Netanyahu: The aftermath

I'm not sure I get it.

My local paper has been besieged with letters regarding the recent Netanyahu fiasco at Montreal's Concordia University.

Some of the letter-writers are justifiably outraged, some are philosophical, and some are just plain unbalanced.

An example of the latter would be the letter by one Jamison Cant of Montreal, full of sinister hints and vague accusations. We could call it, “Cant’s Rant.” Just don't expect him to re-Cant, haha.

Ahem.

Mr. Cant wonders, “Why was one of the most controversial opponents of Palestinian statehood scheduled to speak at a ticketed event (partially backed by the foundation of a major media corporation whose owner is unapologetically biased on the issue) that was held on a university campus rather than at a private venue?”

Ah, why indeed? This is no doubt part of some dark evil plot signifying… well, something bad, anyway.

Cant continues, as we hoped he would. “Not just any university, mind you, but Concordia University, with its well-established reputation for student activism and Palestinian support? Surely, only the naïve and the disingenuous would label this choice of location a coincidence.”

Aha! The plot begins to unravel. The conspirators are mercilessly unmasked. It was done deliberately, you see. But what could have been the intent of this sinister scheme? Fortunately, Jamison Cant is there to piece it all together for us.

“Freedom of speech is a strange thing. Once someone claims it, far too often, he uses it to deny his opponents the same freedom – sometimes violently, sometimes with subtlety.”

Nothing gets past this Cant. The organizers of the event demanded freedom of speech in a ruse to get the other side to kick in windows and beat up Jews, so that the organizers could then accuse the protesters of denying them freedom of speech, thus denying their foes freedom of speech in return!

Er, or something.

Well, you get the gist. Oh, don’t you yet? Then let’s sample this letter from one Jeremiah F. Hayes, Distinguished Emeritus Professor at Concordia University, who also happened to be my professor in an Electrical Engineering course lo these many years.

Professor Hayes also, like Jamison Cant, likes to use the word “disingenuous”. Even the headline over the letter is “Outrage at protest disingenuous,” and in the letter’s opening sentence he writes, “I find the outrage at the cancellation of Benjamin Netanyahu’s talk to be disingenuous.” Got it? Disingenuous.

Like many others, he makes a big deal about the fact that Netanyahu spoke two days before the 9/11 anniversary. Like it would have made a difference if Netanyahu spoke in December, except that the protesters would have had to wear earmuffs over their keffiyehs.

“In Israel, it is alleged that his inflammatory rhetoric contributed to the assassination of former Prime Minister Yithak Rabin. What can we expect from placing him into the volatile atmosphere at Concordia University just two days before the one-year anniversary of 9/11?”

This Netanyahu fellow is obviously lethal. He’s the explosive human equivalent of a trinitrotoluol and nitroglycerin cocktail. This guy is obviously so toxic we should consider having him regulated by the federal Drug Enforcement Agency. I mean, stick this bomb in human form into a crowd of rock-holding anarchists and flick the switch, and how else do you expect the poor chumps to react?

I’m not really sure why people think that the university atmosphere would have been so abnormally highly charged in the days leading to the 9/11 anniversary. Or why they think the protesters were such delicate flowers that they would have been so adversely affected by it. But I bow to my former professor’s vast knowledge.

“Of course,” Professor Hayes continues relentlessly, “for students from Hillel, which helped organize the event, it is a win-win situation. Whether the talk were canceled or not, Mr. Netanyahu’s message would get out. If the protest were vehement enough to cause cancellation, it would be a clear demonstration of the tactics of the opposition.”

Those wily Jews. Here we were all thinking that they bought tickets to the event so that they could listen to Netanyahu speak, when all along it turns out they just wanted him to provoke a bunch of thugs to kick and punch them.

On the other hand, it is a lose-lose for the university. Assuming the university could deny approval for the talk, it would be accused of stifling free speech. But, in order to guarantee security, drastic measures were required: closing the university for the day and cordoning off the streets around the Henry F. Hall building, regardless of the costs to students, local businesses and local residents.

