April 5, 2010: Ann Coulter played Ottawa like a violin

By Michael Regenstreif

It could have – should have – been an insignificant event.

Ann Coulter, the American far right-wing demagogue, blew through Ottawa as we were working on this issue of the Bulletin and managed to grab a whole lot of international attention for a speech she didn’t make at the University of Ottawa.

A chain of events, that began with an email sent by uOttawa Provost François Houle to Coulter warning her that freedom of expression in Canada is not seen as quite the same as freedom of speech in the United States, and inviting her to “educate yourself, if need be, as to what is acceptable in Canada and to do so before your planned visit here,” eventually led to Coulter’s organizers cancelling her Ottawa appearance at the last minute because, they said, they feared for her safety in the wake of an anti-Coulter demonstration outside the uOttawa theatre at which she was to speak.

Here we go again, I thought, it’s just like last year’s George Galloway case, but from the other end of the winged spectrum.

Galloway is the fringe British MP and far left-wing demagogue – and commentator for Press TV, the Iranian government’s English-language propaganda network – who has delivered highly publicized cash gifts to Hamas and was denied entry into Canada for a four-speech tour. So, instead of playing to, perhaps, a couple of thousand people in total, Galloway got a platform to spout his views on every newscast and interview program in the country and was seen and heard by millions.

So it was with Coulter.

Houle’s email, and, then, the cancelled speech, became huge stories that allowed Coulter to paint herself as a victim of repression being denied the right to speak.

Without the email, and the fuss that almost anyone could have predicted Coulter would have made about it, she might have generated a little bit of local coverage at her three stops. Instead, all the national TV networks were there for Coulter’s London and Calgary speeches – and for the Ottawa speech that never was – and she generated coverage in literally thousands of publications around the world, on talk radio and TV, and on countless websites and blogs.

Coulter, like Galloway before her, was handed a violin. And she played it for so much more than it was worth.

The email to Coulter from the uOttawa provost seems to have been unprecedented. And, while Coulter has a habit of saying hateful things – Muslims should ride camels instead of airplanes, Jews should convert to Christianity to become perfected – seemingly for the sole purpose of being offensive, there is no evidence the university has ever sent a similar warning to other speakers, like some of the Israel Apartheid Week firebrands, who also have records of saying things that are hateful and offensive.

July 20, 2009: Minister of health should act now on 21 new beds for Hillel Lodge

By Michael Regenstreif

There was a report, June 10, in the Ottawa Citizen that said “elderly residents in Eastern Ontario wait the longest of anyone in the province to be admitted to nursing homes.” Province wide, the report said, waiting times have doubled in the past two years.

A month before that, in the Federation Report of the May 11 Bulletin, Jeffrey Miller, president of the Bess and Moe Greenberg Family Hillel Lodge, wrote about the long waiting list and waiting time for admission to Hillel Lodge. He also noted that Hillel Lodge continues to pursue and wait for Ministry approval to open up 21 additional long-term care beds.

Two years ago, when Ontario waiting times for nursing home admissions were half as long as they are today, long waiting lists were already a problem. In the October 1, 2007 issue of the Bulletin, Barry Fishman wrote an article about the Lodge waiting for approval for those beds and about the space – the Joseph and Inez Zelikovitz Pavilion – that was reserved for them.

That issue came out just before the provincial election held on October 10, 2007 and I reported on the meeting the Federation’s Communications and Community Relations Committee held with Liberal candidates Jim Watson, then minister of health promotion and now minister of municipal affairs and housing; Madeleine Meilleur, then and now minister of community and social services; and Yasir A. Naqvi, who became the MPP for Ottawa Centre, the riding in which Hillel Lodge is located.

The 21 additional beds being proposed for Hillel Lodge was discussed at the meeting and all three candidates voiced their strong support for the proposal. Watson enthusiastically said he’d undertake to have the government act on the 21 new beds for Hillel Lodge within the first six months of a new Liberal mandate. We are now 21 months into that new mandate and Hillel Lodge is still waiting for the go-ahead to proceed with finishing the pavilion and setting up the beds. Watson and Naqvi, I would note, remain in the Lodge’s corner. They brought Health and Long-Term Care Minister David Caplan to the Lodge on January 16 to tour the facility and meet with Lodge officials.

For the past six months, the minister whose signature will allow Hillel Lodge to proceed, has had first-hand knowledge of the Lodge, what it does and what it could do to help alleviate the critical shortage of long-term nursing home beds in this community.

Waiting times for long-term care beds were problematic when the Bulletin reported on this issue almost two years ago and, as noted, have doubled since then. Will they double again over the next two years? Further delays make no sense. Minister Caplan should act now.

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This issue, we introduce a new monthly column, World Affairs, by Oliver Javanpour. Well known in the community, Oliver is an Ottawa-based public policy and international relations consultant. Oliver was born in Iran and his first column deals with the internal challenges to the Iranian regime since the election there last month.

As Oliver notes, such entities as Hamas and Hezbollah, and many other organizations and schools around the world, are beholden to the Iranian regime for their funding. One such organization, funded by the Iranian government, is its English-language satellite news channel and website, Press TV.

