Profs weigh in on Mac’s response to anti-Semitism

T. Belman. Unmentioned in this article is the fact that often what is classified as anti-Muslim is legitimate criticism of Islam and its followers. A hate crime is a prejudice-motivated crime. A crime is a crime but why there a sub class of ones that are prejudice motivated.

Is all prejudice bad. The left would have you think so when they work to equate all cultures. Everybody discriminates, i.e., chooses. That in it self is healthy. Yes, some discrimination is bad and has been legislated against. All cutures should have to compete for your affection. None should get a free ride or worse, protection from criticism. It is right to be Islamophobic considering what Muslims are doing to Europe. Some value systems should be banned. Christianity and Christians are constantly under attack by progressives. If they can do this, surely the same standards should apply to how Islam and its followers.. Criticsm of any religion must be permissible. Even moreso a political system. Islam is both.

This is a huge subject, one that requires pages and pages to address. I have just scratched the surface with a few provocative statements.

Thus the puzzling question remains: why does McMaster University not confront anti-Semitism, while it is careful always to complain publicly about other, perhaps more fashionable, forms of prejudice?

 by W. F. Smyth and Marianne Walters, HAMITON SPECTATOR

Benign tolerance of hate speech against Jews contrasts with swift reprisals against forms of expression that are without doubt reprehensible — but certainly no more so than explicit anti-Semitism, W. F. Smyth and Marianne Walters write. – Barry Gray , The Hamilton Spectator

A recent article in The Spectator deals with the response, or rather the absence thereof, by McMaster University to egregious anti-Semitic activity and commentary by “Palestinian” groups on campus over several years.

During those years we ourselves have had repeated personal experience with the McMaster administration’s reluctance to deal with this problem in an appropriate, timely, and effective manner.

In March 2013, the Never Again Group, of which we are proud members, brought Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, an eloquent and effective activist, to McMaster to speak about her experience in California, for decades a hot-bed of campus anti-Semitism. Her talk was well-attended, and she met with Patrick Deane, McMaster’s president, to discuss appropriate responses to anti-Semitism. No discernible change resulted. On the other hand, in 2016 the University of California campuses responded positively to Rossman-Benjamin’s arguments by adopting an explicit common strategy to curb anti-Semitism.

In particular, the policy foreshadows the U.S. Senate’s recognition that “anti-Zionism,” as promoted by campus groups all over North America, including at McMaster, is very often just thinly-veiled anti-Semitism. To argue against the development and protection of a Jewish nation is to argue for genocide at the hands of the vast majority in the region whose dream is the utter destruction of Israel.

In September 2013, together with several other concerned Hamiltonians, we wrote Dr. Deane directly, drawing his attention to the 2011 report of the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism (CPCCA). This ground-breaking multipartisan report identified campus anti-Semitism as a serious problem, and made several policy recommendations to deal with its various manifestations, in particular the “vulgarity” of Israel Apartheid Week (IAW). The president responded, saying that he would “take some time to reflect” on the issues raised, but to our knowledge no action was ever taken.

Indeed, in March 2014 we attended the annual plenary McMaster Student Union meeting, at which many students chanted “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea” — effectively advocating the destruction of Israel and its Jewish inhabitants. Earlier that month IAW had been celebrated by many of those same students with (as usual) blatantly anti-Semitic speakers and events. Not a peep out of any McMaster administrator, even though we drew these events to the president’s attention. Nevertheless, when at about the same time an engineering student group published a sexist song book, McMaster officials publicly expressed outrage, immediately suspended the group, and publicly disciplined the main offenders. So benign tolerance of hate speech against Jews contrasts with swift reprisals against forms of expression that are without doubt reprehensible — but certainly no more so than explicit anti-Semitism.

Stymied in our efforts to persuade McMaster officialdom that anti-Semitism is indeed a problem, we contacted the Council of Ontario Universities in March 2016 to propose that, based on the CCPCA report, the COU should co-ordinate a strategy to combat anti-Semitism across all Ontario universities, similar to the recently-adopted system in California. Once again, no interest.

Statistics Canada tells us that in 2016 there were 1.6 times as many hate crimes against Jews as against Muslims. Thus, roughly speaking, a Jew in Canada is close to five times as likely to experience a hate crime as a Muslim. The recent Canary Mission report on “Jew Hate at McMaster University” makes it clear that on our campus the situation may be worse, fuelled in particular by the student group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights. In December of last year, based on this report, we again expressed our concerns to the McMaster president, but received no response.

Notwithstanding these statistics, the McMaster “Equity & Inclusion” office is promoting an “Islamophobia” agenda, every year seeking out incidents of possible hostility against Muslims and publicizing them as much as possible. We attended one of these “Islamophobia” meetings and were unable to discern any real hostility to Muslims: a few Muslim females said they “felt nervous” walking on campus at night! When asked directly why the Equity office took no interest in anti-Semitic incidents on campus, the two hijab-clad presenters explained that there was a Hillel presence on campus to take care of Jews. But of course Hillel has a primarily cultural mission, and in any case has no mandate to speak for the university.

Thus the puzzling question remains: why does McMaster University not confront anti-Semitism, while it is careful always to complain publicly about other, perhaps more fashionable, forms of prejudice?

1. F. Smyth & Marianne Walters are both Professor Emeritus at McMaster University.