That the university was closed for the day might surprise some students who attended class that day. Perhaps Professor Hayes is referring to the closing of the university that occurred after protesters uncontrollably stormed and defaced the building, “regardless of the costs to students, local businesses and local residents.”

“I am outraged over the use of the university for a purely political agenda,” he concludes rather piously. Apparently the political agenda of the protesters does not cause an equivalent spark of outrage.

Dare I say, I find Professor Hayes' outrage to be... well, disingenuous.

But don't think too badly of Professor Hayes; after all, he had sufficient wisdom to give me an A+ in that course.

Da little guy from Shawinigan strikes again

In the movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays a weatherman who is forced to relive February 2, over and over, until he finally gets it right.

I never actually saw the movie, but sometimes I am seized with the horrible conviction that my fellow Canadians and I are destined to watch, dreamlike, as our Prime Minister Jean Chrétien commits gaffe after inexorable gaffe for all eternity, like some kind of political Groundhog Day.

In April 2000, PM Chrétien was let loose on the Middle East, leaving a path of both outraged autocrats and indignant democrats in his wake.

On Day 2 of his tour, he announced that he would support a unilateral declaration of independence by the Palestinians, in clear violation of the Oslo accords.

Only a day later, our intrepid PM was at it again, asserting Israel’s right to the disputed Sea of Galilee that is also claimed by Syria. "I am not the expert of where was the international border. Apparently there was a border that was occupied a long time ago and there was war and so on,” Chrétien elucidated. “For a Canadian we have 30 million lakes so we don't see it in the same perspective but I can understand the need for Israel to keep the only lake they got."

For his next trick, he stunned the international community and his own cabinet by announcing that Canada would be willing to accept some 15,000 Palestinian refugees.

Sometimes you get the impression this man just makes it up as he goes along.

Last week, Chrétien opined on the US stance on Iraq, apparently not yet convinced that Saddam Hussein is an unhinged madman. "A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It's a proof. A proof is a proof. And when you have a good proof, it's because it's proven." Philosophy and politics and entertainment, all rolled into one.

I have taken to watching the man in almost admiring horror. It’s actually quite impressive to see a head of state sound so much like a cross between Susan Sontag and Doctor Seuss.

Of all days, Chrétien chose the one year anniversary of the September 11 attacks to link terrorism with Western arrogance and misuse of powers.

"You cannot exercise your powers to the point of humiliation for the others,” he remarked sagely. “There are long-term consequences.”

"And I do think that the Western world is getting too rich in relation to the poor world and necessarily will be looked upon as being arrogant and self-satisfied, greedy and with no limits. The 11th of September is an occasion for me to realize it even more."

Let us not forget that this is the man who once unknowingly bragged into an open mike that he formulates policy by opposing the Americans, because it’s popular at home.

I had come to expect these ravings from my Prime Minister, but I was not prepared for the widespread support that followed.

Transport Minister David Collenette defended Chrétien’s remarks, saying, "There will be people in the U.S. emboldened by their new source of unfettered power to, in a hockey term, get their elbows up." And even opposition leader Joe Clark, known in some circles as Joe Who because of his winning personality, agreed. "There is a direct relation between the roots of terror and the existence of poverty and despair," Clark said. "I don't think there's much disputing that."

This might come as a surprise to anybody who noticed that a disproportionate number of the September 11 hijackers were wealthy and educated. Or to anybody who noticed that Osama bin Laden is a millionaire. Or to anybody who noticed that the Middle East has oil. And it might come as a surprise to researchers Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Maleckova, who found that higher levels of income and education were positively correlated with terrorism.

Somebody stop the contagion, because it seems to be spreading.

Be careful what you wish for

Several years ago, as an engineering student at Montreal’s Concordia University, I would enviously wish that we were as well known as Montreal’s other English-speaking university, McGill. A Concordia diploma just didn’t carry the same weight of recognition. It seemed rather unfair to have to go through bouts of dialogue like the following:

Well-meaning American lady: “So where are you studying?”

Me: “Oh, Concordia.”

