hate

Hate not acceptable at SFU

“Antisemitism is hate, and it is not acceptable at SFU,” said Simon Fraser University president and vice-chancellor Joy Johnson. (photo by Jeff Hitchcock / flickr)

The president of Simon Fraser University met with Jewish students recently and issued a statement condemning antisemitism on campus and directing those who experience anti-Jewish racism to appropriate resources.

After meeting with Jewish students, Joy Johnson, Simon Fraser’s president and vice-chancellor, tweeted on July 12: “Their experiences were deeply upsetting.”

“Antisemitism is hate, and it is not acceptable at SFU,” she added. “If you are experiencing discrimination or hate, help is available. Please reach out.”

The university, in consultation with the SFU Multifaith Centre and Hillel BC, created a resource for those who have experienced antisemitism. This includes links to campus chaplains, confidential counseling and critical incident support for significant events.

Like many university campuses, SFU has a history of anti-Israel activism that can often veer into antisemitic imagery and tropes. The latest eruption occurred at the first council meeting of a newly elected Simon Fraser Students Society. Occurring around the time of the most recent conflict between Hamas and Israel, the council meeting passed a resolution endorsing the boycott, divestment and sanction movement against Israel (BDS) in what Jewish students view as a biased and unfair meeting.

The student society’s resolution – titled “SFSS Response to the Israeli Colonization of Palestine” – accused Israel of “disproportionate violence,” claiming “worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque were indiscriminately targeted by Israeli police forces” and condemning “the ongoing persecution of the Palestinian people by the government of Israel.” The resolution endorsed the BDS movement and expressed no parallel concerns about Palestinian terrorism, violence, incitement or human rights abuses. It also accused the United States and Canada of complicity in perceived Israeli misdeeds. The resolution passed unanimously.

The student society brought in Dalya Masri, a Palestinian activist, to provide “expert” testimony before the vote, said Katia Fermon, outreach coordinator for Hillel BC, the Jewish student organization.

“She gave a presentation, which was beyond hurtful for Jewish students,” said Fermon. Masri, she said, compared the First Intifada to the sort of peaceful rallies that happen on the streets of Vancouver.

“My students have family that died in the First and the Second Intifada,” Fermon said. “This is not a strange thing for us, and she just mentioned it like it was a rally.”

The presenter accused Israel of taking over territory in 1967, while eliding the larger facts around the Six Day War and other realities, she said.

Fermon said that, in preparation for the vote, the SFSS consulted with Independent Jewish Voices, but did not consult with Hillel.

“That fact is very hurtful,” she said. “Independent Jewish Voices is not a club on campus, however Hillel Jewish Students Association is. They pay their dues.… We are a part of that union. Those voices were not asked for or heard.”

Hillel BC issued a statement condemning the student society’s approach.

“Instead of supporting an open and extensive dialogue amongst students, the SFSS has chosen to perpetuate the agenda of a movement whose use of harmful terminology fails to address the root causes of the conflict, ignoring centuries of complex history in which power dynamics constantly shifted,” it reads. “This rhetoric further sows hate and division instead of helping work towards a peaceful two-state solution. The SFSS has decided to single out the state of Israel instead of opening a space for adequate dialogue between Jewish, Israeli and Palestinian students on campus wherein we may critique the policies of the state while being mindful of the hate that may result in endorsing certain statements, activists or movements.”

It added that BDS “openly traffics in antisemitic conspiracies and dog whistles” and noted that nearly two decades of BDS activism has not “freed Palestine from violence or oppression. Instead, it has been to stoke aggression and polarization online, in the streets and on campuses.”

In a statement to the Independent, Nico Slobinsky, director of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Pacific region, said: “The statement by SFU’s president is an important step in denouncing the rising tide of anti-Jewish hate on campus. CIJA thanks president Dr. Joy Johnson for recognizing that SFU is not immune from antisemitism. Combating anti-Jewish hatred is not only about protecting Jews but also about protecting the very fabric of our society, on and off campus.

“CIJA appreciates the strong friendship and commitment shown by Dr. Johnson to creating a campus that is inclusive, diverse, safe and open to all students,” Slobinsky added. “CIJA looks forward to working with SFU alongside our campus partner, Hillel BC, towards ensuring a healthy campus environment.”

