MPP’s Tim Hudak and Mike Colle teamed up with Avi Benlolo of the Simon Wiesenthal centre to introduce a motion in the Ontario legislature opposing the movement to boycott Israel known as BDS. But the name of the bill is misleading and the explanation for the bill lacks veracity. Read more
Two Ontario legislators (Conservative Tim Hudak and Liberal Mike Colle), have introduced an anti-BDS bill in the Ontario legislature. It quickly passed through first reading on Tuesday, May 17th without debate or fanfare.
In what appears to be a coordinated move, an op ed entitled “Fighting Anti-Semitism in Ontario” co-signed by both MPP’s along with Avi Benlolo of the pro-Israel Simon Wiesenthal Centre appeared in the National Post on the very next day.
Labelled “Standing up Against Anti-Semitism Act”, the bill takes a slightly different tack than the anti-BDS motion introduced by Conservatives in Ottawa in February. The Ottawa motion “condemned” those who support BDS but didn’t have any “teeth”.
The Ontario bill does have teeth.
“The Act provides that no public body may contract with any person or entity that supports or participates in the BDS movement. If a contractor does support or participate in the BDS movement, the contract will be terminated… Public pension funds and foundations of colleges and universities are prohibited from investing in any entity that supports or participates in the BDS movement.”
– Standing up against anti-Semitism act
The motion would apply to any Ontario institutions including universities which allow BDS activities on campus.
The motion is scheduled for second reading this week. The movers appear to be a hurry, perhaps hoping to pass it while Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne is still in Israel.
Where the NDP will stand on it is not clear either.
A flawed argument
But there is a dangerous flaw in the Hudak/Colle motion. BDS is not in the least anti-Semitic. In fact, a quick check of the official BDS website (www.bdsmovement.net) makes that very clear. As a result, the title of the bill is misleading, and the explanation along with the bill is completely untruthful.
“The BDS movement is defined as the political movement whose primary purpose is to boycott, divest from and apply sanctions against Israel and various persons, corporations, businesses and cultural institutions that are Israeli, owned by Jewish Canadians or affiliated with Jewish Canadians or with Israel.”
– Standing up against anti-Semitism act
This is a total fiction. There is nothing in any of the official BDS literature that targets Jewish Canadians. It is entirely focused on a peaceful approach aimed at forcing Israel to live up to its international obligations with respect to the Palestinians.
I have written an open letter to Mr. Hudak and Mr. Colle pointing this out and warning them of the potential consequences. It is reprinted below.
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May 18, 2016
Dear Mr. Hudak and Mr. Colle,
I am writing about Bill 202, “Standing up against anti-Semitism Act”, which you recently introduced into the Ontario legislature.
As you are both experienced parliamentarians, I am sure you know that misleading the parliament is considered a very grave offence which carries severe penalties.
Both the title of the bill and the language used to describe it are highly misleading. I am strongly opposed to anti-Semitism, but your characterisation of the BDS movement as anti-Semitic does not match the evidence.
In particular, the “explanation” included in the bill attributes without any proof an “anti-Semitic” motive to the BDS movement. Furthermore, it claims that the BDS movement targets Jewish Canadians or business owned by Jewish Canadians. I invite you to produce a shred of evidence to justify this statement. On the contrary, a quick reference to the official BDS website which can be found at www.bdsmovement.net makes it clear that the BDS movement opposes all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
In fact, the BDS movement is a peaceful and non violent approach to force Israel to live up to its obligations under international law. It has 3 specific demands, none of which involve expelling Jews, or calling for anything but respect for existing international legislation.
If you would like to know more about the BDS movement, I refer you to an excellent, factual Globe and Mail article written by Patrick Martin on February 23rd. He explains that all 3 of the BDS demands are consistent with official Canadian policy. CBC commentator Neil Macdonald also pointed out that the BDS peaceful approach is an alternative to violent conflict.
Mr. Hudak and Mr. Colle, it is not clear to me whether your erroneous and misleading allegations result from ignorance or dishonesty. I assume the former. As we both know, misleading the Parliament is a serious offence not only to public morality but to the institution of Parliament itself.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Larson
cc. Hon. Yasir Naqvi, MPP Ottawa Centre
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Comments welcome. Anyone wishing to write a note to their own MPP can find names and email addresses by clicking here.
