Sid Ryan’s foreign policy includes only Israel

Many of Sid Ryan’s supporters have defended his proposed boycott on the grounds that it is anti-Israel in intent, not anti-Semitic. But the more we parse what Ryan has to say, the more that looks like a distinction without a difference.

First, he compared the actions of the Israeli army to those of the Nazis during the Second World War. He apologized for that remark, calling it “stupid” and explaining that he got “caught up in the emotion” of the moment. But after the National Post wrote an editorial calling him a “bigot,” Ryan fired back with a letter in which he referenced the “outright atrocities committed by an ever-expanding apartheid-type regime,” i.e., Israel. It appears Sid Ryan is easily caught up in the emotion of letter-writing.

He probably thinks he’s being clever, invoking apartheid-era South Africa and Nazi Germany. But the notion that Zionism is a form of fascism has become one of the nastiest and most poisonous themes of leftist thought in the past few decades. Perversely, it is a view that only gains credence from the violence and terror perpetrated by the Palestinians. After all (goes the argument) only a people scraping the very depths of despair could bring themselves to strap bombs to their children and send them into crowded markets and commuter buses.

By this twisted logic, the more insanely the Palestinians act, the more culpable Israel must be. The alternative possibility—that Hamas is running an ultra-criminal death cult—is never seriously considered.

Sid Ryan has become a parody of anti-Zionist leftism, a walking cliché of intolerance and barely hidden anti-Semitism. There are two possible explanations for his behaviour. The first is that he really believes the things he says, a frightening possibility that makes one wonder how much longer CUPE Ontario can stand to be associated with the man.

The second, and more pleasant, hypothesis is that he’s an Israeli sleeper agent, an idiot-provocateur whose mission is to serve Zionism by bringing the academic anti-Israel lobby into knee-slapping disrepute. In which case he’s doing a fabulous job.