Israel Apart

Just in case the anti-Israel calendar wasn’t crowded enough, “Israel Apartheid Week” began on Monday. On university campuses and at sit-ins in North America and Europe, activists have been showcasing the alleged brutality of Israel toward the Palestinians, persuading the persuadable to connect the Jewish state with the despised whites-only regime of South Africa, and mobilizing support for the “Boycott, Divest, Sanction” campaign that is aimed at turning Israel into an international pariah.

At the University of Toronto, where the event had its genesis in 2005, this week’s attendees are being treated to such elegant nuggets as “Globally Resisting Settler Colonial States through Campaigns & Solidarity,” “Pinkwashing, Homonationalism & Love under the Time of Apartheid,” and, my personal favorite, “Rethinking the Syrian Golan in the Context of Apartheid.” (At this point in their civil war, not even the Syrians know who controls the Syrian side of the Golan.) A few movies and other cultural events make brief nods to actual Palestinians, but for the most part the focus falls relentlessly on the state of Israel and its crimes.

When it began in 2005, the event was simply another among the many campus protests associated with the American war in Iraq and Israel’s supposedly disproportionate measures of self-defense during the second intifada: some flag-waving, some posters, some quaint 60s-style chants. But even as the intifada tapered out, Israel Apartheid Week took off, quickly spreading beyond North American university campuses to cities around the world. Disheveled protest gave way to meticulously planned programs featuring anti-imperialist celebrity speakers and lurid open-to-the-public exhibits of alleged Israeli war crimes. Over the years, studiously avoiding any analysis of the actual dynamics of life in Israel or the territories, the event has stayed on message: Israel treats the Palestinians the way apartheid South Africa treated blacks, forcing them into the equivalent of Bantustans and brutally depriving them of all political and social rights. To judge by recent endorsements garnered from movie actors and pop stars, always a bellwether of politically correct opinion, the movement might be gaining strength.