Et tu, Brute?

How Jews at UBC were betrayed by the Equity and Inclusion Office

For decades Jews thought that antiracist advocates were our allies, fighting against fascism and right wing Jew hatred. It’s still hard to believe that today, many provide the framework for disseminating left wing antisemitism, particularly on campus.

Anisemitism is exploding at UBC’s campus as it has around the globe. For the past three months, I attempted to educate the Equity and Inclusion Office (EIO) at University of British Columbia (UBC) about antisemitism. I was warned not to bother. A good friend, Dr. Ted Rosenberg, resigned from his faculty position at UBC’s medical school last year; ending a 25 year career. He did so after the EIO refused to even recognize antisemitism, let alone protect Jews. Dr. Rosenberg cautioned me not to trust that office. He said: “they will use you to tick a box about their efforts in Jewish consultation. In my experience, they do not act in good faith.”

Naively, perhaps, I accepted an invitation by another UBC faculty member, an old friend, to join meetings with the EIO. They wish to remain anonymous. In looking back at the minutes of our first meeting, I see that the signs were already flashing. But I preferred to believe the office’s claims of openness and desire to learn about antisemitism.

It was obvious that the EIO did not recognize the difference between the mainstream Jewish community and the fringe anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic groups that claim to speak for our community. The EIO spoke of “diverse ways of being Jewish.” In particular, EIO appeared unable to understand that anti-Zionism, rather than being about equality for all is a recipe for the murder or expulsion of half the world’s Jews. Jewish Faculty Network (JFN), representing a small group of anti-Zionist academics, and Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), another small hateful anti-Zionist group, use their claims to Jewishness to advocate for the dismantling of the sole Jewish state. Ironically, these Jewish anti-Zionists were seen as the minority in need of protection.

Every antisemitic project has had its Jewish adherents,who act as fig leaves for hiding genocidal hatred. The antisemitic views and anti-Israel advocacy, particularly support of BDS, (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) of many of JFN’s members are documented by Canary Mission.

It is easier to pretend that these “humanitarian” groups are fighting for global human rights than to accept that they are mortal enemies of their putative coreligionists and the only democracy in the Middle East. BDS has been deemed illegal by the governments of Canada, Germany, Holland, Spain and most US states.

My friend and I spent many hours crafting a letter to the EIO, utilizing the expertise of a highly respected consultant who volunteered to assist us in working with the EIO. We suggested that the office needed further training and recommended Dr. Karen Mock, an award-winning educational psychologist with 50 years’ experience of fighting antisemitism and all forms of hatred. Dr. Mock is the former National Director and CEO   of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation and National Director of the B’nai Brith League for Human Rights. She has spent decades as a leading human rights educator and leader in Arab/ Muslim/Jewish dialogue. She is an expert in training DEI officials and has been recognized by the Canadian government; testifying before the House Committee on Antisemitism. Due to the importance of educating university DEI offices, Dr. Mock offered to help in spite of enormous demands on her time.

Dr. Karen Mock, C.M.

Owing to the lengthy university winter holiday, we did not meet again until January. At that time, we learned that no one at the EIO had even bothered to read our letter. Nonetheless, the EIO proclaimed itself to us as proud of its work in fighting antisemitism, including working toward adopting anti-Palestinian Racism (APR). The fact that APR, which seeks to criminalize Zionism, was offered as evidence of the EIO’s fight against antisemitism was astounding. It was like suggesting that support for Jim Crow “separate but equal” was a step towards combatting anti-Black racism.  When I questioned the EIO’s proficiency in understanding antisemitism, a senior staff member responded that she was perhaps not proficient yet, but “fluent and well on the way to proficiency.”

When asked what training this EIO staff member had undergone, she said that she had brought in “Yavila Corry”on two occasions. A Google search turns up no Yavila Corry. There is a Yavila McCoy, a progressive African-American Jewish educator, who offered two 2 hour seminars at the staff member’s previous university, almost three years earlier. I suspect that if any other minority were involved, no DEI professional would find four hours of training sufficient to confer “fluency.”

When I raised the Jewish community’s concern about the use of the keffiyah as a political statement at UBC graduation ceremonies, EIO took great offence. They did not agree that the keffiyeh is a symbol of support for terror. Rather, EIO staff pointed to the swastika as a recognized hate symbol. Despite its “fluency” in antisemitism, EIO was oblivious to the fact that both keffiyehs and swastikas were once entirely benign cultural symbols. Both had been co-opted by evil genocidal groups who aimed to murder Jews worldwide.

The keffiyeh was used after the Hebron massacre and the Arab revolt of 1936-39 to cover the faces of terrorists. All Arabs in Palestine were ordered to follow suit to prevent arrest by the British, for murdering Jews. It was popularized by Yasser Arafat (head of the PLO and planner of 19,000 terror attacks against Jews) and Leila Khaled (PFLP terrorist and originator of hijacking airplanes) in the 1960s. Keffiyehs are routinely used today in much the same way, as a symbol of support for terror groups and to evade arrest at protests which call for the elimination of the Jewish state. Keffiyeh-masking is one reason that organizers of antisemitic encampments and protests have faced little consequence.

Leila Khaled, Bethlehem Mural 2015 ( Wikimedia Commons)

EIO staff disingenuously suggested that they know many people who wear keffiyehs, hoping for equal rights for both Jews and Palestinians within the Levant. In a follow up letter, sent to EIO but also UBC’s administration, elected officials and Jewish organizations, I recounted having spoken to many people adorned with keffiyehs; many at the University of Toronto encampment, which I visited almost daily. I did not find one person who avers the EIO’s imagined ideals. What I found instead was either total ignorance or genocidal hatred of Jews. Those ignorant are, for example, unaware of the history of 850,000 Jews extirpated by murder or expulsion from Israel’s 22 surrounding Arab countries from the 1930’s to 60’s. They are ignorant of the genocidal Hamas Charter, the Khartoum Resolution and the six refused land–for–peace offers made by Israel. In the words of Palestinian leadership, there is no peace while any Jewish land exists within the Middle East. Based on current Hamas promises and history, Jews would no doubt be murdered or expelled from Israel should Hamas or the Palestinian Authority gain control. 

Unbeknownst to us at the time, a few days after our second meeting, EIO released a pamphlet called “Anti-Jewish Discrimination”. It read as if it were written by any anti-Zionist organization. Although it had been written in December, well before our meeting, the EIO did not think to share it or notify us of its publication. The EIO’s twin publication, “Anti-Arab and Anti-Muslim Discrimination Resource Module” was similarly written and released at the same time, both easily found on UBC’s website, under EIO resources.

Although the Anti-Jewish Discrimination pamphlet displayed a rudimentary understanding of historical far right antisemitism, it omitted any reference to the modern–day threat to Jews posed by Islamism or the left, whether globally or on campus. The pamphlet deliberately omitted any reference to the October 7, 2023 Hamas invasion of Israel and its genocidal massacre of Jews. The pamphlet further ignored the manner in which the October 7 massacre paradoxically led to an exponential increase in antisemitism in the Western world.

Also omitted from the pamphlet was a description of the Soviet inversions, to which most anti-Zionist lies can be traced. The most generous description of the authors of the pamphlet is that they entirely misunderstood Zionism and its place in the Jewish psyche. As outsiders to Judaism and the mainstream Jewish community, they arrogated to themselves the right to separate Zionism from Judaism. The result whether deliberately or not, an insidiously antisemitic document, masquerading as an attempt to combat “anti-Jewish discrimination.” 

Celebrating Resistance on campus, 2024, C Lazar

October 7, the worst sadistic mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust, is a trauma from which Jews worldwide have yet to recover. The pain persists as each emaciated, innocent Israeli hostage, looking like an Auschwitz “Muselmann” survivor, is paraded before jeering mobs by their inhumane Hamas captors. Their path to freedom is paid for by the release from prison of dozens of terrorist murderers. Meanwhile, our kin remain captive, starved and tortured in Hamas’ dungeons, while the terrorists threaten a daily repeat of their barbaric massacre. Imagine how it feels for a Jewish student to see that inhumanity celebrated on campus as progressive resistance. The office dedicated to understanding everyone’s lived experience seems unable to indulge in that small bit of imagination.

