Concordia and anti-Semitism

Letters

Editor: I'm a Jewish Vancouverite, currently in Montreal as vice-president of the Concordia Student Union. This comment piece of mine was printed in the Nov. 29 Montreal Gazette, and I am submitting it for consideration by the Bulletin.

"Not just Concordia," opens a Montreal Gazette article on Monday, Nov. 25, "but universities around the world are witnessing a rise in anti-Semitism with a goal of 'delegitimizing' Israel." This, we read, was the principle message of a symposium on Anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism and Israel Today held the previous day in Montreal. A panel of prominent Jewish academics and lobbyists discussed the growing pro-Palestinian movement on university campuses across the world, most infamously at Concordia University, and how it represents a form of anti-Semitism that "is even worse than during the development of large-scale anti-Semitism in Europe at the end of the 19th century."

As a Jewish Concordia student active in the Palestinian solidarity movement here, the sentiment is one that greatly disturbs me. Having recently visited the occupied Palestinian territories, and witnessed the suffering and humiliation of an entire people under a brutal military occupation, it feels almost unfathomable to hear another attribute my opposition to what I saw – and the government that continues to carry it out – to anything other than an elementary concern for human well-being. And having experienced real anti-Semitism in my life, felt the prejudice of those who insulted or hit me for no apparent reason other than my religious identity, I can think of no worse service to my people than to demean the very real discrimination that we continue to endure today by confusing it with legitimate political criticism.

The attempts to "delegitimize" Israel's occupation of Palestine are as anti-Semitic as the attempts to "delegitimize" apartheid South Africa were "anti-Caucasian." Indeed, it is carried out by a movement of people to raise public awareness in a part of the world that has provided crucial military and diplomatic support to a country that has violated more than 100 United Nations resolutions that have condemned its conquest of Palestinian land, its senseless bombings of innocent civilians in Lebanon, and its denial of restitution or compensation to the more than 800,000 Palestinian refugees that were expelled during Israel's formation in 1948.

Of course, no serious activist will deny that there are elements of anti-Semitism in the pro-Palestinian movement. But I also know that the vast majority of Palestinians that I have met, whether in Montreal or in the West Bank, have denounced anti-Semitism and taken great efforts to oppose it when displayed by others in their community. Indeed, anti-Semitic pro-Palestinians are in the minority, just as the anti-Palestinian fellow Jews who have told me that "Hitler should have finished the job on you" certainly do not reflect the consensus of my community.

No matter how I may abhor the views of those who can say such things, my own background also helps me understand why they do so. It is not just an emotional attachment to Israel that I can share with apologists of its brutal atrocities, but the common human tendency in all of us to close off our conscience from an unpleasant or immoral aspect of something dear to us. When our psyches have formed an emotional attachment to something – be it a person, an ideology, a drug, a country – it is very difficult to break the overwhelming psychological constraints that we put on ourselves to fill our need for it. Given our own terrible history of suffering and persecution, which continues in anti-Semitic incidents around the world and the killings of innocent Israelis in terrorist attacks, I can understand how many fellow Jews find it all the more easy to close off their consciences from recognizing the terrible atrocities committed in our name.

I also know full well that those of us in the pro-Palestinian movement have sometimes done little to reach them with the tactics we have chosen. I saw this firsthand at the notorious Sept. 9 protests at Concordia, which thwarted a scheduled lecture by former Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. While I took part in opposing his presence, I did not agree that we had the right to stop him from speaking. But this was my only misgiving: both the protest organizers and most of its participants would agree that the anti-Semitic incidents on both sides of the barricades that day were deplorable acts.

Although it has been portrayed quite differently, Sept. 9 was just another event in which victims and opponents of the occupation of the Palestinian people stood up to a leader of this occupation – in a manner, I should mention, that was nowhere near as unlawful and confrontational as is commonly perceived. That this could occur on a university campus in Canada was a sign of a growing movement of people across the world in solidarity with Palestinians, a group that includes thousands of conscientious citizens and brave "refusenik" soldiers in Israel itself. And despite some unfortunate and deplorable exceptions, it is one that recognizes and supports the legitimate human rights of the Jewish people. It is thus a sad but telling fact that this movement is labelled as anti-Semitic by those who refuse to accept the very same rights for Palestinians.

Aaron Maté, vice-president
Concordia Student Union
Montreal

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