With Us or Against

Today, the Ontario branch of the Canadian Federation of Students representing more than 300,000 university students voted to boycott Israel stating that universities “through investments and ties with academic institutions that support or profit from what the federation terms Israeli war crimes, remain complicit.” The President of Ryerson’s University Student Union, Rajean Hoilett, further claimed that while the above is necessary, there will be no tolerance for Anti-Semitism on campus.

Ha!

The hypocrisy and contradiction put forth by the aforementioned is almost laughable if it didn’t first make me sick.

How an organization set to represent academia and the intelligentsia of Canada if you will, justifies its decision to boycott Israel, the only democratic country in a region that is literally on fire at the moment due to the radicalization of Islam, is beyond logic.

On the heels of the ISIS beheading of journalist James Foley, hours after Hamas ends the 9th ceasefire by firing not so coincidentally 9 rockets into Israel, Christians in Syria pray for their lives, Europe erupts in Anti-Semitic fervor in ways reminiscent of the Hitler era, and Hoilett has the audacity to claim war crimes are being committed by Israel.

Is this Neanderthal for real?

To answer my own rhetorical question, yes. He is for real.

And sadly he is representative of far too many. Either that or many feel staying silent is better than voicing an opinion due to the fear of offending. Still, after a summer of blitz, your silence is now offending me.

We all remember post 9-11 when George Bush emphatically stated that you are “either with us or against us,” and many laughed claiming his reaction was exactly that, reactionary, and riddled with the intention of fear mongering.

Today that exact statement plays in my head in a loop.

The Ontario branch of the Canadian Federation of Students representing more than 300,000 individuals haphazardly and dangerously made clear they are “against us,” and what the means, if it still isn’t clear from today’s newspaper headlines, is they are “for” terrorism.

It is very black and white.