Students have been studying remotely for more than a year and so most of the discussion, which has included a litany of offensive comments, has taken place on official and unofficial online platforms, including the primary undergraduate forum.

One Israeli student, who asked to remain anonymous, said she was one of a few who spoke up in opposition to the prevailing bias in the dialogue.

“I didn’t expect it to go smoothly,” she said. “There was a lot of backlash in the moment and it is still going on.… A lot of comments are being deleted and monitored but there are a lot of hateful comments.”

The statements frequently included slogans such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and other comments promising the annihilation of Israel. Israel was compared with Nazi Germany, Rhodesia, apartheid-era South Africa and plantation-owning slaveholders. Concerns about the safety of Jewish people were dismissed as efforts to “stifle” legitimate criticism of Israel.

“As an Israeli, I don’t want to believe they said them personally to me,” the student said. “I try my best not to take all those comments personally, but sometimes it gets there.”

As she and other students prepare to return to campus this fall for the first time in more than a year, she said she is not concerned for her personal safety, but she is worried about some of her friends.

“I was born in Israel and I have a little bit of Israeli inside of me so, for myself, I’m not that worried,” she said. “Obviously, it’s not a nice experience.” Whether the online threats and vitriol turn into real-time incidents remains to be seen, she said, but some of her Jewish friends are already taking cover.

“They are not wearing their Star of David,” she said. “They never say out publicly that they are Jewish: to not get into a conflict, to avoid any debate on the matter, they just decided not to. I think it’s a shame…. It is a shame that we live in Canada in the 21st century and people are choosing to hide part of their identity. For myself, it’s a big chunk of my identity, so I’m not going to hide it, but I can’t blame people who choose to. I empathize with them.”

Focus on online hate

Kasari Govender, British Columbia’s human rights commissioner. (photo from Wosk Centre)

Hate in British Columbia, in Canada and globally is on the rise. In 2017, there were 255 police-reported hate crimes in British Columbia, an increase of 55% from just two years earlier. In 2018, Metro Vancouver had the highest rate of hate crimes reported to police in any of Canada’s three largest metropolitan areas, most based on the victim’s ethnicity or religion, with a smaller but significant number based on sexual orientation.

These alarming statistics, and others, provided a framework and urgency for an event Sept. 12 at Simon Fraser University’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue in downtown Vancouver. The event, titled From Hate to Hope in a Digital Age, is envisioned as the inaugural annual Simces and Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights.

Contextualizing the discussion, Shauna Sylvester, executive director of the Wosk Centre for Dialogue, cited the results of a report undertaken by her organization. These indicate that one in three Canadians believes Canadian-born citizens should have greater say in government than those born outside the country. One-quarter of Canadians say we have too many protections for minorities and one in four also believes we have too many protections for religious freedom.

Keynote speaker at the forum was Kasari Govender, in just her second week on the job as British Columbia’s human rights commissioner. She is the first to hold this role in the province since that office was closed in 2002.

“In my view, there is a strong connection between hateful speech and hateful violence, both on an individual and a systemic level,” she said, citing racist manifestoes sometimes posted online by perpetrators in advance of a mass killing. She said it is necessary to trace the path from speech to violence.

A common theme of recent mass murderers is anti-immigration sentiment, sometimes emphasizing the “purity of the nation, whether that nation is Canada, New Zealand, the U.S. or another,” she said, adding that many of the attacks around the world that have been linked to white nationalism correspond to discourse in mainstream political debates over immigration and public policy.

The worst antisemitic mass murder in United States history, the attack on Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, happened while U.S. President Donald Trump and others were promoting fears of the so-called “migrant caravan” coming from Central America. Part of that conversation, Govender said, “was somehow blaming the Jews for this migrant caravan, drawing a connection in the public discourse, and then there was the shooting.”

Boris Johnson, now prime minister of the United Kingdom, compared women who wear burqas to bank robbers, which led, Govender said, to an increase in acts of hate against Muslim women in the United Kingdom.

Online hate is a particular product of technologies that have emerged in recent decades, she said. “The anonymity, reach and immediacy afforded by the internet escalates the problem beyond what we’ve seen before,” she said. “The internet is a very effective tool for fomenting hate from belief to action, from hateful words to violent actions.”

