Re: Apartheid Week Must Be Discussed Responsibly, May 9 The News.

I think that Dr. MacQueen knows full well the truth but he chooses to hide behind rhetorical questions to which he knows the answers. We were both at the same event but his views are consistent with those who designed the event as a platform to launch a hit on their ideological enemies, not debate free speech and how free speech sometimes crosses the line into hate speech as the Israel Apartheid Week events have done on campuses across Canada with a little help from their friends and supporters.

Dr. MacQueen also knows his history and how these dangerous attacks do not stop with Jews or Israel --they metastasize and become forums for hate directed at whomever the haters choose to target. It matters not that the haters represent and stick up for countries and groups that oppress their own people, engage in terrorism, are dictatorships, suppress trade unionism and women and represent groups/countries that propagandize against and vilify anyone who dares get in their way.

Most of what Dr. MacQueen describes as alleged and unproven are actual truths. CUPE and Local 1005 were there and represented by their respective leaders and taking sides; in the case of Local 1005, they provided the megaphones for the shouting and unfurling of banners that were not permitted by anyone by the rules of the event (their own rules by the way). In the case of CUPE, they provided the buses for students from Toronto. But why should rules matter? For instance, the student code of conduct is a rule book that the haters want changed to accommodate their growingly violent platform for next year's events. They don't want to change ignorant behavior - they want to change the rules to accept bad behavior to make hate easier.

Dr. MacQueen is playing games and reveals his own bias by saying that "silencing those who dare to criticize the policies of Israel" was the goal of those defending Israel at McMaster that day.

In fact, the people there defending Israel would rather be at home saying nothing at all, but these deliberately provocative events require some in the community to speak out. Even though the number of Jewish people is small, at least we have learned to speak up when incidents that appear to be like the anti-Jewish propaganda in Germany during the 1930s become obviously dangerous and in need of a serious challenge.

Gary Gerofsky

Dundas