One of the gravest and most threatening problems in the situation is the Arab boycott and blockade of Israel. This boycott is illegal, a violation of the U.N. Charter and of international law; because it has not been stopped, it has grown into full-scale economic warfare-not only against Israel, but against the free world as well. Its corrupting influence has fouled up the channels of world trade and commerce, subjected American business firms and business-men to discrimination on religious grounds, and involved the U.S. Government in the Suez Canal problem as well as in several embarrassing situations.This Arab boycott tried to prevent businessmen from trading with Israel, and air and shipping lines from serving Israel, by threatening them with reprisals and blacklists. They are not only prohibited, according to the boycott, from trading in Arab countries, to use Arab ports, and to enjoy the other usual courtesies and rights, but also they may not be owned or operated by Jews.While the Arab governments respect a decisive position, they exploit weaknesses; they did not retaliate when several European governments, among them Switzerland, West Germany, the Netherlands, brushed aside Arab boycott demands and vigorously rejected Arab threats of reprisal. On the other hand, the list of American firms and individuals affected by the Arab boycott continues to grow.Arab pressures were so strong that some companies yielded to their demands. The major American and British oil companies have yielded to Arab boycott demands. Passengers on cruise ships and American airlines on Near East routes are advised that those of Jewish faith will be denied tourist privileges in certain Arab ports and stopping points. A number of American freighters have been put on the Arab blacklist because they had business dealings with Israel.Yesterday the Lions International was reported placed on the Arab blacklist. This morning I learned that the Studebaker-Lark Corp. and the International Business Machines Corp. have also been placed on the Arab boycott list. A number of our moving-picture actors, actresses, and singers are on the Arab blacklist, and the showing of their films or sale of their records is prohibited because they either are Jewish or appeared at a Jewish fund-raising function. The New York State law against employment discrimination was invoked against Aramco because the oil company refused to hire Jews in its New York offices out of deference to Saudi Arabia where its wells are located and which supports the Arab boycott. And there is also the economic problem created by counter boycott action against firms which have succumbed to Arab pressure.
Tuesday, November 30, 2021
- Tuesday, November 30, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
Monday, November 29, 2021
White Noise and the Haters of Israel
To me, this story of horror and triumph is Israel’s ethos, encapsulated within a single life. When Israelis and Jews speak, they speak as people who have been chewed up and spit out by history; as people who have crawled out of history by their fingernails. When they invoke morality, it is as people with the most intimate knowledge of the horrors of life. And they know what these horrors have to teach us about how tenuous and compromised morality can be, and what it means to live in the absence of morality. They can speak to its inherent complications, compromises, and desperations. They know, in other words, of what they speak. They possess an ethos their enemies cannot, because they have earned it.Promised Government action on anti-Semitism is just blah, blah, blah
The saints, on the other hand, believe that one can simply assert one’s morality and be done with it — that by claiming to be moral, they become moral. The horrors of life are not just irrelevant but inconceivable to them, because they have never known these horrors. Nor can they conceive of the inevitable consequences of these horrors, because as a sheltered and privileged class, they have always lived without consequences. They will never have to pay the cost of what they demand of Israel and the Jewish people. This is how they can not only advocate hurling the Jews back into statelessness and exile, but actually claim it is the moral thing to do. It is how they can justify and even praise the wanton violence they and their allies incite. It is how they can remain blissfully ignorant of what all this says about their morality and their ethos.
What it says is quite clear: the saints have no ethos. They are a morally bankrupt privileged caste who, in their fantasies of rectitude, presume to judge a people who have known horrors of which they cannot begin to conceive. These are people who weep when Whole Foods runs out of kale, and then condemn those who have survived the gulag. And in a supreme act of hubris, the saints not only judge these refugees from history, but consider themselves their moral superiors. The admonitions of such people can, in the end, never be anything more than white noise.
Other European states who have expressly adopted the definition have voiced no similar reservations and the Minister failed to identify which of the illustrative examples the Government takes exception to and why. At a time of escalating anti-Semitism in Ireland and criticism of Israel being freely and increasingly used as a Trojan horse to justify and disguise the spread of anti-Semitic tropes, there is a need for greater Government clarity.Squash world championship in Malaysia canceled over refusal to allow in Israelis
O’Gorman assured Devlin of the Government’s commitment to an anti-racism strategy, to the enactment of new hate crime legislation and to preventing anti-Semitism and other forms of racism. He also reminded him of the funding annually provided by the State for many years to support the national Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration.
