Segacs’s World I Know

In 2002, they tried to ban Hillel at Concordia. Now, regular reader DaninVan sent me an e-mail letting me know that something similar is developing at York University.

Tensions have been running high at York for quite some time. Last week, the campus chapters of Hillel and SPHR both had events on the same day. The Excalibur reports that Hillel’s event was a vigil to remember victims of suicide bombers, and SPHR’s event was a “tribute” to Rachel Corrie. It seems clashes erupted.

Flash forward a week. Today’s Globe and Mail reports that the university has banned both Hillel and SPHR from hosting events for one week.

Slap on the wrist, right? Not quite:

Ms. White said Hillel had permission to hold a vigil outside Vari Hall for those who have died because of terrorism.

The pro-Palestinian group gave no official notice to the university of its demonstration, although Ms. White said rumours were circulating around campus that one would be held. The university requires five days notice from a club if it plans to hold an event on campus.

Equal punishment for unequal crimes is what this sounds like to me. And it gets worse.

Hillel has issued two press releases. I’m posting the first in its entirety here because I can’t find online links.

Jewish Student Community Shocked as York University Suspends Hillel Club status and privileges revoked leaving students feeling vulnerable, silenced and fearful.

Students at York University are shocked by news that the university administration has suspended the club privileges of Hillel @ York, the recognized voice of York’s Jewish students. This statement from the University, which is purportedly based on the confrontation last Tuesday, March 16 in Vari Hall, where Jewish students defended themselves against an incendiary form of anti-Israel guerilla theatre, has left Jewish students on campus feeling betrayed, silenced and vulnerable.

As a group that has always respected university directives and strives to pursue a healthy working relationship with the administration, we are shocked by this heavy-handed crackdown, which affects all areas of our religious, social and cultural activities, not only our political advocacy, said Jordie Saperia, the President of Hillel @ York. We are also extremely nervous at the message that this disproportionate response to the Jewish student voice on campus sends to the entire student body. We feel betrayed.

On Tuesday, March 16th, members of Hillel @ York clashed verbally with pro-Palestinian activists who set up provocative and instigatory mock Israeli checkpoints in Vari Hall, an academic building off limits to political demonstrators. University Administration and security officials stood by, watching, during almost an hour of intense confrontation.

The disciplinary measures taken against Hillel are allegedly in response to Tuesday’s clashes, said Seth Winberg, Vice-President of Hillel @ York. But the record shows that the university has turned a blind eye to dozens of illegal and unauthorized rallies by opposing groups. It is only when Hillel members chose to begin defending themselves that the university decided to punish us.

Students are furious that such disproportionate, harsh action has been levelled against them for the simple act of verbally and non-violently opposing a highly insensitive and unauthorized demonstration, while in the past, rallies held in direct contravention of university guidelines have been ignored and glossed over. In contrast, the location of a Jewish Unity rally scheduled by Hillel for last Thursday was dutifully changed only twenty-four hours in advance when the university’s Office of Student Affairs backtracked on permission granted weeks earlier. We are confused and hurt by the university’s actions, said Talia Klein, the Director of Hillel @ York. Despite the marked instability at the Office of Student Affairs over the past few months, we have always maintained a close and mutually beneficial working relationship with university officials. Now it seems as if York has turned into Concordia.

For more information:

Jordie Saperia, President, Hillel @ York

Talia Klein, Director, Hillel @ York

The second press release has a long list of unauthorized rallies and demonstrations held in the past by anti-Israel campus groups at York. In each case, the administration issued no sanctions whatsoever. It seems it only felt it necessary to step in when Hillel held an event of its own.

I’ll try to follow the situation as it develops. If anyone attends York or can provide a firsthand account, please e-mail me. We can’t let this happen again.

Paul Martin’s finance minister, Ralph Goodale, announced the Federal Budget today. And of course, the media began to immediately analyse, spin, and dissect it seventeen ways from Sunday.

So here’s my ten-second breakdown.

Healthcare: Mainly a provincial issue, but very little new money to help bail out the provinces. Instead of spending it on medicare or on, oh, important stuff like equipment, doctors and nurses, and patient care, the government’s gonna create yet another useless level of bureaucracy, this one to address “public health” (like the SARS crisis). Never mind that there are hundreds of times more people needing everyday healthcare. But it seems that there can never be enough levels of waste for the Libs.