Lady (sounding impressed): “Oh, Cornell!”

Me (more loudly): “I go to Concordia.”

Lady (nodding knowledgeably): “Yes, Cornell!”

When I started my studies, Concordia was still reeling from the shock of Prof. Valery Fabrikant’s murderous rampage in the Mech Eng department. But by the time I graduated, it had subsided. Department secretaries had stopped looking over their shoulders nervously and things were looking encouraging. Concordia was flourishing, and new building projects seemed to be sprouting up like weeds. At that rate, I thought, soon my alma mater would really be on the map.

This week, I got my wish.

We had all heard the disturbing reports last year coming out from Concordia. B’nai Brith of Canada summarizes it:

In September 2001, the Concordia Student Union (CSU) published an Agenda entitled Uprising, which accuses Israel of being involved in “state terror that has killed civilian men, women, and children whose only ‘crime’ is their nationality”. The CSU-produced Uprising goes one step further with an article by Laith Marouf that insinuated that “the ‘Jewish’ Rector knows how much money the university owes to Zionists”, and accused the Concordia administration of being Arabophobic.

Earlier in the year, Mr. Marouf, a foreign national from Syria who was in Canada on a student visa, is alleged to have harassed and intimidated the editor of a Concordia University newspaper and her staff, by alluding to their religion. He is also alleged to have stated in an undergraduate Political Science class in the winter semester of the 2000-2001 academic year, in front of all his peers and the professor, that the “Talmud obliges Jews to kill all non-Jews”.

Marouf, who was elected as a CSU student councilor in March 2001, was allegedly caught on two occasions scrawling graffiti on Concordia University property. One of these incidents relates to graffiti containing both anti-Jewish and anti-Israel diatribes, including “Stop Jewish Apartheid”, “End Jewish Occupation”, “Israel is a racist State”, and the Star of David being equated to a swastika. Similar anti-Jewish and anti-Israel graffiti was scrawled by an unknown person or persons on the corners of eight sidewalks on St. Catherine Street not far from the York Theatre, stating “Stop Jewish apartheid” and “End Jewish supremacy”.

Incidentally, this same agenda also included an encouragement of shoplifting as a legitimate form of protest and I'm not sure that it didn't include instructions on how to build a homemade bomb. All this to say, it was becoming apparent that the Concordia Student Union was becoming something Mohammed Atta would have felt right at home in, and possibly something even Osama bin Laden might have nodded his head approvingly at.

But this week, when violent protesters smashed in glass windows, threw rocks, and assaulted people who had come to attend a lecture by former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Concordia, the former site of my higher education hit a new low.

There were reports of protesters assaulting a 72-year old Czechoslovakian Holocaust survivor and even a rabbi and his wife, a Concordia professor.

Netanyahu ended up canceling his speech, which was, of course, the whole point. Leftists aren’t about free speech. They’re about free speech for leftists.

One of the lunatic organizations involved in the protest even issued an unapologetic statement the following day, branding Netanyahu a “terrorist”. Is that the same Netanyahu who presided over the peace process? In this weird parallel universe, does Arafat then become a democratically elected prime minister with a spotless past, and, incidentally, the ability to string together a coherent sentence? Does the Palestinian Authority then become a place where people like this can legitimately engage in protest of any kind, peaceful or not?

I know that expecting the Concordia Student Union to immediately issue a strong statement denouncing all forms of violent protests is, perhaps, pushing it. Let’s start with baby steps. But, in the same Bizarro-like tradition, they went a step further. Putting the blame for this whole circus squarely on the shoulders of Concordia’s rector, Frederick Lowy, the CSU accused him of endangering students and called for his resignation. (That would be the same Jewish rector that the CSU’s Marouf is so fond of.) You would be excused for wondering at this point if Lowy himself was sporting a green and red keffiyah and throwing stones at the conference ticket-holders. Wait, I have a novel idea. Let’s place the responsibility for the protesters’ outbursts of physical violence and the protesters’ wanton destruction of property on – the protesters!

I don't know what they're teaching university students these days, but at Concordia, it must not be logic.