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Terry Newman: Inside the minds of Concordia's anti-Israel activists

A recent talk felt like a recruitment drive for law-breaking terrorist-sympathizers

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On March 4, Montreal’s Vanier College hosted a talk — titled, “Whose Freedom to Exist?” — that quickly devolved into a one-sided pro-Palestinian session filled with factual inaccuracies, anti-Zionist conspiracies and extremist rhetoric, ultimately ending with a call for college students to carry on the activism of two “exhausted” anti-Israel organizers.

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The panel, which was organized by the women and gender studies department, was moderated by Vanier humanities instructor Leila Bdeir and featured two Concordia University students: Rayana Eltanoukhi and Danna Noor Ballantyne. The session was co-sponsored by Quebec’s Ministry of Education and the Vanier College Teachers’ Association, lending it a veneer of credibility.

Terry Newman: Inside the minds of Concordia's anti-Israel activists Back to video

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Draped in a full-length keffiyeh, Bdeir opened with a standard land acknowledgement, tacking on, “We … recognize an essential part of reconciliation is land back, which is really apropos in the context of a day devoted to Palestine.”

Bdeir introduced the speakers as “two Concordia students who’ve led the way in the campus struggle for solidarity with Palestine and Palestinians” who would share “their experience of academic repression as well as the increased securitization of student life.” She further claimed that, “Their experiences will reveal the mirroring of tactics between those of local security and those of the Israeli military apparatus.”

Eltanoukhi was described as a graduate researcher in psychology at Concordia, while Ballantyne was introduced as a “Palestinian student activist in her second year as the Concordia Student Union’s external and mobilization co-ordinator,” who “previously served for three years as an executive with SPHR (Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights).”

Bdeir began by asking the students for “a more........

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