January 26, 2015: Dark times in the City of Lights

By Michael Regenstreif

The news from Paris this month was shocking and tragic. It began, January 7, when Islamist terrorists attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine known for its uncompromising skewering of politicians and religion. Ten of the magazine’s staff members – mostly editors and cartoonists – and two police officers were massacred.

The next day, a policewoman was murdered in what first seemed to be an unrelated incident.

And, then, on Friday, January 9, when the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket was crowded with Jewish shoppers preparing for Shabbat, a terrorist from the same al-Qaida-inspired cell as the Charlie Hebdo murderers, entered the store, killed four of the shoppers, and took many more hostage.

At about the same time as the Hyper Cacher events were unfolding, police had the Charlie Hebdo terrorists under siege. In almost simultaneous raids, the terrorists in both locations were killed and the hostages freed.

We later learned that the policewoman killed on January 8 was murdered by the Hyper Cacher terrorist. In all, 17 people were murdered during the three days of terror. The “City of Lights,” and the surrounding areas, had become places of so much darkness.

Almost all of 17 murdered victims were killed for one of three reasons.

• Ten were killed because they worked for a magazine the terrorists took offence to for its depictions of the Muslim prophet, Muhammad, the founder of Islam. Many Muslims believe it is forbidden to depict Muhammad in any way – let alone mockingly as many Charlie Hebdo cartoons had done over the years.

Perhaps it should be noted that the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists had no sacred cows when it came to skewering religion. They were equal opportunists who would offend Christianity, in particular Roman Catholicism, France’s dominant religion, Judaism and other religions no less than they would Islam.

In 2008, Charlie Hebdo actually fired one of its cartoonists because he refused to apologize for an antisemitic cartoon that drew complaints from the Jewish community.

• Three more were killed because they were police officers, representatives of the French state. Some might argue that two of them were killed because they just happened to be on the scene of the Charlie Hebdo attack, but that argument cannot be made about the policewoman murdered the day after. And, in reality, the police on the scene at Charlie Hebdo were there because the state’s fundamental values of freedom were under threat of precisely the kind of terrorist attack that took place. Ironically, one of the murdered policemen at the magazine massacre was himself a Muslim.

• The final four victims were killed simply because they were Jewish. Exactly seven decades after the end of the Holocaust, European Jews were murdered just because they were Jewish.

As National Post columnist Christie Blatchford asked, “It’s curious, isn’t it, how, for some people, when push comes to shove, it’s always about the Jews?

“Does anyone believe for a minute that, when Amedy Coulibaly, in presumed solidarity with his alleged associates the Charlie Hebdo killers, chose to make a grand gesture, he randomly picked a Hyper Cacher supermarket on the eastern edge of Paris?”

And it wasn’t just about the Jews for the terrorist who attacked the kosher supermarket. Antisemitic conspiracy theories quickly surfaced about the Charlie Hebdo attack. The most prevalent of them spread by some anti-Israel activists like Greta Berlin who blamed the attack on Mossad agents posing as Islamist terrorists.

While Wikileaks didn’t blame Israel for the attack, it did take to Twitter to say the “Jewish pro-censorship lobby” legitimized the attacks on Charlie Hebdo because of the complaints about the antisemitic cartoon in 2008.

I mentioned that each of the 17 murdered victims was killed for one of three reasons. Actually, one of the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre was killed for two reasons.

Columnist Elsa Cayat was the only woman killed at Charlie Hebdo. Apparently, the terrorists told the women on the scene they would not be killed. They made an exception, though, for Cayat because she was Jewish. So, it wasn’t just about the Muhammad cartoons for the Charlie Hebdo terrorists; it was about the Jews for them too. Another of the victims, 80-year-old cartoonist Georges Wolinski was also Jewish.

These attacks were the latest in the long string of antisemitic incidents that have had many in France’s Jewish community – the second largest Diaspora community in the world – questioning whether they have a future there.

If there was any silver lining to those terrible in events in France, it was the unprecedented solidarity of literally millions and millions of French citizens who marched through the streets of Paris and in other French cities on January 11 standing solidly against terrorism and for the principals of Western democracy and human rights.

