It's Time for a Little Honesty

 Let's be honest. The imbecile students and some faculty on university campuses who are once again this week promoting campaigns like Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) and anti-Israel boycotts have achieved some minor success in harming mainly one side - the Palestinians. They do victimize Jewish students and  faculty who are feeling unsafe on campus - but their objective to bring Israel to its knees is further than ever from being realized.

 Promulgated by Palestinian diaspora groups themselves and joined by "alt-left" pseudo -intellectuals, these anti-Israel movements have degraded the legitimacy of Palestinian aspirations and - worse, appear in some cases to have devalued the concept of a university   education in the eye of the public.  

 Once the bastion of serious academic study, today's  institutions are often known for professors promoting hateful Holocaust  denial and anti-Israel ideology. Students' obsession with Israel, and the  self-defeating propaganda megaphoned on campus, are part of a wider 'dumbing down' of truth.  When it comes to historical truth about  Israel and the Jewish people, universities have become peddlers in "alternative facts."

What serious student of history would promote the ahistorical lie that Jewish people are "colonizers" of their own land? The first Jewish temple in Jerusalem was built some 1,700 years before the al Aqsa Mosque was constructed - right on top of it, in the seventh century, in an effort to cleanse the Jewish presence from our birthright, the land of Israel.

What reputable academic could call Jewish people "settlers" when our ancestors left archaeological evidence of a Jewish presence everywhere in modern day Israel?  Any modern day Israeli can read parts of the Dead Sea scrolls in their original text, carbon dated to 150 C.E.

The land was once called Judea - which is where the word  "Jewish" comes from. Although our ancestors were driven out on numerous occasions throughout history, a continued Jewish presence has always existed. We are indigenous to a land repeatedly stolen from us through the centuries - by the Romans, by the Assyrians, by the Christian    crusaders, by the Ottomans and by the British, who finally returned it to is rightful owner.  Modern Israel was established 69 years ago - but the Jewish homeland is 3,000 years  old - the oldest living civilization in the world - with documents and archaeology to prove it.

Today's anti-Israel campus hate groups have been propagating lies for over sixteen years.  They call Israel an apartheid state in an effort to prove Joseph Goebbels' statement that if you tell a lie long enough it becomes the truth. 

Eventually, however, reality wins. And the reality is that  Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. In fact, on Freedom  House's website, Israel is the only free country on the entire map of the region.

But what about Apartheid?  

If the word connotes a true separation, as in the former  apartheid regime in South Africa, there is clearly no case to be made. Unlike South Africa, all Israelis are free to enjoy all public facilities together. An Arab-Israeli sits on the Israeli Supreme Court, and there are    Muslim political parties and Muslim Members of Knesset. Israeli Jews, Druze, Christians and Muslims work, play and live side by side. Muslim    Israelis are doctors, journalists and beauty queens.  In fact, Israel was represented at September's Miss Trans Star International 2016 in Spain by a Catholic Arab transgender woman. She said she wanted to "represent Israel out of respect, because it is a democracy that has given me peace between my soul and my body."  Can you imagine a Miss Trans Star in any other nation in the Middle East today?

By any measure, this is hardly apartheid.

What about true apartheid? Who is speaking about gender  apartheid in Saudi Arabia, or the oppression of the gay community in Iran? Or the subjugation of the Yazidis by ISIS? Or the cleansing of Christians from almost every nation in the Middle East, except for Israel?

The truth is that in the avoidance of these issues, the absence of dialogue and the relentless fixation with Israel, the content of  post-secondary studies is being called into question. What, exactly, are our students learning?  

Interestingly, despite their ardent efforts, the boycott and IAW movements have failed to curtail Israel's booming economy. Israel's unemployment rate is a mere 5%; its GDP is the highest in the Middle East  and competes for placement in the west. In fact, it has been wryly observed that Israel's national bird is the crane, as hundreds line neighbourhoods  building one apartment block after another across the country.

Conversely, the proponents of BDS advocating restricting trade with Israel end up harming Palestinians, who lose their well paying job when Israeli businesses shutter in Palestinian neighbourhoods. The ultimate effect is the unfortunate destruction of opportunities for coexistence and mobility of the Palestinian community. 

It has often been said that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity and, for the Palestinian people, the extent of the damage of IAW and boycott campaigns is significant: The more    hate against Israel they sow, the further removed the Palestinians become    from establishing a functional Palestinian state. To the sadness of most of the Jewish community who are advocating a win-win solution, the Palestinians have refused countless offers of a Palestinian state living   side by side peacefully with Israel.  As a new American administration takes hold, their chances are even slimmer. 

And now, the world appears to be giving up on the Palestinians. Faith in the viability of a Palestinian state is losing ground as destructive behaviour from Gaza continues and the Palestinian Authority fails to join Israel at the negotiating table; despite best attempts to follow the Goebbels handbook, the hateful lies and propaganda    are just no longer believable outside the ignoramuses on university campuses.  

If I was a Palestinian or part of an alt-left group on campus, I would demand that the mural promoting violence against Israel come down from the walls of the student centre at York University. It is a violent depiction of the Palestinian cause.  So long as it is allowable, it fails to send the message of peace.

Universities continue to protect and justify hateful    anti-Israel activities, even while they lose public trust and support. But let's be honest, loud and clear - Israel and    the Jewish people are here to stay. We are not afraid and in fact, we are    even more emboldened to take on the deniers. In the last seventeen years of    countering this form of hate, we have not lost steam or the will to defend Israel - an island of freedom and democracy in the Middle East.