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December 3, 2004
Jews feel isolated on campus
Panel at Hillel debates free speech and how to combat anti-Zionist
tactics.
PAT JOHNSON
The attitude toward Israel on Canadian campuses bears more than
passing similarities to the Middle East conflict itself, according
to Jewish students who participated in a forum on campus controversy.
Israel advocacy clubs have sprung up on campuses across Canada in
the last couple of years in reaction to mass mobilizations by pro-Palestinian
movements that have targeted their attentions at universities and
colleges. But the pro-Israel students say that while they support
grassroots groups that seek civil discourse aimed at a compromise
that recognizes the right of both Israel and a Palestinian state
to live in coexistence, their opponents are professional political
agitators, many of whom are not students, and who refuse to acknowledge
the legitimacy of the state of Israel.
"The other side has said 'we don't want to live with them,
we reject their point of view,' " said Noah Slepkov, who was
a student at Ontario's York University when that campus was embroiled
in controversy over the Middle East.
Slepkov was speaking at Hillel House on the University of British
Columbia campus Nov. 25 in a dramatic and sometimes impassioned
discussion sponsored by Jewish academics. The B.C. Campus Action
Coalition is made up of 162 Jewish faculty and university staff
at provincial post-secondary institutions. The forum, which featured
panelists representing university administration, professors, the
B.C. Civil Liberties Association and students, was a response to
fears that Jewish students and pro-Zionist activists are being isolated
and intimidated on Canadian campuses.
Contending rights of free speech and freedom from intimidation provided
the foundation for discussion as panelists eloquently defended free
speech rights and unfettered academic inquiry, while an audience
of about 75 stressed the atmosphere of intimidation felt by Jewish
students.
One audience member made a direct parallel between fascism and the
anti-Israel activism on contemporary campuses.
"These are now brownshirts in keffiyah clothing," one
participant said, after organizers played a videotape of Israel's
ambassador to Canada being shouted down at a melee on the Simon
Fraser University campus last March. The incident was one of several
in recent years where representatives of the Israeli government
were either denied the right to speak through bureaucratic decisions
or by protestors preventing them from speaking or being heard.
The forum considered three case studies and asked audience members
to comment. The recent decision by Montreal's Concordia University
to refuse a visit from former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak
was an example of free expression being held hostage by the threat
of mob violence, according to several speakers.
Dennis Pavlich, a vice-president of UBC and a moderator of the event,
along with John Pierce, Simon Fraser University's dean of arts and
sciences, both noted that security for controversial events can
cost as much as $60,000. In an environment where university budgets
are stretched to the limit, some universities are forced to make
pragmatic choices about allowing controversial events to take place,
they said.
Several audience members warned that allowing such considerations
to dictate campus events could be seen as giving a veto to groups
who threaten disruptions or violence. One audience member argued
that Jewish philanthropists should withhold donations to universities
and channel their donations instead to a fund set up to provide
security so that universities can't use the excuse of financial
constraints to ban pro-Zionist speakers.
Jason Gratl, a lawyer and a board member of the B.C. Civil Liberties
Association, said budgetary constraints need to come second to core
university values like free expression.
"It's a commodity worth spending money to protect," he
said.
Though the atmosphere on the SFU campus has been singled out as
among the most hostile in Canada to Jewish and pro-Zionist students,
Hillel representatives stressed that the administration has worked
admirably with them in recent months to ensure a safe campus that
is conducive to balanced dialogue.
Still, some audience members lamented that pro-Palestinian speakers
who deny Israel's right to exist can visit any campus and express
themselves freely in the name of dialogue, while Israeli or pro-Israeli
speakers who seek compromise and a two-state solution have been
silenced and intimidated.
"There's no dialogue for us," said Dr. Robert Krell, a
community leader who was in the audience, "There is for everyone
else. There isn't for us."
The lack of civility in the Middle East debate has been a concern
for the Jewish community, as well as for Jewish students and academics
since tensions re-emerged with the beginning of the intifada in
2000. Howie Fremeth, an SFU student, compared the situation of Jewish
students on campus with that of Israel in the Middle East.
"The problem is we don't have a partner," said Fremeth,
who added that trying to engage with activists whose methods are
to shout down or deny the legitimacy of the Zionist position takes
away students' hope that they can engage in any real discourse.
The fact that many of the core group of activists who are disrupting
local campuses are not students impedes the universities' ability
to ensure order by threatening academic discipline.
In a departure from his colleagues, Slepkov, the former York student,
noted that critics have made similar aspersions against Jewish groups,
pointing out that national Jewish communal agencies have explicitly
funnelled money into pro-Israel campus groups as a counterweight
to the influence of anti-Zionist agitators. This support could be
viewed as the same sort of interference as non-student activists
taking their fights onto campus, he said.
The panelists and audience members generally agreed that freedom
of speech ends at incitement to violence, but the definition of
incitement was debated. Philip Resnick, a UBC political scientist,
said that justifying violence or terror – by someone who argues
that the Americans or Israelis get what they deserve from terrorists,
for example – is not the same as directly inciting violence
and should not be considered under the same category.
The event was part of the B.C. Campus Action Coalition's semi-annual
meeting. The group was formed by professors and staff to counter
defamation and prejudice against Jews and Israel on B.C. campuses.
Pat Johnson is a B.C. journalist and commentator.
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