York University said that its students have the “right to express their views” after film mogul Paul Bronfman withdrew philanthropic support until the Toronto-based school take down a painting seeming to glorify a Palestinian terrorist.
“When I saw that mural, I thought ‘I’ve got to do something here,’” he told the National Post by phone.
Palestinian Roots,
which hangs over a public stairwell at the university’s student centre, features a figure wearing a scarf bearing an image of a borderless Israel and gazing at an under-construction Israeli settlement while holding two stones behind his back.
The man is “fluttered with conflicting emotions, implications and potential consequences of action,” reads a statement by the artist, business student Ahmad Al Abid.
“With each of these factors pulling him towards a different route of discourse, we find him calculating his next move,” he adds.
Bronfman is the president and CEO of Comweb Group Inc., a company supplying equipment and studio space to more than half of all Canadian film and television work.
Until recently, the company’s subsidiary, William F. White International, provided workshops, seminars and “thousands of dollars” worth of loaned film equipment to York University students.
In a recent phone call with York University president Mamdouh Shoukri, Bronfman said the school would be “persona non grata” until the painting was removed.
“It’s not artistry; it’s just pure hate,” Bronfman told the National Post.
While students and faculty at York are “disappointed” with losing support, said Bronfman, “they totally agree with my position; I’ve heard from both York students and the filmmaking department.”
In a statement, York University said its students “have the right to express their views and to test and challenge ideas, provided they do so within the law and in a peaceful and non-threatening manner.”
The school acknowledged that the painting may be offensive, but maintained that it is not “discriminatory, harassing or hateful.”
The university also added any decision about the painting’s future would need to be made by the York University Student Centre, a separate legal entity from the school.
As a member of one of Canada’s most influential families, Paul is not the first Bronfman with philanthropic ties to York University. The Peter Bronfman Business Library, a part of York University’s Schulich School of Business, is named for Bronfman’s uncle.
Representatives for the student centre or the York Federation of Students could not be reached before press time. Although a student union vice president told CBC’s As It Happens Wednesday night that the painting is “”the artist’s depiction of what’s going on.”
Palestinian Roots has hung in the student center since 2013, but it gained the attention of Bronfman and Jewish organizations after it was featured in a National Post column by Avi Benlolo, president of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies.
“This poster is more than a mere piece of art — it is propaganda, and a clear call to murder,” wrote Benlolo, adding that anti-Semitic attitudes are already “rampant” at the university.
In 2013, the York Federation of Students officially endorsed the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) campaign, a push to impose economic and academic sanction on Israel until, among other things, the country withdraws from land seized during the 1967 Six Day War.
On-campus Jewish groups, including the pro-Israeli Hasbara, have raised objections to the painting in the past.
But this, Students Against Israeli Apartheid, the primary campaigner behind the BDS endorsement, called Hasbara “irresponsible” for calling attention to Palestinian Roots.
By encouraging “gangs” like the Jewish Defence League, Hasbara is fostering a “dangerous climate against students who want to support human rights,” spokesperson Merate Atari told the Excalibur, York University’s student newspaper.
In a Wednesday open letter to the Times of Israel, meanwhile, York University student Natalie Slavat wrote “while the intentions of the artist are ambiguous at best, the way in which this piece is perceived by many Jewish students like myself is anything but vague.”
“In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, stone-throwing means one thing: Violence,” wrote Slavat, president of the Jewish student group Hillel at York.