Their true colours

See what the Montreal Muslim News is reporting about the attempt to shut down Hillel at Concordia:

The CSU left two loopholes open for Hillel. While there’s general agreement that an apology from Hillel at the council meeting would have avoided the sanctions applied, opinions differ about what would be accepted as an apology. Adam Slater says, “We want an admission that it was inappropriate to violate the FEA and we also want an apology for violating CSU and University regulations on racial discrimination. The recruiting program is only open to non-Israeli Jews. If they’re willing to do that, this all goes away.” Councilor Trish McIntosh takes a harder line. “The infantry unit that this program feeds into is the Nahal Brigade (http://www.idf.il/english/organization/nahal/nahal.stm). They create and defend West Bank settlements. Recruiting for Nahal isn’t just a violation of the FEA, it’s also a violation of the 4th Geneva Convention. Hillel has to issue a condemnation of the Israeli Army’s practices as well.”

It’s no secret that the CSU’s politics are anti-Israel, as well as radically anti-establishment, anti-capitalism, and anti-globalization. But what Trish McIntosh and her cohorts are saying is that unless Hillel toes the line, and apologizes for not holding the same political beliefs as the CSU, they’ll be shut down.

Yet another example of the CSU’s concept of freedom of speech only applying to those with whom they agree.

When the moratorium was imposed, the CSU was the first to rally for freedom of speech, and a lifting of the ban. But they’ve never had a problem shutting down any speech that opposes their viewpoints before (the Netanyahu riot being a key example). This is one more example of the same. McIntosh believes that settlements in the West Bank are illegal, but the problem is that she’s claiming that Hillel must believe that too, or else no funding, no tabling privileges, no operations. The CSU’s aim is to create a totalitarian dictatorship at Concordia, where anyone who is anti-Israel has freedom of speech, and anyone who is pro-Israel doesn’t. That kind of “freedom” is really no freedom at all.

The CSU has no right to dictate to Hillel what to believe or what politics to profess. Hillel is a Jewish students’ organization, a Zionist students’ organization, and they cannot and should not apologize for either. If anyone owes an apology here, it’s the CSU that should apologize to Hillel for trying to strip the club of its legitimate right to expression.