Israeli Arabs help to debunk apartheid myths
Eight Israelis who identify as Jewish, Muslim, Druze or Bedouin were in Toronto last week as part of a program called WordSwap, hoping to get the last word on the Israeli apartheid debate. Flown in by StandWithUs Canada, a non-profit, pro-Israel advocacy group, Orit Tepper, Rabea Bader and Muhamed Heeb told The CJN about the message they hope to send to students who are inundated with dishonest, anti-Israel rhetoric on campus.
......
“I see how Israel is misrepresented in the media… They’re accusing Israel of apartheid… and you know it’s not true, but if you don’t stand up and say it’s not true, a lot of people are going to believe these lies.” Heeb and his fellow WordSwap participants attended an IAW event last week at U of T, where he said he witnessed first hand that IAW organizers aren’t interested in dialogue.
“I asked them a lot of questions, but they didn’t answer any of them. They wanted to boycott Ben-Gurion University, so I said, ‘Listen guys, Ben-Gurion University has the most Arab girls, Bedouin girls, studying there, more than (schools in) Arab countries.’ I told them I was from the University of Haifa. I’m Arab. I’m doing my master’s, and my faculty would not be able to exchange the knowledge that we have. But they didn’t answer (me),” Heeb said.
Tepper said that every time one of the WordSwap members took the microphone, organizers stopped recording. “They censored them. A member of our group said, ‘I’m an Israeli Arab, my grandparents have lived there, I’ve lived there, I have full rights, I’ve served in the IDF, I work in Tel Aviv, I don’t face discrimination, so how can you say that if you haven’t even been there?’” Bader said he thinks the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is “a joke.” “All I hear is propaganda, lies, and seriously, I thought they wanted to boycott Israel because they want peace, but they’re not talking about peace… Peace or no peace, they’re boycotting Israel,” Bader said.
more...
http://www.cjnews.com/campus/israeli-arabs-help-debunk-apartheid-myths#sthash.yP2twbDo.hTxbu1sI.dpuf
= new reply since forum marked as read