Taxes: Breaks for small businesses and aid for venture capital financing. Both good things. Nothing much for big business (cause, of course, the Liberals can’t be seen to be getting too cozy with the devil). Oh, and a big chunk of cash to find “environmentally-friendly technologies”. I guess that’s the only way a Liberal government can fund business. Anyway the most important question is how much more of my own money will I get to keep on each paycheck. The answer? Not a whole helluvalot. Thumbs down.

National Debt: A commitment to pay it down considerably. This is good. The people don’t always see the debt as a priority, but reducing the debt means reducing interest payments, and that can only help the economy. Let’s see if the government keeps this promise. (Echoes of the “we will cancel the GST” promise sounding in anyone else’s ears?)

Defence: Peacekeeping only. Money for missions in Afghanistan and Haiti. Oh, and a throwaway gesture that says that troops don’t have to pay tax on earnings while deployed abroad. Nothing that could be perceived as Bush-cozying or war-mongering. Heaven forbid Canadian troops get planes that don’t need to be held together with duct tape!

Education: Also a provincial area. Textbooks are now deductible for students. And “learning bonds” to give minuscule amounts of money to low-income students… in about 18 years or so. That’s about it.

Stupid Liberal Wastes of Money: Refreshingly few. Of course, these are usually the small-ticket throwaways that may not have hit the headlines yet. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for a “multiculturalism fund” or a “help the CBC produce more aboriginal-related programming” fund increase. Excuse me while I roll my eyes.

Miscellany: Money for farmers hit by mad cow. Yeah, ok, that one sucked for them. And I certainly wouldn’t want to have to grow my own food, so I guess we can throw them some bones.

Overall: It’s balanced, so that’s good. It’s not excessive with a bunch of stupid spending to buy votes. So that’s also good. But not enough of the fat has been trimmed, and not enough of taxpayers’ money is being put back into taxpayers’ pockets. That about sums it up for me.

Update: Paul has a one-word summary of the budget: YAWN.

Another one of those meaningless, un-scientific polls that pisses me off beyond all logical reasoning: Canada.com is asking people whether they believe Israel’s assassination of Sheik Yassin is justified. At the moment, 45% said no.

That shocks me. I can understand skepticism about the point of taking out Yassin, or fear of the consequences. But to ask whether the assassination of a terrorist, responsible for thousands of innocent deaths, was justified? I can’t imagine what arguments the 45% who voted no could possibly have (other than the standard “well, Israel did it so it must be wrong”).

Meryl links to an excellent article in the Forward by Rabbi Dov Fischer entitled “We’re Right, the Whole World’s Wrong”:

At this moment in time, many Jews who love and support Israel hear the soft voice within, asking the question to which Kofi Annan recently alluded in Madrid: Can we alone be right, while the whole world around is wrong?

[ . . . ]

Well, yes. If we Jews are anything, we are a people of history. From our first patriarch to Israel’s precision-targeted destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, which laid the foundation for a successful Operation Desert Storm and the rescue of Kuwait, our history provides the strength to know that we can be right and the whole world wrong.

This goes hand in hand with a question I’ve long viewed with some degree of fascination: what’s the difference between what’s right and what’s merely popular?

We hear it from our earliest days: “if all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?” The implication is, of course, that there’s some absolute standard of “right” that doesn’t rely on a majority-rule. That the lone voice of conscience is right, and that the angry mobs are wrong. And that we ought to be able to tell the difference, even when it’s lonely.

But then, isn’t democracy founded on the principle that the majority opinion is the right one? And if democracy is such a beautiful thing, then how do you reconcile the notion that it systematically allows the majority to make decisions that go against the minority? I mentioned homosexuality before; is gay marriage “wrong” because the majority of people oppose it? Or if the majority support it, does it become “right”? To put another way, if Quebec held a referendum tomorrow asking if the Jews should pay extra taxes, and it passed with a 70% majority, does that make that “right”?

Clearly not. History has proven pretty conclusively that the majority opinion can be wrong, and the minority opinion is often right.

But how do we determine these external standards? In a practical sense, how do we judge?

Oh, it’s easy for religious people. To them, “right” is an absolute that comes from the laws of the bible, and “wrong” is anything that goes against that. But of course, most of the majority-wrong decisions in history have been – and continue to be – justified by religion. The terrorists on September 11th believed that they were “right” too and that their religion supported their deeds. (The next time I hear “homosexuality is wrong cause the bible says so, I’ll be happy to point that out again).

So religion obviously isn’t any great way to judge right and wrong… though one assumes that a religious person can also be a good person.

