It all comes down to freedom of speech

On January 2, 2009, Sid Ryan, the president of CUPE (the largest union in the province of Ontario) called for the boycott of Israeli academics and educators who have refused to publicly condemn the December 29, 2008 bombing of the Islamic University in Gaza and the assault on Gaza in general. At a CUPE conference scheduled for February, delegates from the 17 universities represented by CUPE Ontario – with about 20,000 members in a variety of positions in the university sector – will vote whether to make the proposed boycott part of the mandate of university workers.

I don’t intend to go into the issue of whether or not the Israeli attacks on Gaza are justified. What I am concerned about is that someone in Canada would suggest such an outrageous proposal. Ryan’s proposal is an abuse of the civil liberties of the Israeli academics and educators.

This proposal is rather unusual because normally, people are boycotted if they make statements that are not acceptable. In this case, Ryan is demanding that people make statements that are acceptable to him.

As an example; if I say to you that I want you to condemn a religion I don’t like otherwise I will tell my neighbours to refuse to do business with you anymore. Is this not a form of extortion?

The law in Canada with respect to extortion is as follows: “Any person who without reasonable justification or excuse, and with intent to obtain anything, induces another person by means of threats, accusations, menaces or violence, to do anything or cause anything to be done, commits the offence of extortion.”

As I see it, Ryan, by advocating that Israeli academics and educators who don’t condemn Israel for its attacks on Gaza, be boycotted, is in effect, attempting to obtain the verbal or written condemnation of Israeli attacks from the academics and educators and is using the threat of asking 20,000 people connected with 17 universities to boycott them so that his purpose will be fulfilled.

The law is broadly worded to criminalize threats of any kind made with an attempt to make anyone do anything that the person making the threat wants done.

Ryan has not actually made the threat face to face but by making it known publicly that he intends to ask 20,000 people to boycott the Israeli academics and educators unless they do what he wants them to do, constitutes a threat.

Ryan made the following statement that in my opinion can only be considered as something similar to what one discharges from their bowels. He said;

"Academic freedom goes both ways. What we are saying is if they want to remain silent and be complicit in these kinds of actions, why should they enjoy the freedom to come and teach in other countries like Canada?"

What he is really saying is that if they don’t say what he wants them to say, then they should resign from the universities and pack up and leave Canada. Who does this twerp think he is?

In 2006, the White House had been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member voted against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the administration's unauthorized wiretapping. To obtain the white House’s goal, Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove had threatened to blacklist any Republican who voted against the president. The blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November of that year. That too was a form of extortion.

Ryan bristled at suggestions from Jewish groups that his criticism of Israel's military action means he is taking an anti-Semitic position. He said, "I don't know of any other nation dropping bombs on learning institutions." He said that Israel’s military strike near a UN school in Gaza is another example of why the boycott should proceed.

He obviously doesn’t know much about what happened during the Second World War. On the night of July 27th, 1943, shortly before midnight, 739 British RAF and United States Army Air Corps aircraft firebombed the German city of Hamburg. Owing to unusually warm weather, along with the deliberate planning of the raids (which trapped the city's firefighters in the bombed-out center of the city by following-up with incendiary bombing of the periphery), the bombings culminated in the spawning of the so-called "Feuersturm" (firestorm). It literally created a tornado of fire that was equivelant to creating a huge outdoor blast furnace. It contained winds of up to 150 mph (240 km/h) and reaching temperatures of 1500 degrees Fahrenheit (800 degrees Celsius). It caused street asphalt to burst into flame, cooked people to death in air-raid shelters, sucked pedestrians off the sidewalks like leaves into a vacuum cleaner and thrust them into the inferno. It literally incinerated some eight square miles of the city including all the city’s learning institutions.

Groups such as the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) maintain the school could have been a military stronghold and Israel was not attacking defenceless civilians but members of Hamas.

CUPE Ontario has a right to speak out when they see colleagues in other parts of the world who are not being able to pursue their education. Similar means of non-violent protest were used to bring attention to apartheid in South Africa.

Strangely enough, I don’t ever remember CUPE complaining publicly that girls in Afghanistan were being denied an education by the Taliban.

If a proposal by CUPE Ontario's university workers committee is passed next month, Israeli academics would be banned from "speaking, teaching or research work at Ontario universities." Unless, that is, they passed CUPE's litmus test by disassociating themselves from Israel's military activities.

British academics flirted with a similar ban on their Israeli counterparts in 2007, but they ultimately backed down. Even UNESCO, often a harsh critic of Israel, has condemned any boycott of Israeli academics as contrary to the ‘free exchange of ideas and knowledge.’

The Canadian Jewish Congress took issue with statements in the media in which Ryan compared the bombing of the academic institution to the type of action perpetrated by the Nazis. Ryan, an inveterate publicity hound, described Israel's actions in Gaza as ‘acts of genocide’ and ‘what the Nazis did.’

What a dummy this man is. Did the Nazis in Europe during their attack on Rotterdam in the Netherlands during World War II call a halt to the bombing of that city for three hours so that food, medicine and water could be delivered to the citizens like the Israeli forces did? No, they didn’t. As many as 24,978 homes, 24 churches, 2,320 stores, 775 warehouses and 62 schools were destroyed. At no time during that bombing did the Nazis give the people in Rotterdam a three-hour respite.

In a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper dated Monday, July 31, 2006, Sid Ryan, called on the PM “to immediately denounce the state of Israel with the same voice with which you denounce Hezbollah and Hamas. I ask that you stop supporting the heinous war crimes that Israel is committing against the people of Lebanon and Gaza.”

Ryan told Harper, “You have been complacent and, by extension, have made the world view of Canadians complacent, in taking the lives of innocent people and leaving the survivors without the bare necessities of life.

Did this man denounce Hezbolla and Hamas when they indiscriminately fired rockets into Israel prior to the Israelis attacks on Lebanon and Gaza. No. He was complacent and silent.

If CUPE wants to acquire the respect of the citizens of Canada, its members should dump Sid Ryan before he brings the membership down to his level. To remain silent and complacent on what their leader is doing is to bring shame on them all.