Samer Elatrash has been suspended from Concordia for 3 years for his role in instigating the September 9th riots.
Samer Elatrash, 23, was found guilty of all five charges against him under the school’s code of rights and responsibilities.
The charges, which include rioting, assault and harassment, stem from a violent protest in the Henry F. Hall building last year that prevented former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking on campus.
In an article in the Link, Elatrash levels his usual myriad of accusations against the university administration, the hearings panel, the police, Benjamin Netanyahu, Hillel, and of course the Zzzzzionists.
Verdicts against the other accused students are to be announced this week.
I wonder if the verdic has anything to do with the fact that Mr. Elatrash wasn’t allowed to present any evidence to defend himself? Or perhaps it had to do with the fact that the administration refused to replace one of the student judges in this case but replaced that same judge in another case for reasons of bias?
BS. Seanna Miller said that September 9th was “a disgrace”. That’s just an observation of fact – it was indeed a disgrace – and has nothing to do with bias against Mr. Elatrash. He HAS to claim that the hearings process was biased in order to save face. The most open, fair, and transparent hearings process in the world would have been met with an accusation of bias. So give me a break, ok?
Agree with Segacs. Reading about it in the Gazette and the Link (thanks for the links, Segacs), it’s clear that of course the September 9th events were disgraceful; anyone who sees that as controversial is obviously not saying something about their own biases.
The Elatrash article is kind of funny. He’s so worried that people will judge his actions, and the September 9th actions, independently and on their own merits, that he spends the first two paragraphs talking about Netanyahu and PR and so forth to make sure that his readers get their alignments right: remember, says, Samer, the administration is just like Netanyahu, I’m just like the righteous Palestinian resistance, and so forth. (Especially amusing that he tries to tar them all with the PR-flack feathers, when both his article and, broadly, the activists with whom he claims to stand mobilize every PR trick in the book, and in fact operate precisely as PR campaigns.)
That said, though, on the Link site the main article about the September 9th suspension hearings was not the letter from Elattrache but rather this one on Students cry foul in riot (http://thelink.concordia.ca/article.pl?sid=03/02/04/0714214). On judge bias, it seems that this CSU councillor and peer judge Anas Sabaii who has been speaking about a “biased process” is not exactly a stranger to the events or characters involved or politics attached, either. Different strokes for different folks?
Actually Hanthala, Seanna Miller was removed from Yves Engler’s case because she’s technically his boss as she sits on the CSU council of representatives and Enlger is a CSU executive, it had nothing to do with any comments she made. She was not removed from Elatrash’s because there was no reason to remove her, she is not his boss. So, her removal from one case and not the other is perfectly logical and does not constitute a double standard.
Oh, I tried to slog through some of Elatrash’s responses but the guy never hits the frigging “ENTER” key when he writes his responses and I know I’m no angel in the paragraphing department myself, what with my long, run-on sentences and lots of bits in parentheses, but maybe every 50 lines or so the guy should hit “ENTER” twice. It would make his thoughts so much easier to follow.
I did read long enough to see his cheap shot against Sari though… “a handfull of bored Zionists (who either lead dreary lives in advertising firm offices or cannot publish their thoughts in the Link proper due to their incoherence–and they should all be expelled, I suppose, if weather watnot is at all consistent)”.
Anyhow…. this is dedicated to Elatrash “SHA NA NA NA, SHA NA NA NA, HEY HEY HEY, GOODBYE!”
The Elatrash article is kind of funny … remember, says, Samer, the
administration is just like Netanyahu, I’m just like the
righteous Palestinian resistance, and so forth.
True James. I think Samer should put that in his resume. It will certainly put him in good standing with the International anti-Semitism Movement.
Peter: I really don’t think it has anything to do with anti-Semitism, or anything else. It’s simply a classic use of rhetoric, using exactly the PR techniques he decries in others.
In what real world courtroom would a jurist making the statement “I think that the crime was a disgrace” prior to the hearings be permitted to remain in the jury pool?
On another note, the glee with which Elatrash’s suspension was met in some quarters showed that whatever the charge, for many the main objective was simply to get him out.
Articulate leaders of dissenting movements have always been targeted in this way, with the hope that silencing a leader will silence the movement.
Elatrash should take all the joy at his suspension as a complement that those seeking to push the zionist agenda find him, and his ideas, enough of a threat to attempt to silence him.
Unfortunately for them, truth is truth, and won’t be silenced.
Side note: At the Link’s board, simply pressing enter won’t create a line break. The user has to know some basic HTML tags (line break, paragraph break) to format text. So that’s why some people type in long paragraphs.
I don’t think it’s got much to do with the incoherence of Mr. Elatrash’s responses though – they would still be incoherent even with formatting.
Articulate leaders of dissenting movements have always been targeted in this way , with the hope that silencing a leader will silence the movement.
ME: An articulate “leader” does not resort to rioting to make his point. That is the reason why Mr. Elatrash was suspended; because he was found guilty of rioting. An articulate person doesn’t engage in screaming, hitting, throwing chairs, breaking windows, and spitting which is what the September 9 rioters were accused of. If Mr. Elatrash really was the “articulate leader” you describe him to be, then not only would he not have rioted, he also would have tried to stop the rioting committed by other students.
In what real world courtroom would a jurist making the statement “I think that the crime was a disgrace” prior to the hearings be permitted to remain in the jury pool?
I believe the jurist in question said that “Sept. 9 was a disgrace.” She did not use the word crime. However, this is moot because the rioting on Sept 9 was a disgrace and she had every right to voice this opinion. She didn’t however say before the hearing that she thought Elatrash participated in the rioting, which is what would have disqualified her.
Peter,
Did you see Elatrash do the things you accuse him of?
And do you understand what the word analogy means?
And do you have any idea how jurors are selected for a jury pool?
Oh, and segacs, perhaps a more “open, fair, and transparent hearings process” (which this, by any stretch of the imagination was not) could have outed any false claims of bias.
As it stands now, with this clandestine closed-door process, a defendant could claim torture and earn the belief of at least a few supporters.
ME I agree with everything you say. Have a nice life.
peter,
Had I known you were so wishy-washy, I wouldn’t have bothered.