PAC ads won’t be disappearing

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

A group of seven organizations, calling themselves the Palestine Awareness Coalition, has purchased advertising space at the Vancouver City Centre SkyTrain station and on 15 TransLink buses. The “Disappearing Palestine” campaign began on Aug. 27, and will run for four months. Even before the first ad appeared, there was controversy.

“As our community prepares to observe the High Holidays, CIJA [Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs], Pacific Region, and Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver would like to update you on an important and developing issue,” began the “Important Community Announcement” dated Aug. 23. The e-mailed message did not include the ad copy, but warned that “these advertisements distort history, are malicious and essentially question the legitimacy of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

“We believe it is no coincidence that this advertising campaign will coincide with the sacred holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur,” the announcement continued. “TransLink – the regional transit authority – has a clearly defined set of advertising policies and guidelines, which restrict the display of ads that make public transit unwelcoming for any ethnic or racial group – the appropriateness of which has been affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada.”

The ad depicts four maps, colored in green, representing “Palestine,” and white, “Israel,” with the green portions diminishing in stages from 1946 to 2012. “Disappearing Palestine” reads the largest text, followed by “5 million Palestinians are classified as refugees by the UN” and then the name of the ad sponsor, the Palestine Awareness Coalition, and its website. The coalition is comprised of members of Boycott Israeli Apartheid Campaign, Building Bridges Vancouver, Canada-Palestine Solidarity Network, Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), Necef Sabeel (Near-East Cultural and Educational Foundation), Seriously Free Speech and Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights at the University of British Columbia. It “was formed to sponsor this campaign and, we hope, to help educate the Canadian public about the real situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories,” IJV-Vancouver and coalition member Martha Roth told the Independent.

“Before taking up your questions ... I want to address the unspoken conflation of the nation of Israel with the world’s Jews,” she continued. “Many of us proud Jews are happy in Diaspora. Even more, many Jews and non-Jews deplore the inequality and racism of Israeli society. We resist the notion that any comment about Israel is actually a comment about Jews.”

About the campaign starting just before the High Holidays, Roth said, “The timing of the poster campaign was entirely in TransLink’s hands. Once we had raised money and been given a green light, it was up to them, and we were as surprised as anyone that our turn came up so quickly.”

Despite what CIJA-PR and Federation described in an Aug. 27 e-mail update as the “painstaking lengths” to which they went to “highlight for TransLink the risk that such ads pose to the Jewish community,” TransLink, using as a reason the same Supreme Court decision cited by CIJA-PR/Federation, refused to withdraw the ads. In an Aug. 27 statement posted online, TransLink said it “does not endorse nor advocate any position put forward by outside advertisers. In addition, as a public agency, TransLink’s advertising policy cannot violate freedom of expression under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Freedom of expression is a protected right under the Charter.

“TransLink does not have the legal authority to deny ads as long as the ads comply with the Code of Canadian Advertising Standards, other laws such as the Human Rights Act and TransLink’s Advertising Policy. This is in accordance with a 2009 Supreme Court of Canada decision that struck down the portion of TransLink’s Advertising Policy that prohibited advocacy ads.”

The TransLink statement says that, “If TransLink accepts advertising, it must not restrict content, (i.e., the freedom of expression of its advertising customer or potential customer under Section 2(b) of the Charter) except in accordance with Section 1 of the Charter which makes all Charter rights subject to ‘such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.’ TransLink has been advised that no such ‘limit prescribed by law’ would prohibit the ‘Disappearing Palestine’ advertisement under TransLink’s Advertising Policy, the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards, or other applicable ‘law’ such as the Human Rights Act.” As of deadline, TransLink had not responded to the Independent’s request for further information.

CIJA-PR and Federation sought an independent legal opinion on the matter, which it summarized in their Aug. 27 community update. CIJA-PR provided the entire document exclusively to the Jewish Independent. In the opinion of Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP, the 2009 decision, “Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority v. Canadian Federation of Students – British Columbia Component,” among other things, “does not prevent TransLink from refusing permit the ads” and it “permits TransLink to have a policy that provides for a safe and welcoming transit system and to exclude advertisements that objectively and reasonably interfere with that goal.”

Specifically, the legal opinion cites the Court’s reasoning that the political nature of an ad alone is not sufficient for its rejection: “It is not the political nature of an advertisement that creates a dangerous or hostile environment. Rather, it is only if the advertisement is offensive, in that, for example, its content is discriminatory or it advocates violence or terrorism ... that the objective of providing a safe and welcoming transit system will be undermined.”

