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Let them in the parade and let people along the parade route judge for themselves. I’ve booed and shouted opinions at a few organizations in gay pride parades.
Do we have to act as if everyone with a sign in a gay pride parade has to follow a certain script?
Geena | June 9, 2010 12:29 PM
It’s strange that the phrase ‘Israeli apartheid’ is now banned at a major political event in Toronto. This involves a pro-Palestinian group that has marched in Toronto’s gay pride parade for many years, as have groups supporting Israeli government policies. That ‘both sides’ approach seems so civilized and democratic, but times are a-changing and not for the better.
Pride festival bans ‘Israeli apartheid’
Toronto parade marshal resigns in protest
By Carmen Chai
Windsor Star
June 8, 2010This year’s Toronto Gay Pride Parade Grand Marshal has resigned and 23 former Pride Toronto activists announced on Monday they have pulled out of Pride festivities after organizers banned the term "Israeli apartheid" from its 10-day event.
"Pride’s recent decision to ban the term ‘Israeli apartheid’ and thus prohibit the participation of the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid in Pride celebrations this year is a slap in the face to our history of diverse voices," said Alan Li, a co-founder of Gay Asians Toronto who rejected his appointment as grand marshal.
"Pride’s choice to take a pre-emptive step to censor our own communities’ voices and concerns in response to political and corporate pressure shows a lack of backbone to stand up for principles of inclusiveness and anti-oppression." . . .
Pride Toronto is a not-for-profit organization that hosts an annual festival held during the first weekend of July in Toronto. With attendance of more than 1.2 million people, it is the third-largest Pride celebration in the world and the largest in North America.
Pride would have lost as much as $600,000 in sponsorship money and city funding" forced the organizers of the march, Pride Toronto, to betray free speech.
Len Rudner, Ontario director for the Canadian Jewish Congress, said characterizing the dispute as matter of free speech versus censorship is inaccurate.
“This is not about free speech, this is about financial accountability,” said Mr. Rudner.
“The Pride committee found itself in a situation where it had to consider whether it was placing its funding in jeopardy.”
As usual, the language of politically correct censorship was employed by the oppressors (p.c. arguments answered well by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (pdf) (in short, it’s a parade, not a work environment)):
PT issued a statement on its website, saying the decision to ban the term "Israeli Apartheid" was not taken lightly.
"The board of Pride Toronto listened to members of our community," it said. "What we heard overwhelmingly was that the use of the words ‘Israeli Apartheid’ made participants feel unsafe."
Tim McCaskell, a member of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA), spoke to Xtra after PT’s release.
"If people feel unsafe, I would suggest that they are being manipulated," he said. "If the word is ‘uncomfortable,’ well, Pride makes a lot of people uncomfortable."
Oh, and yeah, Israel’s rule in the occupied territory fully qualifies as apartheid. As the folks who know say:
‘This is like apartheid’: ANC veterans visit West Bank
By Donald Macintyre in Hebron
Friday, 11 July 2008Veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle said last night that the restrictions endured by Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories was in some respects worse than that imposed on the black majority under white rule in South Africa.
Members of a 23-strong human-rights team of prominent South Africans cited the impact of the Israeli military’s separation barrier, checkpoints, the permit system for Palestinian travel, and the extent to which Palestinians are barred from using roads in the West Bank.
After a five-day visit to Israel and the Occupied Territories, some delegates expressed shock and dismay at conditions in the Israeli-controlled heart of Hebron. Uniquely among West Bank cities, 800 settlers now live there and segregation has seen the closure of nearly 3,000 Palestinian businesses and housing units. Palestinian cars (and in some sections pedestrians) are prohibited from using the once busy streets.
"Even with the system of permits, even with the limits of movement to South Africa, we never had as much restriction on movement as I see for the people here," said an ANC parliamentarian, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge of the West Bank. "There are areas in which people would live their whole lifetime without visiting because it’s impossible."
Mrs Madlala-Routledge, a former deputy health minister in President Thabo Mbeki’s government, added: "While I want to be careful not to characterise everything that I see here as apartheid, I just do find comparisons in a number of places. I also find differences."
Comparisons with apartheid have long been anathema to majority Israeli opinion, though they have been somewhat less taboo since the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, last year warned that without an early two-state agreement Israel could face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights.
Fatima Hassan, a leading South African human rights lawyer, said: "The issue of separate roads, [different registration] of cars driven by different nationalities, the indignity of producing a permit any time a soldier asks for it, and of waiting in long queues in the boiling sun at checkpoints just to enter your own city, I think is worse than what we experienced during apartheid." She was speaking after the tour, which included a visit to the Holocaust Museum at Yad Vashem and a meeting with Israel’s Chief Justice, Dorit Beinisch.
