Israel, Palestine, and Me
August 11th, 2009 | Tikkun Daily
The Jewish Court for Social Justice, at our first meeting, decided that Israel/Palestine would not be a primary focus of the Court’s attention in this session. The natural outcome of that decision?
A discussion of Israel/Palestine dominated our second meeting.
Carleton University correctly banned this poster
SAIA has taken Carleton to the OHRC because this poster was banned by Carleton University as hate speech.
The issue I brought before my colleagues concerns Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) at Carleton University. SAIA has taken the university before the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC), which has made a tremendous mistake in hearing the matter SAIA presented to them.
SAIA promoted Israel Apartheid Week at Carleton this past March with the poster you see here. The university administration, correctly in my opinion, considered the poster inappropriate and banned it from campus.
SAIA has taken Carleton to the OHRC because the poster was banned.
No member of the Court believes this poster is anti-Semitic, an absurd claim used by weak minds with strong opinions.The Court split 2-1 on filing an intervention with the Human Rights Commission. I am the minority on this issue.
The university banned this poster for one simple reason: It’s offensive! It is, in my opinion, morally outrageous.
I do not object to being outraged or offended. Some art has that purpose, namely agit-prop. I do, however, strongly object to agit-prop that does not contribute to anything other than propaganda.
The SAIA poster is nothing but crude agit-prop. Crude agit-prop tells lies. How does this poster inform someone ignorant of the Gaza incursion? And what has it to do with Israeli “apartheid”?
The separation wall, a huge mistake Israel will pay for over a generation or longer, is shown here on all sides. The problem? The wall is nowhere near Gaza. It surrounds the West Bank, not Gaza.
1920s era Soviet agitprop by Mayakovsky. No translation of the Russian is necessary. The pictures tell the whole story.
Refined agit-prop both informs and transforms. The four panels on this Soviet propaganda poster clearly shows two options.
The upper panels show cold winters and starvation. The lower panels show the value of collective labour.
The art here both informs people of a problem and offers a solution to that problem. This is in sad contrast to the SAIA poster. I know that people died in the Israeli offensive. I know that some of them were children. What I don’t know is what to do about it.
SAIA should tell me what to do about it if they have a solution. Alas, no. SAIA does not know what to do about it.
Wouldn’t they offer a solution in their art if they knew what to do about it?