Encampment at University of Toronto, 2024,C Lazar

As an example of its antipathy to the Zionism of the vast majority of Jews, the Anti-Jewish Discrimination pamphlet offers the following examples of “microaggression”: “assuming all Jews must have a connection to Israel” and “assuming that all Jews who have family or personal ties to Israel are Zionists.” Implicit in this description is that there is something so fundamentally wrong with Zionism and a connection with Israel that an allusion to that perspective is an insult. This implicit claim echoes the sinister current trope equating Zionism with racism, settler colonialism, genocide and every evil imaginable. 

Anti-Zionist Jews, who use the word Zionist as an epithet, seem to have exercised an outsized influence upon this document. In fact, JFN is credited as a main source of information.

The pamphlet offers a focus on “intragroup discrimination”which serves to divide Jews into good and bad groups. The document suggests that calling antizionist Jews “fringe” is a “microagression”.  But what else would you call an ideology shared by just 3% of Canadian Jewry that calls for the murder or expulsion of half their brethren?

By delegitimizing Israel, based on the lies and inversions imported from Nazi ideology and Soviet antisemitism, the pamphlet vilifies the 94% of Canadian Jews, who support Jewish autonomy within their ancestral homeland. That support is the essence of Zionism, nothing more.

DEI has a habit of imposing its own template upon others’ experiences, to better empathize with their experience.Transposing European colonialism or the American history of slavery upon Jewish history offers a false and dangerous narrative of the Jewish people. It refuses to look at the uniqueness of Jewish history on its own merits, choosing instead the hateful lens which attributes all of the world’s evil to the world’s only Jewish state.

The EIO, in its ignorance of antisemitism and Jewish history, chose to define antisemitism based upon the views of a group that represents only a tiny minority of the Jewish community. And whose views are antithetical to the majority. It would not do that for any other group. Yet EIO hypocritically claimed that a guiding principle of the document was “ensuring the content was not and is not perceived to promote the agenda of any advocacy group.”Except, of course for those seeking the destruction of Israel and the expulsion of its Jewish population.

Even worse than the Anti-Jewish Discrimination pamphlet was the EIO’s  Anti-Arab and Anti-Muslim Discrimination Resource Module. Starting on page 21, there is an entire chapter devoted to the malignant ideology of “anti-Palestinian Racism” (APR). APR has nothing to do with protecting Arabs or Muslims from discrimination, both laudable goals. It is a hastily constructed system whose goal is to delegitimize Israel and Zionism. It is analogous to BDS, which aims to isolate and destroy Israel rather than help Palestinians.

According to this document, minimization of the Nakba is crime one. In setting out its view of tropes which demonstrate APR, it states:

“The first trope presents Palestinian Arabs as lacking religious attachment to Palestine, the second trope claims they lack modern feelings of national identity, and the third trope claims they are easily induced to commit acts of violence by their ruthless leaders”

In the document, facts are defined as tropes. The fact that Jerusalem is mentioned more than 600 times in the bible and not once in the Quran is APR, if voiced. Critics are required to ignore the fact, for example that the second al Aqsa mosque is built upon the ruins of the second Jewish Temple. The fact that Palestinian identity started in response to the quest for Jewish autonomy at the end of the British mandate and solidified in the 1960s is APR. The facts that more than 70% of Palestinians approve ofthe October 7 massacre and thousands of “civilians”entered Israel on that day to murder, rape, loot and kidnap Israelis, are APR. 

The EIO further claims that “suggesting that wearing a keffiyeh or flying a Palestinian flag are acts of hate” are APR. No wonder they baulked at our objection to keffiyehs at graduation.

This pamphlet is an exercise in gaslighting Jews about genocidal hatred directed at them while attempting to silence any refutation. Who can tolerate being called a racist?

Before discovering the pamphlets, my friend and I offered to meet again with the EIO to explain the shape–shifting nature of antisemitism, and how the current threat is affecting Jewish students, faculty and staff on campus. We do not expect an invitation. 

In summary, we assume that we have been used to allow the EIO to falsely claim that mainstream Jewish voices were consulted in the creation of its anti-Zionist materials. The EIO’s pamphlets serve only to gaslight Jews, deny the lived experience of the vast majority of Jews and promote a political ideology that endangers all Jews, whether on campus or across the country. We call for those pamphlets to be immediately removed from UBC’s website. One thing is now clear: there is absolutely no way EIO can protect Jews on the UBC campus.