By DAVID LAZARUS
Staff Reporter
MONTREAL - Jewish students at Concordia University are trying to deal with what they allege is a renewed campaign by pro-Palestinian students to target Israel and Jews.
As a result, Jewish students who wear kippot are being made to feel "vulnerable," according to Concordia Hillel president Geremy Miller.
The students also accuse the Concordia administration, which helps to fund the campus-based Palestinian group, of doing nothing to address what they feel are propaganda attacks against Jews.
"Concordia is giving money to something that is blantantly anti-Semitic," said Andrew Elbaz, city-wide president of the Hillel Jewish Student Centre.
Elbaz said that material distributed by the Palestinian student group - called the Concordia Collective for Palestinian Human Rights (CCPHR) - has included Holocaust denial material and references to, "Jews," interchangeably with "Israelis" and "Zionists."
What brought the issue to a head, was the appearance at Concordia on March 12 - a Friday night - of controversial political science professor Norman Finkelstein of Hunter college in New York, as part of the Palestine Awareness Week based at McGill University.
Finkelstein, himself the son of Holocaust survivors, has been criticised by Jewish organizations for comparing the Israeli treatment of Palestinians to the Nazis' persecution of Jews, and for saying that a Holocaust studies "industry" was created to deflect attention away from that treatment.
Finkelstein's lecture, as Shabbat began, prompted more than one 100 students from Hillel campuses across the city to spend Friday evening singing, eating Shabbat dinner and dancing upstairs from where Finkelstein was speaking - at Concordia's downtown Hall Building's mezzanine level.
Press reports quoted Finkelstein as expressing regret in his lecture that observant Jewish students could not attend his talk, which was unavoidably scheduled for a Friday night.
For Miller, the increased level of Palestinian activity on campus this year, marked the end of a lull that followed several years of antagonism between Palestinian and Jewish students on campus, dating back to the beginning of the Palestinian intifadah at the end of 1987.
Miller said the CCPHR spent the last year distributing an "unbelievable" amount of literature on campus, focusing on "human rights" issues.
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Some of the material included accusations of "Jews" poisoning Palestinian wells, but virtually none of the material, Miller said, spoke about violations of Palestinian rights outside the territories.
Miller said what he found particularly disturbing, was that the CCPHR did not seem to recognize the Palestinian Authority, and seemed more in line ideologically with completely rejectionist groups such as Hamas.
At first, he said, the attitude at Concordia Hillel was to ignore the CCPHR, so as not to lend them publicity or credibility.
"But it came to a point where we could no longer just sit there," Miller said.
"The [Concordia] administration is afraid of repercussions, so they refuse to do anything, and say it's a free speech issue.
"But a lot of Jewish students feel unsafe. It's creating an unsafe environment. Jewish students are being singled out, and that's unacceptable on a university campus."
When Miller first learned in February of Finkelstein's scheduled appearance, Hillel students consulted with Concordia professor Frederick Krantz and with Rabbi Reuben Poupko, both of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.
As a result of those discussions, Miller said, it was decided that any form of public "protest" would prove ineffectual and that Jewish students' interests would be better served by holding the Friday night event and countering Palestinian disinformation with facts, so that Jewish students themelves would be armed with a more accurate picture of reality, and not be at risk of being taken in CCPHR propaganda.
Miller said that a small number of Jewish students at Concordia has since formed a group called Jewish students for Israeli pride with that goal in mind, and in an effort to revive a spark of activism among them.
In Miller's view, some Jewish students are uninformed about issues relating to the Middle East conflict and too easily fall victim to the Palestinian propaganda onslaught.
He said that while many Jewish students may agree and others may disagree over Israeli government policies vis-a-vis the Palestinians, Jewish students are unanimous in their general support of Israel as an entity with every right to exist.
He said Jewish students, "can no longer stand by and know only half the facts."
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