Posts Tagged ‘George Galloway’

A conference under the topic When Middle East Politics Invade Campus took place in Toronto on February 16. It was organized by Advocates for Civil Liberties , a relatively new organization, whose purpose is to counter anti-Semitism.

It was a very interesting and enlightening event, for which the organizers assembled an impressive group of speakers – students, respected scholars and well-known journalists. Many important issues were discussed, which will make it impossible to cover everything in one post (that’s why I am breaking the coverage into several parts).

Discussing anti-Semitism is not a popular issue in Canada. Jews are usually herded in one group with the “privileged whites”, which does not deserve the attention of the human rights “industry”, although now and then you may hear about an action taken against some neo-Nazi weirdo who is not known to anybody outside of his family. The real perpetrators of anti-Semitism – the radical Islam and the militant leftists – rarely get any attention, because in Canada they are considered fighters for “social justice” and to the HRC they are more important than the Jewish “plutocrats”.

The purpose of the conference was to bring to public attention the disturbing phenomenon of campus anti-Semitism, which has steadily grown over the last few years. For those who don’t attend college now, it’s probably difficult to understand the situation.

That’s why, before going into the conference’s details, I would like to explain the problem through the lens of a particular event, which in a nutshell reveals what’s wrong with the university campuses in Canada and the USA.

The event is George Galloway’s speech at York University last year (I have first-hand impressions because I attended the protest and covered it). Bringing in outside speakers is a great university tradition. However, they didn’t pick any of the thousands bright people of conscience, who can share their accomplishments, they picked instead Galloway, a strange and scary character. He is mentally disturbed (here you can see his cat impression on the Big Brother show). He raised AND delivered funds to Hamas, a well-known terrorist organization. He was kicked out of the British Parliament. In his opinion, Israel should be replaced by a country named Palestine-Israel dominated by Arabs, after 7 million “refugees” return (he said this and more during his visit to Toronto in October last year, more here). He thinks that the only great Jew is Karl Marx.

It’s sad, the Left must have run out of Che Guevaras, if they need to promote that creepy guy. The event was funded by the university and the student federation with money paid by all students. The protests of the Jewish students and organizations were ignored.

Days before the event, Rabbi Aaron Hoch from Toronto called his congregation in an e-mail to protest. When the York University President Shoukri (an Egyptian Muslim) and his staff found out, they threatened the Rabbi with legal action. As a response, Hoch made public the letters they sent. That caused even more rage from the university (all that became public after the speech).

An hour before Galloway’s speech, there were already protesters in the building, students and people from the community. The police and the security allocated for them a small corner in the same building (if it wasn’t for the pouring rain, they could have been pushed outside).

The Jewish protesters were surrounded from all sides and carefully watched and not allowed to move to other areas (except outside). Several of the University security guards were almost constantly taping them with video cameras. In the hall nearby, Galloway’s speech proceeded uninterrupted.

At certain point, Krisna Saravanamuttu, the president of the student federation and a large group of Muslim students rushed into the crowd of protesters and started chanting anti-Israeli slogans. The police did absolutely nothing to stop them. After few minutes they left. Guess who would have been arrested, if the Jewish students responded to the provocation?

So we had a crowd of Jews confined in a small space and watched by guards and police, who protected a raging madman giving a speech on how he is going to resolve the Israeli problem once and for all. Didn’t something like that happen few decades ago in a certain European country? And we all know what the consequences were…

When I went home, I wrote a post about that and added pictures. The next day I received e-mails from Jewish students, who asked me to remove the pictures, because they were threatened with disciplinary action for taking part in the protest. I never censor my posts, but for the sake of their safety I had to do it (later I restored the pictures). Fortunately, few days later the scandal with Rabbi Hoch exploded and reached the national media. Having his real face exposed, Shoukri wasn’t in a position to persecute students. But hey, there is always a second chance for revenge – Shoukri and Saravanamuttu can go after any Jew who dares protest against the upcoming “Israeli Apartheid Week”.

It is despicable that a group of people can be treated in such an appalling way in Canada in the 21^st century. Imagine what would’ve happened if an anti-Black speaker was invited – CBC and CNN would cover and recycle the story for years; the university administration would be gone and squads of counselors, psychologists and therapists would swarm the campus to console the offended Black students.

Why isn’t the same standard applied to Jewish students? Nobody knows, but there are many people who want to know why.

All this is happening at a university where Jewish donors have contributed tens of millions of dollars with the naïve hope that they are contributing to the cause of education. Instead the money went to the cause of bigotry.

This is not an unusual isolated case, it is the everyday life of thousands of Jewish students in North America.

And that’s why we need forums like this conference, which puts those questions into an open discussion.

Anyway, I hope the case of crazy George and his Muslim buddies would make the issues discussed easier to put in perspective.

Jonathan Kay from National Post was the moderator for the conference.

It started with opening remarks by Judge Hadassa Ben Itto. She is prominent judge living in Israel and her statement was delivered by video.

She started by discussing the “Protocols of Elders of Zion” a known forgery created in Russia in the early 20^th century, which has been used as an excuse to persecute Jews. For decades, the Protocols have been a tool to demonize Jews. Although proven to be a fake, they have been published and sold every year in many countries. Since the creation of the Jewish state, not only the Jews, but also Israel have become targets. Those writings perpetrate the myth of the omnipotent Jewish lobby, which wants to dominate the world. In some countries, like France and Germany they are not allowed to be published, but most other countries don’t have those restrictions. Besides that, in the times of Internet any restrictions of publication are impossible to implement. Read the rest of this entry »

When I attended the protest against Galloway’s speech last week, I had no idea what would follow. My thought was that it would be a protest like any other, where the students and other people would express their opinions and go home.

