CFRA’s Nick Vandergraaf speaks with VP, IFPS-CAN and Kurt Westergaard

Unfortunatly, www.sevenload.com chose to close my channel and therefore make all the videos I had uploaded and edited and so on, unavailable. So I am re-uploading this video interview by CFRA’s Nick Vandergraagt of Kurt Westergaard, The famed Danish creator of the ‘Moetoon’ and installing here.

Enjoy and feel free to grab the embed code and put on your own blogs if you choose.

Eeyore for Vlad.

CFRA Nick James KurtW from Vlad Tepes on Vimeo.

Symetrical respect?

You have to be living in a cave in Afghanistan somewhere to not know what happens if you ‘disrespect’ or ‘desecrate’ a Muslim holy symbol by now and frankly, if you do live in that cave chances are good you actually caused the riots, arson, murder, and general destruction that result from the mere rumour of a desecration of a Koran or a cartoon or whatnot.

But what happens when Muslims publicly desecrate symbols of other people’s faiths?

Lets have a look….

Muslims stomping on head of Hindu Sacred Cow

Muslims stomping on head of Hindu Sacred Cow

Here, some Muslims in India show their multicultural tolerance and respect for the Hindu’s, by stomping on the head of a cow, a sacred animal to them. This also teaches us the profound empathy and kindness Muslims show to animals.

Below, we see the Muslim tolerance and appreciation for art, and antiquities as well as the sensitivities of other faiths.

Taliban blows the head off one of the ancient Bamiyan Buddha statues

Taliban blows the head off one of the ancient Bamiyan Buddha statues

Yeah yeah you have seen this before. It’s old news right? Well the point is, we, the non Muslims people of the world had better wake up and recognize that this and other events like it, are not isolated incidents by ‘extremist’ or ‘radical’ variants of Islam. This is in fact how Islam itself demands that evidence of other faiths be treated. More simply put, This is policy.

Evidence of blasting of Jewish artifacts from the Temple Mount

Evidence of blasting of Jewish artifacts from the Temple Mount

For the story on the above photo please visit WND. however this one is probably the least important example of the Islamic overt systematic actions to destroy any historical evidence of Jewish existence in the area of Israel whatsoever. There is plenty of footage online showing actual crushing machines with conveyor belts destroying whatever is dug up in Gaza that shows Jewish history as well as in the Muslim area near the Western Wall.

Muslims wage war on history itself if it in any way runs against how Mohamed specified the world has to be.

he sensitivities run deep. Archaeologists are cautioned not to talk about pre-Islamic finds outside scholarly literature. Few ancient treasures are on display, and no Christian or Jewish relics. A 4th or 5th century church in eastern Saudi Arabia has been fenced off ever since its accidental discovery 20 years ago and its exact whereabouts kept secret.

In the eyes of conservatives, the land where Islam was founded and the Prophet Muhammad was born must remain purely Muslim. Saudi Arabia bans public displays of crosses and churches, and whenever non-Islamic artifacts are excavated, the news must be kept low-key lest hard-liners destroy the finds.

“They should be left in the ground,” said Sheikh Mohammed al-Nujaimi, a well-known cleric, reflecting the views of many religious leaders. “Any ruins belonging to non-Muslims should not be touched. Leave them in place, the way they have been for thousands of years.”

In an interview, he said Christians and Jews might claim discoveries of relics, and that Muslims would be angered if ancient symbols of other religions went on show. “How can crosses be displayed when Islam doesn’t recognize that Christ was crucified?” said al-Nujaimi. “If we display them, it’s as if we recognize the crucifixion.”

As for Christians?

Another Church turned into public toilet.

Or set one on fire:

Perhaps the time to wake up from fantasies that if you are nice to all, all will be nice to you. Reality offers you this axiom.

The longer you wait to solve a problem, the more costly and unpleasant will be the fix until you wait so long there is no fix and the problem overwhelms you.

The time for a bloodless solution, a political one, may not have passed yet. But that political solution must happen right away.

Eeyore for Vlad.

