On university campuses across the country this week, Israeli Apartheid Week will once again attempt to demonize and undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish state. It is part of a global campaign of calls for divestment, boycotts and proclamations, and it should be condemned unequivocally and absolutely.
Yes, lets condemn the issuing of proclamations. And, yes, let's condemn calls for product(?) boycotts, because damn it nobody has the right to spend their own money as they see fit.
14 comments:
So what's Frank Dimant's wife? Chopped liver?
Shit. I've been denounced...
I agree with how he characterized the intent of IAW-the aim IS to make Israel (and Israel alone) a pariah state. Apartheid is a term, like "anti-Semitism", that ought not to be overplayed lest its lose it value as a tool of shame. The part of the statement that I disagree with does just that, because it seems to take the position that organizers of and participants in IAW are ant-Semites.
If everything is anti-Semtism then nothing is anti-Semitism....and if everything is Apartheid then nothing is Apartheid.
Except that in one case (apartheid) it is characteristic--in many respect--of a certain nation. In the other (anti-Semitism), it's a means of hounding Canadian citizens on that nation's behalf.
What Iggy seems to be saying is IAW is a means of lobbying for a foreign nation (the yet to be declared State of Palestine) in public funded Canadian universities with the result being not only the attempted deligitimization of another foreign country (Israel) but with adverse consequences to Canadians who feel an affinity with that foreign country (Jewish Canadians).
Once again His Igness dares us to figure out just how he came to lead the Liberal Party of Canada anyway. I agree with the piece in the Star this weekend depicting Ignatieff has Harper-lite. Maybe eventually the Liberal rank and file will realize the Canadian people really don't want a second conservative party. Maybe not. Until then...
Did Michael not say the Government of Israel is to blame, but not its people.
I don't know Annie. Can you specify a date?
I agree with MoS on this one. Iggy showed once again that he is not much of a leader and a clone of Harpo.
If Reverent Desmond Tutu of South Africa says it is apartheid then who knows better than the Reverent about apartheid.
The "suspension of disbelief" that I have been indulging in since Iggy took over is getting harder to maintain.
Michael said that today ... condemnation of the Israel Government, is legitimate, condemnation of the state and people, is not.legitimate.
Well Annie, that's the most pleasant part of "Michael" (swoon)after all. If you don't like what he said today, he's bound to say something much more pleasing tomorrow or next week or next month.
@ The Mound of Sound:
I hear that!
"When I looked down at the West Bank, at the settlements like Crusader forts occupying the high ground, at the Israeli security cordon along the Jordan river closing off the Palestinian lands from Jordan, I knew I was not looking down at a state or the beginnings of one, but at a Bantustan, one of those pseudo-states created in the dying years of apartheid to keep the African population under control."
- Michael Ignatieff, The Guardian, April 19, 2002
Well done Iggy!
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