Canada Talks Israel/Palestine 
Dynamite letter, Peter, kudos to you.
Trotting out the word anti-Semitism in protest to what is in fact a movement of peaceful activism against racism as practiced by Israel’s policies in the occupied Palestinian territories is not only inappropriate and wrong, but also polarizing and harmful to fair democratic debate about human rights.
Criticism of certain policies of the government of Israel is not antisemitic.
I agree with Mr Larson that for this bill the title, details and explanatory notes are misleading and provoking. It has no place in any Canadian legislature, and should quickly be rejected by open and honest debate. It’s passage would be alarming and dangerous to progressive democratic values that we hold dear in Canada.
@Peter
I believe that you aren’t antisemetic but that doesn’t mean that BDS isn’t. BDS doesn’t institutionally hold the positions you do. As Jews develop increasing ties to Israel through travel, business and marriage a boycott of Israel affiliated becomes a boycott of Jewish affiliated. Frankly having read this blog I think your positions are more in line with liberal zionism than in line with its anti-colonialist opponents in BDS. There are organizations that want Israel to merely come into compliance with International law, BDS is not among them.
A good example of BDS moving to a general attack on Canadian Jews is what happened in Canada was the Concordia Palestinian solidarity movement. Supports of the movement gained control of the student government at Concordia. In that position they started attacking Israel, for example protesting the ability of Israeli leaders to speak to Concordia’s Jewish population. As this was succesful opposition to Israel caused them to attack and ban Hillel, the college Jewish social and religious club, because of Hillel’s ties to Mahal. Mahal is a program among Jews born outside Israel who have weak legal ties to Israel but whom are thinking of making aliyah or want an active dual citizenship to serve in the IDF. The Concordia Jews started acting out religiously like holding campus wide Hanukah celebrations or less religious Jews wearing a kippah (the Jewish head covering) as a protest against the student government.
This is a fairly good example, that happened in Canada which shows that in practice there is no clear line Judaism and Zionism, between attacking the indigenous Jewish population and attacking the Zionism of that population. Of course the track record of anti-Zionism in the Muslim world and eastern Europe shows much the same thing. Anti-Zionism along with Zionism and Nazism has in the last hundred years ethnically cleansed most of the planet of its Jewish population.
It has 3 specific demands, none of which involve expelling Jews,
Actually demand 2 “end the occupation” is often cited by BDSers as implying something like the deliberate ethnic cleansing of 650k Jews most of whom are children. Others tend to agree with the Iranian solution / the anti-colonial movement, that after the “restoration of democracy” the indigenous population determines whether they wish the decedents of the colonizers to remain. That is that Jewish inhabitation is impermissible because it was accomplished through colonialism. Both the PLO originally and Hamas currently hold that position, as do most Palestinians when polled. Standing in solidarity with the Palestinians means standing in solidarity with policies of genocide. I won’t argue that the Palestinians lack any practical means of implementing this genocide and that there isn’t a big difference between a powerless group taking extreme stands and a powerful one taking the same stance. But it simply isn’t accurate to just pretend that Palestinian solidarity is merely a belief in liberal democracy. So while you may not agree with mass expulsion it simply isn’t accurate to say the BDS movement does not.
As for peaceful you closed comments on that thread about the blockade but when discussing how a sanctions regime would be imposed on Israel (a country with both the means and deep experience in engaging in triangle trade to bypass sanctions) talk about blockades and all sorts of force. There is also frequent talk about article 7. There is frequent talk about war crimes being defined in ways that include activities that are performed directly by huge chunks of Israeli population. At the same time there are assertions that “justice” for those crimes must be part of a settlement, where justice explicitly means imprisonment (usually not the death penalty since BDS is tied to people who are anti capital punishment). Tossing a few million people into cages out of 7 million for life is essentially a call for at least a partial genocide. Moreover those same people inside BDS want to charge “collaborators” in those wor crimes which is another few million people including a large chunk of the Canadian Jewish population.
If you want to support a more humane Israel that upholds human rights that’s a good cause. It just isn’t BDS’s cause. The legislation is dealing with the BDS exists not the BDS that you wish existed. The global anti-Zionist movement has a track record of mostly attacking indigenous Jews using Zionism as an excuse.
