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Palestinian Riot in Montreal
Muslim immigrants in Canada have turned violent, big time. Seeking to prevent a scheduled speech by former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Concordia University in downtown Montreal, one thousand Palestinian rioters physically attacked Jews, broke windows, and gained entrance into the university building, throwing chairs and other objects. According to The Jewish Tribune, Canada’s biggest Jewish newspaper: “Riot police then moved in and used pepper spray. The speech was immediately cancelled because the police were unable to ensure Netanyahu’s safety on campus. Several high profile members of the Jewish community were physically assaulted.” Again the question arises: will the West—and the Jews in particular—ever learn? Jewish organizations, intellectuals, and politicians were at the forefront of the campaign to open America’s and Canada’s borders to non-European immigrants and to celebrate the advent of a “diverse” society, no longer predominantly white, Anglo-Saxon, and Christian, but a mixture of all races and cultures on earth. And now they can see the result—aimed at their own heads. In the supreme irony, Jews and other Westerners decided that the meaning of the Nazi Holocaust was not evil, but intolerance, which must be overcome by eliminating all racial and ethnic discrimination from public law. So, in the name of counteracting Nazism and advancing tolerance, the Jews helped admit en masse into North America the most virulent Jew-haters on earth. Will the Jews ever learn? Will they ever acknowledge the catastrophic mistake they have made? Or will their compulsion to “diversify” the white West trump even a rational concern about their own safety? For a detailed account of this mass violence by Muslims in a major North American city, here is an e-mail, sent out by the Jewish Internet Service, by a Canadian Jewish woman who was caught in the middle of it.
Date: Mon, 09 Sep 2002 In April 2001 I sent out a letter detailing my experiences working as a street medic at the protests in Quebec City. Today I am sending a similar letter to you, however it is in regard to a radically different situation. This morning my friends and I set out to Concordia University, in the heart of downtown Montreal, to hear Benjamin Netanyahu (former Prime Minister of Israel) speak. Many articles were featured in the Montreal papers leading up to today’s speech, warning of protest action. I had a good idea of what we would face as we approached Concordia, but I could never have predicted what actually happened once we were there. To enter the building we had to make a giant circle around it, to get to the supposedly “safe” entrance. We had to walk right through a volatile protest of hundreds of Palestinians and their supporters in keffiyehs, with flags, screaming vitriolic hate. Once having run this gauntlet, we waited patiently outside the Bishop street entrance, held back at the gate by security and police. After about an hour they started admitting us inside, but it was too late because a huge group of Palestinian ‘demonstrators’ had appeared in our midst. I was fortunately right at the entrance, and as dozens of violent protesters pushed their way to the front, I tried to get through. Right next to me appeared the ringleader, who tried to push his way in. The cop in front of me punched him in the face while pulling me through the gate at the same time. I rested against the wall and watched as at least a hundred (I think) red-and-green coloured protesters attacked the barriers and tried to get in. Riot cops appeared, dozens of them, and went to the gate as I and a few others were herded into the building. There was yelling and chanting, drumming and fighting going on outside the doors, with hundreds of our people stuck behind the gate being abused by hundreds of violent demonstrators. A few of us were waiting after the metal detectors for our friends to come through, when all of a sudden we heard loud chanting and yelling INSIDE the building. The riot cops came storming in and up the stairs beside us, and we began hearing fighting, crashing, yelling, punching. Chaos broke out and riot cops made us run for the door to the auditorium—I thought we were going to get killed, I swear. It was the scariest feeling, because I knew that these people wanted to hurt me and anyone who supports Israel or is Jewish. Once inside the auditorium, we were told to be patient as more people would drift in from the insanity outside. We waited inside for three hours, as the commotion outside grew increasingly loud. We could hear chanting and yelling, and the protesters began trashing the university building. The police tear gassed and pepper sprayed the entire building and outside, and we began to feel the effects if we stood too near the doors. After hours of waiting, and bomb searches by RCMP sniffer dogs, we were informed that Bibi Netanyahu could not speak after all—too much danger to him and to us. This was an incredible disappointment and we were naturally upset. We however managed to maintain a kind of composure and instead of fighting, the 650 of us inside began