Letter to BDS Committees – the Modern Inquisitors
To: Shelagh Rogers, Chancellor Queen’s University, Kingston Ontario
Re: Request for Submissions on proposal by QUAD (Queens University Apartheid Divestment) To the Principles Review Committee on Responsible Investment
- Should the university divest its pooled endowment and investment funds from companies for conducting business in or with the State of Israel?
- Should the university adopt a screening process that would potentially preclude future investments based on their business in or with the State of Israel?
Dear Chancellor Rogers,
I was asked by a Jewish advocacy group to help them draft a submission to the referenced Queen’s University committee. My initial reaction was here-we- go- again. This gave way to demoralization followed by anger that Jews, once again, are being singled out, and subjected to inquisitions by modern-day blue-ribbon panels. Again, we are being asked to justify our very existence, place in society and now place among the nations of the world. Sadly, these tribunals are part of a long history of societal and institutional Jew-Hatred, including public Disputations, the Spanish Inquisition, the Nuremberg Laws, and Wannsee Conference, the Soviet Jewish Doctors Trial , or trials that led to almost complete ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab countries where they lived for 1000 years before the advent of Islam.
Therefore, I decided not to join the advocacy group, or “submit” this to the committee, lending it credibility. Instead, I am writing this as an open letter to you as the person responsible for university policy. I am saddened to write this on the eve of the Oct 7th Massacre and tragic war in Gaza started by Hamas.
Queens, the University of Windsor , McMaster and other Canadian universities are capitulating to pressure from anti-Zionist illegal encampments, that demand Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. By setting up university sanctioned tribunals, they are appeasing Pro- Hamas protestors, who are highly organized, with support from foreign groups, anti-western professors, unions , school boards and even clergy. Do peaceful protestors, need to mask or cosplay? Do they need to screen out Jews from encampments for their Zionism, chant genocidal slogans to wipe Israel off the map (River to the Sea) or promote harassment and violence against its Jewish supporters with shouts for Global Intifada? My father escaped from Poland shortly before Hitler invaded. Should I follow the exhortations from faculty and other protestors to go back there? Check the complainant, QUAD’S very own Instagram account and read their supporters’ words in the Queens Journal. Are these pleas to promote peace between Israeli Jews and Palestinians?
To avoid confusion or debate, I am not going to use the genteel term, antisemitism, coined by a 19th century German politician, who detested Jews. This label has since been defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). The IHRA definition has been adopted by 35 countries, including the Governments of Canada and Ontario. Not unlike Ivy League presidents’ struggle to condemn calls for genocide against Jews on their campuses, because the term “may be contextual”, universities around the country have struggled with the IHRA definition of antisemitism, because it may be political. For some reason, all other minority groups can define racism and hatred directed against them, except Jews. Interestingly, universities and other educational organizations do not struggle to adopt modern political inversions like APR with its attempts at gaslighting and de-legitimization.
Therefore, to avoid arguments over semantics, I will use the self-explanatory term- “Jew-Hatred”.
The singling out of Israel for opprobrium, calling for the destruction of the sole Jewish State (River to the Sea), where half of World Jewry live and promoting violence (Global Intifada) against its supporters (Jews) is outright Jew-Hatred. The goal of the BDS movement, including QUAD, is not to protest Israeli government policies about settlements in the West Bank, or even to establish peace between Palestinians and Israelis. It is to destroy the Jewish State through a program of sustained de-legitimization and demonization- spreading the Big Lie. By establishing this BDS tribunal, Queens is now complicit in this strain of institutional Jew-Hatred.
The majority in the Diaspora Jewry ( 90% of Canadian Jews) consider themselves Zionists. They consider Israel the ancestral homeland for Jews where they are indigenous and have lived continuously for at least 3000 years despite expulsions and conquest. It is part of their identity. Jews have prayed facing Jerusalem for millennia. Zionism is not the distorted and repugnant modern libel finessed in the Soviet Union and now spread by its anti-western academic successors, the extreme right and Islamists from countries where up to 95% of the population harbor anti-Jewish beliefs and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf are best sellers.