Memorialising Jews murdered in the Holocaust in today’s world generates enthusiasm and is not politically complicated. It seems that protecting today’s Jews against escalating anti-Semitism in Ireland generates less enthusiasm and is deemed so complicated that the Government is incapable of endorsing illustrative examples of anti-Semitism agreed and adopted by most EU member states.
The enactment of new anti-hate or anti-racism legislation will have no practical application to countering anti-Semitism if unaccompanied by a working definition of anti-Semitism and illustrative examples. In that context ministerial talk of action being taken to prevent anti-Semitism, to use the words of Greta Thunberg, is just so much “ blah, blah, blah”.
The World Squash Federation announced on Monday that the men’s world championship scheduled for next week in Kuala Lumpur was canceled after Malaysian authorities refused to allow entry to Israeli athletes.
In its statement, WSF said it “believes in an open and inclusive” event, and it was forced to cancel “due to the lack of confirmation over the issuing of visas and travel authorizations.”
Malaysia and Israel have no diplomatic ties, and Israelis are barred from visiting the South Asian country. In 2019, Malaysia was stripped of the right to host the World Para Swimming Championships for threatening to refuse Israeli athletes, and the competition was moved to London. This year’s tournament was moved to Malaysia from New Zealand because of coronavirus-related travel restrictions.
WSF President Zena Wooldridge indicated that Malaysia’s Olympic officials worked to allow the entry of Israeli athletes, but were unsuccessful in persuading the government to reverse course.
“I would like to extend my sincere appreciation to the International Olympic Committee and the Olympic Council of Malaysia for their unwavering efforts to influence the highest authorities of Malaysia to ensure the ability of all participating teams including Israel to enter Malaysia and compete, without any political discrimination, in accordance with the principles and rules of the Olympic Charter,” said Wooldridge. “It is important to WSF that no nation who wishes to compete misses out on the event.”
- Monday, November 29, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
Palestinian prisoner Ayad Al-Harimi has suspended his hunger strike after 61 days after Israeli occupation authorities agreed to release him on 4 March 2022.On 11 November, Palestinian prisoner Miqdad Al-Qawasmi agreed to end his hunger strike, which was ongoing for 113 days, after Israeli prison authorities agreed to release him in February.
The Most Legitimate State on Earth
For a brief moment in the late 1980s, with communism passing away in Europe and Central Asia and its serf states breathing free, you may have been forgiven for assuming “The End of History” was correct, that the debate about which worldview best guarantees peace and prosperity had been decided, and that proponents of global empire would henceforth speak more softly, if at all. But then came the European Union, the cheerleaders of a hegemonic Pax Americana, an increasingly confident and expansive China, and the captains of the global oligopoly, all braying praises to their new world orders and warning us that attempts to resist them meant returning to carnage and chaos.
If such resistance could be embodied in a state, it would be the Jewish one. Israel may be an enthusiastic participant in international diplomacy and the high-tech global economy, but it is not in any danger of being assimilated into the borg. Its upper crust still sees itself as committed primarily to national interests, not cosmopolitan pieties. And it is not afraid to defy an empire or two for the sake of its survival—as it did, for example, when it bombed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq and was rewarded only with condemnation from the United States, the United Nations, and everyone in between.
But even more than Israel’s actions, it is the country’s essence that is so troubling to advocates of a global moral and political order that preaches sameness, not difference. Israel’s existence, and its continuing success, are an intimation that the light unto the nations may shine not from the embrace of universalist dogma, whether proclaimed from on high in Brussels or Beijing or Cupertino, but rather from a small nation that insists on living by its own traditions and happy to simply lead by example.
