Concordia University’s recent decision to deny (or just delay, its spokespeople now tell us) a lecture from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has elicited denunciations of the school’s Palestinian solidarity movement from media pundits and editorial boards across the country.

Concordia has once again “allowed itself be intimidated by troublemakers hostile to Israel, who [have] threatened to disrupt any such appearance,” by Barak (Montreal Gazette); proving right that “Jews need not apply to Concordia — unless they are anti-Zionists or radical critics of Israel, or unless they keep their mouths shut about topics such as their Jewishness or the Middle East,” (Lysiane Gagnon, The Globe and Mail); in another victory for the “violent — and let’s correctly label them — Islamic fundamentalists” at Concordia University (Calgary Herald).

The display is highly reminiscent of two years ago, when pro-Palestinian demonstrators forced the cancellation of an appearance by Benjamin Netanyahu, although with one notable difference: this time, pro-Palestinians haven’t done anything. No one has threatened to shut down a Barak lecture, and members of Concordia’s Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) have even been quoted in the media as saying that they would like to attend it. *

Granted, one cannot expect them to be enthusiastic; I’m certainly not excited at the prospect of my alma mater welcoming yet another former leader of the brutal Israeli occupation, especially one who built even more settlements than Netanyahu and essentially set off the violence and chaos that has besieged Israel/Palestine for over four years. Moreover, it may be difficult for pro-Palestinians to join the chorus for the right to free speech in a media climate that has never stood up for them when their own rights to free speech and assembly have been violated.

We have no way to evaluate the true test of our critics’ staunch advocacy for free speech — it would be unthinkable in our current political climate that Palestinians would be able to invite a leader with a comparable record to a Netanyahu or a Barak — but enough has occurred at Concordia to provide a pretty good idea.

A little over a year before the Netanyahu protest, Concordia’s administration cancelled a planned SPHR rally at a park a few blocks away from the downtown campus, citing security concerns. That same month, it also expelled two pro-Palestinian activists, Tom Keefer and Laith Marouf, for an alleged confrontation with campus security guards. In violation of university regulations that uphold the right to due process, Rector Frederick Lowy reached his decision without even speaking to Keefer or Marouf, nor even the security guards who were supposedly assaulted.

The only editorials to comment on these decisions were supportive. Likewise, when Keefer and Marouf were reinstated eight months later by the school’s Board of Governors (after the two students had fought for eight months for the simple right to get a hearing), there was no reaction, no op-eds celebrating a victory for due process.

Today, Yves Engler, my former colleague on the Concordia Student Union executive, remains barred from campus for five years after being initially suspended for putting up anti-FTAA stickers. In January 2004, he was expelled by Rector Lowy — again with no due process — for violating his suspension by attending a summer meeting of the CSU Council of Representatives, an accredited body of which he is an elected member.

Of course, it is perhaps naïve to expect any public advocacy for these students’ rights when many of the same pundits have been leading the charge against them. The B’Nai Brith, which announced last week that it was filing a human rights complaint against Concordia University because “an atmosphere of intimidation and hostility against Jewish students still prevails at Concordia”, has long been waging its own campaign against campus pro-Palestinians.

On the very afternoon of September 11, 2001, the organization took the occasion to scapegoat a scheduled SPHR rally, calling “for increased supervision of extremists already in Canada, some ensconced at our university campuses, who may have links to Islamic fundamentalist groups advocating terror. We are troubled that Concordia University has been chosen as the focus for a gathering next week that could include these groups.”

It was thus no surprise to read in the Montreal Gazette last week that B’Nai Brith representatives were “short on specifics of how Zionist students are directly discriminated against at Concordia or other Canadian university campuses.” Facts seem to be of little concern when the targets are those who challenge Israeli state policy, particularly when the accusers are so delusional.

Two days earlier, the Gazette carried a report on B’Nai Brith Executive Vice President Frank Dimant’s visit to the Gaza Strip, where he lamented the fate of its 7,500 Jewish settlers, who will be enticed with hundreds of thousands of dollars to leave their gated, suburb-like colonies away from an enclave where a million indigenous Palestinians endure daily humiliations, water shortages, poverty and home demolitions in one of the most densely populated areas of the world.

“Will bulldozers be brought in? Will the people be forced out?” Dimant said. “It’s ethnic cleansing. The Jews are being cleansed out of Gaza.”

Although I proudly took part in the Netanyahu protests, I disagreed with those close friends of mine who intended to shut it down. I knew that such an act would not just be wrong, but would provide our opponents with a wonderful opportunity to shift discussion away from the issues to our denial of free speech. It did not help matters that there were instances of deplorable but isolated acts of anti-Semitism, which were duly used to tarnish the entire protest.

Should the university administration carry through with its intent to invite Barak before the end of the school year, I certainly plan to be amongst what I expect to be a massive and peaceful protest that, cognizant of past mistakes, will keep the focus on Barak’s record, not his right to speak. In the meanwhile, those who so easily condemn the activists who uphold Palestinian rights may wish to take a moment to reflect on the moral integrity of their positions, both on the issues they have addressed and those they have ignored.

(* Correction: Aaron Maté’s article does not accurately represent the position taken by Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights on Barak’s presence on campus. SPHR has welcomed the initial decision to not invite Barak, although they have rejected the administration’s attempts to implicitly blame them by citing spurious “security threats.” The author regrets the error.)