The State of Israel, like diaspora Jewry, is not without flaws that may merit scrutiny. But this scrutiny should be done with the same integrity, framework and intensity, used to criticize any other country or people. Double standards and distortion of facts are used by social activists in the UN and its UN Human Rights Council, (the majority of whose members are not democratic states that support human rights), by other Human Right NGOs and Women’s Organizations, in addition to mainstream media like NPR, the BBC and even our own CBC. Similarly, people point to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling to legitimize the allegation of genocide. This is despite the Chief Justice of the ICJ at the time, Joan Donahue, correcting the record stating that the ICJ did not conclude that Israel is guilty of genocide. South Africa, which submitted this case, has a score of 41/100 on the internationally recognized Corruption Perception Index , is ranked the 5th highest for crime, and ranked well below Israel for the Human Rights and Rule of Law Index. South Africa also sheltered Omar Bashir, accused of genocide by the ICC, and some of its religious leaders now chant “We are Hamas”.
This is how memes spread and distort the truth. This is how institutions provide cover for Jew-Hatred.
Where do the BDS Movement, Campus Protestors and the Responsible Investment and Human Rights Committee stand on egregious human rights violations and persecution and murder of LGBTQ in Russia, Iran, Yemen, Palestine, to name a few places, or the genocide in Darfur, ethnic cleansing in Myanmar and Syria, or use of sexual violence as a tool of war in Ethiopia? Is Queen’s University planning to divest from China, a country that ethnically cleansed Tibetans and has committed torture, mass incarceration and cultural Genocide against Uighurs ?
The BDS movement, which Queens supports through its tribunal, does not stop with divestment. The American Studies Association, representing US university professors, has voted to boycott Israeli educational institutions. The International Federation of Medical Students Associations (IFMSA) expelled the Israeli chapter. Our very own University of Ottawa attempted to boycott a world renowned Canadian medical researcher, Dr. Daniel Drucker for the crime of being a Zionist. Should Canadians stop using life saving Ozempic, COVID Vaccines, Cardiac Stents or computerized communication systems for people like the late Stephen Hawking, because the technology was developed by Israelis or their Zionist supporters? These examples demonstrate the threat BDS poses for the whole world.
Jews were historically attacked for violating social norms with their religion (not being Christian or Muslim), ethnicity (not blood and soil Europeans), genetics (polluters by the Nazis) and political leanings (both capitalists and Marxists). Now as Zionists they are accused of violating the modern secular religion of Human Rights. Specifically, Israel is described as a White European, Settler Colonial, Apartheid State that intentionally commits war crimes, mass starvation and genocide. These are no different than the Blood Libels from the Middle Ages that defamed Jews and inflamed mobs. How are accusations of deliberately murdering Palestinian children and intentionally starving the entire Gazan population different from killing Christian children for ritual purposes? Please check the links to learn more about these modern libels.
These Double Standards, together with Demonization and De-legitimization, the 3Ds, are the hallmarks to identify when legitimate criticism of the Jewish people or Israeli policies, cross into systemic antisemitism. Jew-Hatred with its othering, scapegoating and dehumanization, only spreads through society and leads to lethal violence when it is legitimized by social institutions like the Church, Monarchy, Politicians, Unions and Writers, Artists, Composers and even Nobel Prize Winners. This is how Hutus in Rwanda willingly slaughtered Tutsis, who were repeatedly demonized by leaders. Genocide and social violence do not spontaneously occur.
Unfortunately, universities and educational institutions have played an outsized role in laying the intellectual groundwork in all countries afflicted with systemic Jew-Hatred. Current academia has substituted postmodern deconstruction for truth, lived-experience for history, ideology for science, relativism for morality, and grievance for responsibility. It has promoted anti-Western intersectional identity-based ideology, replacing scholarship with social activism, including cancelling and boycotting heterodox opinions and marginalizing Zionist Jews. In their quest for global values, academics, even advocate “universalizing” the Holocaust. At the University of British Columbia, this meant airbrushing the “particularist” Jews from their own story. Sadly, Never Again and Lest we Forget, have become cliches. However, I can reassure you that we will never forget. Queens and other Canadian Universities have now joined the pantheon of inquisitors who have marginalized the Jewish people throughout the ages.
No one would have believed that Germans and Jews would have close relations, or that there would be Abraham Accords between Israel and the Gulf countries. This gives me hope that the current ideology of hatred and outrage that afflicts our universities, will one day recede and be replaced by moderation infused with truth, compassion and loving kindness.