While forcing social media platforms to police hate speech might be criticized as an infringement of free expression, she said, the opposite is true. Regulating platforms to shut down violent rhetoric actually improves access to freedom of expression for many, as people of colour, women and others are being silenced online by racism and misogyny, she said.

Participants at the Wosk Centre offered a wide range of perspectives.

Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, outlined the approach his agency takes in confronting online hatred.

“Legal [action] would be our last recourse against a hate group or a hate propagandist,” he noted, saying that their first response is to “try to hold somebody socially accountable.” That means, if the person is anonymous, exposing them. If the person is not anonymous, this might mean bringing their posts to the attention of their employers, family and friends.

“Those might provide checks on their behaviour,” he said, adding, “We’re not really trying to reform people here, we’re just trying to stop the spread of hate propaganda.”

For those who do not respond to social accountability, Balgord said, Canada’s laws are insufficient. Application of the Criminal Code’s section that deals with the wilful promotion of hate and distribution of hate propaganda is unwieldy.

“We did use to have a better recourse,” he said. “It was Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. It would allow a private individual to essentially file a complaint, which would be vetted by the Canadian Human Rights Commission and, if found credible, would go to the tribunal. They could order a cease-and-desist order against that individual and up to a $5,000 fine.” If, at that point, the individual failed to comply, they would be in contravention of a court order and could face jail.

“We really want to see something like Section 13 come back,” he said.

Several speakers agreed that social media platforms need to do more policing of hate speech. Some countries have laws that force social media companies to address hate material on their platforms within certain timeframes or face serious fines.

Social media platforms, Balgord said, may already be in contravention of Canada’s existing laws against discrimination in the provision of a commercial service, because women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ people and other members of targeted groups are exposed to abuse, harassment and death threats that could drive them off the platform.

Rabbi Dr. Laura Duhan-Kaplan, director of inter-religious studies at the Vancouver School of Theology, noted that government budgets are limited but that education can take place everywhere – and that everyone is an educator. Early childhood is crucial, she said.

“What children do together, the songs they sing, the books they read, all of that becomes the building blocks of the way they think,” she said. “All of us who interact with children have an opportunity to begin to teach values of respecting difference, helping others, nonviolence.… One week of summer camp with friends on a theme of diversity, peace, public service – these are experiences that stay with teens and we really, really bring them into young adulthood in a different way.”

A speaker from the audience, a counselor and educator, noted that inequality, including economic inequality and poverty, makes people susceptible to fear and that can become a foundation for hate.

Another speaker contended that there is, in effect, no such thing as race.

“I think it’s very problematic to use the term race as if it’s a reality,” he said. “There is such a thing as racism but not really race. If you look at the majority of anthropologists, geneticists and so on, they say that we have much, much more in common with each other [than differences].… Even using terms like black and white to refer to people reinforces racism. We never call people yellow anymore, because that’s racist. We need to come up with a new language that doesn’t emphasize unreal differences and that are respectful to everybody.”

Lorene Oikawa, president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians, contended that sharing one another’s stories is an effective means to education.

“People really don’t know the stories,” she said. “For sure, there are some people who do, but they don’t know the [extent of the] harm that was done and the intergenerational trauma.”

She applied lessons of the past to current events. “In 2019, Japanese-Americans, Japanese-Canadians are horrified by some of the hateful rhetoric we’re hearing [that] could be lifted from 1942,” she said. “If people knew their history, more people would be going, ‘Wait a minute. What we did back in 1942 was wrong. Why are we saying the same things about people from [other] countries, putting people in camps, separating families, separating children from their families?’ All that stuff happened to Japanese-Americans, Japanese-Canadians and it’s being repeated today.”

She added: “We feel it’s our duty that what happened to our community must never happen to another community again.”

Clint Curle, senior advisor to the president of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, agreed that education is pivotal.

“Is there a lesson, an experience, we can give children especially that will make them resistant to hate speech and resistant to hateful violence?” asked Curle. He compared hatred to a communicable disease.

“If this was polio, what would we do? If this was polio, we would do what we did, which is vaccinate. The way vaccinations work is you get children and you give them just enough of something close to the disease [so] that they develop an internal resistance to it, so, when they encounter the disease, there is something within them that says, no. So, when they encounter hate, they’ll know.”

With more than 1.5 million visitors to the museum since it opened five years ago, Curle said what resonates, especially with young people, is exactly what Oikawa suggested.

