Silence on anti-jew hatred not golden
Enough is enough. The Jewish community is tired of the silence by Canadians over calls of genocide from pro-palestinian groups. Quite frankly, as a peace activist, this sickens me more today than in the past two decades when these calls were confined to university campuses.
Universities allowed at least four generations of students to build a framework of hatred against the Jewish community. It began with sham conferences and morphed into propaganda campaigns like the now infamous “Israeli Apartheid Week.” All those years, despite our protests and logical arguments against allowing hate, including the victimization of Jewish students and faculty, universities proudly waved the “free speech card.” The Jewish community and its friends were aghast, especially given the fact that Canadian universities are funded largely by the Canadian taxpayer. Instead, university administrations (some more than others) protected and defended Palestinian demonstrators who iconized the slogan, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
The Palestinians and their allies have rejected independence on three occasions (at least) whereby they would have had a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Their rejection of every peace deal presented to them — including overly generous ones presented to them by former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert — brings one to the realization that the prime objective of Palestinian radicals is the appropriation of the entire land of Israel.
That call for a “free Palestine, from the river to the sea” has now become so normalized that on Aug. 7, at a pro-palestinian rally in downtown Toronto’s Dundas Square, no one even batted an eye when it was chanted by the crowd. A Muslim leader told me recently that he thought nothing of the chant. It meant nothing to him. Really? The call to wipe out any other group in the world would be vigorously condemned — the protesters marginalized by civil society. Instead, in Canada and elsewhere, they are embraced. For shame.
The 1948 Genocide Convention forbids direct and public incitement to genocide and even recognizes that in most cases, it is cloaked as a metaphor or euphemism. Even if genocide never occurs, the incitement is an offence that can bring about charges of incitement here at home and at the International Criminal Court.
As an example, in 2016, Léon Mugesera, who had immigrated to Canada with his family from Rwanda and was teaching at Laval University, was extradited back to his homeland to face genocide charges for a speech he had given in the early 1990s. At the time of his speech, Mugesera served as the deputy chairperson and special adviser to Rwanda’s ruling party, which orchestrated the 1994 genocide in which more than one million Tutsis were massacred in 100 days by armed militias affiliated with the Huti-led government.
In ordering Mugesera’s deportation, the Supreme Court of Canada found that his 1992 speech claiming that Hutos were about to be “exterminated by inyenzi (cockroaches)” qualified as incitement of genocide against the Tutsis. After being deported from Canada, Mugesera was found guilty of “public incitement to commit genocide, persecution as crime against humanity and inciting ethnic-affiliated hatred,” and sentenced to life in prison by a Rwandan court.
In Toronto and in most major cities around the world however, the continued vilification, dehumanization and propaganda campaign against Israel and the Jewish people continues unabated. As someone who continues to advocate for a two-state solution whereby Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side in peace, this continued call for the genocide of the Jewish people is appearing more and more like an international campaign to annihilate the Jewish population from the land. This relentless incitement on city streets, university campuses and some major institutions and United Nations bodies appears to be deeply committed to replacing the Jewish state with a Palestinian one. Those who are silenced by this incitement are complicit.
In truth, Palestinians should be freed from the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. This past spring, the PA cancelled its “democratic” elections for the fifth time in 15 years. There is no freedom in the Palestinian territories as the Authority continues to rule with an iron fist, arresting and murdering dissenters at will. Life is worse for Palestinians living under the thumb of Hamas in Gaza. The terrorist organization is notorious for using its international funding to launch terror attacks against Israel, instead of building schools, hospitals and civil society.
Incitement against Israel and the Jewish people on our city streets must stop being tolerated. All previous genocides began with words and slogans. Some people laughed and disregarded these calls. We now know better — much better. It’s time to put our condemnations into action. Silence is not golden.