Anti-apartheid Solidarity in Canada

The Canadian journal Upping the Anti has a recent and excellent essay on their blog about efforts of Zionist groups working with the state to step up attacks on anti-apartheid solidarity. In 2004 there was a major push by Concordia university working with the state and Zionist groups to end anti-apartheid solidarity on the campus. When organizers attempted to block far right politician and occasional prime minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking, the university administration suspended several leading organizers and banned all anti-apartheid work on campus. These are the same liberal administrators who will be telling their grand kids 30 years from now how they were always against Israeli apartheid, just like they supposedly were with South African anti-Apartheid. Yeah right.

Like with the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, there is a lot of revisionist history official society does to boost up their legitimacy. They don't tell you at the official NYU "celebrations" every year presided over by Sexton that Dr. King was hysterically denounced and threatened by these liberals when he came out and denounced the Vietnam War and U.S. imperialism. Today you have to laugh as they denounce Reverend Wright as a dangerous black man, and then try to turn Dr. King into a symbol in support of contemporary imperialism and white supremacy.

Anyway, this essay on more recent developments in Canadian anti-apartheid solidarity points out a few key issues that are critical for understanding what the struggle of a single campaign on a campus, community or union and the wider movement as a whole is. The Zionists and official society may have all the guns and money and coercive power of the state, which makes it difficult to organize at times (even as many make a lot of disingenuous excuses), but unfortunately for them, reality and history aren't on their side.

The solidarity movement in the U.S. is at a low point of activity at this time. By 2003-2004 things were slowing down. This was partially due to the fact that the second Intifada was devastated by Israeli state terror, but it was also largely due to the liberal political contradictions of many in the solidarity movement. As the U.S. and Israel attempted to resurrect the Oslo framework again and install the Palestinian elite in the West Bank firmly back in control with the Palestinian Authority apparatus at their disposal. Today, the same dynamics are playing out, only now is added the civil war strategy of the American and Israeli regimes, with the creation of death squad mercenary forces, first using this tactic in Iraq in 2004-2005 (learned from Central America in the 1980s and the Phoenix Program in Vietnam in the 1960s), and applied to Gaza as they carried out a coup against the elected Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority in 2007 and now being used in Lebanon as recently as this month.

In the last three years or so some of what was aimed for since 2000-2001 with the outbreak of the second Intifada and solidarity efforts has been achieved and begun to be implemented, but largely in Britain and Canada, not the U.S. The official announcement of the Campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions was an important step that could not occur in 2000-2003, important years in U.S. anti-apartheid solidarity. The Zionist establishment and official society by 2003 had gotten back on their feet and organized a bit by the time the U.S. scene was fading some. They hit back in ways described in this essay, but much of the solidarity efforts were slowed down because of their own liberal political contradictions. Were the "negotiations" that the U.S. and Israel orchestrated with their Palestinian puppets legitimate or not? Was a "two-state solution" just a propaganda line or a viable reality that reflected the facts of the Israeli system? Were Zionist attempts in the U.S. to "dialogue" just a means to make relative apartheid or legitimate expressions of the political situation in Palestine-Israel? Were campus administrations and the state potential "neutral" arbitrators of this political struggle or part of the interests that support apartheid? We could go on.

What was at stake then for the Zionists, the state and university administrations was what this essay details well: the question of legitimacy. Just as U.S. imperialism must legitimize itself by saying it is all for "democracy", Israeli apartheid must attempt to maintain its "progressive" image. They benefit by the vast majority of people's lack of knowledge about the real situation and therefore they need to keep it that way. Because if most people really knew about these things they would obviously support the struggle for democracy and freedom that the U.S. and Israel must repress.

Every anti-apartheid campaign is about the struggle for legitimacy. When the British university teachers voted to boycott Israeli academics, the British and U.S. rulers, Zionist elites and university administrations went crazy with statements supporting apartheid, because they know that this is a serious blow against the legitimacy of apartheid. This is why in a campaign it is important to clearly struggle for the public space about how the situation is to be defined. It is important to make them defend apartheid and white supremacy by clearly and relentlessly showing that is what they are.

However, they must back up their always failing attempts at maintaining legitimacy with direct repression. Zionist forces working with the state and with support from the Israeli government have worked with McMaster and York Universities in Canada to expel students, ban events and tabling. In the U.S., Zionist groups and the Israeli government work closely with the FBI and local police to spy on and attack solidarity efforts and protests.

Today, anti-apartheid solidarity goes to the heart of exposing the anti-democratic and racist character of official society, because the legitimacy of the Israeli regime is tied directly to the legitimacy of their rule. It is the reason they do anything to attack free speech and association concerning solidarity work.

The efforts of Canadian anti-apartheid solidarity shows how far these efforts have come since 2000, where things are going, and what still needs to be done.