If there’s one debate on university campuses the world over that hardly needs any more encouragement, it is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With a summer that provided increasing violence in Lebanon, Israel and the Occupied Territories, heated debates and discussion await students as the new scholastic year approaches.
Further fueling this debate has been the Canadian Union of Public Employees’s (CUPE) adoption of Resolution 50. Passed unanimously on the weekend of May 26-27, 2006, at the CUPE annual convention, Resolution 50 calls for CUPE participation in an “international campaign of divestment, boycott, and sanctions against Israel until that state recognizes the Palestinian right to self-determination.”
The reasons for CUPE’s adoption of this stance, claims the union’s website, are many. They center on the Hague’s ruling that the so-called “Israeli apartheid wall” is illegal, as well as solidarity and support for the “over 170 political parties, unions, and other organizations, including the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions in their call for a global campaign of divestment, sanctions, and boycotts against Israel similar to those imposed against Apartheid South Africa.” CUPE plans to initiate an “education campaign about the apartheid-like practices of the state of Israel” for its members.
These are no doubt strong words and allegations by one of Canada’s leading union groups. They also have drawn in CUPE Local 3902, the union that represents short-term instructional staff at U of T. In a posting on the Local 3902 website, the Local has decided to not make a decision on the document.
It instead opted to allow its own members to debate the issue, a move that external officer Judy Pocock said falls within the locals’ democratic approach.
“Decisions of the Ontario division are not binding on locals. The only entity that is bound by this resolution, that has a responsibility to carry it out, is the executive of the Ontario committee.”
Since no local, but rather only the Ontario division, is bound by it, the resolution plays more a symbolic gesture than anything else. Pocock seemed to agree.
“There is an obligation on the Ontario division, in terms of doing some educational work, but not on the Locals.” That hasn’t made the reluctance to taking a position on the Resolution easier on Local 3902.
“We’ve had some significant discussions. At this point it is still our position. It’s been such a difficult position for our members that we’ve, at this point, decided not to take a position. At the same time, we think it doesn’t mean that individual members or the executive can’t express themselves. We won’t bind individuals from expressing a position.”
Len Rudner, director of community relations for the Canadian Jewish Congress, agreed on the symbolic nature of the resolution but added that “it points to one side, says you’re the bad dogs and must do much of the heavy lifting.”
He said the resolution’s claim that Israel is an apartheid state was a “sick analogy; an insult to those that experienced apartheid, that demonizes Israel.” The end result, said Rudner, was a “spurious analogy, that brings comfort to those who have already made up their minds, but ultimately sheds no light on a complex issue.”
For Nadia Daar, however, who is the president of the Arab Students Collective at U of T, the resolution is an opportunity.
“CUPE Ontario passing Resolution 50 provides a new starting point when working on campus,” she said. “One thing we’re hoping students can do is to put pressure on their universities to divest from Israel.”
To this end, the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (of which the ASC is a member) will be holding a conference entitled The Struggle Continues: Boycotting Israeli Apartheid, in October.
And they are not alone in the international campaign calling for boycotts, divestments, and sanctions against a state many deem similar to apartheid South Africa. The Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Council of Churches both support Resolution 50, as does the National Association of Teachers in Higher and Further Education, Britain’s largest college teachers union, the Green Party in the US, and have church organizations including the United Church of Canada.
