Stark contrast of ideas

Editorial

As Dr. Daniel Pipes was presenting his provocative and informed perspective on the Middle East at the University of British Columbia last Friday, a clutch of protesters held court outside the lecture theatre, in the main concourse of the student union building, chanting such slogans as "End the occupation now" and "No more Gestapo."

Full credit must go to organizers of the event and to university officials, who succeeded in preventing the kind of crisis that developed under similar conditions at Concordia University in Montreal and at other campuses in North America over the past couple of years. Protesters protested, participants participated and debaters debated.

The 400-seat theatre was not quite full – contrary to early billing, which had pro-Zionist and anti-Israel activists warning their supporters to get there early or risk not getting in at all. Some of the empty seats were due to the fact that some, if not most, of the protesters opted to sit out the speech, milling about and chanting in the SUB until the audience filtered out – through a gauntlet of fierce anti-Israel rantings.

This situation was ideal, in some respects. With the most vociferous opponents opting not to enter the theatre, the event itself was surprisingly sedate. Pipes is an academic above all and his soft-spoken demeanor masks what some see as radical ideas – ideas like not rewarding terrorism, demanding that Palestinian leaders fulfil their promises of peace and that Arab children should not be raised solely to kill and die.

The chanting mob of about two dozen Israel-haters missed an opportunity to participate in an intellectual exchange, which makes perfect sense when seen in context.

Led by one increasingly hoarse cheerleader, the chanters mimicked a litany of ludicrous assertions, accusing Israel of almost every sin since the apple of Eden. For more than an hour before Pipes' speech and at least half an hour afterward, the unthinking masses duly repeated whatever popped into their ringmaster's head. ("No more bypass roads! No more genocide!") The incident was emblematic of so much of the pro-Palestinian movement in North America, which equates repetition with truth and reflects far more hatred of Israel than it does any genuine concern for Palestinians. It also indicates the degree of thoughtless, anti-intellectual nonsense that is rampant in that movement.
One suspects that, had the lead shrieker required a washroom break, his automatonic followers could have been persuaded to chant whatever drivel an imposter could dream up. "No more chocolate cake! No more line dancing!"

For security reasons, audience members were forced to check coats and bags in a room near the theatre, which led to a substantial line of people waiting to collect their things after the thought-provoking and nuanced presentation by Pipes. This was, of course, a captive audience for the zombies who regurgitated their master's voice. Yet, for anyone who had been in the lecture minutes earlier, the intellectual contrast could not have been more stark.

Pipes is an intelligent, informed and articulate embodiment of a particular set of ideas, including a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict. His speech was the epitome of a well-laid-out thesis founded on reasonable assumptions. His critics, who consider Pipes a dangerous reactionary, are themselves apologists for suicide bombers and proponents of a one-state "solution" which would see Israel destroyed. Who, really, is the dangerous reactionary?

But even aside from content, the parallels and contrasts between the two sides were striking in their style. While the Zionist idea has its foundations in more than a century of rich intellectual ferment, the anti-Zionist movement in North America is founded on just the sort of mob mentality and group-think evidenced at UBC last week. Vicious in its rhetoric, mindless in its foundation, very often fact-free, criticism of Israel tends to depict an imaginary world in which all things evil are Israeli.

The protesters were no doubt delighted to have a captive audience waiting to retrieve their coats, yet they couldn't have known – because they wouldn't have thought this through – that the more they chanted, the more ludicrous and less convincing they became. Intelligent people understand that the truth rarely needs to yell.

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