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Politics : Canadian Political Free-for-All -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SofaSpud who wrote (2814)	7/9/2003 7:25:55 AM
From: John Carragher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 37571

Peter Jennings of abc news became a u.s. citizen last month.. You all should be jumping with joy to loose another liberal.. thanks. g

To: SofaSpud who wrote (2814)	7/15/2003 2:23:32 PM
From: SofaSpud	Respond to of 37571

When they came for the Catholics I said nothing because I was not a Catholic. When they came for the Jews I said nothing because I was not a Jew. When they came for the union members I said nothing because I was not a union member. When they came for me no one said anything because they all had already been taken. Pastor Neumeuller This was not just 'ugly student politics' Martin Himel National Post Tuesday, July 15, 2003 Either the analytical eye of The Globe and Mail's John Doyle is out of focus, or he is blind to the hatred against Jews depicted in the documentary Confrontation at Concordia, aired on the Global Television Network recently. Mr. Doyle dismissed as "bad journalism" the obvious pictures of a mob smashing windows, shoving Jewish students, ripping flags, cursing, and violently stopping the right of a former Israeli prime minister to address Jewish students . This all took place at Concordia University in Montreal. Mr. Doyle apparently felt uncomfortable about saying why the Palestinian and Concordia student Union activists rioted on campus. The Arab student activists, however, were honest in the documentary: "All the Jews will leave [Palestine] and only the Palestinian Jews will stay." They want Israel destroyed. Mr. Doyle apparently has bought the euphemism, "they want a secular state." Anyone who has read a book or two on the Mideast conflict knows a "secular" state means the end of the Jewish state. Telling it accurately is good journalism, not bad. The Toronto Star's, Antonia Zerbisias, also doesn't see the implications as a big deal. But both take great exception to the contention that tactics used against Jews in Concordia were similar to those used in the initial stages against Jews during the rise of the Nazism. Look at the history books or see some of those old newsreels. See how Jews were shoved by cursing mobs, see how thugs broke windows. That's how it all started in the 1920s and '30s in culturally enlightened cities such as Berlin and Munich. At the time, those incidents were dismissed as just the by-product of some hot-headed German youths that will pass. That's why Mr. Doyle's dismissal of hatred at Concordia as simply "ugly student politics" is very short-sighted. The Concordia hostility began with an on campus lecture to the Jewish student movement about Hillel, the largest Jewish campus organization in the world, which was violently stopped. Within a couple months, that hatred evolved into the Concordia Student Union banning Hillel, denying the group its funds. The last time a Hillel movement on a campus was banned was in Austria when the Nazis assumed power. Then there were the placards at Concordia -- the Nazi Swastika equated to the Jewish Star of David at more demonstrations. No big deal? I wonder what Mr. Doyle and Ms. Zerbisias would have said if, heaven forbid, a group paraded with placards comparing the swastika to the Cross of Christ, or the Crescent of Islam? If I could get the dust of six million Jewish men, women, and children to talk on this documentary, I wonder what they would say about such placards. But since that is obviously impossible, the documentary turned to one of the lucky survivors who made it to Canada and had the "privilege" of being kicked in the groin, cursed and spat on at the Concordia riots. Tom Hecht said he felt right back in Nazi-occupied Bratislava, where he was cursed and assaulted for being a Jew. Mr. Doyle and Ms. Zerbisias are not impressed with verbal hatred exposed in the documentary. But the pictures, the recorded words, speak for themselves. The curses and catcalls at Jewish students who proposed a resolution against racism -- at what was supposed to be an Anti-Racist General assembly of the Concordia Student Union -- tell the story. Where is the free speech? Where is tolerance? What happened to values at Concordia, values cherished by Canadian society? That hatred spread. Activists tried to violently stop a speech to Jewish students at York . It took a significant police presence to allow that speech to take place. Anti-Semitism was so comfortable at Concordia it reached an amazing level in a downtown Montreal demonstration In the documentary, a classic anti-Semitic poster was paraded at the forefront of an anti-Iraq war protest. It showed a caricature of a Jew with a religious skull-cap, a lurid smile, dollar signs coming out of his head. He is being "masturbated" by an American woman and out "comes" Iraqi oil. It shocked many viewers. How could any critic ignore it? The Nazi cartoons in Der Stuermer couldn't have done a better job. It's all there: the Jewish world conspiracy, the disgusting sexual innuendos, the Jewish control of money -- classic anti-Semitism. It cannot be dismissed simply as activists exercising ugly politics. The editor-in-chief of Der Stuermer, Julius Streicher, was tried at the Nuremberg war tribunal. He never fired a shot at a Jew. He never planned the Holocaust. But he was executed all the same for propagating such hateful motifs. No one should be shot in Canada. But expressing such anti-Semitism is serious. Confrontation at Concordia has been invited to be screened at the prestigious New York International Independent Film and Television Festival. It will be shown in New York and Los Angeles. The Festival organizers saw what Mr. Doyle and Ms. Zerbisias missed. nationalpost.com