Jaggi Singh's "Free Speech and Netanyahu" in Globe and Mail

FREE SPEECH AND NETANYAHU

By JAGGI SINGH

Friday, September 13, 2002 Page A19
The Globe and Mail

Retreating back to the confines of Montreal's Ritz-Carlton Hotel after the
cancellation of his pro-Israel rally at Concordia University on Monday, a
visibly angered Benjamin Netanyahu declared those who protested against
his presence to be "mad zealots" -- among other choice epithets --
not to
mention supporters of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

I was one of the more than 1,000 people who gathered to protest against
Mr. Netanyahu, and it's news to me that our demonstration was sympathetic
to Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein or any other terrorist/dictator of
convenience. Of course, Mr. Netanyahu is no fool; in the neo-McCarthyite
tradition, he knows full well that it's best to throw as much dirt as
possible against Palestinians and their allies (including many Jewish
allies), who together had effectively shut him down.

Smears, insults and smoke screens have been the modus operandi of Mr.
Netanyahu's political career, against even domestic Israeli opponents who
offer minor concessions to the Palestinian people. All the better to
distract the public from reckoning with the reality of Mr. Netanyahu's
destructive policies and world-view on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

One smoke screen in particular has been the idea that, somehow, the
protest at Concordia was an attack on free speech, expression and debate
-- as if Mr. Netanyahu has ever had to worry about effectively exercising
his right to express his views to Western audiences. His Canadian schedule
was full of meetings with reporters and fawning Asper-approved editorial
boards -- and they, in most cases, were acting as glorified stenographers
rather than critical journalists.

Free speech, expression and debate are crucial values in a society
presumed to be democratic, but it wasn't the prot
esters who were attacking
those values on Monday; rather, it was the organizers of Mr. Netanyahu's
event at Concordia, as well as the university administration, that gave
the event a go-ahead.

Let's put things in perspective: Mr. Netanyahu's speech at Concordia was
not going to be some usual public lecture or debate, open to dissenting
points of view or even a vigorous question-and-answer period. Instead, Mr.
Netanyahu's audience was pre-screened and essentially handpicked for what
was to be a pro-Israel propaganda rally (a promotional e-mail for the
event urged participants to bring their Israeli flags).

Moreover, an entire section of the main building was shut off to students,
during a peak period, while police were allowed to set up barricades
around the university. Before the protest even started, riot police were
placed inside the building, while security and public relations officials
told students trying to attend their classes to enter through a side
entrance, instead.

Contrast the "Netanyahu rules," as they apply to free speech, with
the
organization of events by Palestinian activists at Concordia and
elsewhere. Those events have always been open to the public, and they
allow dissenters to ask questions. While often involving heated and
vigorous exchanges by both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students, the
events have been genuine models of free speech, discussion and debate;
free speech, after all, is sometimes messy, and not the stage-managed
propaganda Mr. Netanyahu prefers.

Of course, it's exactly that open debate on the Middle East conflict at
Concordia that has so angered apologists for Israeli human-rights abuses,
and has made the student activists at Concordia open to unsubstantiated
smears.

There was absolutely no intention by the organizers of the Netanyahu
speech to allow Mr. Netanyahu to be challenged, except perhaps by the
mainstream media. Not expecting the corporate-owned media to do the job
for them, Palestinian students and allies responded accordingly and
organized a counterdemons
tration, with the intention of confronting Mr.
Netanyahu on what we see as his record as a war criminal.

I helped write the warrant for Mr. Netanyahu's "arrest" with both
Palestinian and Jewish student activists at Concordia. It was based on a
similar warrant written by activists at the University of British Columbia
in 1997 to oppose the presence of then Indonesian president Suharto during
the APEC summit.

To be clear: If apologists for Mr. Netanyahu want to organize a political
rally for him in Montreal or anywhere, they can do so. But don't expect to
shut down a university in the middle of the day to make it happen. And
certainly don't expect Palestinian students -- many of whom are direct
victims of Mr. Netanyahu's policies and the Israeli occupation -- to sit
idle, or settle for being "polite."

What Palestinian protesters were doing on Monday -- with help from their
allies from various communities -- was to stand up for their rights, as
well as their basic dignity as human beings. They were confronting head-on
a man responsible for crimes against their people.

The so-called "violence" -- unarmed students trying to push through
riot
police in their own building, others breaking windows or throwing objects
in anger as the police beat and gassed demonstrators -- is a distraction
to one of the important elements of what happened at Concordia.
Palestinians living in Montreal asserted themselves, and were able to gain
a tangible victory against none other than a former right-wing Israeli
prime minister who has built a reputation on keeping the Palestinians "in
their place."

Seen in that context, Mr. Netanyahu's anger is understandable, and his
Orwellian smears against Concordia protesters completely predictable.

- Jaggi Singh is a social justice activist based in Montreal.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 16:36:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jaggi Singh <jaggi [at] tao.ca>
To: letters [at] globeandmail.ca,
PMartin [at] globeandmail.ca
Subject: Letter submission

BY E-MAIL
To the editors of the Globe a
nd Mail
September 13, 2002

I am writing to object, in the strongest possible terms, to the selection
of the headline to accompany my Comment submission in today's Globe and
Mail -- "Day of Broken Glass". For the record, my original submission
was
titled "Netanyahu and Free Speech". Apparently, that wasn't sensational
enough for the Globe's headline writers. However, to choose a headline
that inevitably alludes to the "Night of Broken Glass" (Kristallnacht)
--
the Nazi organized pogrom of Jews in Germany in 1938 -- grossly
misrepresents both the pro-Palestinian protest against Netanyahu in
Montreal, as well as my article.

There is absolutely no comparasion to make between the two events, and the
parallel only re-iterates the smears against Palestinians and their social
justice allies that my piece addressed. Criticisms of Israel, and
political figures like Netanyahu, are not tantamount to anti-Semitism.

In the course of the demonstration on Monday, there was physical jostling,
and confrontations between both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian
demonstrators. I myself saw Arabs who were spit on, and called "bloody
Arab" or "savage" by various ticket-holders for the Netanyahu
event. Some
pro-Israel demonstrators claim to have been called racist names, and to
also have been assaulted. In all cases, I condemn any incidents of racist
or anti-Semitic speech or action, as I have always done.

But to be clear: the Monday demonstration in Montreal, which included many
Jewish participants (including some who were arrested), was focussed on
the actions of the state of Israel, the record of Benjamin Netanyahu, and
the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people who live under
de-humanizing occupation. The comparasion, even indirectly, of this
protest for the rights of Palestinians to the Nazi-organized killing of at
least 96 Jews, the burning of at least 1000 synagogues, and the
destruction of at least 7500 Jewish-owned businesses in 1938 Germany, is
entirely without foundation, and a libel on the overwhelming majorit
y of
protesters who equally condemn all forms of anti-Semitism -- no matter the
degree -- as well as Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people.

Jaggi Singh,
Montreal