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 and all Israelis continued Sunday, Aug. 18, at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
“As 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,” said Prof. Steven Plotkin, a University of British Columbia physicist.
The Hamas strategy is one of “asymmetric warfare,” 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.
“And we’ve seen it,” he said. “The encampment and the protests at UBC quickly turned from advocating for the human rights of Palestinians to a call for the end of Israel.”
On campus, the messages he saw included the now familiar “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” but others on the same theme, including “We don’t want your two states! Take us back to ’48” and “Resistance is justified when you are occupied.” Another common refrain, he said, is “‘Globalize the intifada.’ That means bring terrorism everywhere, including here in Canada.”
“Long live Oct. 7” was yet another slogan the professor saw on his campus.
“Let that sink in,” he said.
When reports of extensive sexual abuse by Hamas and other Palestinians who broke through the border on Oct. 7 became known, he said, “I saw posters at UBC that announced a discussion group for ‘the lies that Zionists spread about the sexual abuse that didn’t occur on Oct. 7.’”
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.
“Could you imagine what kind of person would think to tear one of those down? No one would have dreamed of it,” he said. “And now we’re seeing a world whose moral compass has completely lost its direction.”
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.
In the identity-centred worldview of many activists, Plotkin said, morality is determined by one’s position in the hierarchy of oppression.
“The less powerful are pardoned, the more powerful must be guilty,” he said. Because Hamas is less powerful than Israel, Israel must be guilty, despite the evidence of Hamas murdering, raping and abducting Israeli civilians.
“A 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,” Plotkin said. “Their 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’s 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.”
Eyal Daniel, a Burnaby high school teacher who specializes in Holocaust and genocide studies and who is president of the Holocaust and Antisemitism Educators’ Association, spoke about how his group was denied recognition by the BC Teachers’ Federation.
Representing close to 150 educators, the group applied to become one of the BCTF’s provincial specialist associations.
“Our application was rejected without any given reason,” he said. “Currently, there are no educational resources about the Holocaust and antisemitism for teachers in the province.”
Conversely, Daniel said, the province’s 50,000 teachers are bombarded by their union with materials promoting the elimination of the state of Israel.
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.
Despite the lack of recognition from the BCTF, Daniel’s group will continue to work “as if we had been approved,” he said.
“Therefore, 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,” he said.
Daniel spoke of his family’s recent visit to Israel, where they visited the site of the Nova music festival.
“Stepping out of the car into the desert heat, we were immediately surrounded by the haunting silence,” he said, “but, 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.”
Rabbi Susan Tendler of Congregation Beth Tikvah, in Richmond, spoke of the need for dialogue.
“In civic discourse … we’re yelling more than we’re listening,” she said. “So many of us will talk about the need to listen to one another but instead we’re just angry and have an inability to actually talk to one another.”
She asked people to see the humanity of others as a starting point to dialogue.
“To be a Jew means to respect and understand that every single human being was created in the image of God,” she said. “Let us continue to work for peace in the region that so, so sorely needs healing.”
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.
“Most people around me, men, women, had tears streaming down their face,” said Nybo. “We were all holding each other in collective grief.”
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.
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.
“I will tell you we are committed to this fight,” she said.
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.
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.
“The card depicts two eagles in the sky: under the Imperial Eagle of the Russian coat of arms, a group of impoverished, traditionally dressed Russian Jews, carrying their meagre belongings, line Europe’s shore, gazing with hope across the ocean,” wrote Neudorfer. “Waiting for them are their Americanized relatives, whose outstretched arms simultaneously beckon and welcome them to their new home. Above them, an American eagle clutches a banner with a line from Psalms: ‘Shelter us in the shadow of Your wings.’”
