McMaster University was the scene of a boisterous rally today as pro-Israel and pro-Palestine took to the microphone to condemn or support Israel.
The event wasn’t good or bad – at least it didn’t break down into a physical confrontation. The “after-rally” was very hardline. Even this was kept under control by the prompt action of McMaster security to keep the two sides apart.
During the open session, the moderator (left) cut the mic of a pro-Israel speaker who continued to make his point by shouting over the moderator.
Heather Kere of the Ryerson Students’ Union told the assembled crowd that McMaster University and the McMaster Students Union were wrong to ban the poster by the Israel Apartheid Awareness Week group.
York Federation of Students Vice-President Gilary Massa lead the York delegation to attend the rally at McMaster.
Most people in the crowd were not actually students.
I just wanted to make a comment about the photo that said most people in the crowd were not actually students. As a McMaster student I was at the public forum and I can say that there were many McMaster students in the crowd. This picture does not show that students were standing on the second floor of the Student Centre and behind the people in the seats as the public forum continued throughout the morning. Many students were at the public forum listening and engaging with the issues regarding Isreali Apartheid Week at McMaster. This picture is not a fair representation.
As a subscriber to McLean’s, I am very disappointed in their reporting of this event at McMaster, which I attended.
The young man in the first photo was a boisterous, hot-tempered fellow who was clearly violating the Code of Conduct, as explained by the fairly impartial moderator at the beginning of the forum.
I was honestly quite impressed by the organization of the students at McMaster, and the solidarity that students from other GTA schools showed them in this fight against their university administration, that is supposedly stifling free speech on campus.
Please, provide your paying customers with reliable and accurate information, lest we lose faith in you.
In terms of the lack of students, here is another picture: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2109/2300285649_4e019e475b_o.jpg
and another:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2256/2300352953_b4d99dac85_o.jpg
You can see here (the grain is a result of a high ISO setting) in the wide-angle of the audience that there is a lack of students. You can see the students at the back, there are not really that many. A lot of them are looking to see what’s going on prior to leaving.
I’m sorry if the reality of the photos I took does not match what you wanted to see, I cannot help that. The reality is that both sides of the debate moved in their non-student supporters and there were more non-McMaster students than they were actual Mac students.
The choice of the photo above is due to its higher quality, and tighter frame.
The second floor, there were at most a dozen people looking down from there at any time. I was up there many times and I looked up there for photographs a few times. (People looking down make for a great shot.) Most of the time, people up there were university staff looking down to see what was happening or members of the students’ union council looking at what was happening. A few times, a small group of students would form, but they quickly moved on.
In terms of the speaker, both sides attacked each other. The caption is correct. You are challenging its correctness based on it not reflecting your bias. In terms of violation of the student code of conduct, it is an easily violated piece of paper – I did so on numerous occasions both in my Silhouette columns and my personal blog. I can pretty much say that both sides violated the code today. I note that the university was taking pictures of potential violators and there will likely be follow up.
As I sat in the atrium of the McMaster University Centre among a crowd of about 200-300 students, faculty and citizens, all I could think about is that this must be a nightmare. I was there in body but not in mind – my mind was numb in that dark environment in which hate is permitted and has been renamed free speech. A room where rules and regulations take a back seat to lies and opinions masquerading as facts – and where those lies, like in a Kafka novel, were directed at innocent people who were purposely given no voice. A conference advocating freedom of speech? I think not! It was mob rule.
Imagine, a Canadian University taking a stand against a growing problem that has unions, Muslim groups and a variety of self-serving haters of Israel doing all in their power to make Jewish students suffer through demonization with all the requisite lies and propaganda. It was not just demonization of Israel, it was demonization of an entire religion. And though I claim no deep religious connections or convictions, I do recognize when a people are being bullied and vilified by a mob.
It was too good to be true that someone would speak up for the rights of a people who have been maligned and lied about over the ages and recently made to seem illegitimate, non-existent and unwelcome in the family of nations – a country, Israel, that has become the proxy representative of Jewish people and the main recipient of hate from growing collective of anti-Semites.
