Segacs’s World I Know

Jeremy Wallace and Anne and Max Bailey from the Centre For Human Rights & Cultural Diversity defended the CSU in a letter to the Canadian Jewish News this week.

In the wake of last year’s events, we decided some pro-activity was needed. We offered a speaker, Edwin Black, who wrote IBM and The Holocaust, to the student union. They helped to book a room, and put up posters around the school. [ . . . ] That subject was right up the alley of the anti-corporate types. The Jewish community has far too much pro-capitalist rhetoric, and apologists for corporate extremism.

Nobody’s disputing the CSU’s willingness to be accommodating to people whose speech agrees with theirs. Of course they roll out the red carpet for anyone who wants to bring in an anti-capitalist, anti-corporate speaker. That fits right in with the CSU’s politics. Nobody’s disputing the rights of someone like Edwin Black to be heard. I even agree that there has been too little attention paid to the role of certain corporations in the Holocaust. All that, of course, is besides the point.

No, this dispute is about freedom of speech extending to those with whom the CSU disagrees. True freedom means allowing anti-corporate types to speak, and also pro-corporate types. It means allowing pro-Palestinians to speak and also pro-Israel speakers. It means helping left-wing, right-wing, and non-wing alike to be heard.

The letter goes on to criticize the Jewish community leadership compared to the CSU:

And let’s not keep calling these people anti-democratic. We never voted for the leadership of Montreal’s Jewish community. In fact, we find their unabashed support for Israel, no matter what is done there, to be an embarrassment. When will our community welcome dissent, as a sign of strength and not of weakness?

Ah, but there’s a key difference. Nobody voted for the Jewish community leaders because we all have a choice whether or not to be represented by them. We don’t pay tax to these people, we give donations. We can choose to agree with some of these community groups some of the time and disagree other times. These groups are interest groups, and their views are pro-Israel. Mr. Wallace and Mr. and Ms. Bailey have every right to dissent.

Concordia students don’t have this choice. They have to pay fees to the CSU or else they can’t take their classes. The CSU legally represents all students, whether they like it or not. CSU fees aren’t voluntary – they’re compulsory. And that is why the CSU’s flagrant abuse of democracy is so disturbing. When CSU executive members illegally annul by-election results and appoint themselves to remain in power after being recalled by the students, when council members elected to represent their constituents instead use their positions to advance their own political views, and when thousands of dollars of student money is used to defend people who assaulted some of those same students, then that’s abuse.

The CSU may act nicely towards people with whom they agree. But the true judge of an elected representatitve is his or her ability to act nicely towards people with whom they disagree.

A Hamas leader has been arrested in Texas, as well as members of his family and five employees of a computer company.

“We will follow the money of terror,” Attorney General John Ashcroft said at a news conference. “And we will pursue the financiers of terror as aggressively as we pursue the thugs who do their dirty work.”

This is kind of like charging Al Capone with tax evasion instead of murder . . . but I suppose any charge is better than none.

Well, not quite. You’ll still have to shell out the 12 bucks to park in a downtown lot. But plans to tax off-street parking have been shelved, for now at least.

It’s about time someone stopped the madness. Parking is already expensive enough without adding even more tax.

Parking spaces rake in $600 to $700 a year in hidden taxes, said Pierre Cléroux of Groupe Urbain, a coalition of businessmen who, backed by the chamber of commerce, oppose the tax.

“A supplementary tax on parking spaces is not justifiable – and for us it’s unacceptable,” he said. “For a person who has a monthly parking space in Montreal, 40 per cent of the cost is (already) taxes.”

Environmentalists and city planners usually advocate raising taxes on gas and parking as a means of discouraging people from driving and encouraging them to switch to public transit.

But I take serious issue with that. I’d love nothing more than to be able to leave my car at home – or sell it – and use a reliable, efficient public transportation system instead. It would save me money on gas, insurance, and maintenance, as well as the headaches of rush hour and the concern about drinking and driving, just to name a few reasons.

The trouble is, that reliable, efficient public transportation system doesn’t exist. Not for us suburbanites anyway. Our buses are few and far between and we don’t have a metro. Commuter trains are only convenient to people going straight downtown and back, and only at peak hours. My daily commute to work – maybe 75 minutes round-trip, even in traffic – would take well over 4 hours by public transit. Efficient? Hah!

The carrot-and-stick method of persuasion only works if you offer a carrot; namely, improved public transit. Until that happens, the government can wield the tax stick all it wants, and people will keep driving. We simply don’t have a choice.

This time in Paris, police arrested 4 who were allegedly involved in planning a terrorist attack.

