The Cord’s inappropriate apartheid claims

I am concerned that an article of such poor journalistic standards has been printed in The Cord. Not only is it full of grammatical errors and providing a skewed and incomplete account of the events that took place on campus, but it takes a radical anti-Israel stance in what should be a balanced news article.

It is absolutely inappropriate for a news article in The Cord to be making the claim that there is “apartheid of the [sic] Palestine.” This is a radical view expressed by very few extreme anti-Israel activists, and condemned internationally. In Canada, IAW and the BDS movement have been condemned across the political spectrum by many Conservative, Liberal and NDP MPs.

While the author of the article felt it was perfectly acceptable to present this radical view in the newspaper’s voice, she was extremely careful to put scare quotes around any mention of the very offensive nature of the materials being displayed by L4P, including a poster in the Concourse featuring a swastika.

Inciting hatred is a criminal offence in Canada, and Special Constables was enforcing the law by removing inflammatory material. The L4P organizers displayed exactly the same material last year and were then similarly advised to remove the hateful posters. But from reading The Cord’s account of events, readers would not get a sense of the serious nature of the incident. If the Cord cares about maintaining journalistic integrity and impartiality, a retraction is in order to address the dubious claim of apartheid.