to sing Hatikvah, the national anthem of the State of Israel. We sang peace chants and then just waited to be let out, in groups of 10, escorted by police. The scene as we exited was disgusting. Benches were overturned, papers and garbage streaked across the hallways, and broken windows. We were shoved outside directly into a HUGE Palestinian riot, where some of our people were apparently attacked. The cops did nothing. We stood on one side of the barrier, while they stood on the other, and we faced off. On our side, we sang and danced and celebrated being free and Jewish. On their side, they threw bottles at people’s heads, screamed hatred, and tried to break the barriers down to hurt us. They started tossing pennies and coins at us—one of the oldest ways to taunt Jews by saying we’re all ‘money-grubbing’. While we sang Hatikvah arm in arm, they spat at us. Finally we decided to disperse and leave them to their hatred. Today was a sick and sorrowful day not only for the Jewish students and community of Montreal, but for Jews everywhere, the city of Montreal and Canada. Today a man was gagged and not allowed to express an opinion; today hundreds of people were denied the opportunity to listen to him speak. Today a riot broke forth on our peaceful streets, and today no police managed to restrain hate. Today Montreal Jews were made to feel afraid for our lives, and today Jewish students were threatened in our own home. If we cannot express ourselves here in Canada, champion of free speech and human rights, where on earth can we do so? If we cannot feel safe in our own cities where we have grown up and thrived, where are we to go? I can answer my own question with what many of us already know—Israel is our place. She is our homeland, and opens her arms to us, willing to protect us at all costs. The Jewish people need Israel, and she needs us. Even so, we must voice our distaste at the violence which occurred in Montreal today. We must all take our own individual stands against this fascism, by which freedom of speech was denied. What happened today in my city cannot be condoned or allowed to repeat itself. We must act. So I am sending you all this long letter, with my own personal feelings and an eyewitness account. Please do what you can to see that this message is spread to anyone you can think of—from friends to work associates, to politicians, and from Jews to non-Jews alike. We have a chance to fix these wrongs, but only if we take action and don’t sit back as passive observers. We say NEVER AGAIN, but unless we protest these attacks on our freedoms, it is fruitless to put up that chant. Last but certainly not least, a personal lament on our situation: today I saw raw hatred, and it cut me to the core. I have never feared for my life as I did today. I have never feared for our free society the way I do today. I wish beyond anything that we can one day fix the agonizing rifts between our peoples, and erase the hate from our and their hearts alike. Shanah Tovah to all Jewish readers of this letter, and a sweet year. To all non-Jewish readers: thank you for reading, and please understand what I am expressing here. It is most important for you to know what really happened here today, and it is vital that you see this side of the story.
Love always, Comments
Another street battle in Canada. What is it about Canada that produces so much political violence? Granted, Britain is much the same; recall the anti-white race riots last summer in the North of England. And yesterday about 100 British National Party (BNP) activists protested outside a mosque where an anti-British and anti-American hate speech was given. The BNP members were not only confronted by Muslim thugs, but also by “anti-Nazi” activists who had gathered to protest the BNP protestors! I can’t even imagine the same thing happening here. I suspect that Muslim activists and their left-wing fellow-travellers in the US know in their hearts that they would be crushed. Better to wait, the thinking goes, until their numbers increase further when they can make a bigger impact. When that happens, I think the US will start to see similar political fighting. Posted by: William on September 12, 2002 10:29 AMFor anyone who is interested, here’s an e-mail a reader forwarded to me that gives more details on the Palestinian anti-Jewish riot in Montreal. Teitelbaum’s Take Last week, an ever-ditzy Sara Netanyahu told one of her husband’s disaffected former cronies (who promptly recorded the conversation and then played it back on Israel Radio) that, barring his imminent return to power, the two of them would move abroad, in which case, she added, “the country can burn.” Alas, when the too-big-for-Israel Bibi ventured abroad last week for a brief jaunt in Canada, it wasn’t Israel that burned, but the small patch of boulevard fronting the Borg-like downtown HQ of Concordia University, nee Sir George Williams, where the former Israel PM had been slated to give a talk. Bibi showed up in La Belle Province to address the subject of terrorism courtesy of Montreal Gazette and National Post owner Izzy Alper’s CanWest conglomerate and at the direct behest of the university’s Hillel Jewish Student