Eyewitness to Hatred: Concordia University, Montreal

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.

It is short, I'll paste it here.

I have come here to voice what I believe is an urgently needed reminder: that the war on terror can be won with clarity and courage or lost with confusion and vacillation. International terrorism depends on the support of sovereign states, and fighting it demands that these regimes be either deterred or dismantled. In one clear sentence, President George W. Bush expressed this principle in his historic speech a year ago: "No distinction will be made between the terrorists and the regimes that harbour them." Such strategic clarity was applied with devastating effect to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that supported al-Qaeda terrorism. But that is only the first step in dismantling the global terrorist network. The other terrorist regimes must now be rapidly dealt with in similar fashion. Israel has not experienced a terrorist attack like the one the world witnessed on that horrific day last September. That unprecedented act of barbarism will never be forgotten. But, in the past two years, Israel´s six million citizens have buried more than 600 victims of terror -- a per capita toll equivalent to more than half a dozen September 11ths.

This daily, hourly carnage is also unprecedented in terrorism´s bloody history. Yet, at the very moment when support for Israel´s war against terror should be stronger than ever, my nation is asked by many to stop fighting. Though we are assured by friends that we have the right to defend ourselves, we are effectively asked not to exercise that right. But our friends should have no illusions. With or without international support, the government of Israel must fight not only to defend its people, restore a dangerously eroded deterrence and secure the Jewish state, but also to ensure that the free world wins the war against terror in this pivotal arena in the heart of the Middle East.

Instead of praising Israel for seeking to minimize civilian casualties through careful and deliberate action, most of the world´s governments shamelessly condemn it. For many months, many of these governments have rightly supported the war against Afghan terror. Yet their patience for the war against Palestinian terror ran out quickly. The explanations that are offered for this double standard are not convincing.

First, it is said that war on Palestinian terror is different because a political process exists that can restore security and advance peace. This is not so. There can never be a political solution for terror. The grievance of terrorists can never be redressed through diplomacy. That will only encourage more terror. Yasser Arafat´s terrorist regime must be toppled, not courted. The Oslo agreements are dead. Yasser Arafat killed them. He tore them to shreds and soaked them in Jewish blood by violating every one of its provisions, including the two core commitments he made at Oslo: to recognize the state of Israel and to permanently renounce terrorism. With such a regime and such failure of leadership, no political process is possible. In fact, a political process can only begin when this terrorist regime is dismantled.

Second, it is said that waging war on Palestinian terror will destabilize the region and cripple the imminent war against Saddam Hussein. This concern is also misplaced. Clearly, the urgent need to topple Saddam is paramount. The commitment of America and Britain to dismantle his terrorist dictatorship before it obtains nuclear weapons deserves the unconditional support of all sane governments. But contrary to conventional wisdom, what has destabilized the region is not Israeli action against Palestinian terror, but rather the constant pressure exerted on Israel to show restraint. It is precisely the exceptional restraint shown by Israel that has unwittingly emboldened its enemies and inadvertently increased the threat of a wider conflict. I must also tell you that the charge that Israel, of all countries, is hindering the war against Saddam is woefully unjust. For my country has done more than any other to make victory over him possible. Twenty-one years ago, Prime Minister Menachem Begin sent the Israeli air force on a predawn raid hundreds of miles away on one of the most dangerous military missions in our nation´s history. When our pilots returned, we had successfully destroyed Saddam´s atomic bomb factory and crippled his capacity to build nuclear weapons. Israel was safer -- and so was the world. But rather than thanking us for safeguarding freedom, the entire world condemned us.

Ten years later, when American troops expelled Iraqi forces in the gulf war, then Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney expressed a debt of gratitude to Israel for the bold and determined action a decade earlier that had made victory possible. That is why there is no alternative to winning this war without delay. No part of the terrorist network can be left intact. For if not fully eradicated, like the most malignant cancer, it will regroup and attack again with even greater ferocity. Only by dismantling the entire network will we be assured of victory. But to assure that this evil does not re-emerge a decade or two from now, we must not merely uproot terror, but also plant the seeds of freedom. Because only under tyranny can a diseased totalitarian mindset be widely cultivated. This totalitarian mindset, which is essential for terrorists to suspend the normal rules that govern a man´s conscience and prevent him from committing these grisly acts, does not breed in a climate of democracy and freedom. The open debate and plurality of ideas that buttress all genuine democracies and the respect for human rights and the sanctity of life that are the shared values of all free societies are a permanent antidote to the poison that the sponsors of terror seek to inject into the minds of their recruits. That is why it is also imperative that, once the terrorist regimes in the Middle East are swept away, the free world must begin to build democracy in their place.

We simply can no longer afford to allow this region to remain cloistered by a fanatic militancy. We must let the winds of freedom and independence finally penetrate the one region in the world that clings to unreformed tyranny.

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Benjamin Netanyahu was the Prime Minister of Israel from 1996-1999.

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