Letters to the Editor
Judy Haiven, Halifax
Israeli Apartheid Week defended …
National Post Published: Thursday, March 04, 2010
Re: A Festival Of Bigotry, editorial, March 2.
It’s funny. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) killed more than 1,400 Palestinians (400 children), maimed more than 5,000 and left 20,000 homeless after Israel’s 21-day siege of Gaza, last December and January. And Israel has admitted to using phosphorus shells during the Gaza operation.
In contrast, Israel Apartheid Week kills no one. It maims no one; it makes no one homeless — yet on campuses across Canada, if the Conservative government has its way, people will not be allowed to speak out and name the atrocities that Israel has committed and continues to do to the Palestinians. Apartheid is not too strong a word to label Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians. Even former prime minister Ehud Barak calls it that. I am Jewish and support the right of Canadians to have Israel Apartheid Week.
Judy Haiven, associate professor, Department of Management, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax.
Scott Weinstein:Montréal
Israeli Apartheid Week:
National Post Published:March 04, 2010
It is remarkable what speed politicians can change their tune, and what speed their past can be uncovered. Michael Ignatieff recently condemned Israeli Apartheid Week, but here is what the Liberal leader previously wrote in The Guardian on April 19, 2002:
“When I looked down at the West Bank, at the settlements like Crusader forts occupying the high ground, at the Israeli security cordon along the Jordan river closing off the Palestinian lands from Jordan, I knew I was not looking down at a state or the beginnings of one, but at a Bantustan, one of those pseudo-states created in the dying years of apartheid to keep the African population under control.”
The quote by Michael Ignatieff on Israel is still up on The Guardian’s website, guardian.co. uk/world/ 2002/apr/ 19/israel3
Scott Weinstein, Montreal.