Four suspected Islamic militants who had an unidentified liquid and an anti-contamination suit were probably planning an attack, France’s interior minister said Tuesday. French counter-terrorism agents arrested the four – three Algerians and a Moroccan – in a raid on an apartment in a Paris suburb on Monday. One of the suspects is a woman, judicial officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Agents also seized the equivalent of $7,750 Cdn in cash, a computer and extremist Islamic documents, the judicial officials said.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said the raid also turned up false identity papers, two vials of an unidentified liquid and “a protective military suit against biological, chemical and nuclear risks.” Specialists were studying the vials’ contents.

I’ve now been to Israel three times and I’ve never seen any kind of problems. But I was in France for 3 days and I witnessed a bomb scare. Statistically, you have a higher chance of dying in a terrorist attack while vacationing in France than in Israel, and yet look which country’s airport has been ghostly empty these past couple of years. Exactly whom is France accused of occupying?

Ahenakew apologized… sort of:

In an emotional appearance Tuesday, Ahenakew apologized to the Jewish community, Holocaust survivors and their families.

“I am deeply sorry for the pain I have caused you,” he said. He also apologized to his own people.

“I have clearly embarrassed our people. I admit my own stubbornness, my pigheadedness and my own personal embarrassment prevented me from coming forward immediately to do the right thing in light of what I have caused by such irresponsible and painful comments,” he said.

Sorry, but in a case like this, that just don’t cut it. What’s more likely to be a true expression of how he feels? The disgusting racist comments he made in anger? Or a carefully-crafted apology after nearly five days of media pressure?

For a man like this to be a member of the Order of Canada is a disgrace. He resigned from all his political positions within the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, but even during his apology speech he still opted to wear his Order of Canada pin on his lapel. What does that say about Canada? What does that say about us as Canadians? He should be stripped of the Order immediately.

In a discussion on the Link’s website, I noticed something I’d seen in a few places before: an anonymous pro-Palestinian poster (alias “ii”), when referring to Israeli PM Ariel Sharon, felt it necessary to include the fact that his birth name was Schneinerman in parenthesis. I asked him why he felt the necessity to do this, and he gave the following reply:

The reason I use it is to discredit the misnomer ‘anti-semitism.’ The name shows Mr. Scheinerman to be of European, rather than Semitic origin.

Why did he choose to change his name? I don’t know. To fabricate a history perhaps?

He then proceeded to give the birth names of Golda Meir, Shimon Peres, David Ben Gurion, and Yitzchak Shamir, seemingly incapable of so much as mentioning any of these prominent figures in Israeli history without a parenthetical reference to the fact that they all Hebraized their names.

Aside from the obviously convoluted reference to the “Semitic” race – a social construct of racists, with no basis whatsoever in reality – “ii” shows both a lack of understanding of the term and basis of antisemitism, and a gross disrespect and disregard for Jewish and Israeli history. Firstly, the term “antisemitism” is defined as hatred directed against Jews. The whole point is that there is no so-called “Semitic” race! That’s why it’s racist. And the fact that all the Israeli politicians to whom “ii” referred were Ashkenazi rather than Sephardi really has no bearing on whether attacking Jews is antisemitism or not. According to “ii”‘s logic, it’s not antisemitism to make racist statements against Jews of European origin. Do I really need to go into how twisted that is?

Secondly, if “ii” knew more Israeli history, he would know about the efforts of the olim in the early twentieth century to revive Hebrew as a national language. Prominent people such as Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (whose name graced the cover of the pocket dictionary that got me through Hebrew school) and others accomplished what was essentially a modern-day miracle: the revival of a language that had not been used in everyday conversation for nearly two thousand years.

Far from an attempt to “fabricate history”, as “ii” slanderously suggests, the revival of modern Hebrew was an attempt to reunite a People who had been scattered in different parts of the world for far too long. While Hebrew continued to be the language of religious study and prayer throughout all that time, by the beginning of the twentieth century, most Ashkenazi Jews spoke Yiddish, Russian, Polish, German, French, or English, and many Sephardic Jews spoke Arabic, Ladino, or a whole host of other languages in everyday conversation. What Ben-Yehuda and his compatriotes recognized was that if Israel was going to reunite the Jewish people from across the world, they would need a common language as an expression of a common heritage and national identity.

When Ben-Gurion, Meir, Shamir, Peres, and Sharon – as well as Ben-Yehuda himself and a host of others – Hebraized their names, it was as much an expression of their common National Jewish identity as anything else. And it is precisely this identity that people like “ii” seek to discredit. A person’s name is an expression of who they are, and who they wish to be, and the habit of anti-Zionists to deny the history and heritage of the Israeli leaders is nothing but a thinly-veiled claim that the history and heritage does not exist.

