MONTREAL — A hastily organized event to protest  Israeli Apartheid Week on Montreal campuses drew barely 50 people last week, most of them not students and none of whom voiced any dissenting opinion.

The Campus Struggle Against Anti-Semitism, held on March 2 at the McGill University law faculty, was led by National Post columnist Barbara Kay and Alain Ayache, a member of the World Lebanese Cultural Union.

A snowstorm prevented a third scheduled speaker, Asaf Romirowsky, director of Israel and Middle East affairs at Philadelphia Jewish Federation, from attending.

The event was presented by the Student Coalition for a Just Peace in the Middle East and the Student Israel Advocacy Program, both organizations that are associated with the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research (CIJR), an independent pro-Israel group.

Second-year law student Rebecca Katz was mainly responsible for organizing the event. She said that Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is “totally manipulative” and  is “preaching hate,” and regretted the lack of co-ordination among pro-Israel students.

IAW, in its fifth year internationally, had its most ambitious program to date in Montreal, with scheduled events from March 1 to 9 at McGill University, Concordia University and the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), as well as CEGEP St. Laurent, and the listed endorsement of 40 local groups.

Kay described IAW as a “screen for Jew hatred” and a violation of Jewish students’ right to express their views about Israel within a safe environment. She castigated university administrations for being “too cowardly to enforce their own human rights codes.”

If the situation does not change, Kay urged defenders of Israel to take the universities to court, making a case under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

IAW organizers are harder to hold accountable, she added, because they are “very careful not to violate the specific hate provisions of the Criminal Code.”

However, nothing is stopping individual students from going to the code of ethics office of their university to complain, she said.  

She suggested parents and donors use their influence on university administrations to improve the atmosphere for Jewish students.

At the same time, Kay said that IAW should not be banned because she does not believe in censorship, short of preventing incitement to violence.

She also said Israel studies programs should be instituted at Canadian universities, distinct from Jewish studies. The existing Middle East studies programs are biased against Israel.

The Jewish community doesn’t understand that when calling Israel an apartheid state becomes an acceptable term and the boycott of Israel starts to succeed, “the right to defend Israel on campus will be denied… It will become an intellectual crime to advocate for Israel,” Kay said.

The current situation at Canadian universities “pales in comparison” with the anti-Semitism on European campuses, she said.

Ayache, a former lecturer in political science at Concordia and UQAM and a journalist in the Middle East, suggested pro-Israel students reach out to Arab students, inviting them to discuss ideas, even if it takes a third party to make the overture. This kind of openness could change the negative opinion many Arab students have about pro-Israel groups, he said.

McGill student Gabriel Goldenberg suggested that part of the reason for the lack of a coherent response to anti-Semitism on campuses is that “it’s not cool to be an activist for Israel or Jewish-related issues… There’s almost a shame or embarrassment. [Students] say, ‘Yeah, I know Israel is right, but I don’t want to get involved.’” He added that “student politics can wear you down.”

CIJR handed out flyers describing as false and offensive any analogy between the status of Arabs in Israel and that of blacks in South Africa during apartheid, as well as information denouncing Tadamon, one of the chief organizers of IAW in Montreal, as pro-Hezbollah.

Tadamon, which means solidarity in Arabic, is working with the campus-based and student-funded Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG).

The major Jewish student association, Hillel, did not hold any events last week to coincide with IAW, and instead scheduled several pro-Israel activities for this week, including speakers, films and cultural happenings.

It did distribute “Apartheid for Dummies” cards, which used the image of the popular book series to concisely refute any similarity between Israel and the former South African regime.

“We decided to celebrate Israel the week after [IAW], rather than counter it. Debating it, I think, is ridiculous,” said Dan Hadad, Hillel’s director of Israel advocacy.

Students associated with the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies handed out fact sheets on democracy in Israel and its conflict with Hamas that included an argument against a boycott of Israel based on its contributions to high-tech.