These haters pretend to speak in the name of Palestinians but they seem to know very little about Palestinian/Arab history and even less about a balanced picture of events as they pertain to the Middle East. They use the Palestinians as a prop, selectively choosing images and events out of context to make Israel look horrible. They know nothing of rights and responsibilities. They NEVER address Palestinian terror against Israel. They never ask why the Arab world mistreats and fails to settle their own refugee problem. This was an ignorance-driven, one-sided event that feeds on young impressionable minds. It is designed by its followers to radicalize and brainwash and instill hate into Canadian society.
The strength and numbers of these haters has reached epidemic proportions everywhere. It has become impossible to ask them to abide by any rules of conduct or to respect their fellow Canadians. To do so brings an immediate jihad of complaints, legal action, and bus loads of like-minded individuals who travel around staging these hatefests. Money is provided by unions and, I suspect, political and religious institutions both from Canada and abroad that share a common end goal – to spread hate and intimidation throughout the land. They DO NOT want us to live in peace.
The willingness of some academics to speak out against Israel when they know that they must perpetrate lies and distortions to do so, is really a sickening sight. I would guess that these individuals would also have sold their families to the Nazis during WWII just because it fit into a ridiculous ideology, agenda or to satisfy fratricidal and insane urges.
I hope that more people of all races, religions and backgrounds see the danger that lurks in the fanaticism and blind hatred that such people have against Israel. It is not a battle in which facts have any import. It is an animalistic and atavistic response and like sharks, they circle their target and tear bits out until it becomes a death by a thousand bites. The sharks do not stop at Jews, they soon move on to others.
To those who think that I am exaggerating or scaremongering, I have seen hate at McMaster and it is disguised as truth. We can choose to live with this and see it poison an entire campus and an entire country or we can choose to fight back now. I choose to fight. Please join me to express your disgust in the goals, the ignorance and the tactics of this growing jihad movement and disgust with some in the mainstream population who are joining their ranks just as mainstream German people coalesced around the Nazis.
hi, my name is Snir Seitelbach I’m the man in the top photo, I’m quite upset at the picture that you posted of me because it makes me out to be extremely uncivilized and irrational and I was unaware that this was the picture that was being posted. To add to that it doesn’t emphasize the point that I was trying to get across that Mcmaster is a school peace cooperation and friendship and racist and hate filled slander is not welcome there. I felt that the point needed to get across, my speech had nothing to do with pro-israel but had everything to do with equality and the disrespect that jewish students of mcmaster were shown. To add to that no emphasis has been put on the death threats chanted by anti-israel students at Mcmaster, I feel that my rights and freedoms were taken away and that these atrocities need to known.
I was present at the forum and was impressed by the fact that such a charged topic was handled without violence or uncivilized behaviour. Unfortunately the local media took pictures and emphasized the more “newsworthy” and colourful events that occurred after the Forum, which are a separate affair. Evidently, from the comments of at least one of your readers, some people were there and heard the sounds coming from the mouths of the other side but did not listen to what they said. No doubt that is not a phenomenon unique to Jews, so there may well have been people on both sides who felt that way. The tiresome charge that criticism of Israel is antisemitic and Nazi-like is not only hype but a way of dismissing what was said. I heard more than once the condemnation of both the rockets fired at Israel and the collective punishment of Palestinians by the Israeli military. On the whole, it seemed to me that anyone who was willing to listen would have learned something necessary, if not necessarily pleasant from the other side. I hope that this event will point out to those who are interested in Peace in the Middle East, that it is both possible and necessary to have discussion sessions where people are obliged to listen to the pain of the other side and learn from it.
I recognized many members of the McMaster community at the meeting, not only students, but faculty and retired faculty with their spouses. The fact that there were people from outside the University was not a bad thing, in fact their contributions were welcome, as far as I am concerned.
It is time that those who defend Israel and those that defend Palestine learn from each other by genuinely hearing what the other has to say and dropping the easy dismissive cliches that prevent dialogue. Here in Canada it is safe to do so and the two communities, if speaking with one voice, might be able to influence what happens in the Middle East, which is not true if the two communities simply echo what the powers that be on either side tell the world.
