Toronto Universities must reject false claims that IAW is "hate" and condemn disruption and harassment at IAW events

Wednesday March 11, 2009

Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) - York
Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) -University of Toronto
Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) - Ryerson

Israeli Apartheid Week 2009 is a series of lectures and film screenings on various campuses and communities (now 40 cities) across the world whose intent is to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system. In its fifth year, Toronto's Israeli Apartheid Week has seen an alarming increase in harassment, intimidation and physical violence against its organizers and guests. While people who seem to be affiliated with the Jewish Defense League (JDL) are the primary organizers of the attacks, unfortunately, the student groups Hasbara and Hillel have also joined in, using cameras, physical proximity, and threatening language to intimidate activists, especially women students, calling them "terrorists" and repeating the accusations of "incitement" and "hate speech". When these incidents of harassment and intimidation are reported to campus police, the police have taken no action.

Prior to the start of IAW, several pro-Israel organizations, including B’nai Brith, the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) and the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre (FSWC) made false allegations that IAW was a "hate-fest" and, in the name of the safety of Jewish students, they encouraged community members and students to take action to prevent the week from happening. Several Federal Members of Parliament, Peter Kent (Conservative), Jason Kenney (Conservative), and Michael Ignatieff (Liberal) have joined in this campaign of false accusation and innuendo, implying falsely that IAW educational events are threatening to the safety of Jewish students on campuses. While Kent, Kenney, and Ignatieff have not attended any IAW events, several high profile university administrators, including Nouman Ashraf, the Anti-Racism and Cultural Diversity Officer at the University of Toronto, have attended this year. At a meeting with Ashraf, called by organizers to express their concerns over the violence at IAW, they asked him if he had witnessed any hate speech at the events. When he confirmed that he had not, organizers asked him to make a public statement to that effect. Ashraf refused and to date, no members of the senior administration have done so.

We demand the freedom to hold public debates and events on campuses without fear or intimidation. We do not want our events to be militarized, or for lecture series and film screenings to take place behind lines of police. Nor do we want the hiring of security to become a requirement for future Palestinian solidarity events. Imposing prohibitive security fees on volunteer-based activist organizations, would be a de facto shutting down of the right to free expression on campuses, and would be a reward to those organizations who come to our events to disrupt them.

Instead, we believe the freedom to hold IAW events could relatively easily be guaranteed by a public statement from University administrations stating that free expression on campuses will be protected and that the University rejects the false claim that IAW events constitute "hate speech". We therefore demand:

1. That York University, the University of Toronto, and Ryerson University all make official statements distancing themselves from the false allegation that IAW is incitement and hate speech.

2. That these Universities make a public statement that IAW events are protected on grounds of free expression and condemning disruptions and harassment at these events.

If Universities refuse to do this, their claims to protect free expression cannot be taken seriously. They will be engaging in a very dangerous game, entertaining false claims and tolerating physical disruptions of university events. It is within their power to de-escalate the situation, and it is their responsibility to do so immediately, rather than encouraging fear and engaging in campaigns of smear, false accusation, and innuendo against their own students. It is past time that Universities stopped looking for ways to prevent discussion from happening and look for ways to make such discussion productive and educational.