One prominent member of the delegation, who declined to be named, said South Africa had been "much poorer" both during and after apartheid than the Palestinian territories. But he added: "The daily indignity to which the Palestinian population is subjected far outstrips the apartheid regime. And the effectiveness with which the bureaucracy implements the repressive measures far exceed that of the apartheid regime."
Whether Israel within its pre-1967 borders is an apartheid state, I’d say not, but this website disagrees with me:
8 Comments
Symbolism over substance is the modern way.
I have mixed feelings and if the cancellation is part of a ‘boycott, divest, and sanction’ effort, I support that. If not, the Tel Aviv float should’ve been allowed to participate and people along the parade route should’ve booed like crazy. IMHO.
Thanks for that link.
“Gibbs essentially said yes, the White House endorsed the underlying message: unions and others unhappy with corporate Democrats should not be working to replace them but instead support Democrats in the general.”
Whoa now this is interesting and troublesome. A group of people who have been oppressed not supporting or even being willing to allow another oppressed group of people to state their case.
But look who has been advising Canadian Prime Minister Harper
Noted PR communications leader Ari Fleischer will serve as keynote speaker at the 2010 CoSIDA Convention in San Francisco
http://www.cosida.com/news/2009/10/20/1020094202_733.aspx
“He also helps advise several major corporations about their communications issues and served as International media consultant to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.”
Gay Pride parade will not allow the truth “Israeli Apartheid” Very sad very telling. Unable to feel empathy to others who are oppressed. Very sad. PEPS ( progressives except for Palestine)
Wonder if Toronto will not allow ArchBishop Tutu to speak in their city of in Canada.
Tutu condemns Israeli ‘apartheid’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1957644.stm
Archbishop Tutu: Israel, apartheid and sanctions
http://writingrights.org/2010/04/12/archbishop-tutu-israel-apartheid-and-sanctions/
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39829
* Will the city of Toronto , Gay Pride parade, Canada block Nelson Mandela from speaking or marching in Toronto etc
A Letter from Nelson Mandela to Thomas Friedman
“You seem to be surprised to hear that there are still problems of 1948 to be solved, the most important component of which is the right to return of Palestinian refugees.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not just an issue of military occupation and Israel is not a country that was established “normally” and happened to occupy another country in 1967. Palestinians are not struggling for a “state” but for freedom, liberation and equality, just like we were struggling for freedom in South Africa.
In the last few years, and especially during the reign of the Labour Party, Israel showed that it was not even willing to return what it occupied in 1967; that settlements remain, Jerusalem would be under exclusive Israeli sovereignty, and Palestinians would not have an independent state, but would be under Israeli economic domination with Israeli control of borders, land, air, water and sea.
Israel was not thinking of a “state” but of “separation”. The value of separation is measured in terms of the ability of Israel to keep the Jewish state Jewish, and not to have a Palestinian minority that could have the opportunity to become a majority at some time in the future. If this takes place, it would force Israel to either become a secular democratic or bi-national state, or to turn into a state of apartheid not only de facto, but also de jure.
Thomas, if you follow the polls in Israel for the last 30 or 40 years, you clearly find a vulgar racism that includes a third of the population who openly declare themselves to be racist. This racism is of the nature of “I hate Arabs” and “I wish Arabs would be dead”. If you also follow the judicial system in Israel you will see there is discrimination against
Palestinians, and if you further consider the 1967 occupied territories you will find there are already two judicial systems in operation that represent two different approaches to human life: one for Palestinian life and the other for Jewish life. Additionally there are two different approaches to property and to land. Palestinian property is not recognised as private property because it can be confiscated.
As to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, there is an additional factor. The so-called “Palestinian autonomous areas” are bantustans. These are restricted entities within the power structure of the Israeli apartheid system.
The Palestinian state cannot be the by-product of the Jewish state, just in order to keep the Jewish purity of Israel. Israel’s racial discrimination is daily life of most Palestinians. Since Israel is a Jewish state, Israeli Jews are able to accrue special rights which non-Jews cannot do. Palestinian Arabs have no place in a “Jewish” state.
Apartheid is a crime against humanity. Israel has deprived millions of Palestinians of their liberty and property. It has perpetuated a system of gross racial discrimination and inequality. It has systematically incarcerated and tortured thousands of Palestinians, contrary to the rules of international law. It has, in particular, waged a war against a civilian population, in particular children.”
http://www.bintjbeil.com/E/occupation/mandella.html
Thank you. Mandela states the case very well. It’s obvious why the Israeli govt wants to ban the phrase ‘Israeli apartheid’: because it’s true and they can’t face the term in honest debate.
Nelson Mandela a man who knows what apartheid is.
Really pathetic when one group of oppressed people are unable to extend their experience and empathy to another group of oppressed people. Sad