The idea that particularism is not an atavistic survival technique from a benighted past, but in fact the wellspring of human culture and social process, is as wicked to the Davos set as the Peace of Westphalia was to the Roman Catholic Church. To those who despise the idea of national sovereignty and national character, to those who want us all to watch the same shows, buy the same goods, and obey the same regulations and standards of virtue promulgated by a single authority, there can be no greater threat than the continuing existence of a strong, prosperous, and free Jewish state with its capital in Jerusalem. And what case can be made for a particularistic national existence in countries like Japan and France—to say nothing of more brittle constructions like Nigeria, Brazil, or the United States of America—if Israel is judged to be illegitimate?
Israel’s continuing success in the face of universal condemnation and scorn is a reminder that Herder’s celebration of difference was a solution to the universalist dreams of Pope Innocent X and his ideological successors, who nearly drowned the world in blood. Today, the universalist set foolishly insists that there is no greater crime than the belief that people and nations are and should continue to be different rather than the same. Feel free to ignore them.
On this day the Palestinians rejected statehood because they didn’t want to live next to a Jewish state. How has that approach worked for them? @YosephHaddad and I review:
— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) November 29, 2021
??Partition plan
??1948
??1967
??First & Second intifada
??2008, 2012, 2014, 2021
pic.twitter.com/5LBlNgsDDt
A report immediately following the UN #partitionplan detailing how the Arabs chose violence instead of statehood. pic.twitter.com/kJoro65cYN
— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) November 29, 2021
- Monday, November 29, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
- Monday, November 29, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
The historic connection of Jews to Hebron, to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, to the heritage of the patriarchs and matriarchs, is unquestionable. Recognition of this connection must be beyond all controversyYou won’t agree about everything, but we need to remember that ‘we are all one man’s sons.’...We all have shared roots from this cave. Alongside that, we have to remember that our roots are not the only ones that go back to this cave. Especially today, and especially here, in this holy space dedicated to all sons of Abraham, we have to continue dreaming of peace, between all faiths and creeds in this land, and to condemn any type of hatred or violence.
Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh rejected the claims of Israeli President Isaac Herzog that the Jews have a historic right to the city of Hebron.Shtayyeh stated that Herzog's statements are an attempt to impose more false facts in the Arab Islamic city, as a prelude to Judaizing and extending control over it, and subjecting its original inhabitants to the apartheid regime whose features are evident in the streets and lanes of the Old City, which is subjected to ethnic cleansing and racist discrimination. .Shtayyeh condemned Herzog’s provocative intrusion into the Ibrahimi Mosque, warning of its dangerous repercussions, and called on the United Nations and UNESCO, which placed the Haram al-Sharif on the World Heritage List, to take urgent action to stop these violations of Islamic and Christian sanctities, especially in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. And the Ibrahimi Mosque in the city of Hebron.
Jews accurately say that a holy site was theirs first, and they are willing to share but not forfeit their rights. The Palestinians say that the Jews have no historic rights to anything in the region and are trying to steal it all from them.
Facts don't matter - the Palestinians take a political position, that they are the only people with a legitimate claim to the region, and they twist history and archaeology and common sense to their bigoted, antisemitic viewpoint.
It happens all the time. But Westerners cannot grasp the concept that Palestinians lie so openly, contradicting what Muslims have themselves admitted for centuries. So the false Palestinian claims get enshrined at UNESCO because no one wants to upset them.