Barbara Kay-National Post review of Bruce Bawer’s Canadian tour

National Post
Barbara Kay: The survival of the West is at stake

Posted: September 16, 2009, 10:30 AM by NP Editor

Broadly speaking, 9/11 produced two instinctive responses in the thinking population, which then became political positions that have continued to diverge and harden with the years.

The realists instantly understood that the trade tower attacks were the tipping point of an already metastasizing jihad against the West, a jihad that had now to be resisted on all fronts: the physical jihad by combat, and the soft jihad– the push for Islamization of the West through suppression of “offensive” speech and a gradual imposition of shariah law –by words and civic actions.

A more populous and culturally influential group, our liberal dreamers — mainstream media, intelligentsia, liberal Christian and Jewish clergy and most Western politicians — were too besotted by utopian multicultural ideals to grasp the nettle of Islamism as a phenomenon beyond rational means of containment.

Continue Reading →

UN Watch and National Post on Naomi Klein

From U.N. watch:

in the space of two weeks, anti-globalization activist and best-selling author Naomi Klein, the preeminent figure of the radical left, published a lengthy essay justifying the U.N.’s disastrous Durban II racism conference, and helped organize a boycott of this week’s Toronto International Film Festival — for the crime of showing Israeli films. The New York Times reports that celebrities who signed Klein’s boycott letter include Harry Belafonte, Viggo Mortensen and Julie Christie. However, Jerry Seinfeld, Natalie Portman, Sacha Baron Cohen, Lisa Kudrow, Patricia Heaton and Lenny Kravtiz countered with an ad supporting inclusion of Israeli films, and opposing blacklists. While Jane Fonda initially joined Klein’s boycott, she has now apologized for endorsing its “inflammatory” words.

The following editorial by UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer, in today’s National Post of Canada, exposes Naomi Klein’s irrational rage — and reveals an ugly episode from her past that she has been carefully hiding.

National Post

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

The strange, enduring rage of Naomi Klein

When it comes to Israel, she has always acted out of intense emotion, hysteria and anger

Hillel Neuer,  National Post

Abbas Momani, AFP, Getty Images
Naomi Klein attends a Palestinian boycott in the West Bank village of Bilin, near Ramallah, in June.

GENEVA — Supporters of liberal democratic values may have a hard time understanding why anti-globalization activist Naomi Klein has recruited Jane Fonda and other stars to boycott the Toronto International Film Festival for the crime of showing films from Tel Aviv, a symbol of tolerance in a region of tyranny.

Klein has never called for a boycott of films or any other products from the dozens of Arab and Islamic countries that systematically subjugate their women, torture dissidents and persecute religious and ethnic minorities.

She was not moved to protest when the city of Toronto twinned with Chongqing, nor when it established a “friendship relationship” with Ho Chi Minh City, despite the widespread human rights abuses in both China and Vietnam.

Nor has she ever called for the boycotting of films from the many Western democracies, including Canada, whose soldiers are fighting Islamist terrorists in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Klein’s singling out of Israel — particularly its most liberal city and cultural sector — has no rational basis.

This should come as no surprise. For while Klein’s statements and writings on Israel pose as sober analysis, the truth is that she has always acted on this subject out of intense emotion, hysteria and anger, rather than rational thought, facts or logic. Continue Reading →

NCC approves monument against ‘oppression’

Big H/T to Fred for this one. oh, and TB for the video at the bottom via GOV. A rather perfect example of the idiocy of Ottawa Canada’s NCC or, National Capitol Commission.

The category? easy. Irrational leftism.

From The Ottawa Citizen:

Decision made despite confusion over what work even commemorates

By Cassandra Drudi, The Ottawa CitizenSeptember 10, 2009

OTTAWA-A new monument in Ottawa to commemorate the victims of some sort of oppression was approved by the National Capital Commission’s board of directors Thursday, but the decision has left those proposing the monument confused as to what, exactly, was approved.

“We don’t really understand the decision at this point,” said Tim Egan of High Park Group, which is representing one of the groups behind the proposal. “We really do need to talk to our board to assess the implications.”