I was at the forum. The people sitting in chairs were largely non-students, but faculty, following up an online discussion of the debate which had been continuous for at least a week; sometimes the back of the hall was filled half the way across the floor, and there were students on both sides along with faculty.
The distinction between being critical of Israel’s policies in the Occupied Territories, and being critical of Jews in general, was made many times although it was not recognized, or not heard, by many members of the audience. It was also acknowledged that Israel is a democracy, but that the actions of its government on Palestinians did not acknowledge their rights as human beings, and had caused/ was causing the suffering of civilians who had no control over their lives and could not escape the violence.
The issue of free speech in this or any other particular case cannot be addressed within the wording of the Student Code of Ethics as it stands, in which no one is allowed to use language which might offend anyone else – no one would be able to say anything much, and we must ask hard questions at a university. Issues must be debated publicly, as here, even though they are often left unresolved. It must be asked often whether more harm is done to those who are offended, or to those whose naming of harm is suppressed, and decided again and again. On an issue with such longstanding divisions, most of the already divided people will retain the views they started with.
Using some other term than the suppressed one would not have changed the issues, although it might have kept the temperature more comfortable for those who did not like the word, while harming those who used it through censorship. The greatest issue was whether “apartheid” was hate speech, designed and used only to incite racist or nationalist hatred and violence against Israel and Jews, or whether it legitimately described the situation in the Occupied Territories, Gaza in particular at this moment. Those who found the term offensive reacted very angrily to it as hate speech, while those using it demonstrated its legitimacy as a term here according to its use by the United Nations and others in this context.
My own view is that agreeing to disagree is probably the best we can do until the issue is properly addressed within international law.
It really is too bad that Maclean’s believes itself to be representing the campus community through its constant attacks on student activism. I reject this magazine for its seemingly personal desire to denounce the right of students to protest their state or their campus. The integrity of the academic community rests upon its ability to express itself freely, and in this world of perpetual conflict and media complacency, to speak out against injustices of any kind. This should not be done quietly, or carefully – in fact it cannot succeed if academics voice their views meekly. I reject the fact that Maclean’s, a non-academic, non-peer reviewed pop culture rag magazine, endows itself with some right to denounce academics for their views, and especially for exercising their democratic right to protest.
Maclean’s is not an authority on any issue so far as I can tell. It is a well-funded, underqualified mouthpiece for the business community and conservative ideology that could not keep pace with real academic debate if it tried. As a student of McMaster and an audience member during the forum, I reject Maclean’s biased reporting of the events on my campus, and outright denounce this magazine for its thinly-veiled editorials that you dare to print as hard news. The issue on campus was one of free speech. It was debated by students and falculty members, on both sides of the controversy and was confronted at McMaster as a matter of academic integrity. The author of this piece appears to be a contributer to the school newspaper, which deliberately misrepresented the events in question, which is why the student body denounces the paper as trash, as I am denouncing Maclean’s.
In closing, I reject outright this magazine for its ridiculous attacks on free speech on Canadian campuses. If we don’t speak out, the media-mouthpieces that dicate public opinion in this country would have us all support the wars, privatize health care and denounce democracy whenever it suits corporate interests. Maclean’s – Go back to reporting on your darling, Lord Black and get out of my university…
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The rally was rather disappointing to me noticing that the supporters of”Israel Apartheid”were causing more hate between the 2 sides.I could see many Jews and Palestinians were mad but not showing it.This “Israel Apartheid” is not a good example of peace but rather makes Jews like me feel unconfortable and is not a good way to make peace it causes more hate.Especially Rafeef Ziadah she has to learn to forgive and if she supports a 2 state for both sides to live safely all this fighting will stop in the Middle East but all she cares in my opinion is fighting and trying to make Jews look bad and cause more hate between the two sides and if she keeps on with this it will stay the same of how it is today in the Middle East.She is making it worst.I could easily tell that the one who was monitoring the speeches was a pro-Palestnian knowing that he cut a Pro-Israeli speaker but he let several Pro-Palestnians talk bad about my country Israel like Raffef Ziadah it was unacceptable in my opinion.