The conflict between Israel and Palestine reaches beyond the walls of Israel in the West Bank. After the Gaza conflict or massacre as some have labelled it ended with an uneasy truce, Canadian universities have become a new battleground.
Emotions ran high at Carleton and other universities across Canada as Israel Awareness Week and Israeli Apartheid Week ran back to back, bringing out the wide gap between pro-Israel and anti-Israel Canadians.
On Feb. 22, the Canadian Union of Public Employees Ontario passed a motion to push Canadian universities to end any research or investments that would benefit the Israeli army. They aim to encourage debates on the Israel-Palestine issue across campuses in Canada.
But the latest CUPE motion just adds flames to the fire rather than encouraging debate. Their stand threatens to eliminate any possibility of a peaceful debate on the issue.
While academic institutions should play an important role in discussing the conflict and coming up with a solution, CUPE Ontario has overstepped their role by calling for an academic boycott.
Such a polarized stand on sensitive issue is not conducive to a healthy debate on the conflict, which is what CUPE claims to encourage.
By taking such a stand, CUPE Ontario has silenced the alternative voice and closed its doors to the supporters of Israel.
This raises the question of the right to protest and freedom of speech and expression, which the Canadian democracy guarantees to every citizen.
From that perspective, CUPE Ontario should have the right to take whatever stand they wish. However, with the motion, CUPE has brought the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the classrooms of Canada, in an unhealthy manner.
Healthy debates on global issues certainly have a place in universities. But by taking a biased stand, CUPE has in fact voted against a healthy and productive debate.
Their stand would isolate those people who support Israel, discouraging them from participating in any debate.
The CUPE motion comes at an already ugly phase of this debate.
A poster advertising the Israeli Apartheid Week was banned by Carleton and a few other universities in Ontario in the last week of February.
The banned poster shows a cartoon depicting a helicopter with the word Israel firing a missile on a child wearing a Palestinian grab.
However, the Carleton administration, which banned this poster, did not pay heed to requests by 56 Carleton professors to condemn the Israeli bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza.
The administration also ignored a request for a debate on the issue by the Students Against Israeli Apartheid – Carleton.
Such biased positions on critical issues prevent alternative views from being expressed, widening the gap between opposing groups.
Though the CUPE motion is anti-Israel and not anti-Jew, that is not how the masses will interpret it. Jewish groups in Canada have protested the motion as they fear intimidation by anti-Israeli groups.
Their fears came alive a few weeks ago when Jewish students at York University were shoved and insulted with anti-Israeli slurs during a news conference calling for the resignation of the heads of the York Federation of Students. They had to take refugee in the lounge of Hillel, before Toronto police rescued them.
Such incidents are unnecessary on university campuses where free, liberal thinking should be encouraged.
CUPE should keep out of academic institutions, and come up with more productive ways of registering their protest.