I appreciate Neil McLaughlin’s brief outline of the history of the anti-apartheid protests at McMaster University this spring (Commentary, April Bulletin). I respond to his comment about the usefulness of the phrase “Israeli apartheid” which he sees as potentially compromising a possible two-state solution to the problem.

Unfortunately, the Israel envisaged in the two-state solution would still be a state in which basic rights are differentiated based on ethnic lines, i.e., an apartheid state. For those of us who wish to see an end to such exclusionary regimes, the two-state solution is unacceptable, although it may be a step on the way to an acceptable long-term solution.

That is the logic of identifying Israeli policies for what they are. Palestinian students and faculty are not being accorded free speech by existing Israeli policies, and I don’t see how this will change, barring the ethnic cleansing of four million Palestinians from Israel, given a two-state solution.

Martin Adamson
Zoology
University of British Columbia

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