“The thing that seems to work best is storytelling across social boundaries,” he said.

Zena Simces, a health and social service policy consultant and a former Pacific region chair of the now-defunct Canadian Jewish Congress, conceived of the annual event with her husband, Dr. Simon Rabkin.

“We felt that we wanted to enhance an understanding of human rights in our community and to create an opportunity for dialogue on human rights issues,” Simces said. “Our aim is to select current and relevant themes each year and to invite experts and community leaders and community members to advance and generate positive action.”

Rabkin, a cardiologist, professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia and president of the medical staff at Vancouver General Hospital, added: “The dialogue this evening … is seeking to enhance our understanding and knowledge of how this increase in hate and its consequences can be addressed from legal, social media and community perspectives.”

Monitoring online hate

On Monday, Facebook eliminated many extremist pages from its platform, including several Canadian pages, such as those of extremist groups Soldiers of Odin, the Canadian Nationalist Front and Aryan Strikeforce, as well as individuals like white supremacists Faith Goldy and Kevin Goudreau.

Some anti-racist activists say it’s a good start, but only the tip of the iceberg. They also assert that occasional purges of hate content will not address the larger issue in the absence of clear, enforceable standards by social media giants like Twitter and Facebook, which also owns Instagram.

Relatedly, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs has launched a campaign, #notonmyfeed, which is intended, according to the accompanying website, “to stop online hate from becoming real-world violence.” (See jewishindependent.ca/cija-fights-online-hate.) CIJA cited social media posts by the murderers in the Pittsburgh synagogue and the Christchurch mosque killings as cause for governments to move on the issue.

“In both cases, the perpetrator used social media to spread their heinous, hateful agenda,” according to the website notonmyfeed.ca. “From white supremacists to ISIS, it is increasingly clear that online hate and radicalization can fuel and foreshadow offline violence.”

The House of Commons justice committee – as if they are not busy enough with the SNC-Lavalin affair – is launching a study on the issue. The intent, according to CIJA, is to develop a national strategy around online hate.

A national strategy confronting hatred, whether online or offline, seems like a positive development if it helps track problematic people and ideas in order to prevent future violence.

The benefits of a crackdown on online hatred are obvious: by making it more difficult for hateful ideas to reach large, mainstream audiences, moves like those by Facebook are a positive step. Groups that use social media to recruit individuals into hate movements may be hobbled by such policies. Although there are plenty of forums online where they can continue their efforts, hate groups may not have as easy and accessible a reach if policies are put in place to monitor and censor such groups and their messages.

Of course, some of the extremists are crowing about being banned.

“Our enemies are weak and terrified,” Goldy tweeted (because she is not banned from that platform). “They forget most revolutions were waged before social media!”

True enough. But if we make Goldy’s job harder, it’s a good thing.

However, while there are potential positive outcomes, we should not be blind to the potential unintended consequences of such a move.

If the murderers of Pittsburgh and Christchurch had given hints on social media of their intent, isn’t the larger issue here that those threats went unchecked and, therefore, the perpetrators were allowed to complete their mission of mass murder without intervention? Do we really want to eliminate forums in which we can track and identify potential terrorists? If we ban them from these platforms, are we forcing them underground into places where we cannot police them?

Presumably, police and intelligence agencies know where to find the online warrens of hatemongers and can monitor those venues almost as easily as they could Facebook or Twitter, while ensuring that members of the public who are innocently surfing the web do not stumble upon violent hate messaging in seemingly innocuous places. Even so, given that, as CIJA points out, the Pittsburgh and Christchurch killers left a trail on social media and still managed to execute their terrible plans, it suggests we’re not doing a stellar job on this front even when the warning signs are on the world’s largest sharing platforms. So, how much better are we to expect things to be when we force them into the darker crevasses of the online world?

This issue is confounding in part because the internet is, by definition, anarchic and largely beyond the control of all but the most authoritarian governments. As a result, governments and even social media behemoths like Facebook can do only so much to control what is shared through the web writ large.

Leaving aside issues of free expression (which differ across jurisdictions in ways that social media do not), there are practical considerations that we hope elected officials, law enforcement and social media corporations themselves consider when addressing online hate.