The NCC board passed a motion supporting the concept of the commemoration, “but perhaps with a different title,” after objections about the title were raised by nearly all members who spoke.

The title — “monument to the victims of totalitarian communism” — has already been changed once. In the first proposals, one by a non-profit group called Tribute to Liberty, the other by Open Book Group, it was to be called “monument to the victims of communism.”

After beginning discussions with the NCC in March 2008, the groups had back-and-forth discussions with a committee of experts who suggested that the title be changed because it could be perceived as “unduly critical of Canadians who might associate themselves with communism,” Egan said.

The group then changed the name to include the word “totalitarian.” The title still did not sit well with the board.

“I was unsettled by this name, and other members of the committee agreed with me,” said Hélène Grand-Maître, speaking in French. “We should make sure that we are politically correct in this designation.”

Board member Adel Ayad said the name was troubling for its “very tight definition” and for the presence of the word “communism” in the title, as Canada has a communist party. Continue Reading →

Three Left Wing Myths About Israel (with an extra bonus myth!)

This essay by Sultan Knish: H/T Solstace reposted with permission of the good sultan with thanks.

Myth 1: “Israel was created because Europe felt guilty about the Holocaust.”
This left wing myth has been widely repeated, most recently by Desmond Tutu. While blatantly false on a level that even the most serious anti-Israel historian can recognize, it persists because its function is to delegitimize as the product of post-war colonial guilt, rather than longstanding Israeli national aspirations.

Israel was not created in 1947. By 1947, Israel already was a functioning country with a language, culture, agriculture, universities, newspapers and military forces which proved capable of defending against the armies of several Arab nations. The only thing that happened after the Holocaust was a UN vote in 1947 was for a partition plan that was never implemented because the Arab world instead chose to try and destroy Israel. Israel however would have declared independence and fought for its own survival, with the same exact outcome, regardless of UN Resolution 181. This vote is often described as creating Israel, but it was more accurately an attempt to settle the borders of Israel that failed because of Arab genocidal hostility that expressed itself not only toward Israel, but toward the Jews living in Arab lands.

Nor did post-war European colonialism create Israel. Britain, which was the colonial power in the region, was against Israel’s independence and abstained in the UN vote. The majority of votes for Resolution 181 came from non-European countries, primarily in Latin America and Eastern Europe, such as Bolivia, Brazil, Panama, Peru and Poland, Ukraine and the Soviet Union. 7 European countries voted Yes, most of them Northern European states such as Sweden and Denmark, which experienced only a limited impact of the Holocaust. 12 Latin American countries voted Yes. Twice the number. And all of them countries that had their own national aspirations and had fought against colonialism.

Post-Holocaust guilt was not the reason Resolution 181 passed. Less than a third of the 33 votes came from countries where the Holocaust had taken place. The reasons were varied and different. Some Latin American countries identified with Israel’s national aspirations and some sought economic ties. Truman was influenced by the desire for Jewish votes in an upcoming election. The Soviet Union wanted to sabotage Britain’s colonial program. The motives of different countries were varied and complex. Iran for example voted against the resolution and yet became the second country to recognize the new State of Israel.

Left wing activists may insist that Resolution 181 was a racist act, but in fact half the countries who voted for it were non-white, and most of the countries who voted for it were non-European. Therefore the myth that Israel was created after the Holocaust by guilty Europeans, a myth that has been bandied about by everyone from Desmond Tutu to Wallace Shawn to Barack Obama is just that, a myth. Israel would have existed regardless of the Holocaust or UN Resolution 181, which was voted for primarily by non-European countries in any case. Those who repeat the myth are therefore demonstrating either extreme ignorance or extreme deceptiveness.
Myth 2: “European Nations Gave the Jews a Land Already Inhabited by a People.”
This is one of the more common myths that seeks to strike at the legitimacy of the creation of the modern state of Israel, and treats the Jews as a foreign body within the land. This is a continuation of the anti-semitic stereotypes of the Jews as eternal wanderers and eternal foreigners.