I used to think of the analogy of a white light that was seen through the eyes of every human being, but all wearing cellophane-coloured glasses. If 99% of the world had red glasses, and 1% of the world had blue glasses, then the light’s red and the person who sees blue is crazy. That then becomes the truth. The real truth is irrelevant, I argued, because we have no way of knowing or seeing it. But wouldn’t that mean that it’s in fact impossible for the Jews to be right and the whole world to be wrong? Wouldn’t they be “right” just because there’s more of them? After all, where is this external standard of rightness coming from? If we need a test of time or a perspective of history to see who was really right all along, as Rabbi Fischer argues the Jews have been throughout history, then how is it possible to know how to act “right” today? Without the benefit of hindsight, how do we know if our unpopular position – perhaps dictated by conscience – is really the right one?

It’s not that simple. A conscience is really nothing more than a set of values and experiences – some taught, some perhaps innate – that looks at each situation and comes to a conclusion of how the decisions fit with what we already know. My conscience says that Israel is right and the Palestinians are wrong. Sheik Ahmed Yassin’s conscience (assuming he had one, which I highly doubt) said the opposite.

That’s the thing about life. In the movies, the bad guys know they’re bad. They laugh evil laughs. They talk about their plots of world domination. They dutifully don their black hats in the Westerns and identify themselves as the “bad guys” so that we can readily identify them. But in real life, the bad guys think they’re the good guys. We all think we’re the “good guys”. Self-righteousness is perhaps more dangerous than evil.

There’s no easy way to reconcile that one. But I’ll just say that yes, there is some standard of right and wrong that doesn’t depend on a popularity contest. No, I’m not entirely sure how we determine that standard, other than looking at things like not harming others, promoting quality of life, and acting with positive intentions. But I also know that Rabbi Fischer is right when he says that history will pass judgement on the world for how it’s treating the Jews today, just as it has for over two thousand years.

I’m breaking my promise not to mention the American election until September – but only tangentially – because I want to highlight this post by Debbye:

I’ve been watching the hearings of the independent commission of Sept. 11 on CNN, and it is frustrating. Did the administration under FDR have to face a similar inquiry about lapses of failure after Pearl Habour? (That is strictly a rhetorical question, okay?)

There is so astounding a lack of common sense and humility in these proceedings that it begs the questions Are you more interested in winning this war or this election? In what way does what did or did not happen before Sept. 11 actually pertain to the post-Sept. 11 period?

Honestly, just when did The Blame Game become the second American pastime?

[ . . . ]

I can’t summon up outrage against the Clinton administration. I can’t summon up outrage against the Bush administration. The somebody should have known mindset is all very well and good if you actually believe the technology in The X-Files is online and available to our government.

[ . . . ]

Ooh, brainstorm! Why don’t we just blame the terrorists for Sept. 11?

Because, Debbye, people are more interested in pinning catastrophes on their political rivals than on those really at fault. Left blames right. Right blames left. And the cycle continues.

I’m tired of reading endless attacks and character smears on Kerry from right-wing sites, and just as tired of hearing them about Bush from left-wing sites. Yes, it’s an election year. Yes, passions run high and there are certainly people out there who are party-loyal and view the other guys as the devils-incarnate. And yes, maybe it’s easier for me, with my outsider’s perspective, to roll my eyes and remark that it doesn’t matter.

That’s right. I said it doesn’t matter.

Because the terrorists don’t hate Americans because they have a Republican president. They hate Americans because they’re Americans. September 11th would have happened even if Gore won the Florida battle… and the terrorists wouldn’t have batted an eyelash when the whole world tried to make him out to be the devil incarnate.

Would Gore’s team have attacked Iraq? Unlikely. And yeah, that changes things somewhat on the world scene. But would the terrorists have capitulated or given up with a Democrat in the White House? Not a chance! Most of the planning for 9/11 took place during Clinton’s term.

So vote for Bush. Or for Kerry. Or for Nader. Or for Mickey Mouse. Or for the Purple People Eater. The terrorists aren’t going to start loving the U.S. no matter who Americans elect as their President… unless it’s Bin Laden. (Hmmm, I figure he could probably dominate the election in San Francisco…)

The “Great Satan” of America is a myth that’s believed by a large portion of the world… and they don’t care who the Americans vote for as their President – they just care that Americans can vote at all.

I’m so sick of seeing this basic truism being turned into a finger-pointing election issue that I felt it necessary to break my promise and rant about it. Now I’m done, and we’re back to our regularly-scheduled programming. But 9/11 wasn’t Bush’s fault, or Clinton’s fault, and it’s certainly not Kerry’s fault or Gore’s fault or Rice’s fault or Rumsfeld’s fault. Like Debbye said, it’s the terrorists’ fault. And somehow I doubt that the families of the 3,000 people who were murdered in the WTC would grant anyone the right to cheapen their lives as an election issue.

