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Israel-bashing is often well tolerated as a conduit for Jew hatred

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) immediately contacted the Peel District School Board (PDSB), which said it would “look into it,” but the poster stayed up for the duration of the program. On Twitter, PDSB finally promised a “full investigation,” apologizing for the delay in removing the banner, and acknowledging the “hurt and harm the class project has caused the Jewish community.”

Hate speech is often based in a kernel of truth. In the 1990s, under the direction of pathologist Dr. Yehuda Hiss of Israel’s Abu Kabir forensic unit, specialists harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the corpses of Israeli soldiers, as well as from deceased Jewish and Arab citizens, without relatives’ permission. In an investigation, Hiss admitted his culpability, and was removed from his post. This informal and unethical practice, never official policy, ended before 2000. No living person, let alone Palestinian prisoners, was ever at risk. All organ harvesting in Israel is done according to the same stringent standards Canada follows.

The prisoners-as-guinea-pigs motif is a favourite of militant Israel-haters. In July 1997, then-Israeli Speaker of the Knesset Dalia Itzik was falsely alleged to have stated that the Israeli Minister of Health had given pharmaceutical firms permits to test new drugs on prison inmates, and that 5,000 tests had already been carried out. Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reported on this ongoing libel in 2008, with a quote from Itzik’s office: “Knesset Speaker Itzik never made the statements attributed to her. Knesset Speaker Itzik is certain that incidents of this kind do not occur in Israel; this is not how Israel conducts itself.”