- Monday, November 29, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
WHEREAS the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU) membership is a diverse mix of students of different nationalities, ethnicities, places of origin, and religions whose views sometimes conflict; andWHEREAS Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects freedom of expression everywhere in Canada subject to statutory limits of hate speech, including at UTSC; andWHEREAS the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union’s equity statement assures students that “any form of discrimination and harassment will not be tolerated;” andWHEREAS the SCSU equity statement further declares: “We all have an obligation to ensure that an open and inclusive space, free of hate is established;” andWHEREAS the SCSU is obligated to follow the principles articulated in the University of Toronto’s Policy on the Recognition of Student Groups, stating, “the University will not attempt to censor, control or interfere with any group on the basis of its philosophy, beliefs, interests or opinions expressed unless and until these lead to activities which are illegal or which infringe the rights and freedoms already mentioned;” andWHEREAS the SCSU membership includes Jewish students, including citizens of the State of Israel, who are protected under Ontario’s Human Rights Code (1962) based on creed, ancestry, place of origin, and/or ethnic origin, defined as “social, cultural or religious practices drawn from a common heritage or a shared historical past;” andWHEREAS provisions of the Ontario’s Human Rights Code protects Jews, including Jewish students, from discrimination in the provisions of services and by vocational associations and unions, including from discrimination by the SCSU or in the services the union provides students at UTSC; andWHEREAS most Israeli citizens are compelled to serve in the Israeli military or perform mandatory national service.BE IT RESOLVED that SCSU re-affirm its commitment to ensuring that Jewish students are unencumbered by discriminatory policies or actions by the union or its officers, as promised by the union’s equity statement, and the Ontario Human Rights Code, by recognizing the right of Jewish students, like all students, to organize & advertise events to express their political, cultural and/or religious views; andBE IT RESOLVED that SCSU executives oppose conditions that discriminate against, or significantly impede, full Jewish participation in political, religious, cultural, academic, or social life on and off campus. To do so, the union, its executives, and staff will:1. Continue to recognize Jewish student groups, including Jewish student groups affiliated with outside organizations, consistent with the University of Toronto’s Policy on the Recognition of Campus Groups; and2. Protect the right of Jewish students to enjoy their Charter rights of a freedom of expression on campus, including the articulation of political views, the practice of religious beliefs, and the display of Jewish symbols.3. Fund all recognized student groups who apply for, and qualify for, union funding for student programming events through normal processeswithout exceptions for particular political beliefs held by the student groups, the views expressed by participants or organizers of such events, or the political views of co-sponsors of the events.4. Refrain from placing restrictions on Jewish students or Jewish student organizations seeking to affiliate with outside organizations when organizing, funding, or advertising events beyond the limits established by the University of Toronto’s Policy on the Recognition of Student Groups5. Oppose and condemn hostile behavior directed against Jews because they are Jews, or Israeli students because they are Israeli citizens, by executives and staff of the SCSU, and discourage any such behavior in social media forums controlled by the SCSU, its executives, and staff.6. Eschew the use of union participation in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as an inhibition of student participation in campus organizations like Hillel, or community organizations like UJA or Independent Jewish Voices.7. Defend the principles of academic freedom, by ensuring that students, staff and faculty at UTSC enjoy opportunities to:
• attend lectures, workshops and films about Israel and/or Palestine,
• participate in joint research with Israelis or Israeli institutions,
• enroll in classes offered in conjunction with Israeli universities,
• travel or study abroad in Israel, or with organizations that support Israel or Zionism.8. Disavow remarks or rhetoric that may be seen as antisemitic, including statements that:
• amplify historical tropes about Jewish power;
• perpetuate stereotypes about Jews;
• blame Jewish students for the actions of the Israeli government or military;9. Be mindful of conflating support for Israelis or Palestinians with support for actions by the governments of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and their allies, or other groups operating within Israel and Palestine;BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED thatregardless of positions taken by the union on contemporary politics in Israel, Palestine, or more broadly in the Middle East,the union will continue to support campus events through normal processes including but not restricted to, educational events about the Holocaust, Jewish religious beliefs, or Jewish history,or current events that are organized or sponsored, in full or in part, by campus and community groups that support Israel or Zionism.BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that to avoid discriminating on the basis of ancestry or place of origin, the union will ensure that neither prior service in the Israeli military, nor reserve service in the Israeli military, will disqualify students, faculty and staff from engagement with the union.BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the union will not refrain from co-sponsoring activities or entering into contracts with organizations that include participants, directors, or employees who have served in the Israeli military, or continue to hold reserve status in the Israeli military, solely on that basis.
Sunday, November 28, 2021
- Sunday, November 28, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
Come celebrate Hanukkah this year building a radical, loving, anti-Zionist Jewish movement for liberation.
Who was liberated in the original Chanukah again? Oh yes, the people whose descendants JVP wants to exile!
Hanukkah means rededication.
Actually, it means "dedication."
This Hanukkah Against Apartheid, we rededicate our resolve to be bold and win against all that is life-taking and land-grabbing.
Oh? They are against Hamas, who just murdered a Jew? No, of course not.
