Executive Committee deputation re: QuAIA By Elle Flanders I speak before you today as a member of the Toronto lesbian

and gay community; as the former executive director of the lesbian and gay film festival; a former board member of Pride Toronto; as well as a member of the Jewish community. I am also a member of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. I have fought for a good part of my life to obtain equal rights those that allow me to speak before you as an equal citizen today. As a Jewish woman, I am all too aware of how fragile ones equality isand hence I do not only fight for my own rights but the rights of others as well. Many QuAIA members are Jewish with roots or implications in what takes place in Israel and Palestine. Other members are longtime human rights and social justice activists. On these basesPride has always been political and it is not for any one of you, not even councilor Pasternak, to decide which politics can or cannot be at Pride. My grandparents helped establish the State of Israel councilors. I grew up in Jerusalem. I am neither self-hating nor deluded. I have spent most of my adult life shadowed by and hence making films about the conflict in Israel and Palestine. Israel is a state like any other, with flaws, like many others. Israel is not a sacred cow and is not above critique. There is NOTHING inherently hurtful, hateful, anti-

Semitic, or any other words that have been carelessly bandied about in the face of a critique of Israeli state policy. The words Israeli Apartheid are nothing more than a descriptor of systemic racist policies that one ruling ethnic group has imposed on another in the same land. I grew up in Israel, I think I have some authority and knowledge to tell you a little bit about what is happening there. It saddens me. This was my grandparents and parents dream, a land they help to build. But in that dream, others were dispossessed. And in that dispossession, much injustice has occurred. I am not afraid to say that, I am not afraid to admit when I and/or my people have erred. And Israel has indeed erred. In 2009, I lived in the West Bank for a year, yes, a nice Jewish lesbian living in Ramallah. My partner and I traveled every day for six months on a segregated road system; they are known as the apartheid roads because they are segregated by your ethnic identity. Roads for Jewish Israelis, roads for Palestinians. We made a film about these roads that screened at TIFF 2011. Yes, a film about the apartheid roads that thousands of people saw at TIFF. You cannot single out Pride, Councilor Pasternak. The Israel Supreme Court heard a case arguing that the road systems constituted a state of apartheidThe term is used in Israeli newspapers and by many Israeli politicians. Just in the last few months, countless articles appeared in the

Israeli press citing Israeli Apartheid. Are they too creating atmospheres of discrimination (or hurt)? Are you suggesting that Toronto knows more about Israeli Apartheid than Israel? While there are voices from individuals in the Toronto Jewish community who may claim this hurtful, I too am the Toronto Jewish community. And I say otherwise. Enough is enough. Councils cannot continue to single Pride out. This must end here and now. Your city staff has said so and Prides Dispute Resolution Committee has said so. Perhaps if councilor Pasternak and those who find the term Israeli Apartheid hurtful, could see the real effects of these insidious policies, perhaps just then, they would help us all move to peace, and not apartheid.