Double Standard-itis

By Michael Posner

© Great Untold Stories Inc.

When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society, you see? — Orson Welles

We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Here’s a little thought experiment.

Suppose the Universe of Manitoba department of political science is employing an Israeli expert in modern Zionism. Let’s call him Yaakov. His academic credentials are impeccable, but he has recently been convicted of committing — many years earlier — a heinous crime on the West Bank. The charge: putting a torch to a Palestinian home, and murdering a family of four.

Yaakov, who has resided in Canada for two decades, stoutly proclaims his innocence, insisting he was elsewhere at the time of the bombing, and is simply the victim of mistaken identity.

But almost 40 years after the event, an Israeli court nonetheless finds him guilty, in absentia, and demands his extradition from Canada.

Question: In the current climate of ferocious anti-Zionism that grips Western universities, how much time would elapse before Yaakov was summarily fired, frogmarched out the door, and handed over to the appropriate authorities? Ten minutes? Five? You get the point.

My thought experiment is not -- forgive me -- academic.

Ottawa’s Carleton University today employs Hassan Diab, a former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Special Operations (PFLP-SO), a certified terrorist organization.

Last April, a French court found Diab, now 70, guilty in absentia of detonating a motorcycle bomb in Paris on the evening of Oct. 3, 1980. It was the holiday of Succot. Four Jews died; four dozen more were injured.

The scene outside the Paris synagogue, October, 1980

The bomb had been planted in the saddle bag of a Suzuki motorbike outside the Rue Copernic synagogue in the 16th arrondissement, not far from the Champs-Elysees. But for a timing glitch, which delayed the explosion, many more would have been killed and wounded, because shul-goers were milling on the sidewalk before the service.

The court sentenced Diab to life imprisonment, issued an international warrant for his arrest, and formally requested extradition from Canada.

Diab maintains he is the victim of mistaken identity, and was living in Lebanon at the time of the attack, taking university exams.

A Lebanese-Canadian of Palestinian origin, Diab has been teaching in Carleton’s sociology and anthropology department for 18 years. This fall, he’s teaching a course called — without irony — Social Justice in Action. Most of his course outline appears to be based on his own case, dealing with questionable extradition.

University officials are not only aware of Diab’s situation, but have lobbied the Canadian government extensively to refuse France’s extradition request. They even organized a public rally in his defence. Despite the recent French verdict, Carleton has unilaterally determined that he is innocent.

Hassan Diab

B'nai Brith Canada has officially asked the university to terminate Diab; the administration has not yet bothered to respond. The children of one Paris bombing victim -- former Israeli TV personality Aliza Shagrir -- said it is "outrageous that an academic institution supposedly promoting equality and justice [employs] a cold-blooded murderer convicted in a French court. Apparently, a murderous terrorist act against a Jewish target does not conflict with the values of Carleton University.”

It’s hard to disagree. If an Israeli professor had a comparable conviction registered against his name, would any university official defend him? Not likely.

The background of the case is messy. The French legal system failed to identify Diab as a person of interest until the late 1990s, and didn’t file for his extradition until 2008.

For several years, Diab fought it successfully in the Canadian courts, but was finally put on a plane to France in 2012. He was put under house arrest for 26 months, without trial. When the case was finally heard, it was initially dismissed for lack of evidence. .

However, French prosecutors appealed the decision, arguing major legal errors had been made by the presiding judge, and insisting that it was "beyond possible doubt" that Diab was behind the bombing. Pending the appeal, he was ordered to remain in France, but he fled, returning to Canada.

The Paris Court of Appeal later reversed the dismissal of charges, and ordered Diab to stand trial. When he refused to appear, the trial proceeded without him.

The key evidence focused on Diab's passport, which was found in 1981 in Rome's airport, in the possession of a senior PLFP-SO terrorist. It bore stamps indicating its owner had entered France through Spain, and quickly exited the country, about the time of the synagogue attack.

In custody, Diab had claimed the passport has been lost in September, 1980. But a Lebanese judge discovered that the loss declaration was not filed until 1983, and had cited April, 1981 as the date of its disappearance.

Additional evidence included testimony from PFLP associates, collected by intelligence services, that Hassan was indeed a member, as well as handwriting analysis.

Finally, in the unanimous verdict rendered by six Supreme Court judges last Spring, he was convicted of terrorism.

It seems unconscionable that a Canadian university administration could continue to defend a convicted terrorist. It seems equally unconscionable that the Trudeau government would deny France's extradition request.

But stranger things have happened.

Meanwhile, Canada's Jewish community continues to be a victim of Double Standard-itis in other troubling ways.

Despite more than a year of rising antisemitism -- shootings, vandalism, bombings, assaults, calls for Jewish genocide -- not a single Jew (to my knowledge) has ever protested Islamic terrorism near a mosque.

Indeed, were a single Jew to wave a single Israeli flag in front of a Muslim house of worship, does anyone doubt how quickly he or she would be removed, if not arrested? Does anyone doubt how swiftly Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would be to find a microphone and lament the rise of Islamophobia?

But Muslims and their hate-spewing supporters routinely assemble in Jewish neighbourhoods and outside synagogues, without significant restraint or push-back from the police.

One evening this week, more than 40 masked, flag-waving demonstrators -- in clear violation of a court-imposed, 50-meter buffer zone -- stood outside Montreal's Shaar Hashomayim synagogue in Westmount for three hours, openly calling for an intifada.

Outside Shaar Hashomayim, November, 2024 (Photo by Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs)

​They were attempting to block members' access to the building, where former Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy was scheduled to speak. Police eventually moved the mob back, but instructed attendees to use a rear exit, saying they could not otherwise guarantee their safety.

Ad nauseum, government officials at every level spout platitudes about curbing hate speech, and cracking down on egregious acts of antisemitism. But reluctant to offend a noisy and more powerful voting constituency — Muslims — their fine rhetoric increasingly rings hollow.

When the wind is southerly, Jews will know a hawk from a hand saw.