Last month, Canada's York University was the site for a conference on the middle east. Given the organizers, most of us expected it to be a hate-Israel fest and decided not to attend it. Na'ama Carmi of Haifa University was an exception. Here, from the Toronto Star, is an excerpt of her experiences and impressions [h/t Dylan]:
Although the extreme manner in which they were presented was sometimes hard to hear, I was not surprised by the same Palestinian arguments that have been around for decades.
Thus, we heard that Israel is a racist, apartheid state; that the Palestinians are the "indigenous" and Zionists the colonials; that the only reason for the unwillingness of Jewish Israelis to give up a Jewish national state is their unwillingness to surrender power and privileges; and that Zionism has an inherent tendency toward war crimes.
Unfortunately, this was not accompanied with introspection or self-criticism by the Palestinians. Hamas was not mentioned at all. Apparently it does not exist in the virtual map of the Palestinian participants. Another "marginal" phenomenon that disappeared as if it did not exist is the lethal Palestinian terror against Israeli citizens.
But if all this was quite an expected scenario, not in my worst dreams did I imagine an atmosphere that was totally incompatible with academic discourse. The university rightly resisted outside pressures aimed at silencing the conference. But there were attempts at the conference itself to silence unpopular views.
A hostile atmosphere toward people with different views generally, and Jewish-Zionist Israelis in particular, was created. Anyone who challenged the Palestinian perspective was intimidated or even labelled a racist. The audience vocally applauded those whose views it approved. At times, those presenting a different view were subject to abuse and ridicule.
For me, this reached an extreme when one interlocutor, rather than debating the substantive arguments I presented, questioned my psychological state. And all of this without any apparent attempt by the organizers to stop it. Never before in my whole academic career have I encountered the rudeness that I experienced at this conference. ...
[W]hat happened at York University reflects a worrying, dangerous and, unfortunately, not uncommon pattern. Persons who demand the protection of human rights abandon them and display little tolerance for the views of others when they have the power to marginalize them. ...
This was not an academic conference, but an "academic" version of Durban.
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