Hey CD-host,
I’m glad you accept that I am not anti-Semitic. In return, I am willing to admit that there are probably some people who support BDS who are anti-Semitic. When I see/hear that, I speak out.
I assume there are anti-Semites in every Canadian political party – Conservatives included. But that does not make those parties anti-Semitic. They could be called so if it were in their program, or if their official spokespersons made anti-Semitic statements.
The official BDS website and its official spokespersons are very clear in their opposition to anti-Semitism..
@Peter
Yes I saw how you handled that Jewish conspiracy theory a few weeks back. You do speak out.
They could be called so if it were in their program, or if their official spokespersons made anti-Semitic statements. The official BDS website and its official spokespersons are very clear in their opposition to anti-Semitism..
I would say the BDS movement is pretty clear in their opposition to being called antisemetic. They also express opposition to types of antisemitism that are popular exclusively on the right. So for example among those BDSers who believe that any humans have souls, few believe that Jews don’t or have non-human souls. On the other hand the aspects of Nazi ideology that passed into Soviet/Stalinist antisemitism are very popular among BDSers. They just refuse to term those “antisemitism”. Arguably this is very much like the original antisemitism league, that considered the religious anti-Judaic bigotry to be the stuff on crackpots and rubes and wanted a more scientific bigotry against Jews based on race.
So to take some examples:
–Jews use liberalism to weaken church and state —
Well BDSers are liberals so they generally talk about Jews using foreign policy neo-conservatives to undermine state and liberal organizations / interest groups.
— Jews manipulate the economy, especially through banking monopolies and the power of gold – Yep with gold replaced by “big banks”
— Jews replace traditional educational curriculum to discourage independent thinking
Again think about how often you hear about how zionist propaganda is why people (especially in America) hold the positions they do regarding Israel / Palestine.
etc… I’m not sure if you want me to list out the classic antisemetic memes and their BDS equivalents.
— Jews encourage immorality among Christian youth —
Yep where immorality is “imperialism”, “colonialism”… and not the sexual stuff that doesn’t bother leftists.
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Fundamentally though the problem is not that BDS itself promotes antisemetic themes. Look at the comments above. I’m going to respond later today It is that the core belief on which the movement is centered is fundamentally antiJewish. No one fails to understand the ties that the Quebecois have with France. Or that Irish Canadians have with Ireland. The idea that the Jewish people genuinely love their homeland and that Jews in Canada have the same relationship to Israel as any other expat community is simply unthinkable and seen as immoral. That is the core problem. And that’s not ancillary to BDS it lies at the very core of the movement. BDS expresses a full throttled open rejection that Jews are people entitled to self determination where they live.
The Hebrew culture is the dominant culture in the territory that use to be mandatory Palestine. In most situations where you have a dominant culture and a minority culture the pressure being applied by liberals is to allow for assimilation on deep cultural issues, while maintaining a sort of shallow respect for cultural differences. That’s not at all the case with respect to BDS, in that it doesn’t advocate for the dominant culture to just assimilate the minority culture. Rather the approach being advocated is for an overthrow of the nation underlying the state. That’s a solution that to the best of my knowledge is not advocated anywhere else. It is a unique solution with respect to the Hebrew culture of Israel.
Conflating Zionism and Judaism is incredibly offensive to anti-Zionist Jews. It is not hard to differentiate between businesses and individuals supporting Israeli oppression and people who just happen to be Jewish. It really makes no sense to fear that BDS will start targeting all Jews since so many prominent BDS supporters are themselves Jewish.
The end of the occupation doesn’t require the expulsion of the settlers. The one-state solution could allow the settlers to stay with the occupation ending through full annexation with equal rights provided to the Palestinians.
Standing in solidarity with Palestinians does not mean standing for everything a variety of Palestinian groups have ever said or done. You seem to really get carried away with generalizations based on ethnicity. The BDS movement has very discreet goals and methods that are completely non-violent in in accordance with accepted international norms and laws.
I doubt there is anyone in the BDS movement that thinks justice for war crimes and human rights abuses in Israel means the imprisonment of millions. That is absurd. There would be widespread support for a Truth and Reconciliation process as the best approximation of justice in this circumstance.
@Steve C
Conflating Zionism and Judaism is incredibly offensive to anti-Zionist Jews.