The fact of the matter is that Jews had an ongoing presence in the land going back thousands of years, that was only interrupted by massacres and expulsions, after which the Jews population would once again attempt to reestablish itself. Greek, Roman, Arab and Ottoman colonialism expelled Jewish populations and attempted to replace them with their own populations in order to gain a foothold in the land. Unlike them however the Jews remained the land’s indigenous population. Continue Reading →

Islamic colonisation destroying our heritage

As there were no more white British people in the local area, the Grade II listed status church closed down — only now to be re-opened as a mosque.


bnprenaissance… The bloodless genocide and ethnic cleansing of the British people and culture continues apace with the latest example being the ripping up of a century old Christian cemetery to make way for a mosque in Manchester.
The grave desecrations, being carried out with a large Komatsu earthmover in the graveyard of the St John the Apostle and Evangelist church at the corner of Holmfirth Street and St Johns Road, is part of the re-opening of this nineteenth century church as the Dar-ul-Ulum Qadria Jilania Islamic Centre.
A sign on the door says clearly that the Islamic Centre is already open for prayer — showing that by Islamic centre the colonisers actually mean mosque.

The conversion of this church (founded in 1845 on a site donated by Sir J. W. H. Anson) into a mosque has been made possible by the displacement of the local indigenous British population by waves of Third World immigration into Manchester.

As this policy gathered pace under successive Tory and Labour governments, the numbers of Third World colonisers grew to the point where they have now totally displaced the indigenous population.

As there were no more white British people in the local area, the Grade II listed status church closed down — only now to be re-opened as a mosque.

This church — formerly the largest Church of England parish in Longsight, was the only one in the area with a graveyard.

These Christian British graves — the only remnant of the now ethnically cleansed British people in the area — are obviously offensive to the Muslim colonisers, who have brought in the earthmoving machine to smash up the gravestones which are being literally crushed to rubble.

St John the Apostle and Evangelist church is a real time history lesson of what will happen to Britain unless the insane multicultural Lib/Lab/Con genocidal policies of mass Third World immigration are not only brought to an end, but reversed.

The British National Party is the only party which speaks up on this critical issue which directly affects the very future existence of this nation — and is also the only party which has the policies to stop this extermination of our folk and nation.

The British voters will soon be faced with a choice between their continued extermination at the hands of the Lib/Lab/Con ethnic cleansing party, or their survival as a free and independent indigenous people with the BNP.

Ezra Levant: A great day for freedom of Speech (In Canada)

From The International Free Press Society:

I decided to post a video clip of Ezra at the HRC answering a rather central question to this debate. Know that in this man’s opinion, it was Ezra Levant who basically single-handedly removed the power that the Canadian Human Rights Commissions had accumulated for itself, and with which they ran an unopposed extortion racket in Canada under the guise of section 13, the ‘hate speech’ laws. This victory of the people over the state belongs to Ezra.
Below the video, the National Post article.

James Cohen.

National Post…

Yesterday, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal did something its never done in its 32-year history. It acquitted somebody of “hate speech” charges. Until now, the tribunal had a 100% conviction rate.

In a 107-page ruling, tribunal member Athanasios Hadjis didn’t just throw out the case against Marc Lemire, he threw out the law, too, calling it an infringement of the free speech guarantees of the Charter of Rights.

Hadjis is no wild-eyed civil libertarian. In the recent past, he himself has convicted people under this same law. And, before Jean Chretien appointed him to the tribunal, Hadjis was the boss of one of Montreal’s largest multicultural lobby groups, which thrived on ethnic identity politics. But even Hadjis has had enough of the human rights industry and their fetish for political correctness. He ruled that allowing Canadian citizens to express offensive ideas is preferable to living under a government that prosecutes people for expressing those ideas.

As of yesterday, it’s no longer illegal to write politically incorrect things on the Internet. Now it’s illegal to prosecute someone for it.

This will have an immediate impact on the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC), which maintains a large censorship department and has other cases under investigation. If the CHRC were a real police force, and the tribunal were a real court, all existing censorship cases would be dropped, and anyone who was previously convicted would have their convictions voided. Dozens of lawsuits against the government for wrongful prosecution, and compensation for costs, wouldn’t be far behind.

