March 19, 2012: Covering the Israeli prime minister’s visit to Ottawa

By Michael Regenstreif

It was quite the interesting experience covering the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Ottawa from March 2 to 4.

Actually, the only day I was really able to do some coverage was March 2, a Friday, when Netanyahu was on Parliament Hill for talks with Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Saturday, Shabbat, was a private day and the press, including the Jewish press, was barred from Netanyahu’s briefing with leaders of Canada’s Jewish community organized by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) at the Rideau Club. More on that later.

Security on Parliament Hill was the tightest I’ve ever seen it when I arrived on Friday morning. The general public was not being allowed on to the Hill that morning. You had to have a pass just to get on to the Hill.

Partway up was another checkpoint where my pass was checked again. From there, a Mountie escorted me up to the Centre Block and another Mountie took me to the East Block entrance where they were screening all visitors that morning. He told me it was the tightest security he’d seen on Parliament Hill since U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit three years ago.

I went through the security screening at the entrance to the East Block and was escorted to my destination, the Confederation Hall Rotunda in Centre Block where Netanyahu would sign the House of Commons and Senate guest books about an hour later.

At the Rotunda, I was greeted by Terry Guillon, chief of the Press Gallery, who gave me the option of either being outside for Netanyahu’s arrival on the Hill or inside to witness and photograph him signing the guest books. I opted for the latter.

Guillon also showed me the room where the press conference would be and told me that only two questions would be allowed, one from the Israeli media and one from the Canadian media (which went to the Globe and Mail).

Then it was the first waiting game, standing around the Rotunda for about an hour chatting with various media personnel and Hill, PMO and Embassy of Israel staffers until Netanyahu and Harper arrived.

After the ceremony, the two prime ministers retreated to Harper’s office for the first of their meetings and we spent another hour or so waiting for the press conference.

The press conference was all of 15 minutes. Each leader spoke briefly, first Harper, then Netanyahu, and the two questions were asked and answered.

And that was pretty much it.

As mentioned, the press was barred from the meeting CIJA organized for Netanyahu with invited leaders from Canada’s Jewish community. Earlier in the week, CIJA CEO Shimon Fogel apologetically told me the decision to bar even the Jewish media came directly from the Israeli PMO, that he himself wished it wasn’t so.

On Parliament Hill, I chatted with veteran Jerusalem Post reporter Herb Keinon, part of the Israeli media contingent travelling with Netanyahu. He said he’d been quite surprised to find out the media was not being allowed to attend the event with Jewish community leaders. In his experience covering Netanyahu, the media has generally been welcome at similar events when he meets with Jewish community leadership on his travels.

Netanyahu’s decision to bar even the Jewish media was certainly not in keeping with what’s happened during recent visits to Ottawa by other senior ministers in his government.

Six months ago, when Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was here, there was a similar meeting organized by CIJA, which I covered. Lieberman was open and approachable at that meeting.

And, in October 2010, when Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s vice-prime minister and minister of strategic affairs, was in Ottawa, he sat down with me for an exclusive 45-minute interview.

From what I’ve gathered, Netanyahu did not say anything at the meeting that he hasn’t said elsewhere on the record. So, it defies logic that he wouldn’t want a Jewish newspaper reporting on the meeting to the Jewish community.

March 5, 2012: Norman Finkelstein rips the BDS movement to shreds

By Michael Regenstreif

It’s that time of year again. Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) is scheduled to take place from March 5 to 9 at several Canadian campuses, including the University of Ottawa and Carleton University. The annual IAW events were first organized eight years ago in support of the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement against Israel. The claim that Israel is an apartheid society is a cornerstone of the BDS movement – and one that has been refuted often. See, for example, a Huffington Post column by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz for a cogent analysis. tinyurl.com/dershowitz-IAW

This year, the BDS movement is in a late-breaking uproar because American political science professor Norman G. Finkelstein sat down, February 9, with a pro-BDS interviewer at Imperial College in London and ripped the BDS movement to shreds.

Make no mistake: Finkelstein is no friend of the State of Israel. For the better part of three decades, Finkelstein has been the most prominent Jewish anti-Israel activist – with the possible exception of his mentor Noam Chomsky.

Denied tenure at DePaul University in 2007, Finkelstein has made a career of lecturing on behalf of anti-Israel groups around the world and by writing a string of anti-Israel books. A son of Holocaust survivors, Finkelstein’s best-known book is The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, in which he claims that Israel has exploited the Holocaust in achieving its aims.

In this surprising video – which you can see in its 31-minute entirety at vimeo.com/36854424 – Finkelstein exposes the BDS movement, which he repeatedly refers to as a “cult,” for its “silliness, childishness, and a lot of leftist posturing” that seeks to obfuscate its true goal: the elimination of the State of Israel.

According to Finkelstein, the BDS movement does not come out and state its true goal because it knows the public will not buy into a movement seeking the dismantling of Israel.

“No Israel. That’s what it’s really about. And you think you’re fooling anybody? You think you’re so clever that people can’t figure that out for themselves?

“No, they understand the arithmetic perfectly well. Are you going to reach a broad public which is going to hear the Israeli side [say] ‘They want to destroy us?’ No, you’re not. And, frankly, you know what, you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t reach a broad public because you’re dishonest. And I wouldn’t trust those people if I had to live in this state. I wouldn’t. It’s dishonesty.”

Finkelstein also rips the BDS movement for taking its marching orders and following the lead of “Palestinian civil society.”

Recalling earlier movements he’s been part of, Finkelstein said the anti-Vietnam War movement did not take its marching orders from Hanoi, and Latin American solidarity movements (in the Reagan era) did not take their orders from Nicaragua. They acted, he said, on their own initiative.

He went on to describe “Palestinian civil society” as a collection of mostly one-person NGOs in Ramallah completely incapable of mobilizing more than a few hundred Palestinians.

Toward the end of the interview, Finkelstein suggests that a solution to the conflict is possible. A solution, he said, that would not be perfect, but which would satisfy most Israelis and most Palestinians. Although he does not explicitly say so, the obvious conclusion is the two-state solution. And that flies in the face of what IAW and the BDS movement are all about.