It is said, the Temple was cleaned, sanctified, and rededicated after the Maacabees [sic] won the fight. Here, in diaspora, we can recognize the “Temple” as what we are building together: Judaism beyond Zionism. The Temple is where we practice our treasured values of justice, freedom, and equality; it is this practice that sanctifies the Temple.
JVP's' Temple has been replaced with a new, symbolic "Temple."
Sounds somewhat familiar....
Oh, yes, it sounds like Christian supersessionism! In various flavors of Christianity, the Jewish Temple has been replaced with the Christian people - or with Jesus himself, just like the Jewish people have been replaced with Christians.
Jewish Voice for Peace cannot stomach an actual Temple being central to Judaism. They take a page from Christianity and replace the Temple that is a central component of Judaism with whatever they consider important - in the process, saying that real Judaism is obsolete and their replacement theology is the real thing.
Similarly, JVP cannot subscribe to real Judaism, because in real Judaism the Temple and Jerusalem as central - and they don't want Jews to have any attachment to those. So they replace them.
You can call it a replacement theology.
"Jewish" Voice for Peace cannot possibly accept real Judaism. So it has to make up its own religion of anti-Zionism and calls it Judaism. And if that religion borrows some concepts from Christianity, well, why not? That religion was a success!
And then JVP writes something that sounds truly Christian:
Scroll down for JVP and friends’ virtual Hanukkah offerings.
A Call to Action: Join the Maccabees
The Maccabean victory over Greece, the world’s major military power of the time, was miraculous. Perhaps even more miraculous was the third major successful effort to reestablish an independent Jewish state.Edwin Black: Yom HaGirush—The inside story of ‘Expulsion Day’
The modern-day Greek nations were first the Ottoman Empire and then the British Empire, upon which the “sun never set”; that is, until the British departure from Israel.
Last week, we witnessed the murder of Eli Kay. He immigrated to Israel on his own in his teens; served with distinction in the esteemed paratroopers’ unit; studied in a yeshivah; worked as a tour guide in the Old City; and was engaged to be married. A newly commissioned Israel Defense Forces paratrooper who attended his crowded funeral said that you could sum up the mood in one word: “determination.”
In other words, if you think that terrorists or their sympathizers are going to have even a shred of impact on our will, you are sorely mistaken. This only strengthens our resolve. We are the Maccabees. With God’s help, we have vanquished the world’s largest empires. More of us are coming, and we are building families and our Jewish future right here in the land of Israel.
This year, when celebrating the joy of Hanukkah, we must make it more than a superficial effort. Remember those who fought and found the oil to light our way.
Thank God for the miracle of Israel then and now. Commit to support the mission of the Maccabees of today. Support our people and help build the State of Israel.
No one can show me any identification of Arabs as Palestinians before 1964. On “The Edwin Black Show,” I have publicly asked for just one example. Yet the “Palestinian” cause has been championed—based on false history, fake facts, Jewish ignorance and the forgotten realities of 850,000 expelled Jews.Brown University’s Anti-Zionist Fantasy World
There have been many expulsions and forced migrations in history. The Spanish Inquisition broadly covers a single sphere of expulsion. The Trail of Tears covers one category of forced migrations, that of Native Americans. But never since the Roman Empire has the world seen some 15 countries openly coordinate the deprivation and expulsion of their citizens based solely on their religion.
Even though this grave act was always a flame burning in the families of the dispossessed, it was forgotten by the world. The “sha-sha” virus can infect an entire people proving there is both collective memory and collective amnesia.
But I stumbled upon the Farhud in researching my 2003 book Banking on Baghdad. This rekindled the torch of awareness.
“The Farhud Recognition Project,” energized by Sephardim in the United States, only asked for the mass murder to be remembered. I dove further into the topic, resulting in my 2010 book, The Farhud—Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust, which tracked the Arab-Nazi alliance, the awful pogroms and the post-war expulsion.
In June 2015, I and a group of committed communal leaders were able to do what many memory-seared families called the impossible: proclaim International Farhud Day at the United Nations in a historic event globally livestreamed by the U.N. itself.
But I always wanted to do more and give identity and homage to the mass expulsion. This month, with the support of my colleagues in many countries, on a special edition of “The Edwin Black Show,” I proclaimed Nov. 30 forever more to be a day of remembrance named “Yom HaGirush.”
