Ontario MPPs Ignore International Denounciations of Israeli Apartheid
Posted on | March 2, 2010 | Comments Off
Shourideh Molavi
On February 25, a group of Ontario Members of Provincial Parliament (MPP) voted unanimously on a motion to “denounce” this year’s Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW). Claiming to send a message of so-called “moral suasion” to all “fair-minded Ontarians,” Peter Shurman, the MPP who tabled the motion, argued that the mere application of the phrase ‘Israeli apartheid’ is “about as close to hate speech as one can get without being arrested.” In what seemed a veiled threat of possible arrests in the future of those accusing Israel with the crime of apartheid, Shurman moved on to state that he was “not certain” that its use “doesn’t actually cross over that line.”
Israeli Apartheid Week, March 1-7, 2010 – apartheidweek.org.
To make the case for curtailing the use of this phrase, random online blogs not associated with IAW are quoted, after which a barrage of name-calling which vilify the organizers as “propagandists” and “liars,” and label IAW as “pure garbage” and “toxic” follow. Once tabled, a range of bizarre anecdotes of relatives, neighbours and friends who support the Zionist project were presented by various NDP, Liberal and Conservative MPPs as reasons for supporting this blatant censure of freedom of expression. Other than a letter written by Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath, distancing the NDP from the motion, there was little disagreement.
Read the full article on The Socialist Project website
Tags: Andrea Horwath > IAW > Israeli Apartheid Week > Peter Shurman > zionist
