A split within the Mount Allison Faculty Association (MAFA) surfaced last month over a union statement demanding that Canada call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
A group of faculty members tried, but failed, to prevent members of the MAFA executive from making any future statements that aren’t directly related to collective bargaining or issues of academic freedom without consulting the membership first.
The November 10 MAFA statement, issued over the name of President Karen Bamford, also called on the federal government to:
- “end all forms of Canadian military and financial aid, including arms sales, to Israel…
- “call for talks under the auspices of the United Nations to find a durable and just political solution to this conflict…
- “call for the release of all hostages and the thousands of Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli prisons…
- “pressure Israel to lift the unlawful blockade on Gaza…
- “condemn Israel’s violation of international humanitarian law and laws of war and support investigation by the International Criminal Court…
- “pressure the Israeli government to end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.”
To read the full statement, click here.
Sources say a motion to change the MAFA constitution to prevent the union executive from issuing such statements in future without consulting the membership failed to gain majority support after a “spirited” debate at a meeting last month.
Deep divisions
Mt. A. students, staff, faculty and members of the public march to Convocation Hall on November 12 calling for a ceasefire in Gaza
The MAFA debate showed the deep divisions within Canadian institutions, including the media, over issues related to Israel and Palestine.
The CBC, for example, uses extreme caution bordering on self-censorship on such issues, as I found when I worked for its English-language radio news division from 1972 until 1991.
A January 5th report from the alternative news site The Breach provides a vivid illustration.
The Breach headlines read:
CBC says killing of Palestinians doesn’t merit terms ‘murderous,’ ‘brutal’:
In response to complaints about its coverage, CBC says Israeli state violence is different than Hamas’ violence because the killing of Palestinians happens “remotely”
The story, by Breach senior editor Emma Paling, reports on the CBC’s response to complaints by Jeff Winch, a retired film studies teacher at Humber College in Toronto.
Among other things, Winch complained that CBC described Hamas’s October 7th attacks on Israel as “murderous,” “vicious” or “brutal,” while using much less graphic terms for Israeli mass killings in Gaza.
CBC response
In a December 5th e-mail, Nancy Waugh, the CBC’s Senior Manager of Journalistic Standards, wrote:
Different words are used because although both result in death and injury, the events they describe are very different. The raid saw Hamas gunmen stream through the border fence and attack Israelis directly with firearms, knives and explosives. Gunmen chased down festival goers, assaulted kibbutzniks then shot them, fought hand to hand, and threw grenades. The attack was brutal, often vicious, and certainly murderous.
Bombs dropped from thousands of feet and artillery shells lofted into Gaza from kilometers away result in death and destruction on a massive scale, but it is carried out remotely. The deadly results are unseen by those who caused them and the source unseen by those [who] suffer and die.
It’s a different kind of event and is described differently as “intensive,” “unrelenting,” and “punishing,” raining death and destruction on one of the most densely populated places on earth…They are different stories, and we have tried to describe both accurately and vividly.
To read the full Breach report, click here.
Alternate news sources
Mainstream media sometimes publish revealing stories such as CBC’s well-documented October 28 report on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s longstanding policy of keeping Hamas in power in the Gaza strip. To read it, click here.
Also, a January 1st report by the Globe and Mail‘s Africa correspondent Geoffrey York on Canada’s willingness to recognize genocidal claims against certain countries, but not against Israel:
In a submission to the court in the Myanmar case last month, for example, Canada and five other Western governments argued that the evidence of genocide can include “a violent military operation triggering the forced displacement of members of a targeted group” and can also include “subjecting a group of people to a subsistence diet, systematic expulsion from homes and the induction of essential medical services below minimum requirement.”
It also argued that the scale of the deaths is “merely a starting point” in considering the intent of atrocities, and the victimized population should not be limited to those who are killed.
All these arguments could equally apply to Israel’s actions in Gaza, and Canada will appear hypocritical if it ignores the similarities, according to Mark Kersten, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of the Fraser Valley who specializes in international justice issues.
“The parallels are blatantly obvious,” Dr. Kersten said.
To read the Globe’s full story, click here.
But, after they publish such stories, mainstream media seem to forget them and frame their ongoing coverage around statements from official sources: Netanyahu righteously condemning Hamas and Trudeau claiming that Canada does not support the premise of South Africa’s case that Israel’s military action in Gaza is genocide.
I’d say other sources are needed to supplement the mainstream and on this story, excellent ones include Democracy Now (U.S.), Haaretz (Israel) and Al Jazeera (Qatar).
“I’d say other sources are needed to supplement the mainstream and on this story, excellent ones include Democracy Now (U.S.), Haaretz (Israel) and Al Jazeera (Qatar).”
Note how you’re quoting an Israeli source as “alternative”.
I also note the absence of any Palestinian media happy that Hamas is getting what they’ve long deserved for what they’ve done to the people of Gaza. Surely there are people in Gaza (or the West Bank) who feel that way.
That tells you something about which of the two is a free society, and which isn’t.