As poster “bistro” commented in reply to “ii”‘s post:

The idea there is that Jews are not “really” a people: Jews from Arab countries are “really” Arab; Jews from European countries are, surprise, Europeans after all; and you’re done — people (des gens), but not a people (un peuple). [. . .] The your-real-name-is manoeuvre is very convenient. It’s shorthand for saying: you don’t really belong in the Middle East, your peoplehood is a lie, even your names are lies, and you are really European. You don’t belong here.

Next time you see this being done, pause a moment and think about it. It may seem like a small thing, but it’s nothing but an attempt to claim that Jews aren’t really a people at all.

Hillel has issued an appeal for its constituents (Jewish Concordia students) who have personally experienced damages thanks to the CSU’s illegal and groundless actions, to join them as plaitiffs in their lawsuit. Here’s the skinny:

Shalom Chaverim,

As most of you should know, Concordia Hillel is proceeding with the lawsuit against the CSU. Don’t be mistaken, despite announcements in the media, Hillel has not been re-instated. The CSU is still withholding our funds and are making a thinly veiled attempt at blackmailing us into submission. Our rights have been trampled upon. Be it known that we will not back down.

Concordia Hillel is an association of students but has no legal status in and of itself. The club can’t take action in its own name. As such we are seeking volunteers from among Hillel’s constituents (i.e. Jewish students of Concordia) to serve as plaintiffs in our case against the CSU.

Plaintiffs have to be available for time-consuming depositions and court appearances. Court records and proceedings will be public, so potential plaintiffs should consider that their anonymity cannot be preserved. As well, in the unlikely event that we should lose, the plaintiffs COULD be sued for court costs, but not to worry as the Hillel Foundation would cover it.

If you’ve read through all of this and are still interested in filing suit with us, please get back to me ASAP as we’re proceeding soon.

Sincerely in your service,

Noah Joseph

Co-President

Concordia Hillel

For more information, contact Noah.

Jaggi Singh has been allowed into Israel, but he’s barred from entering the Disputed Territories.

The media’s calling him a “peace activist” and a “committed protester”, while simultaneously quoting his buddy Samer Elatrash of the SPHR.

“It clearly demonstrates that Israel has formulated and is enforcing a policy of putting a lid on the West Bank and the Gaza,” said Elatrash, who disputed the Israeli court’s jurisdiction over the Palestinian areas.

No, the fact that Israel’s letting him in at all clearly demonstrates what an open and tolerant society it is – far beyond the call of duty. Singh threatened the security of Israel’s former Prime Minister, for godssakes! How many countries would then let someone like that come visit as a tourist, let alone as an activist intending to stir things up for media attention?

Now that Singh is stuck in Israel but can’t visit the Territories, what, oh, what, will he do? Jaggi, why not hang out in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem a while? Maybe check out the nightlife. Go see a few museums or historical sights. Who knows? You might even like it!

Or maybe – what a concept! – he can even try being a real “peace activist” for a change. He can ride buses for Israel to protest suicide terrorist attacks against civilians. And why not? What else does he have to do while he waits to be cleared to go to the Territories and disseminate anti-Zionist propaganda?

12/17/02: Update: Jaggi Singh now says he intends to defy the ban and go to the Territories anyway. (via LGF). I guess he doesn’t like Tel Aviv’s nightlife that much after all.

Speaking of the Gazette, yesterday’s editorial about antisemitism on campus is highly worth a look. It argues that UQÀM was right to allow Gideon Kouts’s scheduled speech to go ahead, but that should not lull us into a false sense of security. Hatred is alive and well on campuses, even when disguised as something else – or when very thinly disguised, as was the case at Concordia on September 9th.

UQÀM officials would doubtless protest – without question truthfully – that they haven’t an anti-Semitic bone in their bodies. And yet they evidently failed to discern the larger pattern: Kouts, after all, is not the only prominent Israeli recently prevented from speaking at a Montreal (read: Canadian) university. In September, glass-smashing thugs silenced former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Concordia.

Apologists quickly absolved the pro-Palestinian hooligans responsible for the window breaking. Blame, they argued, belonged to Mr. Netanyahu for being so controversial. Concordia, they maintained, was at fault for letting such a controversial politician speak. No violent controversy would have occurred, they insisted, had the university foreseen the security risk inherent in Mr. Netanyahu’s appearance.

Mob violence, in other words, wasn’t the fault of the violent mob. Responsibility, rather, was placed on those who saw no reason for a mob or violence. Windows were smashed because the university failed to install glass strong enough to resist pounding fists.

Sounds an awful lot like Jaggi Singh’s arguments, doesn’t it?