But the tribunal isn’t a real court, and Hadjis acknowledged that he doesn’t have the power to strike down the law, only to declare it unconstitutional and to refuse to apply it. The CHRC has ignored the tribunal before: In this same case, Lemire was routinely denied his procedural rights by the CHRC, including its outrageous tactic of waiting until the trial was over before disclosing all of its documents to him. Even worse, some bizarre CHRC conduct came to light, including confessions by their staff that they joined neo-Nazi organizations and published bigoted comments on the Internet to entrap their targets. A real court would have thrown the case out years ago, and a real police force would have disciplined such rogue conduct.

Still, it’s a great day for Charter values like freedom of speech. But how long will it last? The human rights industry knew this was an important case, and over the past six years it spent millions of tax dollars fighting Lemire. The federal government had six lawyers on the case–four from the CHRC and two from the Justice Minister’s office. And there were five lawyers intervening on behalf of Canada’s tax-subsidized Jewish groups, the B’nai Brith, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC).

Yesterday, the CJC issued a bizarre press release in which it states that, despite the tribunal’s clear ruling, it believes the censorship law “remains constitutional.” In the next few weeks, the CJC and the rest of the human rights litigation industry will clamour for the government to appeal this decision.

It was one thing for Justice Minister Rob Nicholson to defend the constitutionality of a government law that was under attack — that’s standard operating procedure. But now that the law has been found to be illegal, it would be quite another thing for Nicholson to positively act to revive such an illiberal law. Nicholson must also put a leash on the disgraced CHRC, and order it not to appeal either. They’ve already done more than enough damage to Canada’s civil liberties, at great expense to taxpayers.

In fact, just leaving Hadjis’s ruling intact isn’t enough–his ruling illustrates a deeper rot in the CHRC. Hadjis found that the CHRC has become much more aggressive and confrontational in recent years, and at the same time it started applying punitive sanctions — such as issuing fines of tens of thousands of dollars. That toxic mix of abusive conduct with criminal-style punishments was specifically forbidden by the Supreme Court when it last reviewed the censorship laws in 1990.

It’s that bullying corporate culture that Nicholson needs to address. Nicholson should start by ordering Jennifer Lynch, the CHRC’s chief commissioner, to stop her expensive campaign of demonization against the commission’s critics. And then he should call in a retired judge — or the auditor-general — to do a thorough biopsy to find out how Canada’s human rights agency became such a threat to our human rights.

National Post

31 minute film on hate speech on campus USA

This video is really only about 31 one minutes and then it repeats.

Link: Hate Speech on Campus 09c

Digging up the Saudi past: some would rather not

Nice little read that sheds light on the Muslim mindset.  So much for that “religious tolerance” crap they continue to spout.

A visitor looks at a bronze lion from the 1st centry BC at an exhibit at the Saudi National Museum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The Arabian Peninsula has a rich, largely unexplored history - dotted with ancient kingdoms and crisscrossed by caravan routes carrying frankincense to the Mediterranean that drew in the Romans. But its treasures are little known outside a small circle of archaeologists and academics.

A visitor looks at a bronze lion from the 1st centry BC at an exhibit at the Saudi National Museum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The Arabian Peninsula has a rich, largely unexplored history - dotted with ancient kingdoms and crisscrossed by caravan routes carrying frankincense to the Mediterranean that drew in the Romans. But its treasures are little known outside a small circle of archaeologists and academics.

Toronto Star…

 RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Much of the world knows Petra, the ancient ruin in modern-day Jordan that is celebrated in poetry as “the rose-red city, ‘half as old as time,'” and which provided the climactic backdrop for “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”

But far fewer know Madain Saleh, a similarly spectacular treasure built by the same civilization, the Nabateans.

That’s because it’s in Saudi Arabia, where conservatives are deeply hostile to pagan, Jewish and Christian sites that predate the founding of Islam in the 7th century.