If they don’t want the conflating then:
Jewish synagogues need to stop having Israel flags on the bimah
Jewish day schools need to stop making Israeli independence day parades one of their central public events.
Jewish Hebrew schools need to stop organizing regular trips to Israel and covering modern Israeli history the same way they cover ancient Israeli history in a religious context
Jewish religious books need to stop identifying the state of Israel as the fulfillment of prophecy, ex Seder Ha-T’fillot.
etc…
and finally anti-Zionist Jews need to start treating human rights abuses in Israel with the same level of ignorance and indifference they express towards them in Myanmar or Zaire.
Until then the conflation is well warranted. The Jewish community in the aggregate gets to decide what the content of the Jewish religion is, the same way the Muslim community in the aggregate gets to decide what the content of the Islamic religion is. If Judaism institutionally becomes Zionist then Zionism becomes an aspect of Judaism. The fact that some minority within a religion disagrees with a religious doctrine doesn’t change the fact it is a doctrine.
It really makes no sense to fear that BDS will start targeting all Jews since so many prominent BDS supporters are themselves Jewish.
Then how do you explain the historical track record? Many of the Egyptian anti-Zionists of the 1940s and 1950s were Jewish. Yet Egypt was ethnically cleansed of Jews. Many of the Soviet anti-Zionists were Jewish yet the Soviet union was mostly cleansed in the 1990s. The Iranian Jewish community always objected to conflating Judaism and Zionism yet Iran is mostly cleansed in this generation. The easily verifiable facts dispute your assertion.
The end of the occupation doesn’t require the expulsion of the settlers. The one-state solution could allow the settlers to stay with the occupation ending through full annexation with equal rights provided to the Palestinians.
Absolutely true. And if BDS advocated a one-state solution with equality for all and used rhetoric consistent with that position it would be completely unfair to accuse BDS of advocating for massive ethnic cleansing (or worse). As long as BDS rhetoric uses terms like “war criminal” for 650k people most of whom are children and calls for “international justice” to be applied against those people while asserting things like “right to resist” (and see below for an example) then BDS does not support full human rights for Jews. Just as Jews get decide the beliefs of Judaism, BDSers get to decide the beliefs of BDS. What Jews advocate for can rightfully be called Judaism. What BDSers advocate for can rightfully be called BDS positions.
Same problem in both cases.
Standing in solidarity with Palestinians does not mean standing for everything a variety of Palestinian groups have ever said or done.
Of course not. It does mean standing in solidarity with the political positions held by the Palestinians as expressed by the political parties that exist among Palestinians in substantial numbers and the positions they take.
The BDS movement has very discreet goals and methods that are completely non-violent in in accordance with accepted international norms and laws.
The S in BDS is not necessarily and is generally not in practice non-violent. A siege or a blockade is an act of war. Moreover and more importantly for BDS positions like hatred of dialogue and rejection of normalization are inconsistent with non-violent approaches. Martin Luther King engaged in frequent dialogue with southern governments and institutions. Ghandi engaged in dialogue with the British and later the separatist factions. BDS’s rhetoric is inconsistent with a desire for peaceful change. They seek changes in Israeli society that are harmful to Israelis. They seek these changes quite openly and admit those changes can only be accomplished through massive suffering inducing the enemy to lose their will to resist such change. Those are not the sorts of acts taken by peaceful movements.
in accordance with accepted international norms and laws.
BDS rejects quite a of international law. They reject the partition resolution. The reject the concept that Jews are a people. They reject self determination for the Hebrews of Israel. They reject the legitimacy of the Israeli state to determine property rights in their territory. They reject the right of refugees to resettle. They reject anti-discrimination norms which allow people of different ethnicities to buy and sell property all throughout territories and discourage ethnic separation. They reject the timeliness of security council resolutions. Etc.. Certainly the accept international law when it agrees with their positions but so what? Supporting the law means support the law even when it disagrees with you.
I doubt there is anyone in the BDS movement that thinks justice for war crimes and human rights abuses in Israel means the imprisonment of millions. That is absurd.
