By Fern Sidman

For the 4th consecutive year, anti-Israel apologists and propagandists will be convening at the University of Toronto, York University and Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada for a three week event (Feb 3-19) called Israel Apartheid Week. As in years past, the major objective of this smear campaign is to impugn and excoriate the Jewish State as a racist entity, as well as organizing symposiums to further an agenda of academic boycott and BDS (boycott, divestments and sanctions) against Israel. Through a series of cleverly crafted gross distortions of facts, outright lies and half-truths, the organizers of this event which include the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, Women in Solidarity with Palestine and the Arab Law Students Association have couched their flagrantly fraudulent and incendiary rhetoric in academic and intellectual terms in order to gain credibility. One of the groups participating in Israeli Apartheid Week is the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, which obtained its place in historical infamy by traveling Egypt in March of 2007 to attend a conference intended to forge closer links between the international antiwar movement and Islamic resistance groups, including several on Canada’s terrorism list.

Speaking of “ethic cleansing and exile of Palestinians” by Israel, the purveyors of this patently false claim seek to demonize Israel with incessant accusations of establishing an “apartheid” state similar to the model of South Africa. They cite the construction of the Israeli security wall, built by Israel to reign in Palestinian terror organizations such as Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad. While they seriously question Israel’s right to exist and the Jewish character of the state, it is apparent that they justify the Hamas led daily Kassam rocket attacks into southern Israeli towns such as Sderot as a legitimate means to an end when it comes to liberating “Palestine” from the hands of the “occupiers”.

Many of the attendees and speakers at the vast array of conferences and lectures include anti-Zionist Jewish activists, including prominent members of the International Solidarity Movement and open supporters of Hamas. The use of the term “apartheid” as applied to Israel is featured ubiquitously in their literature, their web site and in their verbiage in order to indoctrinate the already sympathetic academic community into believing that Israel is the ‘bogeyman’ of the Middle East. Israel is taken to task, literally raked over the proverbial coals for its “intransigence” when it comes to negotiating land for an ostensible ‘peace’, while denying Israel the right to defend herself against the overwhelming predilections of her enemies to obliterate her.

One of the featured speakers will include notoriously anti-American and anti-Israel professor Ward Churchill, former professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder, who has written extensively on the subjects of genocide, ecocide and colonization as it pertains to Native Americans. In July of 2007, Churchill was dismissed from his position at the University of Colorado on grounds of academic misconduct; specifically plagiarism, fabrication and falsification.

On Monday evening, February 4th, the Ryerson University Library was the site for the opening event entitled “Introduction to Apartheid”, led by Saron Ghebressellassie, a student agitator and supporter of Angela Davis and the United Black Students at Ryerson. Outside the library building, a passionate group of Jewish activists from the college community along with local Toronto residents staged a raucous demonstration against the event calling on the organizers to stop supporting terrorism against Israel and America. Signs saying “Stop the Child Abuse” focused on the recruitment of Palestinian children as suicide bombers, while other signs exposed the event organizers as providing succor for wanton terrorism.

Toronto Jewish Defense League leader, Meir Weinstein organized a contingent of 40 JDL members who called this event a well orchestrated propaganda show and subterfuge for blatant anti-Semitism. “There is no distinction between anti-Zionism and the hateful epithets of classical anti-Semitism” said Weinstein. “Many of the people attending tonight’s lecture are Hamas supporters and members of the new Black Panther Party, both of whom do very little to hide their hatred of Jews and Israel. Just as Holocaust denial is an attack on the credibility of Jews, so is this event. What makes this event morally reprehensible and very dangerous, is that it takes place within the confines of the world of academia; bestowing upon it a purported legitimacy and credibility, while the speakers assiduously avoid launching verbal attacks on Jews as individuals as it is now considered politically incorrect.” “The bottom line”, continued Weinstein, “is that Israel has a right to exist, it is the eternal homeland of the Jewish people and we don’t need the world’s approval to exist as a nation. Our right to this land was established by our G-d in our Torah and that is our legitimate deed, now and forever.”

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Related: Israel, Palestinians, Political Correctness, Canada, Anti-Semitism

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