But now, in a quiet but notable change of course, the kingdom has opened up an archaeology boom by allowing Saudi and foreign archaeologists to explore cities and trade routes long lost in the desert.

The sensitivities run deep. Archaeologists are cautioned not to talk about pre-Islamic finds outside scholarly literature. Few ancient treasures are on display, and no Christian or Jewish relics. A 4th or 5th century church in eastern Saudi Arabia has been fenced off ever since its accidental discovery 20 years ago and its exact whereabouts kept secret.

In the eyes of conservatives, the land where Islam was founded and the Prophet Muhammad was born must remain purely Muslim. Saudi Arabia bans public displays of crosses and churches, and whenever non-Islamic artifacts are excavated, the news must be kept low-key lest hard-liners destroy the finds.

“They should be left in the ground,” said Sheikh Mohammed al-Nujaimi, a well-known cleric, reflecting the views of many religious leaders. “Any ruins belonging to non-Muslims should not be touched. Leave them in place, the way they have been for thousands of years.”

In an interview, he said Christians and Jews might claim discoveries of relics, and that Muslims would be angered if ancient symbols of other religions went on show. “How can crosses be displayed when Islam doesn’t recognize that Christ was crucified?” said al-Nujaimi. “If we display them, it’s as if we recognize the crucifixion.” Continue Reading →

Sudan, slavery, starvation and Islam.

So hold on a second…. “We shouldn’t fight Islam because Islam is just where Christianity was a few hundred years ago so since ‘we’ did it, we really should allow ‘them’ to do it and someday ‘they’ will be ‘us’.”

I have heard variants on this preposterous bit of pseudo-reasoning for years now. There is so much wrong with it I do not have the time or patience to type it all out. I will offer two things though, 1. if it was wrong for Christians to do (whatever aspect of Islamic horror we are discussing which most likely Christians NEVER did, and certainly not in accordance with dogma) then, it is wrong for Muslims to do it now. 2. Thanks very much to KitmanTV, we see a contemporary example of Islam in Africa which frankly, any attempt to rationalize away or justify with the intellectual slight of hand of  the kind of historical relativism I illustrated above, is simply repugnant and borderline criminal. Watch this please. And send this link to anyone who gives that obscene argument or any variant of it.

Link: Slavery sudan

It wasn’t all that long ago, that Britian sent its gunboats up various African rivers and shelled the palaces of kings and leaders who would not abandon the slave trade. England has changed quite a bit since then I would say.

PJTV history of political correctness. This is truly excellent.

Please take the twelve minutes to watch this superb analysis of modern American leftism and it’s genesis. At the end of this short clip, they suggest going to youtube and searching for a documentary which is broken into three parts on the history of political correctness as a deliberate strategy for undermining western civilization. I took the liberty of finding them and adding them here so no need to search. Please enjoy and send the link far and wide. I believe this needs to be commonly known.

Also, please consider joining and supporting PJTV

Eeyore

PJTV The Narative plus History PC from Vlad Tepes on Vimeo.

Anti-Israel protestors set to bare ass at Montreal Gay parade

This weekend’s Montreal Gay pride Parade will proceed with a new, colourful twist: anti-Israeli protesters will join the throngs of gays and lesbians marching to be seen and heard. Not that anti-Israel demonstrators don’t take advantage of every opportunity to avail themselves of any available venue; Christ, the United Church of Canada has even stooped to embrace their biased, vitriolic, anti-Semitic sentiment at their 40th general meeting in Kelowna, B.C. under the umbrella of  a misguided ” peace and justice” campaign. This years adjunct to the Pride Parade  though is particularly peculiar.

Leila Pourtavas, an Iranian-Canadian lesbian contends that the group Q-team is ” bringing a political issue to the table”. Never mind Leila, that the issue that you ‘bring to the table’ is completely void of fact, fairness and historical accuracy; not to mention at it’s root, is heaped with multiple decades of anti-Semitism.  Never mind Leila that those who seek boycotts against Israel and their constant vilification of the sovereign state would, as sure as the sky is blue, haul you and your Q-team out to the common ground of Evin Prison in Tehran, tie your wrists and ankles together with chord and lash you, if not execute you for being gay. Remind yourself Leila, that eating where the Ayatollah shits may not be a good idea.

