York University in Toronto, Canada is my Alma Mater.
Having to work for a living, sometimes hundreds of miles away from Toronto, I
took courses on and off over many years before I graduated. During that time, I
saw life on the university campus transform somewhat––not a whole lot to cheer
me at the time, but enough to give me hope for the future.
Right after graduation, I got a job in Montreal where
I lived for about twenty years before returning to live in a town near Toronto,
near York University. I have been following the events at the university ever
since, and what I saw began to cheered me up. In a moment, I'll tell you what I
see as changed drastically since then but first, let me tell you about the
reason why I decided to engage in this discussion.
It is that an article appeared under the title: “What
To Do About The Increasingly Vicious Anti-Jew Campus Protests,” and the
subtitle: “Institutions of higher learning are increasingly in thrall to
anti-Israel groups that disguise bigotry an antisemitism behind flowery
manipulations of the truth.” It was written by Beth Bailey and published on
December 6, 2019 in The Federalist. Bailey discussed several universities, one
of them being my Alma Mater, York University.
What happened was that a panel of the genocidal
Israeli military came to York University to explain why the globally endorsed
boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) of the goods produced in military
occupied Palestine should end despite the genocide and ethnic cleansing that's
ongoing in there. The Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) protested, and
Beth Bailey tried to make a big deal about that.
To make her point, Bailey quoted Amit Deri, a member
of the Israeli military, as well as the Jerusalem Post. The following is what
she gathered from them: “One video shows individuals shoving and trying to [but
never did] punch one another in a packed stairwell. A pro-Palestine protestor
claims he was punched by a pro-Israel attendee. Reservists [of the Israeli
army] stated that protestors assaulted a few Jewish students [but no video to
show it]. One person was injured during the [entire] protest”.
And this is what prompted Beth Bailey to describe
those events as follows: “What resulted was antisemitic violence colored with
calls for genocide as protestors attempted to intimidate, demonize, and
disenfranchise Israelis, Zionists, and Jews.” It looks like this woman is
confused about the location of the wailing wall. Next time she wants to wail
over nothing, she better find the right wall on which to pour her heart out.
So then, what happened when I was studying at York
University? Well, that was a time just after The Toronto Star had published a
letter I had written to the editor under the title: “Don't listen to
propaganda, Egypt is a civilized country,” in which I said nothing more
out-of-line than urge the readers to reject the negative portrayal of Egypt,
which they heard and saw everywhere they looked in the print and audio-visual
media.
This was enough for the Canadian Jewish Congress to
run to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and tell them they have
information about me that shows I am a threat to the country, the continent and
the whole world. And this was enough for the secret police to put me under
surveillance for forty years even though they met me several times during those
years and told me they had nothing against me, that I was as clean as a whistle
and that I should put my mind at ease.
But why not stop the surveillance and the handing of
information they gather about me to those who used it to destroy my chances at
breaking through the blacklisting of me? I explained they had to stop so that I
could get my career going. The RCMP had no answer to my question, but I learned
later that the Jews, the RCMP and the Globe and Mail, were terrified I may
become well known and tell my story to the public. They thought that if this
happened, their stature in the world will be reduced to less than that of Idi Amin's
cat.
And it was during that time that York University could
have played a role to end the madness but did not lift a finger even though
some of my professors appeared on television shows as contributors. They knew
it was enough for them to drop just one word, and it would have put an end to
the madness, but they feared it would also have ended their careers.
Another thing I did to put an end to the madness, was
talk to my members of parliament every time a new member was elected in the
district where I lived. I am sure they tried to help but got nowhere. And this
included a member of parliament that had been a professor of economics at York
University. He was elected during the brief period that Joe Clark was Prime
Minister. This is when I learned that the entire Canadian government was
terrified of the combined power of the Canadian Jewish Congress and the RCMP.
In fact, I know the story of careers that were ruined
because the people tried to help me. There was a minister who sired a child
with a woman that was not his wife. There was a speaker of the House of Commons
who was pressing the prime minister to bring my case to the floor of the House,
and was kicked out of his position. And there was an editor-in-chief whose son
was exposed as a pedophile.