RUTHFULLY YOURS

In the last part of this series, we featured a report from Ynet News, detailing how Australia has an increased amount of prejudice on campus in the state of Victoria, including verbal insults and assault. Now, a report in Canada’s National Post relates how similar intimidation is carrying on in Canada too.

Yesterday in the House of Commons in Ottowa, MP Joe Volpe of Toronto claimed that schools in the nation have become “hotbeds of anti-Israel activity, with the resulting intimidation of Jewish students.”

Last week, the Post reported that York University had threatened to sue Rabbi Aaron Hoch for a circular email he had sent, in which he had urged people to protest speeches made on that University’s campus by British supporter of Hamas, George Galloway. The speech by Galloway had been made on November 16 on a ten-city tour of Canada. There had been protests at the event, but Galloway had declared that event had been a success. On his Twitter fed, Galloway wrote:

“The cheers from the 700 at Toronto’s York Uni (sic) drowned and washed out the murmur from the Zionist protesters. A great night.”

On November 15, before Galloway’s visit, Rabbi Aaron Hoch had sent an email to 700 individuals on his mailing list, and the University is claiming that he made defamatory remarks against the University president, Mamdouh Shoukri. In this email, the rabbi from Dan Family Village Shul had written:

“Mr. Shoukri has again showed his amazing tolerance for anti-Semitism and lack of vigilance regarding the feeling of safety for Jewish students on campus.”

Harriet Lewis, the university’s general counsel, said that the email comments were “actionable.” Rabbi Hoch responded by resending his comments, including additional comments from the university.

The university had encountered ugly incidents before, such as an event in 2009 when pro-Palestinian students had intimidated Jewish students, forcing them to barricade themselves into the Hillel lounge. After that, the person who assumed the role of head of York University’s  student federation was named as Krisna Saravanamuttu, who had been sanctioned for his involvement in the event that led to the intimidation of the Jewish students in 2009. The event to which Galloway was invited to speak was hosted by the student federation.

Saravanamuttu is either very stupid or he has a problem with honesty or logic, when he dismissed Rabbi Hoch’s criticism of Galloway as an “activist for terrorist organizations” to be “baseless accusations.”

Hamas is still sending Qassem rockets into Israeli towns like Sderot, and during the recent Washington-convened “peace” talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Hamas officially announced that it had killed four Jewish settlers. Murdering people as they drive in a car near Hebron,  including killing a pregnant woman, is an act of terrorism; a group that carries out such murders is de facto a terrorist organization and a person who politically praises such a group and has previously given money to this group can be described as an “activist” for a “terrorist organization”. Poor Krisna Saravanamuttu is too dumb or too politically indoctrinated to accept this, or he is strangling himself with spaghetti semantics.

Rabbi Hoch is right to condemn the university. Galloway was banned from setting foot on Canadian soil last year. He was seen to give money to Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas. Hamas is a terrorist organization, that has killed more than 200 Jewish civilians between 2000 and 2004, and has a charter that celebrates Muslims killing Jews, as I wrote in the first of his series. It could conceivably be argued that a person who gives money to a group that calls for the destruction of Israel on religious grounds, fully aware that this anti-Semitic group is holding a Jewish man as a hostage (Gilad Shalit) merely because he is Israeli Jew, is an “anti-Semite”. This appears to be the line of argument that Rabbi Hoch is employing.

The president of York University appears to have made no condemnation of Galloway’s presence on campus, so again, it is logical to assume that Rabbi Hoch felt he had a valid point to make about Mamdouh Shoukri supporting anti-Semitism.

Yesterday’s comments in the Ottowa parliament by Joe Volpe were not the first to refer to York University’s controversial decision to invite Galloway (who declared in 2006 that it would be “morally justified” for a suicide bomber to kill Britain’s then-prime minister Tony Blair) to speak in its premises. Peter Kent, Minister of State of Foreign Affairs (Americas), spoke in the House on Thursday last week, and denounced the decision of the university. He said:

“We believe that all Canadians have the right to free speech, but, we expect, Mr. Speaker, that universities in Canada will support free speech, not shelter from criticism those like Mr. Galloway, who says he is not in favour of free speech.”

