Canada Schools Blasted For Ban On Anti-Israel 'Apartheid' Poster

[Purveyor]

By Cnaan Liphshiz, Haaretz Correspondent

Two Canadian universities came under criticism this week for banning a poster which is seen to be depicting Israelis as child-killers and accusing Israel of apartheid. Brazilian politicians and scholars, meanwhile, lambasted a recent student exchange accord between Tel Aviv University and a Catholic academy from Sao Paulo.

The posters from Canada, which were banned from Ottawa University and Carleton University, are advertisements for an annual series of events labeled as "Israeli Apartheid Week," due to begin on Monday, March 1. The "Israeli Apartheid Week" tradition began in 2005 in Toronto, spreading since to other campuses and cities.

The poster, circulated by pro-Palestinian activists, depicts a gunship with the word "Israel" on it firing a missile at a boy wearing a kaffiyeh and holding a teddy bear. In explaining the ban, Ottawa University said: "All posters approved must promote a campus culture where all members of the community can play a part in a declaration of human rights."

The poster has roused controversy in Canadian and international press and on campuses, where supporters of Israel said it was unacceptably portraying Israelis as child-killers - an old anti-Semitic theme.

One student from the Ottawa university, who preferred their names be withheld from this article, told Haaretz that the decision to ban the posters was "a blatant violation of free expression for students speaking out on human rights."

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HAARETZ: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1067277.html

[Chulanowa]

1. "An old antisemitic theme"

Well, that argument could hold water, I suppose... if Israel weren't actually killing children. I mean really. "If you accuse us of doing what we're actually doing, that makes you racist"?

Israel needs to stop pretending it defines Jewishness, and find a better defense for itself than just relying on that goofiness.

[ConcernedCanuk]

2. The Israeli government must have not realized what the slaughter in Gaza would mean to the World

.
.
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I can understand Israel's anger with the rockets coming from Gaza

which killed a dozen or two people in Israel?

But Israel responded with firepower that destroyed billions of dollars of infrastructure in an impoverished nation,

and killed HUNDREDS of innocent people -

The World will not forgive Israel for their slaughter,

and more importantly,

neither will the children and parents of those in Gaza that lost their loved ones

YA CAN'T BOMB PEOPLE INTO PEACE!

Ya can bomb them to pieces, but unless you kill every frickin one of them - the survivors are gonna come back at you

Iraqis are gonna be gunning for USAmericans for decades to come

United States of America will have to be humble for DECADES before they will ever gain World respect again

And I don't really expect the USA to humble itself in the near future

Already talking about INCREASING military presence in Afghanistan

frigadee

Wasting money needed at home to go mess around in other people's business - and nobody WANTS them there . .

yayzuzz . .

[iconicgnom]

3. It's too bad that these decisions are so shallow.

Generally speaking when people use the analogy to apartheid-like policy and behaviour it isn't reference to SA as such, just as it isn't reference to Israel as such. The reference is to Zionist-absolutist policy and most importantly to behaviour that results from Zionist-absolutist policy, including the disenfranchizement of what was, in times gone by, a majority non-Jewish population. What exists now in the land that once was Palestine is a new country, Israel, guided by a Zionist ideology, plus some undefined-regions wherein the population, made up in large part of non-Jewish refugees, is having a number done on them (to say nothing of the very recent diaspora of people to neighboring countries, refused any right to return to their own land).

It isn't Israel as such that's being held anathema in posters like this, it is the Zionist ideology that Israel set permanently into law, which doesn't recognize the supremacy of equal rights. Of course, various forms of the concept underlying Zionism go back a long ways - but I see no reason to question anything except its modern incarnation here, as written into Israel's law and as it determines Israel's relationship with those territories it controls. This is important, because an ideology like Zionism can be challenged, in terms of how it's incarnated, without challenging the very existence of a *country*, Israel, or of the *Jewish people*.

With no other evidence to the contrary, I consider someone who denies this to be an ideological absolutist.