And if I start posting comments from BDSers which call for the wholesale destruction of the Jewish population of Israel then what? For example a leader:
The ensuring government, which comes into power after the referendum among the original Palestinians, once settled will decide whether the non-Palestinian emigrants to the country over the past years can continue living in Palestine or should return to their home countries as an aside from the same speech We recommend neither the classical war by the army of Muslim countries nor to throw migrated Jews at sea [grammar from original] and certainly not an arbitration by the UN or other international organizations
You may not agree with all the positions taken by BDSers but it simply is inaccurate to state that your positions represent the entirety of BDSer positions or those the organization has taken.
There would be widespread support for a Truth and Reconciliation process as the best approximation of justice in this circumstance.
And if BDS called for that then BDS’s calls for “justice” wouldn’t be interpreted to mean anything other than a commission. But as long as they are deliberately ambiguous their opponents rightly attribute to them supporting the more violent proposals that some of their membership and leadership have advocated.
Legislation to prohibit support for the application of peaceful economic pressure on another country for just cause is not only reprehensible … it contravenes the right of free speech in Canada. The state of Israel has been defying international law by occupying parts of another country for decades, killing thousands of its inhabitants in a series of military incursions, and jailing Palestinians (many children included) under military law without recourse to legal representation. To even bring forth such legislation for discussion is ludicrous.
Arguing about BDS is often a distraction and typically leads to an impasse. So, to put this discussion in a broader context, consider what’s at stake for the Occupied Palestinians —
In an April 3. 2016 article in the Intercept, Glenn Greenwald wrote that “all forms of resistance to Israeli occupation are deemed illegitimate.” —
“When Palestinians fight against occupying troops on their soil, they are denounced — and often killed — as “terrorists.” Meanwhile, nonviolent campaigns to end the occupation through a South Africa-style boycott are demonized as “antisemitism” and officially barred — censored — in all sorts of ways, in numerous countries around the world.
If fighting Israeli occupying forces is barred as “terrorism,” and nonviolent boycotts against Israel are barred as “antisemitism,” then what is considered a legitimate means for Palestinians and their allies to resist and end the decades long, illegal Israeli occupation? The answer is: nothing. Palestinians are obliged to submit to Israeli occupation in a way that none of the people demanding that would ever themselves submit to occupation of their land. All forms of resistance to Israeli occupation are deemed illegitimate. That, manifestly, is the whole point of all of this.”
(Source: TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/h2ryg3r )
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In a July 2014 article on Israel-Palestine and BDS, Noam Chomsky wrote that the road ahead for Palestinians is unfolding before our eyes,” towards Israel’s “final solution”.
Citing Israel scholar Zeev Sternhell, Chomsky notes: “the occupation will continue, land will be confiscated from its owners to expand the settlements, the Jordan Valley will be cleansed of Arabs, Arab Jerusalem will be strangled by Jewish neighborhoods, and any act of robbery and foolishness that serves Jewish expansion in the city will be welcomed by the High Court of Justice. The road to South Africa has been paved and will not be blocked until the Western world presents Israel with an unequivocal choice: Stop the annexation and dismantle most of the colonies and the settler state, or be an outcast.”
“The road ahead leads not to South Africa, but rather to an increase in the proportion of Jews in the Greater Israel that is being constructed…. There is no reason to expect Israel to accept a Palestinian population it does not want.”
(Source: http://www.thenation.com/article/israel-palestine-and-bds/ )
@fjwhite
You have a point most anything the Palestinians do to resist will get attacked. With many Jewish Israelis being in their 5th generation talk of resistance to an occupation is pretty much being rejected by the mainstream. There is no home country for the Jews of Israel to return to. Israel is their home. Most people believe that after thousands of years solving the Jewish question in a way that Jews were comfortable with was a triumph for good governance. What Palestinians are “allowed to do” and would be encouraged to do is to negotiate how to integrate fully into the country and society that exists where they live or move to another country more to their liking.
Moreover that is in fact what most of the people criticizing the BDS movement do with their own societies. Me, you and everyone else on here doesn’t agree with everything about the society in which we live. We don’t respond to those disagreements by trying to overthrow that society and replace it with an entirely different one. Rather we work within the system for gradual change and make things a bit better, while accommodating. Or we pick another society / sub-society that fits us better. So I reject your charge of hypocrisy here.
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Now if by occupation you meant the West Bank and Gaza that’s not BDS. The groups that merely support an end to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza are called “liberal Zionist” and are denounced by BDS.