It turns out that one of Press TV’s weekly program hosts and commentators is none other than George Galloway, the fringe British MP who was denied entry into Canada earlier this year because of the very public financial aid he delivered to Hamas, an organization banned by Canada because of its terrorist activities.

While you’d be hard pressed to find any commentator in the western media who thinks the Iranian election was an exercise in democracy, Galloway assures us, in his Press TV program available via a series of videos on YouTube, that the Ahmadinejad victory was completely legitimate and that Iran is the very model of pure democracy.

According to Galloway, it’s the western media that has fuelled the massive Iranian protests that erupted after the election. Western media commentators, Galloway tells us, “hate the Islamic Republic” and they “hate President Ahmadinejad – not for any bad things he’s done, or any mistakes he’s made … It’s because Iran will not bow the knee to western power … [and] to the Zionist settler State of Israel, which is an apartheid state.”

Galloway’s Press TV commentaries reveal him to be nothing but a paid propagandist for the brutal Iranian regime. It’s so very sad that many Canadian leftists – including some Jewish leftists – see Galloway as some sort of revered truth-teller.

April 6, 2009: Was the George Galloway case about free speech?

By Michael Regenstreif

British MP George Galloway was scheduled to speak April 2 in Ottawa at the Bronson Centre as part of a four-stop Canadian speaking tour that was also to have brought him to Toronto, Mississauga and Montreal.

By the time you read this column, you’ll know whether or not Galloway made it to his Canadian dates. Prior to his scheduled visit, the Canadian Border Security Agency had declared him unwelcome in Canada because of his support for Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls Gaza. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, citing Galloway’s “financial, material support for an illegal terrorist organization,” said the government would not overturn the agency’s decision to keep Galloway out of the country.

As I write – on March 27 – I can’t say for sure that Galloway didn’t make it to the Bronson Centre. His Canadian tour organizers had a federal court hearing scheduled for March 29 in Toronto and were hoping the court would overturn the ruling barring Galloway from entering Canada. If unsuccessful in court, they vowed to hold the events anyway with Galloway speaking via a closed-circuit Internet connection.

After the war with Hamas in Gaza, Galloway led a 5,000-mile overland convoy that delivered well over $1.4 million U.S. worth of material goods to Hamas. Not to a UN relief agency, but directly to Hamas. That, apparently, is what got him barred from Canada.

In Gaza, Galloway gave an interview to IslamOnline in which he heaped praise on Hamas and its “prime minister,” Ismail Haniya. He came to Gaza, he said, to “stand beside” Haniya. “I have offered him corporeal and financial support.”

Galloway went on to say that Hamas does “nothing illegal here in Gaza,” adding “Haniya is the PM of all the free people, not only in Gaza, but also all over the world. We accept him as a PM for the free people.”

That was hardly the first time Galloway had shown his support for terrorists. Google him and you’ll find lots of examples. On July 22, 2006, during Israel’s war with Hezbollah, Galloway told a crowd at a pro-Hezbollah demonstration that “Hezbollah has never been a terrorist organisation” and declared “I am here to glorify the Lebanese resistance, Hezbollah. I am here to glorify the leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.”

In a 1994 speech in Baghdad, Galloway famously told Saddam Hussein, “Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability,” although he later claimed to be saluting the Iraqi people rather than the dictator.

Galloway has been a member of the British House of Commons since 1987. He was originally a member of the Labour Party, but was expelled from the party in 2003. He is now the only MP for Respect, a far-left fringe party.

After the last election, Galloway told Al-Jazeera, “I was re-elected despite all the efforts made by the British government, the Zionist movement and the newspapers and news media which are controlled by Zionism.”

The Ottawa Peace Alliance was one of the main sponsors of Galloway’s Canadian speaking tour. It’s hard to see how peace fits into George Galloway’s agenda.

The Ottawa Peace Alliance and the other Galloway sponsors have framed the issue of his being barred from Canada as a free speech issue and have set up a website called defendfreespeech.ca. In reading through the website – at least as of March 27 – there is nothing there about free speech as a principle that applies to all people and all points of view. Only as something that George Galloway deserves.

I find it interesting that they’re painting the Galloway case as a free speech issue because one of the other main sponsors of Galloway’s Canadian tour is Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), a group that first gained national attention in 2002 by promising to shut down the speech that Benjamin Netanyahu – then a former prime minister of Israel – was scheduled to give on September 9 that year at Concordia University in Montreal.

True to their promise, SPHR led a violent riot that day at Concordia that forced the cancellation of Netanyahu’s speech and, for years afterwards, SPHR trumpeted gleefully about how they prevented Netanyahu from speaking. It’s hard to see how free speech fits into the SPHR agenda.

And, in a bit of irony, SPHR was to have presented Galloway’s Montreal speech in Room 110 of Concordia University’s Hall Building, the very room their violent riot prevented Netanyahu from speaking in on September 9, 2002.

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The late Terry Schwarzfeld was a good friend of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin. She contributed articles on occasion and I had the great pleasure of sitting down for an interview with her just before she left for Calgary in November to be installed as national president of Canadian Hadassah-WIZO. Our deepest condolences go to the Cotsman and Schwarzfeld families.