I bet you have rebel media bookmarked.
As a matter of fact, I do.
How about you? Teheran Times?
When an entire population is subject to mass murder and collective punishment they will naturally draw together and divisions disappear. The Nazi bombing of London in WW2 an obvious example. Similarly, Hamas are an inevitable response to decades of illegal occupation. They would not have emerged from a peaceful coexistence in which Israel was not systemically stripping them of their land and rights. Rebel Media sounds about right.
She most likely doesn’t even live in our community. Must be a boring life if you’re only hobby is playing the contrarian/troll on some small town news site. Yawn.
Why not National Post, The Globe and Mail, CNN, Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, i24, Al Monitor??? This way you get news from different angles.
You could even add Israel National News, if you want to see what actual truly right-wing Israelis are thinking. Hint: it’s way milder than anything you can find on the Palestinian side.
… because then you might actually conclude that the Israelis are actually the victims of a long-running would-be genocidal war against themselves, which they’ve so far been able to fight back against quite successfully — and quite mildly, by the standards of what other similarly-capable countries would do in similar circumstances.
And that wouldn’t go well with the desired narrative that they’re the world’s most evil country or something, now, would it?
Meanwhile, (Muslim) Uighurs are actually being genocided, and nobody cares — and there’s a case where a “jihadi attitude” would actually be appropriate. The Islamic Republic of Pakistan (that’s the official name) is actually busy kissing China’s a…. instead, for example.
Yeah… those news sources aren’t biased at all! Isreal and IDF lie through their teeth everyday.
Imagine reading a propaganda piece from Israel and believing they are the victims.
It’s quite telling how you determine what is and isn’t a genocide based on the skin color or religion.
Imagine thinking the deaths of 12000 innocent children is “mild”. Wow, I can’t believe I share my community with someone like yourself.
I feel sorry for you Marika.
Tristan: “Yeah… those news sources aren’t biased at all! Isreal and IDF lie through their teeth everyday.”
And what, Hamas is telling the truth?
Or does “biased” just mean “something I don’t agree with”?
Those who support using a labour or academic organization as a political soap box should ask themselves if that extends to issues they oppose, or if they only support such usage when it aligns with their own views.
As for the CBC’s managers of Journalistic Standards, the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of their response makes me wonder how they’d describe a gas chamber at Treblinka. Would events there be described as “intensive,” “unrelenting,” and “punishing,” because adding the Zyklon B was “carried out remotely”? And because the “deadly results are unseen by those who caused them and the source unseen by those [who] suffer and die”?
Many sad signs of our time are the current break down of education in Canada is that authors like John Ralston Saul in his book the Unconscious Society got it right. Took me years of teaching and traveling to realize the extend of my own ignorance. No one listens to grey hairs these days so with apologies to Marcius Aurelius’ the roman emperor made famous by the movie Gladiator might interpret on of his phrases, “Even in a Place one can live well” MTA seems to be filled with great minds albeit politically left and out of touch with reality , Perhaps, the wise words of the emperor substituting University as ‘wordier place’ in stead of Matthew Arnolds ‘worldly place’ of a palace.
“One can think well even in University, but alas many an ill schooled student that wants to set the world on fire may have been riddled with ‘fake morality’ and have come to believe that the dawning of a Mortar board bestowed by the elite of society, that only they have the high moral ground.
Real defense of civilization is not meted out proportionally because to defend civilization against outrages requires total war unconditional surrender, peace with Germany and Japan) otherwise you must accept barbarism.
You task is not what to do, but who shall do it. The yearly invasion of uncivilized youth must be civilized now.
Then there is Dietrich Bonhoeffers first law of stupidity and that is even on a college campus there are more dishonorable people than you can imagine.
However, there is some comfort for me in being dull and stupid in my life, and that is the damage I’ve done to my students is some what limited. But to do serious monumental damage you need to have a high view of yourself.
To days playoffs at the coliseum is the unbeliever in the Wimpy west clad in a black loin cloth of historical transgressions VS The believers the punishment of those (Oct 7th, scantly clad women and earlier Manchester incident) “who strive to make mischief shall have a painful punishment.”
As a Christian (values) basically eradicated in the middle east you can offer proof of love of Allah, but ,”do not believe those who are jews; they are listeners for the sake of a lie. (5.41) Koran
Fifty two years ago this May I missed being massacred at the Lod airport in Israel. For those who live in town for I’m for ever grateful to the diplomat the late Darrel Meseau, who kept me out of harms; way whether it be land mines , rudeness to Allah or accidently stealing souls.
Out side the cities in the county side 20% of the citizens are Israel Arabs and a cup of coffee was a contract. As a secular man It is hard to get my head around the fact that my host would take a bullet for me. Isis and Hamos only have one purpose and that to kill. Heard something that sounded like Canadian. I was told that my host asked if all Canadians were that naive (politically corrected)
Pivotable moments people the sanctity of the individual or only Allah. Take care. Peace with you.