Frances Belzberg: I am a 96-year-old Jew. Can we talk about this anti-Israel vitriol please?
When my husband and I celebrated the opening of SFU's Belzberg Library 34 years ago, we could not have imagined such ugliness within its walls
University campuses and library buildings have profound meaning in our civic and inner lives. They are the physical embodiments of so much of what we cherish in a democratic society: freedom of thought, the search for knowledge, and the debate over ideas among people of good will.
Often enough, though, crises in the world raise tensions and overwhelm the capacity of even the most well-intentioned people to discuss those events in a constructive spirit. Universities across Canada and the United States have become alarming hotbeds for anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric and actions. Students do not feel safe on campus nor protected by school leadership.
In my hometown of Vancouver, a controversy has flared up at an institution of research and learning that was endowed by my late husband and me — the Samuel and Frances Belzberg Library, located in the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue, at Simon Fraser University.
The librarian for history, international studies, liberal studies and political science at SFU posted several provocative and hateful tweets that go beyond criticism of Israeli policy. On Oct. 29, the librarian denounced Zionism and Israel as “vile, inhumane, deranged, and monstrous.” She also urged people to boycott Indigo books simply because its owners founded a charity that funds former Israeli soldiers’ education, saying: “Don’t give your book money to Israel.”
I am 96 years old. I make no secret of my Jewishness, nor do I conceal my deep attachment to Jewish history, including centuries of persecution and violence. I lost dozens of family members in the Holocaust: aunts, uncles, cousins yet to blossom into their full selves. The horrific events of Oct. 7 were a stark reminder that antisemitism has, in the worst sense possible, endured, and, astonishingly enough in recent months, deepened in Canada, the United States, Europe and well beyond.
When my husband and I celebrated the opening of the library 34 years ago, we could not have imagined such ugliness within its walls. Our hopes in endowing the library were rooted in our commitment to create a space where facts and information were centred, a place that would foster mutual understanding, not a cascade of social-media vitriol from one of our own librarians. I am concerned not only about the messages themselves, but also about the unwillingness of officials at Simon Fraser University to publicly disavow them.
The extraordinary irony is that the library exists within the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue — whose stated mission is to “use dialogue and engagement to facilitate transformative conversation and create real world impact for society’s most pressing challenges.”
Several attempts were made by me and my daughter appealing for direct dialogue, at Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue, with the librarian and anyone she chose to accompany her. These requests were denied.
I completely acknowledge, and celebrate, that our endowing the library gives me no right at all to hold sway over the learning and the dialogue that takes place within it. The library belongs to everyone now, as it should be.
And so, simply as a citizen and as a patron of the library, I think it is within my rights to express the obvious: this is an institution based on free and civil discourse. Such messages on social media from our librarian are no more tolerable in a library than bigoted social media messages from a professor or student leader should be at this university. It runs entirely counter to the values of such institutions: tolerance, decency, learning, and open exchange. But the university has failed in its moral obligation to condemn this speech unequivocally, and, in this failure, leaves its Jewish students vulnerable to the very attacks we are witnessing across Canada and elsewhere.
My heart aches for the hostages, for the dead Israelis and for the displaced. And, while I loathe Hamas as an organization pledged, in its charter, to the elimination of the state of Israel, my heart aches for the many thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians who have been killed, maimed or displaced in recent weeks. My heart aches for Jewish people globally who are experiencing an unprecedented rise in antisemitism. (Here in Vancouver, there were 17 reported incidents between Oct. 7 and 31.)
Yet, even in my grief and outrage, I am convinced there is much to discuss, much to learn, on the road to recovery and, God willing, peace and reconciliation. That may be hard to imagine in this dark moment. But I am also convinced that ugliness and hate in the public sphere is the enemy of recovery, peace and reconciliation. Decency, learning, openness and dialogue — at our precious library and beyond — are our only hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment