My friend Isaac Apter was assaulted at U of T. This happened at the stupid Israel Apartheid Week. The organizers need to be held accountable for their goons. U of T needs to think very hard before allowing this nonsense to happen again without strict supervision.
I was assaulted last night at Israel Apartheid Week by an organizer/hired security gaurd.
Today at 9:47am
A few people have asked me this morning about what happened last night at UofT. I attended the Israel Apartheid Week event with a few friends and was prepared to ask a couple questions. The girl sitting next to me asked a question to one of the speakers about the problems with Hamas's Charter. The speaker answered the question by discussing occupation and Israel's "racist" policies, etc, instead of actually addressing the issue of Hamas's Charter and denial of Israel's right to exist. A couple people in the crowd, including myself, shouted out to the speaker "answer the question!" (It is generally fair game at these events where there are more activists present than observers to request that the speaker focus on the question asked). At this point, one of the (probably unlicensed) private security guards hired by SAIA approached me from behind. When I turned around in my seat to look at him, he grabbed and squeezed the back of my neck and growled at me from about 10 inches in front of my face "you shut the fuck up! shut the fuck up!" At this point I kept my cool moved back and I was like "get away from me bro, don't touch me!" One of the event organizers called for someone to ask the police standing outside in the hallway to come in to remove me for "causing a disruption" at which point I encouraged the police to come in to record the name and identity of the individual who assaulted me. I left the room promptly and reported the incident to the police. I will be filing a formal report later today with Metro Police.
I personally believe in freedom of speech and that students should be allowed to book lecture halls to present speakers who express radical, even extreme views. The presence, however, of (probably) unlicensed, private security gaurds wearing bullet proof vests and leather jackets who physicaly assault people who speak up against those radical, extreme views, must be confronted. SAIA must not be allowed to bring hired goons onto campus to intimidate people who oppose their views. I feel ashamed as a UofT alumnus.
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3 comments:
Time to start a big campaign of recruiting dozens and hundreds of people to call up university administrators and demand that they ban these hateful, anti-Jewish racist and often violent events. These things are like the definition of 'hate speech' - group defamation, likely to expose people of certain groups (in this case, Jewish, Israeli and Zionist students) to hatred and contempt, etc. We should clog up the deans' phone lines and e-mail inboxes at all these schools.
Was this the Scarborough, Mississauga or which campus? I'm starting to compile a script for a complaint and lists of phone numbers and e-mail addresses of deans who need to receive some mass complaints.
Isaac tells me it was at the downtown St George Campus of U of T.
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