The opinion describes the “force” of the ads as being that they “tell a story of the disappearance of Palestine and the expansion of Israel at the cost of Palestine.” It notes that the maps in the ad “are prepared on different bases, are inconsistent with each other and also omit relevant and inconsistent information. Thus, for example, the first map fails to note that the entire territory in 1946 fell within the British Mandate and there were no areas specifically identified by the British authorities as constituting Jewish (Israel not having been born as yet) or Muslim territory. Yet the map proposes to identify a few white zones as Jewish in the northern section of the map. These were privately owned parcels: yet no effort is made to identify the ownership by ethnic identity or government of the other parts of the map. The second map identifies a proposed partition of the territory, which never in fact took place. The third map fails to observe that the Gaza Strip was within Egyptian political control and the entirety of the West Bank was annexed by Jordan.”

The maps used in the ads “constitute political representations of a particular view of history that is viewed sympathetically by some but in no case could be said to be accurate or fair,” the Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP opinion states. “In the very loaded context of Palestinian and Israeli conflict, including the current peace talks, such advertisements condemn the Jewish community through its association with Israel and are destined to make the transit system an unwelcome and unsafe environment for Jewish users. The Supreme Court’s reasons point the way to the proper reasoning to be applied: if these advertisements objectively violate the policies, then their refusal constitutes a reasonable limitation on free speech and is justified under the Charter.”

The opinion highlights two TransLink policies: “No advertisement will be accepted which TransLink, in the exercise of its sole discretion, considers to be of questionable taste or in any way offensive in the style, content or method of presentation,” and, “All advertisements shall be free of any demeaning, derogatory, exploitative or unfair comment or representation of any person or groups of persons....” It notes that “the chief of the Transit Police has expressed concerns about the impact of the advertisements on the safety of the transit system” and that CIJA-PR and Federation “have received several e-mails [from Jews] expressing concern for their safety and the safety of their children using buses in Vancouver in which the advertisements are displayed....”

The opinion concludes, “In short, TransLink’s policy is a constitutional limitation on the general right of free speech and imposes a legitimate restriction for the purpose of providing a safe and welcoming transit system. The advertisements are offensive both by what they purport to show and what they omit that would be necessary to be included if they were intended to accurately depict history. This is not a case of accidental misrepresentation or omission: rather, the maps self-evidently have the goal of encouraging transit users to believe that Israel (and, by their association, Jews, including Jews living in Vancouver) has throughout its history pursued the ‘disappearance’ of Palestine. That message has the obvious goal and effect of intimidating Jews in the public spaces of TransLink’s transit system.

“For these reasons, in our view, TransLink has the right and duty to enforce the current advertising policy and an ample basis on which to conclude that the proposed ads violate the current policy.”

Responding to the criticism that the ad is de-contextualized and misleading, Roth told the Independent, “The lack of context is a function of its material existence. The context of Israeli theft of Palestinian lands is far too long and complex for a simple graphic presentation. Yet these maps do quite a good job of demonstrating the steady diminution of land owned by Palestinians. I don’t know what is meant by ‘misleading’; the viewer is led to see that even the small amount of territory in the West Bank that remains to Palestinians is broken into non-contiguous pieces by Israeli settlements.”

About the concern that the ad denies Israel’s right to exist, given that the first map, with most of current-day Israel covered in green, is the implied ideal scenario, Roth replied, “Is the poster claiming that Israel ‘should not exist’? Not at all, but Palestine should also exist. Some of us believe the best hope for peace would be a bi-national state, in which all citizens have equal rights. Some of us don’t. But we all deplore the apartheid-like segregation of Palestinian people.”

Roth described the ad as “an educational campaign.” She said, “Actual information about Israel/ Palestine is difficult to obtain. If viewers have questions, at least, we want them to address them to the member groups in the coalition, because we all have information to share.”

CIJA-PR, meanwhile, has “received an outpouring of support from community members across the political spectrum, as well as other religious, ethnic and minority groups who recognize that the true goal of this campaign is to undermine the legitimacy of the state of Israel,” said CIJA-PR co-chair Stephen Schachter.

He noted, “Each of the groups sponsoring these ads supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions of all Israelis. Just last month, one of the groups publicly condemned renewed peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. These aren’t the voices of truly pro-Palestinian advocates; rather, they are a sad example of extremist views by anti-Israel activists.”

While the campaign will run despite CIJA-PR’s efforts, Schachter said, the centre “took a principled position on this matter, on behalf of a concerned Jewish community. We strongly advocated for TransLink to enforce its own policies, which prevent offensive and derogatory ads targeting a specific community from being displayed on public transit. TransLink got our message loud and clear, as did those who hold the transit authority accountable. We believe TransLink made the wrong decision. It’s our hope that this won’t be repeated.”

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