Galloway arrived in Canada on October 2, even though he had been banned from entering the country in 2009. Immediately after that decision Galloway had ranted in the left-wing Guardian about how Canadian immigration minister Jason Kenney, who had excluded him, was a “right-winger” and – strangely – a “gay baiter.” Hamas is not known for its tolerance of homosexuals. A week after Galloway tried to smear Kenney, a Canadian federal court judge officially banned Galloway from entering,  supporting the Canadian government’s decision. The government had decided Galloway should not enter because he was deemed to be a “supporter of terrorism.”

Ezra Levant wrote of the poor decisions at York University:

So Galloway and his fellow Hamas supporters were free to have the run of the university. Shoukri even provided them with security.

But if Torontonians dared counter-protest, they could be charged with crimes, as the university is private property and protests by non-students could lead to disturbing the peace or trespassing charges.

And then there’s the icing on the cake: Lewis demanded a written apology from Rabbi Hoch for making “untrue” statements which hurt the reputation of Shoukri and the university.

Hoch claimed Shoukri was insufficiently concerned about Galloway’s anti-Semitism and harassment of Jewish students on campus. To show just how concerned he was, Shoukri demanded the rabbi shut up.

That’s not how we do it in Canada.

Agence France-Presse reports that Pope Benedict XVI has made some rather injudicious comments. He had declared that Pius XII, his predecessor as Pontiff during the era of World War II, did “all he could to save people.”

Rabbi David Rosen, International Director of Interreligious Affairs of the American Jewish Committee has condemned the remarks, which appears in the Pope’s new book, which was officially released yesterday. The book, entitled “The Pope and the sign of the Times” is a compilation of interviews.

Benedict XVI had stated of Pius XII:

“Naturally, one can always ask: ‘Why did he not protest more strongly?’ I believe he saw that the consequences could have been a public outcry. He personally suffered enormously, we know this. He knew that he needed to speak and yet the situation prevented him.”

David Rosen said on Sunday:

“…not only did Pius XII never directly challenge the Nazi regime regarding the extermination of the Jews; perhaps even more dramatically, he never publicly expressed any condemnation, let alone express of regret, subsequent to World War II.”

In December 2009, the Pope had raised Pius XII’s  status to “venerable,” an action that drew criticism from Jews.

Recently, Israel condemned as “anti-semitic” a repudiation of Israel that was made at the Vatican Synod by a delegation of priests led by Archbishop Cyril Salim Bustros, eparch of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church in the United States. Bustros’ comments are discussed here.

The BBC is usually very politically correct, but John Ware is a journalist of repute who has no problems about openly questioning the blatant anti-Semitism that is flourishing in Muslim communities in Gaza and the West Bank, and also in Britain.

He had a young researcher of Saudi origin go into London Muslim schools, and found Saudi-originated text-books that promote the notion that Jews look like “apes and pigs.” Children as young as six have been exposed to such texts, and the books on the Saudi curriculum explicitly state that the punishments for stealing is hand-amputation (with guidelines on how this is carried out) and that homosexuals should be executed. One Koranic researcher interviewed by John Ware stated that the books give no explanation of the historical context, and could be used to encourage anti-semitism.

The resulting documentary, “British Schools, Islamic Rules” which was broadcast on Monday November 22, has drawn some interesting comments. From Julian Kossoff in the London Daily Telegraph:

The text books being used at the “weekend schools” revealed by Panorama were from the Saudi national curriculum and portrayed Jewish people as “monkeys and pigs” bent on world domination.

Building on the anti-Jewish strands that exist in the Koran, modern hate-texts, including the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Mein Kampf, Did Six Million Really Die?, are widely promoted and consumed from Riyadh to Jakarta. The poison is pumped out to the masses looking for fantastical excuses as to why Israel has been able to defeat all the Arab armies sent against it and to channel rage over the dispossesion of the Palestinians.

