Jamila Ghaddar is a member of
MacMaster Universities Student's for Palestinian Human Rights. She recently talked to Linchpin about the banning of the term Israeli apartheid on campus by the administration and student union.

Linchpin: O.K. Can you start by telling me what Israeli apartheid is?

Jamila Ghaddar: Well Israeli apartheid is a term that was coined by Israeli senior officials then used by Israeli academics and then taken up by the Palestinian movement both in Palestine and the international solidarity movement. It’s based on the international apartheid convention which outlines the kind of apartheid as a system that systematically has separate and distinct types of treatments for different racial or other types of groups under its jurisdiction.

Linchpin: What is happening at McMaster right now? The term Israeli apartheid has been banned?

Jamila Ghaddar: Currently the student union is not permitting us to sign, to have any posters or public advertisements that say Israeli apartheid on them.
Linchpin: O.K. Recently there was a committee started called United for Student Rights that held a free speech forum here at McMaster, what happened at that forum?
Jamila Ghaddar: Well at that forum there was a very di fficult situation as you could imagine, it’s not easy to have such public discussion. We thought it was excellent because alternately the forum was relatively calm, it was relatively a place where all the different views could meet, and it was really very positive because when can we ever have open political discussion.

Linchpin: What were some of the things brought up during the forum specifically?

Jamila Ghaddar: That was very interesting when people t ook up the general question of who does get to decide and it was very clear from some of the interventions particularly from Dr. Enns, Dr. Graham McQueen, that the claims that if something is offensive or inflammatory is a basis for banning it is not only arbitrary but violates the very essence of freedom of speech, and that if such decisions are to be made let it at least be made in a way which is democratic as opposed to being decided by administrators.

Linchpin: So the administrators that have banned the phrase at this point are they in the student union or are they the administration of the university itself?

Jamila Ghaddar: Well the original decision came from the Vice President Dr. Busch-Vishniac of the university so she is part of the administration itself. She’s what they call Vice President Academic, and then it was taken through Human Rights and Equity Services, which is also an unelected body, and then it was enforced through the Student Union since the Student Union is the only body with jurisdiction over student clubs, and the Student Union is claiming that this is a private matter, that they don’t have any say in it because the University and Human Rights and Equity have more experience and knowledge than them. To my knowledge the Student Union actually took this decision before the administration ever did but they’re now hiding behind administration so that they as the only elected body in this whole configuration aren’t held to account.

Linchpin: What do you hope to see in the next few weeks or months? What do you hope to see come in the future?

Jamila Ghaddar: Well I would hope to see that the posters and advertisements that weren’t permitted be approved. I would hope to see that they would not continue, like for example SPHR is worried that at some of their future events and some of our future terms will not be allowed. We hope that doesn’t happen. We hope also that the whole discussion is broadened to take up this so called issue of tolerance that was presented in the president’s speech, statement on the is sue last week, last Thursday. What is tolerance? We would like to elaborate what is hate crime and we would also like to take up this issue of why is it that it is the resistance that is criminalized rather than the oppressors? Why is it that the oppressed are made the problem, and why is it that the oppressed whether it be in Palestine or here SPHR being oppressed by their draconian violations of our basic rights why are we supposed to act in a way that they won’t act in? Why are we held to a higher standard? I don’t think we’ve violated any standard of acting anyway, but how is it that we’re the criminals?

Linchpin: What was the content of the poster besides them saying “Israeli Apartheid”?

Jamila Ghaddar: The poster, the biggest font on the poster said “Prison Break. Gaza Resist Under Siege.” This is the title of the event, and then in fairly small font it said “Guest Speaker Adam Hanieh from the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid” so it’s actually the name of an organization, the speaker, and then embedded into the image of somebody breaking chains on their arm it said “Israel can starve Gaza but they can never make Gaza kneel.”
Linchpin: What’s going on in Gaza these days?

Jamila Ghaddar: Well as the Israeli officials have declared they have initiated a Holocaust against the Gazan people. I’m sure you’re aware of some of the massive massacring taking place in Gaza, and I think what this really shows is what does it mean to be a hate criminal. Because they always claim that to defend Palestinian rights as outlined in international law that this is a hate crime against Jewish people, because of the Holocaust, the Holocaust that was perpetuated by the Western powers against a Semitic population within their midst. Well it’s very interesting that now Israeli officials…Zionists…Euro-Zionists…people who come out of the 19th century Western ideological movement, that they think it’s ok to launch a Holocaust against the Palestinian people, and if I were to say anything maybe it’s not Israeli apartheid maybe it’s Israeli genocide, maybe it’s just a little bit worse than apartheid.

Linchpin: O.K. thanks Jamila.

Jamila Ghaddar: Can I say one more thing?

Linchpin: Sure.

Jamila Ghaddar: I think when you have the criminalization of dissent and when you have the criminalization of resistance it’s because they don’t want a solution to the problem they just want to implement the final solution and what we’re fighting for here at McMaster is our right not just of freedom of speech or academic freedom but our right to organize and our right to actually have politics that actually have politics that serve people because its just going to go down the line. Six years, everything they’ve done to SPHR, first they did it to us, and then they did it to everyone, and now we’re one of the few clubs on campus that do politics versus when we first started it used to be a whole plethora of clubs dealing with all sorts of political issues. So to criminalize dissent, to criminalize politics and one of the things they’re saying that they’re writing in the Spectator (Hamilton’s daily newspaper) that they’re saying in the Silhouette (McMaster’s student paper) that they’re talking about to me in person, the powers that be, is that how can I, how dare I, politicize this campus, that this is the problem, this is what it means to be responsible, to not be respectful, to not have tolerance, that I would politicize this campus. At a time when the Canadian people are so marginalized from any form of politics you would think that somebody would thank us for bringing politics to the public arena on a campus. So it’s really politics that we defend.

Linchpin: Thanks again.