UBC student Zara Nybo, a non-Jewish ally, holds a poster of Rom Braslavski, as she speaks of his heroism before he was taken hostage to Gaza on Oct. 7. <\/i>(photo by Pat Johnson)<\/i><\/p>\n
As negotiations continued in Doha, Qatar, for the release of Israeli hostages, the weekly rallies in support of those held, their families and all Israelis continued Sunday, Aug. 18, at the Vancouver Art Gallery.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a university professor and as a Jew, I have been forced to witness the frontlines of a propaganda war to dehumanize and demonize Jews and to delegitimize the nation of Israel,\u201d said Prof. Steven Plotkin, a University of British Columbia physicist.<\/p>\n
The Hamas strategy is one of \u201casymmetric warfare,\u201d he said, in which they bait Israel Defence Forces with attacks and hostage-takings, then use their own Palestinian civilians as human shields, knowing that the casualty numbers and horrible images will evoke sympathy in the West.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we\u2019ve seen it,\u201d he said. \u201cThe encampment and the protests at UBC quickly turned from advocating for the human rights of Palestinians to a call for the end of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
On campus, the messages he saw included the now familiar \u201cFrom the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,\u201d but others on the same theme, including \u201cWe don\u2019t want your two states! Take us back to \u201948\u201d and \u201cResistance is justified when you are occupied.\u201d Another common refrain, he said, is \u201c\u2018Globalize the intifada.\u2019 That means bring terrorism everywhere, including here in Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLong live Oct. 7\u201d was yet another slogan the professor saw on his campus.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cLet that sink in,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n When reports of extensive sexual abuse by Hamas and other Palestinians who broke through the border on Oct. 7 became known, he said, \u201cI saw posters at UBC that announced a discussion group for \u2018the lies that Zionists spread about the sexual abuse that didn\u2019t occur on Oct. 7.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Plotkin reflected back to the days after the 9\/11 terror attacks in New York City, when people put up posters of their lost loved ones.<\/p>\n \u201cCould you imagine what kind of person would think to tear one of those down? No one would have dreamed of it,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd now we\u2019re seeing a world whose moral compass has completely lost its direction.\u201d<\/p>\n Posters of Israeli hostages are routinely torn down at UBC, elsewhere in Vancouver and around the world. Plotkin shared a psychological hypothesis for why this desecration is so rampant.<\/p>\n In the identity-centred worldview of many activists, Plotkin said, morality is determined by one\u2019s position in the hierarchy of oppression.<\/p>\n \u201cThe less powerful are pardoned, the more powerful must be guilty,\u201d he said. Because Hamas is less powerful than Israel, Israel must be guilty, despite the evidence of Hamas murdering, raping and abducting Israeli civilians.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cA hostage poster, however, throws a wrench into that framework because it forces them to cope with the idea that the people that they thought were oppressed could actually be in the wrong,\u201d Plotkin said. \u201cTheir whole simplistic worldview of the blameless oppressed and the evil oppressor is undermined by the ugly facts contained in the posters. A hostage poster induces a cognitive dissonance and, rather than question their own worldview, it\u2019s easier for them to see it as pro-Israel propaganda designed to elicit their sympathy for the Jews in Israel, the bad guys, and so they feel compelled to tear the poster down.\u201d<\/p>\n Eyal Daniel, a Burnaby high school teacher who specializes in Holocaust and genocide studies and who is president of the Holocaust and Antisemitism Educators\u2019 Association, spoke about how his group was denied recognition by the BC Teachers\u2019 Federation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Representing close to 150 educators, the group applied to become one of the BCTF\u2019s provincial specialist associations.<\/p>\n \u201cOur application was rejected without any given reason,\u201d he said. \u201cCurrently, there are no educational resources about the Holocaust and antisemitism for teachers in the province.\u201d<\/p>\n Conversely, Daniel said, the province\u2019s 50,000 teachers are bombarded by their union with materials promoting the elimination of the state of Israel.<\/p>\n The provincial government has mandated that Grade 10 students must receive Holocaust education beginning in 2025 and it is said to be working on curriculum materials.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Despite the lack of recognition from the BCTF, Daniel\u2019s group will continue to work \u201cas if we had been approved,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cTherefore, these days, we are in the process of constructing a new website, developing useful, meaningful professional development opportunities for teachers, assessing and developing appropriate educational materials and working with the minister of education on the upcoming Grade 10 Holocaust education curriculum framework,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Daniel spoke of his family\u2019s recent visit to Israel, where they visited the site of the Nova music festival.<\/p>\n \u201cStepping out of the car into the desert heat, we were immediately surrounded by the haunting silence,\u201d he said, \u201cbut, yet, 364 voices called out from the ground: Where is the humanity? The Nova memorial site is a barren killing field where humanity ceased to exist.\u201d<\/p>\n Rabbi Susan Tendler of Congregation Beth Tikvah, in Richmond, spoke of the need for dialogue.<\/p>\n \u201cIn civic discourse \u2026 we\u2019re yelling more than we\u2019re listening,\u201d she said. \u201cSo many of us will talk about the need to listen to one another but instead we\u2019re just angry and have an inability to actually talk to one another.\u201d<\/p>\n She asked people to see the humanity of others as a starting point to dialogue.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be a Jew means to respect and understand that every single human being was created in the image of God,\u201d she said. \u201cLet us continue to work for peace in the region that so, so sorely needs healing.\u201d<\/p>\n Zara Nybo, a fourth-year student at UBC, is an ally to the Jewish community, president of the Israel on Campus club, and an Emerson Fellow with the international advocacy group StandWithUs. She shared recollections of a training conference in Los Angeles from which she and scores of other campus activists recently returned. At an LA rally for the hostages, she heard profoundly moving testimonies from family members of those still held in Gaza.<\/p>\n \u201cMost people around me, men, women, had tears streaming down their face,\u201d said Nybo. \u201cWe were all holding each other in collective grief.\u201d<\/p>\n The mother of Rom Braslavski spoke of how her son had been a security guard at the Nova music festival and took it upon himself to hide the bodies of murdered women, both so they would not be taken to Gaza and so that they would not be posthumously raped or mutilated, as he had seen other female bodies desecrated. Braslavski was taken hostage in Gaza.<\/p>\n As Nybo and her fellow students prepare for the new academic year, she emphasized the training they have undergone and the determination with which they will return to campus.<\/p>\n \u201cI will tell you we are committed to this fight,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Richard Lowy, who has provided vocal and guitar inspiration at almost every rally for months, spoke of the hope that a resolution will come through negotiation.<\/p>\n Event organizer Daphna Kedem recounted the rally in Tel Aviv the evening before and expressed hope that the hostages will be released soon and that the weekly rallies she has organized for 10 months will cease to be necessary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" UBC student Zara Nybo, a non-Jewish ally, holds a poster of Rom Braslavski, as she speaks of his heroism before he was taken hostage to Gaza on Oct. 7. (photo by Pat Johnson) As negotiations continued in Doha, Qatar, for the release of Israeli hostages, the weekly rallies in support of those held, their families […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44851,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[801,23271,22714,22226,5094,23128,22752,22700,22725,6190,22107,23430,19750,1774,23431],"class_list":["post-44850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-antisemitism","tag-bctf","tag-bring-them-home","tag-daphna-kedem","tag-eyal-daniel","tag-hamas-terror-attacks","tag-holocaust-education","tag-hostages","tag-oct-7","tag-rally","tag-richard-lowy","tag-steven-plotkin","tag-susan-tendler","tag-terrorism","tag-zara-nybo"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}