From the Guardian:

It [Panorama] claims to have found 5,000 Muslim schoolchildren being taught that some Jews are transformed into pigs and apes and that the penalty for gay sex is execution. Some textbooks are said to teach the correct way to chop off the hands and feet of thieves. A spokesman for the programme said the pupils, aged six to 18, attend a network of more than 40 weekend schools across the country which teach the Saudi national curriculum to Muslim children.

One book for children as young as six is said to ask them what happens to someone who dies who is not a believer in Islam – the correct answer is “hellfire”.

On hand-cutting, states the Press Association:

Programme makers said there are accompanying diagrams showing children where the cuts must be made.

Other texts for the 15-year-old pupils also claim that Zionists want to establish world domination for Jews, a spokesman said.

It is of little wonder that Saudi schools are promoting segregation and anti-Semitism. It should not be forgotten that King Fahd of Saudi Arabia was the first major figure behind the global campaign of funding mosques and Islamic schools outside of Saudi Arabia. Fahd himself was a firm believer in the 19^th century Russian tract – the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Even though this was a hoax, Fahd believed in it, and his hatred of Jews was legendary.

According to an essay by Professor Moshe Sharon, who teaches Islamic history at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem:

In 1985 King Fahd of Saudi Arabia published the following observations and memoirs about Israel and the Jews in the popular weekly aI-Musawwar:

“Israel has had malicious intentions since ancient times. Its objective is the destruction of all other religions. It is proven from history that they are the ones who ignited the Crusades at the time of Saladin so that war would lead to the weakening of both Moslems and Christians. They regard other religions as lower than their own, and other peoples as inferior to their level. And on the subject of vengeance – they have a certain day on which they mix the blood of non-Jews into their bread and eat it. It happened two years ago, while I was in Paris on a visit, that the police discovered five murdered children. Their blood had been drained and it turned out that some Jews had murdered them in order to take their blood and mix it with the bread that they ate on this day. This shows you the extent of their hatred and malice towards non-Jewish peoples.”

Abdurahman Ibn Abdul Aziz al-Sudais, Imam of the Al-Haraam Mosque at Mecca, is a rampant anti-Semite, continuing the Saudi establishment’s traditions of intolerance and ignorance.

Sudais has twice been a guest at the East London Mosque, the same mosque that was frequented by the underwear-bomber Umar  Farouk Abdulmutallab before he tried to murder a plane-load of people on Christmas Day, 2009.

A sermon that Sudais delivered can be read in a 2002 pdf document by the Anti-Defamation League, entitled Islamic Anti-Semitism in Historical Perspective.

“Read history and you will know that yesterday’s Jews were bad predecessors and today’s Jews are worse successors. They are killers of prophets and the scum of the earth. God hurled his curses and indignation on them and made them monkeys and pigs and worshippers of tyrants. These are the Jews, a continuous lineage of meanness, cunning, obstinacy, tyranny, evil, and corruption. They sow corruption on earth… O Muslims, the Islamic nation today is at the peak of conflict with the enemies of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, with the grandsons of Bani-Quraydah, Al-Nadiri, and Qaynuqa [Jewish tribes in the early days of Islam]. May God’s curses follow them until the Day of Judgment…. The conflict is exploding and magnifying, the exploitation and greed are increasing, and the indulgence in humbling Arabs and Muslims and their holy places has become very serious by the world rodents that have revoked pacts and agreements. Treachery, sabotage, and cunning dominate their minds and injustice and tyranny flow in their veins… They cannot but remain arrogant, reckless, corrupt, and harmful. Thus, they deserve the curse of God, His angels, and all people.”

For further reading, the definitive work on Islamic anti-Semitism has to be the stunning Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism by Dr. Andrew Bostom, which will be reviewed soon on Family Security Matters.

Adrian Morgan

The Editor, Family Security Matters

FamilySecurityMatters.org‘s Anti-Semitism Watch will be an on-going occasional series on these pages.