I wrote my post the same night and included in it the most interesting pictures.

A blogger who was there wrote the next day that he was not going to include in his blog the footage from the protest. He was told by the Jewish students that they feared repercussions for what they were doing. I didn’t pay much attention to that, thinking they were way too cautious.

Then I received several e-mails with requests to remove some of the pictures. Their reason was that they were threatened with legal action. There were no e-mails from the Muslims and the lefties, who organized the Galloway circus.

Then I read Ezra Levant’s column about  Mamdouh Shoukri, the President of York University, who threatened a Rabbi with legal action for calling people to oppose Galloway’s appearance.

Then there was the editorial of National Post, which revealed that the Jewish organizations at York were about to be charged with violations, which may bring expulsion.

I thought that Galloway and the Israeli Apartheid Week were bad enough, but it turned out the things were much, much worse. In the wise words of George Costanza, this thing is like an onion: the more layers you peel, the more it stinks!

So the events which happened that night started to fit into their places. The blatant anti-Semitism suddenly came to light.

First of all, the appearance of Galloway was not unlike an appearance by Adolf Hitler. Both of them have the same final solution for the Jews, with the only difference that Galloway expects the Palestinian Arabs to do the dirty job by moving en masse into Israel and destroying the country. Read the rest of this entry »

A remarkable protest against a speech by George Galloway took place last night at York University in Toronto.

The speech was sponsored by Muslim organizations and approved by the university administration. York University is known for tolerating Muslim fanaticism. There have been cases, where Jewish students and organizations have been harassed. It even hosts the Israeli Apartheid Week, which is an excuse for promoting anti-Semitism and distorting the reality in the Middle East.

This time, however, York University sank to a new low. Hosting George Galloway, and open supporter of Arab terrorism, is totally inexcusable.

He is a man, who doesn’t have the best taste in choosing clothes:

His behaviour often crosses beyond the borders of sanity:

His choice of friends talks loudly about his ideas and convictions:

But above all, his maniacal hate for Israel and the desire to help those who want to destroy that country have put him in hot water on numerous occasions. It is hard to believe that such a person could have any following, but he does.

The Left must have totally lost its ways, if a person like Galloway can serve as its moral compass. Karl Marx said in one of his books that “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” After the scary tyranny of Lenin and Stalin, the left descended to worshipping Galloway the Clown.

This is Galloway’s second visit to Toronto. Last month he spoke at Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church and promised that he would be back. At the time, there were fewer protesters, however, this time the protest was better organized.
There was a large group of people (probably nearly 300) in the building where Galloway was scheduled to speak. The majority of them were students, but there were also concerned citizens and people from Jewish organizations, like the Jewish Defence League.

The event was supposed to take place in secrecy, no cameras or recorders were allowed inside: Read the rest of this entry »

On October 28, 2010, Norman Finkelstein delivered a lecture in Toronto sponsored by CJPME (Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East). He is an American Jewish scholar, who has been a supporter of Hezbollah, Hamas and few other questionable organizations. At the event he proudly displayed on his jacket’s lapel a pin with the Palestinian flag (thus the title of this post).

For his support of those Muslim extremist organizations, they have bestowed upon him the highest possible “honour” in their hierarchy of values – that they consider him a non-Jew. That’s very similar to what Hitler did. In the cases when he reluctantly wanted to keep a Jew, who was useful to his regime, he used to resolve his moral dilemma by declaring him or her an “Honorary Arian”. That was the case with the conductor Herbert von Karajan’s wife, who was of Jewish background. We could only guess what would have happened to those “Honorary Arians”, had Hitler survived beyond 1945 and they were no longer needed.

The audience was the usual assortment of the types of people common for such an event. There were numerous ladies with hijabs (but unfortunately no niqab/burkas), angry looking young Arab men, tattooed lefties with purple or orange-coloured hair, nostalgic old hippies with white hair, and many others that wore different versions of that ugly chequered scarf, which Arafat utilized to hide his baldness.

Although the organization that put together the event claims that they are supporters of peace, the image they created at the beginning was anything but peaceful. The lady who opened immediately directed the audience’s attention to their website’s “BDS Centre”, i.e. the boycott page. Right now they are boycotting the Mountain Equipment Co-op for its links with Israeli companies. (So far the boycott has been an utter failure, rejected both by the co-op and its customers. No wonder, how can the lefty cyclists afford the higher prices of other bike retailers?)

Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a funny video with George Galloway (who recently visited Toronto). The ex-member of the British Parliament, pathetic Big Brother participant, fanatical supporter of Muslim terrorism and a darling of the progressive dimwits is seen here being yelled at by Judge Judy.

If this could happen in reality, it would’ve been really priceless…

George Galloway is back in Canada. The fiercely Marxist ex-member of the British Parliament gave a speech yesterday in Toronto. Although last year he found himself in trouble when the Government of Canada challenged his eligibility to enter the country due to his support for a terrorist group, now Galloway is bolder and more militant than ever.

The carefully sanitized account of his speech covered by The Canadian Press left out many statements that were loudly applauded by his audience: he still supports Hamas but in slightly different way; Canada is a vicious and extremist country; the Arabs in Gaza are dying of starvation; Israel is committing systematic ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem; the only good Jews are those who are against their own country; the only solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict is the creation of a single Arab-dominated country.

More on Galloway’s presentation later… Let’s say more about the event and its organizers. It took place at the Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church on Bloor/Spadina, a well known haven of the Annex “progressives”, it’s not clear whether it is still a real church, judging from the events they regularly organize there.

Read the rest of this entry »