The University of Manitoba Masters of Human Rights Students Association held an event on Dec 11,2024 at the CMHR entitled Canada’s Evolving Stand on Palestinian Statehood, Self-Determination, International Law and Diplomatic Realities. There were four speakers at the event, Mona Abuamara, Libby Davies, Faisal Bhabha and Ramsey Zeid.  Abuamara, Bhabha and Zeid have all taken the public position that Israel is a settler colonialist state, and Zeid has said that Zionism (the  right of the Jewish people to self -determination) is “a disease”. All of the speakers on the panel assembled are very pro-Palestinian, and the panel is not balanced in that there appears to be no one to counteract the view that Israel is not a settler colonialist state, and that Jews are in fact indigenous to the region as per historical, archeological program and DNA evidence.(The Bible was written in Hebrew not English or Polish).

The Master of Human Rights (MHR) is an interdisciplinary program to train students practically and academically for careers in human rights work. It is a graduate studies program housed at the Faculty of Law.

The Winnipeg Jewish Review sent in the following questions to UM administration:

1.Is the Masters of Human Rights program at UM taught in a manner that promotes a balanced approach to the Middle East conflict in an academically responsible and balance way?

2.Or does the choice of  the  above program at the CMHR  and the panel assembled reflect anti-Israel indoctrination in the academic program itself, which has led to those in the program having a deep hostility to the notion of Israel?

3.Does the UM have any concerns at all that the Masters of Human Rights program has become riddled with virulent  anti-Israel bias and indoctrination?

4.Do those in the Masters of Human Rights program have any classes on the history of anti-semitism, the oldest hatred in the world? If not, does the UM believe it would benefit those in The Masters of Human Rights program to have training in the issue of antisemitism and will the program offer serious programming in this area ? 

The UM administration sent in the following response :

"The University of Manitoba Master of Human Rights Students’ Association is an independent student organization. It does not speak on behalf of the university, and the university does not speak on its behalf. The student group has the authority to make decisions about its meetings, events, and matters pertaining to its operations and governance, without university interference or input. The university has extensive supports and processes in place to help ensure a safe work and learning environment, for all. This includes initiatives and training around antisemitism, Islamophobia and all forms of racism for students, faculty and staff. This is an ongoing effort and commitment we've made.

"Any person involved in conduct that contravenes university policies or the law, including speech advocating or glorifying intimidation, hate, or violence against specific individuals or groups, will be subject to consequences in accordance with university policy and the law.

"In a free and democratic society and as an institution of higher learning, UM encourages critical thinking, respectful debate and discourse on difficult and divisive topics." 

The UM administration does not address whether in fact the students in the Masters of Human Rights program in this case are not merely exercising their power to select speakers, but whether they have been encouraged to engage in such one-sided events by more generally receiving academic programming - which is common now in academia - that is itself selectively concerned with Israel, demonizing and promoting hostile and false slogans such as that Israel is a colonial settler state.   With respect to these attacks on Israel and of the Jewish people, the perspective should at least be raised in any programming that addresses that the case for Israel- not only against it- should be presented for student consideration.  The case for Israel includes the perspective that:

- the Jewish people are indigenous to Israel;

-that there has been a continuous Jewish presence in Israel for thousands for years, even after various imperialist powers denied the Jewish people their sovereignty in their homeland;

-that Jews were largely displaced from their homeland by wave after wave of imperialism that included ancient imperialist neighbours, Greece, Rome, Christian Europe and various waves of Islamic imperialism;

-that Jews who came to Europe were escaping from societies that persecuted them in order and to build a Jewish society - they were not emissaries, agents or enthusiasts for the European societies they fled;

-that a plurality of Jews in Israel come from surrounding Islamic countries, from which they escaped as refugees after the 1948 war in which their Arab neighbours attempted to destroy Israel rather than accept  the UN partition plan;

--that in 1948, and on repeated occasions since then, Israel accepted the two-state solution and many of its neighbours violently rejected it and invaded Israel rather than accepting the emergence of both Jewish and Arab states 

-

Legitimate University academic programing in the area would not narrowly obsess on Israel. To the extent that it address the Middle East conflict, and to the extent that Israel is concerned, such programming would present not only criticism, but the positive features of Israel from a human rights standpoint - including its existence, despite tremendous external threats, as the only liberal democracy in the area, its development of a constitutional system which recognizes human rights, including the equal dignity of every individual, and that has an independent judiciary and press. It is not requested or expected that programming present only positive views of Israel, but it is unacceptable, from the point of view of the academic mission, that it amount to indoctrination in hostility.  What is actually happening in the classroom as the University of Manitoba?   Are events such as the one under discussion, or Gem Newman's hostile polemics, a reflection of what is happening in U of M classrooms?