That name, Yom HaGirush, marks when Jewish communities across many countries were once again dispossessed, but became repossessed in the free nation of Israel. The Jewish state now possesses these people and their descendants—and they in turn now possess their Jewish state. Possession is nine-tenths of survival. Israel has become the final stop for the Jews.
From Morocco to India, and from Yemen to Afghanistan, the lives and centuries of legacies were incinerated. It was done in broad daylight with barely a murmur from the world.
It happened not even five years after the world learned that six million Jews had been exterminated and millions more made refugees. Mark it down on a piece of paper: Yom HaGirush. YomHaGirush.com is now in embryonic form, but soon will be a vibrant worldwide resource and a warning to the world that when we say, “Never again,” we mean it.
Brown University is working hard to become the most anti-Israel school in America. In its competition with Columbia University and New York University, Brown not only boasts the nation’s first ever endowed chair in Palestinian studies (named after PLO poet Mahmoud Darwish), but the recipient of that dubious honor, professor of history Beshara Doumani, is currently serving as the president of Birzeit University, located down the road from PLO headquarters in Ramallah. Brown University has become the Providence Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
To that end, Brown’s Center for Middle East Studies competes with Columbia’s Center for Palestine Studies and NYU’s Kevorkian Center to celebrate Palestinianism and decry the evils of Israel. Brown’s latest effort came on November 12 in the form of a Zoom talk by Somdeep Sen, associate professor in international development studies at Roskilde University, Denmark. Sen was promoting his book, titled “Decolonizing Palestine,” which is academic-speak for “Denouncing Israel.”
Like many anti-Zionists, Somdeep Sen lives in a dream world, partially of his own creation and partially thrust upon him by the fantasy world created by a sect of pro-BDS, anti–Semitic liberal-arts academics who insist that Israel is an “apartheid state” and there is a country called “Palestine.”
He announced repeatedly that his book is an attempt to “normalize Hamas” by rendering it “de-exceptionalized.” In academic jargon, this means that Sen’s work is dedicated to softening the image of Hamas, contextualizing the terrorist organization so that it seems to be just another movement of downtrodden underdogs fighting against oppressors. This delusion led him, multiple times during his talk, to compare Hamas to Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
- Sunday, November 28, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
- Sunday, November 28, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
The University of Toronto is opposed to all forms of discrimination, and committed to the protection of freedom of speech and academic freedom. The University was alarmed to learn about two motions passed at the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union (SCSU) Annual General Meeting on November 24. Both motions are inconsistent with the University of Toronto’s core values of freedom of speech and inclusion.One motion reaffirmed SCSU’s commitment to the “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) movement; another concerns the rights of Jewish students at UTSC. Student organizations are free to take positions on a wide variety of controversial topics. Student societies for which the University collects mandatory fees based on registration must abide by our Policy on Open, Accessible and Democratic Autonomous Student Societies. This Policy simultaneously affirms the independent operation of autonomous student societies and the requirement that “autonomy must be exercised in a manner that is compliant with the law and University policy. Further, all Student Organizations must conduct themselves in an open, accessible and democratic manner.”One of the requirements in the BDS motion is that SCSU “refrain from engaging with organizations, services, or participating in events that further normalize Israeli apartheid.” The motion allows an exception for suppliers of Kosher food if “no alternatives are available.” A requirement that providers of food as a religious accommodation be required to apply for an exemption, or even be asked about their views about issues elsewhere in the world is unacceptable.So too is the striking of the language about academic freedom from the second motion. Academic freedom is an individual right, and the Policy on Open, Accessible and Democratic Autonomous Student Societies requires that these organizations must permit their members to determine which positions to take. Nor should they restrict the speakers that they can invite, or organizations with which they can cooperate based on their connections to a particular country.The motions are specifically focused on Israel in a way that is troubling to many members of the community. Such motions would be no more acceptable if focused on another country, or if a student organization in which members are enrolled by their registration were to take multiple stands on a wide variety of issues.The University’s place in society requires that its members be free to take positions on controversial questions. These issues are addressed by a number of University of Toronto policies, including the Statement on Freedom of Speech and the Policy on the Recognition of Student Groups. According to our Statement of Institutional Purpose,The University of Toronto is dedicated to fostering an academic community in which the learning and scholarship of every member may flourish, with vigilant protection for individual human rights, and a resolute commitment to the principles of equal opportunity, equity and justice.Within the unique university context, the most crucial of all human rights are the rights of freedom of speech, academic freedom, and freedom of research. And we affirm that these rights are meaningless unless they entail the right to raise deeply disturbing questions and provocative challenges to the cherished beliefs of society at large and of the university itself.These requirements apply directly to the SCSU motions. It is not acceptable to impose political tests on the recognition of Jewish student groups on any of the University of Toronto campuses. It is unacceptable to impose political tests on suppliers of Kosher or any other type of food.The University will be following up with the SCSU to address our concerns.Meric S. GertlerPresident
Although there were many strong comments made by the University in our support, there is a need to call out bigotry by name when it is so clearly manifested. The actions of the SCSU were not simply political disagreement. The passing of these motions is an act of blatant antisemitism and must be addressed as such.
