Philadelphia — Recently two prominent Middle Easterners traveled to two North American campuses to deliver speeches mainly about the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Both of them met protests. One succeeded in speaking and the other did not. Thereby hangs a tale.
On Sept. 9, former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu went to Concordia University in Montreal to explain why “there is no alternative to winning this war [on terrorism] without delay.”
But he never spoke there. Indeed, he never made it onto the campus because a thousand anti-Israel demonstrators staged a mini-riot with the intent of preventing him from speaking. “Benjamin Netanyahu is coming to Montreal. Let’s make it clear he’s not welcome” read their signs.
The anti-Israel forces physically assaulted the would-be audience. A female professor of religion at Concordia recounted how some of them “aimed their punches at my breasts.”
They smashed a plate-glass window and threw objects at the police inside. They hurled furniture at the police from a mezzanine.
As Toronto’s Globe & Mail reported, “By lunch time, the vestibule of Concordia’s main downtown building was littered with paper, upturned chairs, broken furniture and the choking aftereffects of pepper spray.”
The police department said it could not assure Netanyahu’s safety and canceled the event. To which Wassim Moukahhal, an Arab leader at nearby McGill University, crowed: “The man is a war criminal. We don’t want our city and our universities to be the harbor of such a war criminal.”
Nor was this the first time Netanyahu has been prevented from speaking on a university campus. In November 2000, “hundreds of raucous protesters” at the University of California-Berkeley likewise managed to cancel his appearance.
Islands of repression
On Sept. 12, Hanan Ashrawi, former spokeswoman and colleague of Palestine Authority President Yasser Arafat, went to Colorado College in Colorado Springs to give a keynote speech at a symposium on “September 11: One Year Later.”
Protesters to her speech noted that Ashrawi is smack on the side of America’s enemies in the war on terrorism. For example, while the U.S. government formally designates Hamas a terrorist group, Ashrawi states she doesn’t “think of Hamas as a terrorist group.”
Moreover, she considers Israelis living on the West Bank to be “legitimate … targets of Palestinian resistance.”
The many objections to Ashrawi’s being honored at Colorado College centered on her obnoxious presence at an event dealing with the aftermath of Sept. 11.
Colorado’s Governor Bill Owens spoke for many when he said, “It’s outrageous to be bringing this woman who has done so much to divide the Middle East and has applauded terrorism.” Both of the state’s U.S. senators objected. Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani added: “I wouldn’t have invited her. Cancel it.”
But she did speak, without any interference. The protests against her were completely non-violent and included nothing more than scattered boos, hand-held signs and a rebuttal following the speech (given by this writer).
These two parallel yet contrasting episodes point to several conclusions:
• As the school year starts, both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict are seeking to shift the terms of the debate. The pro-Israel side wants to delegitimize speakers who effectively call for Israel’s destruction. The anti-Israel side wants to block speakers sympathetic to Israel.
• Both incidents point to profound problems in the university and why Abigail Thernstrom calls it “an island of repression in a sea of freedom.” In the Colorado case, the administration made the morally idiotic choice of honoring an apologist for terrorism. In the Concordia case, a weak-kneed response permitted thugs to inhibit free speech.
• The incidents also point to the differing faces of anti- and pro-Israel activism, with the latter acceptably political and the former crudely violent. The second resembles the restrained actions of the Israeli armed forces. The first represents a North American face of the suicide bombings.
Or, to put them in their most elemental terms, we see here the contrast between the civilized nature of Israel and its friends versus the raw barbarism of Israel’s enemies.
It promises to be a hot year politically at the campuses. How things turn out will depend on which form of activism prevails — the holding of pink sheets of paper with “I disagree” written on them or the throwing of chairs from balconies.
Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and author of “Militant Islam Reaches America.”
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