In response to the Gem Newman episode, UM President Benarroch referred to the insidious nature of antisemitism, acknowledged that the University must "do better. How has it actually - not rhetorically, but in practice - doing so?

It seems clear from the bias in the above event is that the UM Master of Human Rights program in all likelihood is going to be producing graduates who are hostile to the right of Israel to exist as a state in the region, in that graduates will view the conflict through the lens that Israel is a “settler colonialist state.” These graduates will likely be the ones who are employed in the future in the human rights field, including at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, where they chose to hold their event.

While these students in the UM Masters of Human Rights program at the University of Manitoba have  put together an event which considers Israel an illegitimate settler colonialist state, I do wonder whether they will be devoting any specific programming  to considering the earthquake that just hit Syria with the fall of the regime of Bashar Assad. 

That earthquake that occurred in Syria is the direct result of the fact that Israel gave Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy in Lebanon, enough of a bashing that it had a domino effect. It emboldened  rebels in Syria to aim their sites on the Assad regime, which was held together by Hezbollah fighters armed by Iran and Russia. In fact, President Biden has credited Israel's operations against the terrorist organization Hezbollah, which has imperialized the rest of the Lebanese people and supported the Assad regime, as well as repeatedly attacking Israel, as one of the reasons for the final overthrow of Assad's violent dictatorship.

Assad  has certainly committed genocide in Syria, killing 500, 000 of his own people after the Arab spring in 2011, using chemical weapons against them, and causing millions more Syrian refugees to flee the region (including to Canada). Bashar has never been arrested by the International Criminal Court, since Syria never signed the Rome declaration (Israel never did either but that hasn’t stopped the ICC from issuing arrest warrants against Netanyahu, Gallant and possibly other high ranking officers in the IDF .)

I don’t recall any of the students in the Masters of Human Rights program ever holding a program to note that Syria under the Assad regime was in fact a “colonialist state.” The Assad’s were from the Alawite minority, an offshoot of the Shiites, who ruled over the other peoples of Syria, including the Sunni Muslims, Kurds, Druze and Christians. The Syrian state was held together by the tyranny and oppression of the Assad regime. The Alawite minority was installed as leaders of Syria by the colonialist powers, the British and French who formed Syria, as well as Lebanon pursuant to the Sykes Picot agreement of 1916, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. (The secret agreement was between Britiain and France, with assent from Russia and Italy to define their mutually agreed spheres of influence and control in an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire.)

Syria and neighbouring Lebanon were formed by the colonialist powers as a way to protect the oil pipeline that ran between Iraq (through Syria and Lebanon) all the way to the port of  Haifa, which was under control of the British.

Syria was among the invading armies that rejected the rights of Jews to self-determination and sought to destroy Israel in 1948. Not only did Syria manage to end the Jewish presence in the country, but its government also has presided over the drastic reduction in its Christian population.During the Syrian civil war, the various forms of local imperialism were aided and abetted by the imperialism of Iran and Russia. 

While Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who is cherished by many local Palestinians, was hoping to change the constellation of the Middle East by his Oct 7 attacks, events have not gone quite as he planned. A majority of Palestinians in Gaza now understand that Oct 7 was a mistake. Hezbollah and Iran did not join in the war to destroy Israel as Sinwar had planned. Hezbollah (whom Sinwar hoped would invade Israel using chemical weapons ) has just entered into a ceasefire with Israel,  that was not linked to a ceasefire in Gaza. The result has not been the defeat of Israel, as Sinwar hoped, but rather of Assad.

While the new jihadist leaders of Syria are not  expected to be friendly to Israel, they are not likely to be worse than the Assad regime, which allowed Iran to send in weapons to Hezbollah through Syria. Israel has now destroyed Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, taken over the Syrian town of Quneitra as a buffer zone, and is blocking the route to prevent Iran from using Syria to re-supply weapons to Hezbollah.

It remains to be seen what the effects of the fall of Assad are on the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, another colonialist state, and Lebanon, another colonialist state. The Hashemite minority was installed by the British after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and rules over Jordan.