- I'll soon (ideally, next week) be completing my article on the Rights & Democracy saga, but for now just want to flag this interesting side bar concerning recently appointed board member/troll, and uber-Israel lobbyist David Matas. For a quasi-governmental organization that purports to be 'non-partisan' and concerned with promoting 'rights' and 'democracy,' Israeli Apartheid Week has helped expose the ideological, anti-democratic underpinnings of the far-rightward shift (from its previous centre-right proximity) at R&D in recent months:
"B’nai Brith Canada is asking University of Manitoba president David Barnard to reconsider its plan to allow Israeli Apartheid Week events on campus next week. "We sent a letter to the university’s president Feb. 10 asking for a ban but it is not happening," David Matas, senior council for the Jewish community advocacy group and a prominent human rights lawyer, said at a press conference today. Flanked by members of the Jewish community and prominent politians - NDP Christine Melnick and the the Tories’ Hugh McFadyen - Matas said the events have spread misinformation and hatred at campuses in other cities and should be banned from the university." [Winnipeg Free Press]
- Al Jazeera hosted this must-watch debate on Israeli Apartheid Week the other day. See Hazem Jamjoum and Eyal Sivan demolish Gidi Grinstein.
- Highlights from the opening day of the sixth annual Israeli Apartheid Week in Toronto, filmed on 1 March 2010. Speakers include Na'eem Jeena and Jon Elmer. (8 minute clip at Archive.org, very informative).
- Providing a rare dose of sanity for CanWest readers, Jaggi Singh pens 'Defending Israeli Apartheid Week': "What the political and media attacks on IAW amount to is a form of neo-McCarthyism. Classic Mc-Carthyists dismissed progressive movements as treasonous agents of a foreign communist regime, offering little to no evidence to back up these smears. It was a useful tool during the Cold War to silence left-wing dissent. Similarly, the 2010 neo-McCarthyism dismisses certain critics of the state of Israel -- particularly those who support the Palestinian civil society call for boycotts, divestment and sanctions -- as anti-Semites, with no proof whatsoever....If readers are curious about what has provoked Canada's politicians to near-unanimously take steps to condemn a series of modest educational events organized mainly by students on campuses across the country, I encourage them to consult apartheid-week.organd to attend an IAW event in your community. Make up your own mind." [National Post]
- 'Will Canada join Israel's Next War?': "Since taking office in 2006, Stephen Harper’s minority federal Conservative government has shifted Canada’s foreign policy sharply to the right. It has championed Canada’s role in the Afghan war and the use of “hard power” in foreign affairs and loudly proclaimed Ottawa’s allegiance to US foreign policy objectives and support for Israeli aggression in Lebanon and Gaza. Now, a junior cabinet minister has implied that the Canadian Armed Forces would fight alongside Israel in the next Middle East conflict." [WSWS]
- Targeting Israeli Apartheid [Stephen Lendman in Palestine Chronicle]
- Italian Professors Denounce Complicity of Israeli Academic Institutions in the Occupation [AlternativeNews]
- 'Student group speaks out against profiting from Israel-Palestine conflict': "With the hope of building a campus-wide movement, Brown Students for Justice in Palestine held their spring kick-off event, Education without Occupation, on Wednesday, presenting their campaign for divestment from companies profiting from what the group called the Israeli occupation of Palestine." [Brown Daily Herald]
- 'The New Canadian Paradigm: Embracing Apartheid' Review of Yves Engler's new book, Canada and ISrael: Building Apartheid. [Dissident Voice]