On June 13, 2016, under the title: “Egypt ,
Forty-One Months Later,” the New York Times published excerpts from a book that
was written by an Egyptian woman named Yasmine El Rashidi. The title of her
book is “Chronicle of a Last Summer. A Novel of Egypt ”.
This being a novel, and there being no indication as to how
much of what's in the excerpts is real and how much is fiction, I must reassure
the readers that what follows is the truth as I recollect it almost half a
century later. I am telling my story at this time because I'll never have a
chance as timely as this one to illustrate so vividly the contrast that exists
between two cultures – that of ruthless men and that of cowardly boys.
Here is the passage in Rashidi's account that prompted me to
write my story: “A man … had walked towards them. I had noticed his shoes. They
were familiar shoes. Shoes we saw a lot. Shoes of the undercover police. They
were pointed, with a ledge.”
And here is my story. At some point during the mid-1960s and
the end of the decade, I was taking a night course in the humanities at York University
in Ontario .
The professor was John Harney who was also a member of the New Democratic Party
(NDP), and he happened to be running for the leadership of the party at the
time. I was also working full time, and the union to which I belonged had a
close relationship with the NDP. And so I managed to convince all of our
delegates to vote for Harney at the convention that was held later in the year.
Perhaps, out of his sense of duty, professor Harney felt it
necessary to warn the entire class that because he is a member of a party
considered to be Socialist and accused of sympathizing with the old Soviet Union , we may all go under the surveillance of the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). He didn't say electronic surveillance
because he didn't know about it at the time. But he told us we'll recognize an
RCMP agent by the shoes he wore. They will always be clean, he said, and they
will always shine. He didn't say anything about them being pointed or having a
ledge.
I did not worry about that because I was more annoyed by
something else. I had received a visitor from a member of the Canadian Jewish
Congress who had invited himself to my house for the purpose of warning me that
I must stop writing letters to the editor … or the practice will get me into
trouble. I did not stop writing but the editors stopped publishing my letters
undoubtedly because he had visited them too.
What the editors did not do, however, was stop circulating
my missives among themselves inside the loop – they who were the elites of the
establishment. Thus, each time that I sent a piece of writing to one of them,
they engaged in a “mining” orgy like a pack of starved hyenas scavenging on the
carcass of a game that had succumbed to the hunting skills of a more powerful
predator.
And then it happened that an editor of a major Toronto newspaper told me
I was under the surveillance of the RCMP. To make certain I got the point, he
told me about the furniture I had in my apartment, and the books I had on my
shelves as described by those who were breaking into my apartment and taking
note of everything in it. Over the years, I repeatedly complained to my Members
of Parliament (MP) and asked for action to end this child-like madness. The
trouble was that the MPs were themselves so terrified of the RCMP; they did not
want me to call on them again. That's when it dawned on me that I was living in
the most cowardly police state ever to have existed. What made matters even
worse was that each time I contacted a Member of Parliament to complain, the
RCMP would visit me at home or at work, or would tell me to report to a
designated place, or to their headquarter. I met them – always two officers at
a time – who listened to my complaint and assured me that I had nothing to
worry about because I was clean like a whistle.
But why can they not end the surveillance and leave me
alone? That's when they went mum. When I displayed anger at the fact that
information about me was circulated among all those who wanted to hurt me and
did, one of the officers would talk about people being so desperate they
committed suicide. It is as if they suggested I should do the same. And there
was a time when they hinted that it was the Jews who had me under surveillance.
This turned out to be half the truth. In fact, I later befriended several
individuals in the media and outside of it, who were in the loop, who knew some
of what was going on, and were telling me.
It turned out the RCMP and the Jews were working together,
harassing the Arabs – be they Christian or Muslim – to prevent them from
participating in any activity that would raise their profile and give them
prominence. That's because the Jews did not want competition, and the RCMP were
terrified that something like this article would go out and tell the world what
it's like to live in a Canadian style police state.
It was also confirmed to me that both the Jews and the RCMP
wanted me to get so desperate, I would commit suicide or engage in activities
so stupid, I would be arrested. The police would then use the event to justify
their lifelong harassment of me, and their destruction of the life I was meant
to live but never did because they blocked me everywhere I knocked at a door –
be that in Canada or outside of it.