Which seems reasonable enough, when those views and values do not threaten the dignity, safety and security of other students who are deleteriously impacted by the views of a strident minority claiming to be representative of the larger student body.

The two-page resolution resulting from a 19-to-15 student council vote to deny student union funding or the use of activity space in student-union controlled buildings holds that the decision to delist SAIA under the terms of the Manitoba Human Rights Code is justified, under the distinction that the group was engaged in "discrimination" and "harassment".

The document revealed further its concern that as a result of that discrimination and harassment practised by the Students Against Israel Apartheid pressure group, other student union members "being Zionists, experience fear for their safety during 'Israeli Apartheid Week".

This vote and the concomitant document was proceeded with despite the legal opinion of the student union countering that "the actions of SAIA were well within the grounds of legally protected and acceptable political discourse"; that the motion could very well place the student union "at a significant risk of committing a breach of [their] legal obligations".

It seems that this initiative on the part of the University of Manitoba student union while yet unique within Canadian universities, may herald a trend toward all such student unions deciding after due consideration that the values and views and conclusions so forcefully expounded by the SAIA group do not reflect those of the student union, nor would they wish to continue supporting them.

If so that would represent a departure from the current situation where universities like York in Ontario enthusiastically support the yearly week of denigrating and slandering a sovereign nation whose purpose is to defend itself from violent attacks emanating from neighbours whose charter clearly states an Islamist-led determination to destroy the State of Israel.

Portraying Israel and its armed forces as human-rights-abusing militants targeting the national aspirations of another people, another culture, another religious devotion plays well to the latent anti-Semitism common enough in most societies, emboldening those who feel justified in blaming Israel and Jews for all the miseries that the world imposes upon itself, is neither just nor acceptable.

It is past time that Canada's seats of higher education engage in a little introspection over this matter, becoming a little more informed about the intricacies and the problems besetting a culture and a religion that stands out as different in a greater geography that has historically given little tolerance to such differences.