As governments do begin to take the issue seriously and consider interventions in the interest of public safety (including, especially, the safety of the most commonly targeted identifiable groups), we trust that a balance will be struck between eradicating violently hateful messaging, on the one hand, and, on the other, not harming law enforcement’s ability to do their job by pushing these ideas into clandestine sectors where they can neither be monitored nor challenged. Finding that balance should be the key to formulating public policy on this urgent issue.

CIJA fights online hate

“We were saddened, horrified and deeply angered by the murderous terrorist attack in Christchurch, which was clearly motivated by hatred of Muslims that was at least in part fomented online,” Martin Sampson of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) told the Independent. “This is another disturbing example of how terrorists and mass murderers make use of social media – both before and after attacks – to spread their heinous message.”

On Friday, March 15, 50 Muslims were murdered by a white nationalist terrorist at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. On Oct. 27, 2018, 11 Jews were murdered at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Penn. Both perpetrators had been active in spreading hatred online. In the case of Tree of Life Synagogue, the shooter had written a post announcing his intentions hours before the attack.

“This issue has been of interest to us for some time,” said Sampson. “We included it as a core federal priority in our Federal Issues Guide, which was released in September of 2018. The horrific shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in late October, and the fact that the assailant had been highly active in promoting antisemitism on social media – it is reported that he posted more than 700 antisemitic messages online in the nine months or so prior to the attack – underscored the urgency of the issue and the need to increase awareness about the connection between online hate and offline violence. This is why we launched notonmyfeed.ca.”

The goal of CIJA’s #notonmyfeed campaign is to reduce the spread of online hate speech. “In any democratic society that values freedom and individual rights, no right is absolute,” said Sampson. “Striking a reasonable balance between preserving free speech and protecting Canadians from those who systematically demonize and slander entire communities is a challenging, complex task, but not an impossible one.”

CIJA is calling for a comprehensive response that addresses hate in a variety of forms, not just antisemitism, he said. “We can preserve free speech while protecting Canadians from those who deliberately promote hostility – and even glorify violence – against entire communities.”

Sampson said there is a direct link between online hate speech and violence. “In countless cases – such as in the case of individuals who have been radicalized to participate in terrorism or hate crimes – online propaganda has been a significant factor,” he said. “This is a complex issue. Understanding it and developing tools to counter it is why we are calling on the government of Canada to take the lead by launching a national strategy to tackle online hate, working in partnership with social media platforms and internet service providers.”

Some people contend that, if online hate speech foreshadows offline violence, there may be some value in monitoring it, rather than forcing it underground. As well, if kicked off one social platform, those inciting hatred can just move to another one.

“In cases of ignorance, inappropriate statements or offhand comments that are bigoted, counter-speech is clearly the best response, and these types of online behaviours are not the focus of our calls for a national strategy to tackle online hate. In cases of propaganda being systematically produced by extremists – particularly when it includes the glorification of violence – allowing it to continue can in some cases pose significant risks to public safety,” said Sampson about these concerns. “Moreover, allowing such behaviour to take place on social media platforms often violates the basic terms and conditions of those sites. Social media platforms should enforce their own existing policies.”

The movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel over its treatment of Palestinians is controversial, with some seeing it as a legitimate tactic opposing human rights abuses and others seeing it as a form of discrimination rooted in antisemitism. “It is neither the focus of our policy position on online hate, nor can I perceive any scenario in which BDS would be implicated or affected by a national strategy to tackle online hate,” said Sampson, when asked whether BDS was one of the intended targets of CIJA’s campaign. “To be clear – we strongly oppose BDS and work to expose and counter the real agenda of the BDS movement, but that is a very separate challenge and completely distinct from our call for a national strategy to combat online hate.”

Asked if CIJA has any plans for addressing hate speech in the Jewish community itself, Sampson said, “Our position on online hate is that a national strategy should address hate in a variety of forms, not just antisemitism. This is why we have mobilized a coalition of communities, including the Muslim community, to join us in this effort. We believe every online account should be held to the same standard, regardless of the identity of the person who runs the account. When it comes to the Jewish community, we strive to set an example in how we manage our social media accounts, allowing debate and diverse opinions in the comments section of our posts, while having a zero tolerance policy toward bigotry and hateful comments.”

Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He is Pacific correspondent for the CJN, writes regularly for the Forward, Tricycle and the Wisdom Daily, and has been published in Sojourners, Religion Dispatches and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.