The Toronto City Council passed a motion requesting the City Manager to update the city's anti-discrimination policy. The councillors don't want to fund the Pride Parade if the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid will use the event to promote an anti-Israel message.
Changes sought to city's anti-discrimination policy after Gay Pride flap
[Councillor James] Pasternak maintained that the group's [Queers Against Israeli Apartheid] very name - which links Israeli treatment of Palestinians to the South African Apartheid movement - was provocative and designed to demonize Israel and Jews.
Pasternak said he's hoping that a new policy will be tougher in dealing with speech deemed offensive to groups in the city - and would prohibit messaging such as Queers Against Israeli Apartheid deliver.
"This is a group that is designed to demonize," he said. "We have a responsibility here and now to make sure that groups like that and others aren't given public space in which to operate. We had some holes in our current policy and we weren't able to really come to the conclusion that the term 'Israeli apartheid' violated that policy. We're hoping for a refreshed policy so that those terms are deemed to be discriminatory."
This is very brave.
Notice the phrase "speech deemed as offensive to groups in the city." Here is the rub when you are talking to a BDS supporter. Israel is Jewish, except when it isn't. When BDS calls it "racist," Israel is Jewish. When you say BDS is anti-Semitic, they say Israel isn't Jewish. They conveniently deny to us the ability to define what is anti-Semitic. However, the EU does have a working definition.