The following article is from the Montreal Gazette.

‘Anti-Israel agitators’ trying to ‘hijack’ gay pride parade: B’nai Brith

Q-Team to march ‘against Israel apartheid’ in Gay Village on Sunday

By Andrew Halfnight, The Gazette

Revellers dance during Montreal's gay pride parade in 2002.

Revellers dance during Montreal’s gay pride parade in 2002.

Photograph by: Gordon Beck, The Gazette

MONTREAL – A Jewish advocacy group butted heads with gay activists critical of Israel this week, sparking a debate about what views are kosher at Montreal’s gay pride parade.

B’nai Brith issued a press release Tuesday warning that “anti-Israel agitators” were planning to “hijack the agenda” of Sunday’s procession through the Gay Village.

But a member of Q-Team, which is leading the contingent “against Israeli apartheid,” disagreed. Continue Reading →

Campus group advertising Israeli Apartheid Week lodge HRC complaint against university

From the Ottawa Citizen.

Students take Carleton to rights tribunal

Group says school trampled its freedom of expression

By Jennifer Green, with files from Katie Daubs, The Ottawa CitizenAugust 7, 2009

Carleton University was only trying to keep campus political discourse civil. Now, it looks as if it will face Ontario’s human rights tribunal.

In March, a campus group advertised Israeli Apartheid Week with vivid signs of an Israeli fighter jet targeting a Palestinian toddler. Carleton told the group, Students Against Israeli Apartheid, to come up with something less pointed.

It complied, but complained to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario that the school trampled its freedom of expression. A mediation will likely be held in late September or early October, and, if the parties cannot agree, the complaint will proceed to a hearing, said Yavar Hameed, a lawyer representing the Carleton students.

Hameed said criticism of Israel was a sensitive issue on university campuses, and he didn’t know if this case would be resolved during the mediation stage. “The nature of this complaint focuses on the advocacy of Palestinian human rights,” he said. “We’re hopeful the human rights tribunal will take that issue seriously so Palestinian students and their allies will not feel chilled or marginalized when they try to speak about their basic rights.”

In an e-mail, Carleton spokesman Jason MacDonald said the students’ claims were “false and completely unfounded. The issue is now being addressed by the human rights tribunal and will provide us a with formal opportunity to respond point by point to these false claims once and for all. In the meantime we’re not going to do anything to undermine that process.”

Ben Saifer, a member of Students Against Israeli Apartheid, said the group would not back down. “The days of administrative intimidation and sophism are counted at Carleton University, and the tides are turning in North America against the supporters of the illegal Israeli occupation and apartheid regime.”

On its website, the group said: “In its fifth year, Toronto’s Israeli Apartheid Week has seen an alarming increase in harassment, intimidation and physical violence against its organizers and guests. While people who seem to be affiliated with the Jewish Defense League are the primary organizers of the attacks, unfortunately, the student groups Hasbara and Hillel have also joined in, using cameras, physical proximity, and threatening language to intimidate activists, especially women students, calling them ‘terrorists’ and repeating the accusations of ‘incitement’ and ‘hate speech.’ When these incidents of harassment and intimidation are reported to campus police, the police have taken no action.”

The university is also in hot water over its decision in late July to remove sessional lecturer Hassan Diab from a teaching post. A Lebanese-born Canadian citizen, Diab is accused of killing four people in the bombing of a Paris synagogue. Senior administrators at Carleton had approved his appointment, but the Jewish advocacy group B’nai Brith said it was “deeply disturbed by the news that Hassan Diab, the alleged bomber of the Rue Copernic synagogue in Paris in 1980, will be teaching an upcoming sociology course at Carleton University. That terrorist attack, blamed on the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-Special Operations, resulted in the murders of four Jews, with scores more injured.”

The university fired the teacher, but a few days later, sociology and anthropology professors called for Diab’s reinstatement.

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