Union. But it became clear even before he signed in at the posh Ritz Carleton Hotel that Bibi’s two-or-three-block motorcade descent from the slopes of Mount Royal would prove as slippery as any I endured on foot as a Concordia student 25 years ago, even after an ice-storm and a couple of drafts of now sadly defunct Brador beer. Jewish Student Union President Yoni Petel told VJ the day after the debacle that Internet discussion groups before Netanyahu’s arrival had been rife with calls by a group called the Montreal Coalition for Peace and Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) to quash his appearance by all and any means. Anticipating a mugging of the kind recently fashionable at the University of San Francisco and the University of California at Berkeley, Petel says he beseeched both the university’s administration and the Montreal Police to beef up security for the event. “We told them over and over that this group is dangerous, that their protests are almost always violent, and that this one will be violent.” Despite a lurid history of campus violence dating back to the ‘60s, and since the latest Intifada an atmosphere of anti-Semitic and campus-wide anti-Israel intimidation that have earned the school the dubious monicker of “Gaza U,” Petel’s pleas went unheeded. Consequently, many of the students, faculty and community members attending the event found themselves forced to run a gauntlet of gibbering protestors who had pushed past police and university security guards into the lobby, where they set up a self-proclaimed “Palestinian checkpoint.” The protesters, says Petel, behaved “in a way not even befitting of animals. They broke windows, they threw chairs, they kicked a Holocaust survivor right square in the (testicles) on the way in (the Montreal Gazette said he was kicked in the ankles merely to spare him embarrassment). “Rabbis and their wives were spat on and punched. Students were hit on the head with a flagpole. There were chants of “Kill the Zionists” in English, Arabic and French. And in the street some people heard “Itbach il Yehud” (Kill the Jews!). The police, presumably because of a dearth of English or Arabic-speakers, simply stood there doing nothing.” I asked Dr. Stephen Scheinberg, who heads the history department that granted my own BA, for his own take on what went down at Concordia. Although Scheinberg does not share Petel’s Betarist political outlook, their accounts are similar. “I felt I was staring fascism right in the face,” Scheinberg recounted in an e-mail message. “I was in a crowd trying to go in and along with Prof. Norma Joseph and her husband, the rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese (Synagogue) and we were pushed and shoved. I did see Tom Hecht kicked in his vital parts. The demonstrators were allowed to block our access to the hall while the riot police stood by. “The police failure,” he adds, “was that they did not keep the demonstrators away from the building. They were supposed to demonstrate (two blocks away) but the barriers allowed them right around the building. I don’t know why but I do know why they did not act. The university and police certainly didn’t want tear-gassed students. Only when windows were broken were the police allowed in and used pepper spray to disperse the demonstrators. “The demonstrators kept prating about Palestinian human rights, which I believe is a good topic for discussion, but they had no interest in rights of free assembly, free speech, or the meaning of a university. I suppose some of them come from Middle Eastern countries with no such traditions, and others are Arab Canadians who know but obviously hold such freedoms in contempt.” Informed that the university and the RCMP had cancelled his talk (the university later claimed that Bibi’s security entourage had called it off), Netanyahu retreated to his hotel where, not without a measure of satisfaction, he denounced the protesters as “mad zealots” and “a microcosm of what exists in the Middle East.” Rector Fred Lowy, who is Jewish, responded by declaring the events of the day yet another stain upon the long-suffering university. Promising to oust and prosecute the most violent offenders, Lowey declared a moratorium on further political assemblages of the kind that might spark yet another such fracas. This despite the fact that any number of Holocaust deniers, Israel-bashers and Palestinian figureheads had been granted quick and easy access to the university over the years, none of them ever similarly abused by Jewish students and community members. Dr. Scheinberg subsequently joined Lowy in a meeting with community leaders, where he echoed Netanyahu’s sentiments, arguing that the Jewish community “had scored a victory because the broad Canadian public would now understand what the demonstrators stood for and what we stood for.” Nevertheless, Scheinberg took umbrage with Lowy’s ban on further Mideast-oriented activity, agreeing with B’nai Brith Canada’s position that Lowy had inadvertently penalized the victims for the acts of the perpetrators. “It is to my mind a terrible precedent for Canadian universities,”Scheinberg said. The next day, on Tuesday, Netanyahu