Friday 17 February 2006

The Record (Kitchener, Cambridge and Waterloo, Ontario)

Apartheid label 'not anti-Semitic'

Karen Kawawada and Philip Jalsevac
Record Staff

Uri Davis doesn't look or sound like a rabble-rouser.

White-haired, dressed in a sweater that screams Oxford, he looks like what he is -- a professor and author, an honorary research fellow at the Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Durham University and at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at Exeter University, both in England.

But for all his quiet, intellectual manner, the ideas he advanced at a University of Waterloo talk last night are considered radical in many circles.

Ideas such as these: Israel is an apartheid state. Israel is committing a slow form of genocide against Palestinians.

Davis was invited to speak by the Young Communist League and the K-W Solidarity Association for International Liberation Struggles as part of Israel Apartheid Week, which is also marked in other Canadian cities and in Oxford . In front of a polite audience of about 50, he identified himself as "a Jew, a Palestinian Jew, a citizen of the state of Israel and an anti- Zionist."

Although he holds dual British and Israeli citizenship, David was born in Jerusalem in 1943, in what was then British-mandated Palestine .

Today, he maintained, the country of Palestine coexists with the nation- state of Israel . This is a similar situation to what occurs in Britain , he said. The nation-state is the United Kingdom , but England , Scotland , Wales and Northern Ireland exist within it.

The difference, he said, is that in the United Kingdom , at least in law, a Scottish citizen has the same rights as an English citizen.

This is not the case in Palestine , where non-Jews are segregated from Jews and discriminated against, Davis said.

It isn't simply that Israel is racist -- Israel is an apartheid state, he said.

"Singling out the state of Israel as an apartheid state has nothing to do with . . . expressing anti-semitic sentiment.

"It is a necessary measure based on a very cruel factual and legal system." The major difference between South African apartheid and the situation in Israel is that in Israel , there's no "petty apartheid."

There are no highly visible discriminatory measures, but " Israel is more radical in a negative way," he said. At the peak of apartheid, 87 per cent of land was reserved for whites. In Israel , 93 per cent is reserved in law for Jews.

"It's only the absence of petty apartheid that allows Israel to project itself as the only democracy in the Middle East , he said. Regulations restricting Palestinian Muslim economic activity and movement are effectively "genocide by strangulation," he said.

Another speaker, Hazem Jamjoum of the Arab Students' Collective at the University of Toronto called for sanctions against Israel .

Zainab Amadahy, a Cherokee activist in Toronto , gave a history of colonial settlement in Canada , arguing First Nations were victims of genocide, both cultural and literal.

Some members of the predominantly Jewish Waterloo Israel Political Affairs Club had sent e-mails suggesting members attend, but if any were there, they didn't rush to ask questions.

In a Record article Wednesday, Ariel Picollo, president of the club at UW, said he was "very sad to see things like this are supported and promoted."

But Gloria Ichim of the Young Communist League, who has been to the occupied territories, said if Picollo wants to see sadness, "I think he should go to Palestine and see the families whose land has been confiscated and who don't have food to feed their children."

Ichim was offended by the article for calling the position of two academics on Israel inflammatory. "I take issue with 'inflammatory,' " said Ichim, an organizer of the event. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are among those who criticize Israel for its treatment of Palestinians, occupation of the West Bank and violence, she said.

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