Another blogosphere roundup of reactions to Shiek Ahmed Yassin’s death – this one by Burnside. Check it out.

Following what was said below, it seems our schools are so eager to teach political correctness, tolerance, and multiculturalism, that they encourage pride in every background… except American:

A U.S.-born teenager carrying a U.S. flag in a multiculturalism parade was booed off stage and reduced to tears by fellow students at Wagar High School on Thursday, in an apparent protest against the Iraq war.

[ . . . ]

A parade of flags representing every nationality at the school – 39, this year – is an annual event at Wagar, the most ethnically diverse high school in the English Montreal School Board.

“During the parade, when the American flag (was) walked by, quite a large number of students booed, which was very upsetting to the student carrying the flag,” said Juanita Meikle, a parent who is chairperson of Wagar’s governing board.

The girl, a Grade 9 student, “was very upset. She was crying,” Meikle said.

No other flag was jeered.

Knee-jerk anti-Americanism is something that’s about as much a part of being a Canadian as street hockey. Unfortunately, even the most well-meaning educators encourage it. And lately, most of them haven’t been all that “well-meaning”.

With teachers ranting in classrooms about the evil American government and policies, the infringement of American culture on our own “wonderful” CBC, the exploitation of the rest of the world by America… small wonder students are booing the Stars and Stripes.

People don’t just come to believe something on their own. They need to be taught. I really hope that the teachers and administrators at Wager don’t just criticize the students, but take a long hard look at themselves. If we’re going to stamp out intolerance, that includes all forms of intolerance… including anti-Americanism.

Margaret Wente’s column on the absurd consequences of excessive political-correctness ought to be required reading for anyone contemplating public or political life:

One problem with our effort to sanitize the language of all that might offend is that it leads to lunatic results. Just ask the music reviewer at the Los Angeles Times. Last month he reviewed an opera by Richard Strauss, which he described as “a glorious and goofy pro-life paean.” A diligent copy editor replaced the controversial term “pro-life” with the inoffensive “anti-abortion.” This resulted in not one but two embarrassing corrections explaining that the opera has nothing to do with abortion.

Education and social work are the fields in which the language police are busiest. My favourite example is from a new college textbook on human development that includes this statement: “As a folksinger once sang, how many roads must an individual walk down before you can call them an adult.” This gruesome effort is some educator’s attempt at a gender-neutral makeover to the classic folksong Blowin’ in the Wind. In the original, it goes, “How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?”

I’ve experienced some of this myself. For example, while I was a Concordia student, I remember the equivalent of a major scandal erupting because someone referred to a day when a stupid political decision was made as “Black Wednesday” – a reference to the “Black Tuesday” of the 1929 stock market crash… but taken completely out of context as a racist statement. Apparently, a similar scandal erupted on NBC’s new reality show featuring Donald Trump and his horrible excuse for hair, The Apprentice, when a candidate accused another of racism for using the phrase “pot calling the kettle black”.

Okay, so those are obvious examples. But Wente has lots more:

[ . . . ] more than 500 words that are routinely deleted from textbooks and tests by educational publishing companies and government education departments. They include “landlord,” “cowboy,” “brotherhood” and “primitive,” — words that might offend feminists, multiculturalists or ethnic activists. The forbidden list is growing fast. “Fireman,” “handyman” and “hostess” bit the dust long ago, and are now being joined by “addict” (replace with “individual with a drug addiction”), “cancer patient” (replace with “a patient with cancer”), and “yes man.” New York State education officials have gone so far as to banish all words that include the hateful letters m-a-n — including “mankind,” “man-made,” “man hours” and “penmanship.”

So now I’m supposed to fly off the handle if someone accuses me of poor penmanship???

This has gone too far. And it stems from people having big sticks way too far up their asses. Some terms in language are clearly offensive and should be changed. Others are not meant in any discriminatory sense, and people really need to count to ten before they explode.

Concordia University’s CSU elections are taking place this week.

Those of you who have been reading for a while know that this election is very important for students who don’t want more rioting, nonsense, and antagonism while going to school. Last year, the moderates swept to a much-needed victory over the extremists, and from what I hear, the school’s been a much better environment this year. This year I’m not really up on the details, but it seems to me that there isn’t as much anger about the student union as there was last year. A whole year without riots tends to restore people to their usual state of apathy, I guess.

So to all you Concordia students out there, make it your business to read up on the candidates and go out and vote.

There. That’s my public service announcement for the day.