paid a courtesy call on Canadian Premier Jean Chretien at his Ottawa digs. Netanyahu subsequently told a luncheon crowd in the Canadian capital that Chretien, himself just fresh from a visit with US President George Bush at the Detroit/Windsor border, had castigated the university for “continual irresponsibility there.” Never loathe to add his own two agoroth, Netanyahu opined that my venerable alma mater, home to Mordecai Richler and the rest of us Jewish street urchins unable to gain entry to McGill, had been “misaptly named.” As one of the many who remain partial to the university’s distinctive, if no less goyische, name before 1974 (when Sir George Williams University merged with Loyola University further west on Montreal Island) I am forced to admit, if perhaps for the first time, that our cigar smoke and brim fire belching ex-PM-at-large is almost certainly right in this regard. Why, however, is a matter he left unresolved. Lacking the kind of endowments that typically swell the flush coffers of nearby McGill, Concordia has funded its latest expansion in part by actively recruiting foreign students, many of them from the Islamic world. Canadian immigration policy remains sufficiently indiscriminate that students from Third World countries may enter the country and remain even if registered for a single Mickey Mouse course. Additionally, the school has attracted a number of students whose parents enjoy diplomatic immunity, and who are not reticent to use it as a shield for the kind of political activism that sometimes skates past the red line into the realm of criminality. Those Canadian universities that must contend with ever-declining government support, meanwhile, demur from the task of imbuing foreign students with respect for democratic values and academic freedom and integrity. To do so would earn the wrath and denunciation of those Canadian progressives inclined to view such minimal gate-keeping as racist, colonialist or unabashedly imperialist, progressives who, universities being what they are, often occupy faculty positions. Whether generated in-house or out, these are not appellations that any university seeking to maintain its good, that is to say, solvent, name abroad would wish to endure. And finally, we are left to contend with an aging Jewish community that, after decades awash in the often-caustic exigencies of eking out a minority niche in French Quebec, may have grown too depleted – dare we even say meek and tooth-worn – to retake the high ground. This is certainly mirrored at Concordia, where of a student body of some 25,000 and a Moslem and Arab contingent numbering between 1,500 and 2,000, fewer than a thousand Jewish students remain. Once a refuge and a bastion for Jewish Montrealers, today good old Sir George is a school most now avoid with the aplomb of people about to have their thumbnails snatched out. With respect to Dr. Scheinberg, who most commendably hopes the university will “lay down the law in clear terms, along with arrests, expulsions and suspensions,” being kicked in the yarblockos and then sent to my room for a time-out is not my idea of a moral victory. It is, however, decidedly Canadian. Copyright 2002 Rants & Raves to sheli@jewishstreet.com Posted by: Lawrence Auster on September 12, 2002 10:41 AMI don’t know if there has been any significant change in overall Jewish thinking on open borders, but there was a ca. 5000 word article posted on Frontpage last fall by someone named Steinlight. The gist of the argument was that Jews really need to re-think their position on immigration as they will lose political influence to a growing Muslim population. Don Feder has also come out in favor of restricting immigration. Leftist thinking is nevertheless deeply ingrained in the Jewish popualtion living in the West. Posted by: Carl on September 12, 2002 8:12 PMSteinlight is something of an oddball, even within the Jewish community, as he is a very ethnocentric Jew whose immigration restrictionist argument is based solely and explicitly on what’s good for the Jews. Moreover, he has a tremendous amount of ethnocentric resentment against white gentiles, and he keeps attacking the best known immigration restrictionists as racists. I don’t see the Steinlight approach going anywhere. Don Feder has been an outspoken immigration critic for years, so that’s not a new development. However, there are *some* signs that Jews are slowly waking up to the danger of immigration, but in most cases, I expect, they will see that danger solely in terms of Muslims. That’s still a move in the right direction. Once they admit that not all peoples are equally assimilable into America, they will have given up the universal egalitarian principle of the 1965 Immigration Act. Posted by: Lawrence Auster on September 12, 2002 11:23 PMI’ve seen this topic debated quite frequently in recent weeks. Why do you think it is important that the Jewish American establishment change its stance on immigration? Posted by: William on September 13, 2002 8:11 AMI wish that the Jews had not been quite so instrumental, even forceful, in bringing socialist and Marxist pseudo egalitarian ideas into the American law and public policy forum. |