The Old Bait-and-Switch
Posted on: July 10, 2009

The following editorial appears in today’s Ottawa Citizen:

THE OLD BAIT-AND-SWITCH

When confronted with a political protest, it’s useful to look carefully at who exactly the protesters are. Sometimes people are not what they seem.

Anti-Israel campaigns are most notorious for bait-and-switch. Protests that are supposed to be about the legitimate rights of Palestinians are often, in reality, vehicles to attack Jews and promote Islamic extremism. Earlier this year, “anti-Israel” demonstrations in several Canadian cities featured people giving the Nazi salute and circulating the medieval anti-Semitic libel that Jews drink blood.

Of course, not all critics of Israel have sinister and radical agendas, but you really have to wonder why those who advocate on behalf of Palestinians don’t work harder to keep their cause from being hijacked by people of ill will.

So it’s important to cast a skeptical eye on the strange campaign now underway in Toronto to disrupt an exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Scrolls are mostly ancient Hebrew manuscripts and are the State of Israel’s greatest treasure. The Israel Antiquities Authority is allowing them to be shown at the Royal Ontario Museum.

An odd assortment of groups are protesting the exhibit on the grounds that the scrolls are stolen artifacts and really belong to Arabs, not Jews. Yes, you read that correctly. Hebrew manuscripts of the Jewish Bible that were written centuries before Muhammad was born are, apparently, Muslim property.

It’s easy to see what’s going on here. Just as Holocaust denial circulates in some corners of the anti-Israel movement, there is a parallel effort to deny the Jewish people’s ancestral connection to the Holy Land. The idea is to delegitimize Israel by denying the indigenous rights of Jews. Some Israel-haters have even taken to arguing that Palestinian Arabs are the real descendants of “ancient Hebrews.”

It was interesting, for example, to see an online magazine called the Canadian Charger go after the Royal Ontario Museum for declining an “interview” with one of its correspondents. The Canadian Charger just a few days earlier published a strong defence of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, praising his “social justice policies.”

So the point remains: When you see a campaign like the one against the Dead Sea Scrolls, take a look at who — and what — is behind it.