The Paris marchers were joined in the streets by dozens of world leaders at the head of the demonstration. And, among their front ranks, standing just a few feet apart, were Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. While some might be cynical about the of the two of them marching together – especially with all that has been revealed about the machinations behind both being there – it was a symbolically significant moment.

In light of such terrorism and the clear rise in antisemitism across Europe, the world and its leaders need to keep up this united front – and take it well beyond mere symbolism.

August 17, 2009: The Diab affair at Carleton should never have happened

By Michael Regenstreif

It was a shocking act of terrorism, almost three decades ago in Paris, when a powerful bomb, hidden in motorcycle saddlebags, was detonated, allegedly by the Special Operations cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in front of the Rue Copernic Synagogue.

Four people – three French men and one Israeli woman – were killed and about 40 others were injured. It was Erev Simchat Torah and the toll would almost surely have been much worse had the explosion come a few minutes later as congregants exited the shul after services.

Ottawans were shocked last November, when Hassan Diab, a part-time sociology professor at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University, and a dual Lebanese and Canadian citizen, was arrested by the RCMP, accused by French authorities of perpetrating the heinous act.

Diab – who proclaims his innocence – was jailed until bail was granted under strict conditions in late-March. In January, he will face an extradition hearing to determine if he’ll have to return to France to face trial.

No one expected to hear much about Diab until the extradition hearing. But, then, late last month, news broke that Carleton’s department of sociology and anthropology had hired Diab to teach introductory sociology to summer students beginning July 28.

The university should have anticipated the controversy that would result from hiring an alleged terrorist. As the Ottawa Citizen said in an editorial published July 31, “If he stood accused of sexual harassment you can bet no sociology department would ever have anything to do with him, but trying to kill Jews? Hey, it was a long time ago.”

Diab spent one day in the classroom before Carleton cancelled his contract and replaced him with another professor.

Just as predictable as the controversy of hiring Diab was the reaction of some of his colleagues to his firing. Thirty members of Carleton’s department of sociology and anthropology signed an op-ed piece in the Citizen demanding his reinstatement, painting his dismissal as post-9/11 injustice and discrimination.

The French case is strong enough that Canadian authorities arrested Diab, jailed him for several months pending a bail hearing, then released him under the very strict bail conditions until the extradition hearing, which was determined to be justified.

Diab has not been convicted of the crimes to which he stands accused and must be regarded as innocent until proven guilty. And, if he’s cleared of the charges, they should not be held against him. But that doesn’t mean he should be teaching first year undergrads – or PhD students for that matter – while standing accused of terrorism and multiple murders.

Intro to sociology is a course that can be taught by any sociology faculty member, and probably by most grad students in the department. Carleton did not owe this course to Diab. This entire episode, so predictable from start to finish, should not have happened.

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Twice since I’ve been at the Bulletin, I’ve done interviews with highly placed Israelis who spoke about the openness of Israeli society to its gay and lesbian community, of how Israel was unique among all Middle Eastern countries in this regard.

When I interviewed then-ambassador Alan Baker in April last year for our special Israel @ 60 supplement, he talked about that Israeli openness and pointed out that there were even Palestinian gays and lesbians who have sought asylum in Israel from the discrimination they faced in their own society.

Earlier this summer, retired-Admiral Abraham Ben-Shoshan, who now heads the Tel Aviv Foundation, visited the Bulletin office to talk about the city of Tel Aviv and the foundation. Ben-Shoshan mentioned the city’s live-and-let-live attitude, its openness to gay culture and such events as its very popular gay pride parade.

Sadly, that live-and-let-live attitude was put to the test early this month when a disguised gunman in Tel Aviv entered a community centre support group meeting for gay teenagers and sprayed the room with machine gun fire murdering two people and wounding five others.

Israelis were shocked by what is widely believed to be a hate-crime. To his credit, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was unequivocal in his statement that it was a “terrorist act,” that he rejected such “gratuitous hatred” and that the gay community in Israel had special needs that should be met with openness and sensitivity.