- Sunday, November 28, 2021
- Elder of Ziyon
Every once in a while one can see the birth of a new conspiracy theory in the Arab world.
Saturday, November 27, 2021
The 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai helped shape Israel-India relations
November 26 marks 13 years since the terror attacks in Mumbai, India. On that night, in 2008, 10 gunmen associated with the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT – “Army of the Righteous”) organization attacked five locations in the city, firing at random, with the simple intention of killing the maximum number of people. The attackers deliberately targeted areas of the city frequented by foreigners, evidently with the intention that this would maximize the global impact of their actions.
Among the sites targeted was Nariman House, known also as “Chabad House.” Six Israeli citizens were tortured and murdered at this site, which had been deliberately selected by the organizers. Among the dead Israelis were Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, who managed the Chabad House. Sandra Samuel, an Indian citizen who worked as a nanny for the Holtzbergs, famously risked her own life to save their then two-year-old son, Moshe.
The Mumbai attacks did not conclude on the evening of November 26, 2008. Rather, the gunmen took hostages and held off the Indian security forces for three days. The final death toll was 165 killed, consisting of 140 Indian citizens and 25 foreign visitors. Nine of the 10 gunmen were also killed. The 10th was apprehended by the authorities, convicted of murder, and executed four years later.
The Mumbai attacks were a profoundly traumatic event seared in the memory of the people of that city, and of India as a whole. Meanwhile, 13 years on, many unanswered questions remain regarding the perpetrators of the attacks, and who stood behind them.
The direct responsibility of the Sunni Islamist LeT group for the Mumbai killings is not in doubt. The captured gunman, Ajmal Kasab, admitted his membership of this organization, and described in detail the process in which he and his colleagues had trained in Pakistan, and set out for the attacks from Karachi, the capital of Pakistan’s Sindh province.
Canada’s Largest Labor Union Rejects Israel Boycott by 2-to-1 Margin
Canada’s largest labor union rejected a motion endorsing the movement to boycott Israel during its national convention on Thursday, by a broad margin that was applauded by Canadian Jewish groups.
Members of the 700,000-strong Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) held the body’s biennial summit online this week. Resolution No. 70 called for CUPE to “support the Palestinian people’s’ right to self determination and their demands to end Israel’s military occupation and colonization,” and to officially back the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
Weighing the measure Thursday, CUPE members spurned the measure with 32% voting for and 68% against.
“CUPE members should be praised for standing up to the lies and intimidation of the BDS movement,” said Michael Mostyn, Chief Executive Officer of B’nai Brith Canada, on Friday. “The passage of this motion would have inflicted great harm not only on Jewish and Israeli members of CUPE, but on all workers who benefit from trade between Canada and Israel.”
“CUPE has heeded the wise words of Tommy Douglas, Canada’s greatest labour icon: ‘The main enmity against Israel is that she has been an affront to those nations who do not treat their people and their workers as well as Israel has treated hers.’”
Commenting Friday, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs said members voting against the resolution “chose peace over division.”
“BDS is an anti-Zionist, antisemitic movement that calls for the demonization and delegitimization of Israel and denies the Jewish people the universal right of self-determination,” CIJA said. “It does not stand for Palestinian rights.”