By DAVE GORDON, Special to The CJN
Wednesday, 03 October 2007

When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to New York City last week to address the United Nations, the National Press Club and a gathering at Columbia University, some Canadian students decided they wanted their voices heard alongside the American protesters.

Five Toronto students and two campus outreach directors drove to New York to spend the day shoulder to shoulder with 2,000 other demonstrators at Columbia, sending Iran’s leader a clear message: “Ahmadinejad Not Welcome!” as thousands of lapel pins read.

“We were hoping that Iran’s dictator would ultimately not be welcomed to New York. As soon as we realized the speeches were a reality, we took students. This is a perfect example of how we need to get involved. It’s important to be on top of these things,” said Orna Hollander, director of Betar Toronto, the Zionist campus group that organized the trip.

She said initial plan had been to protest at the United Nations, but things shifted when she realized there would be ample protesters there. The group decided to join in solidarity with students at Columbia instead. The rally began Monday morning and lasted about four hours, into the early afternoon.

Thousands gathered at a rally across the street from the UN organized by leading American Jewish organizations and attended by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and prominent members of New York’s congressional delegation.

“Make no mistake – Iran is not only a threat to Israel, and not only a threat to its neighbours, but a threat to the entire world,” Livni told the crowd. “And today we ask, ‘Where is the world?’”

Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs had invited Ahmadinejad as part of the school’s World Leaders Forum. The school received widespread criticism for the invitation.

The event started off with an introduction from Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, who chided Ahmadinejad. Bollinger said that the Iranian president possessed “all of the signs of a petty criminal and a cruel dictator.”

Bollinger asked Ahmadinejad to defend his oppression of women, homosexuals and the Baha’i, as well as to explain statements in which he called for the destruction of Israel. He also challenged the Iranian president’s denial of the Holocaust and questioned his country’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, which has brought UN sanctions against his people.

“I doubt you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions,” Bollinger said.

Ahmadinejad asserted that Bollinger had insulted the intelligence of his audience by offering a one-sided introduction “affected by the press and a political monster,” a seeming allusion to the pro-Israel lobby.

While Iran welcomes its guests with honour, “I got a wave of insults,” Ahmadinejad said.

He reiterated his past claim that the Palestinian people are unfairly paying the price for the Holocaust.

“Why should five million Palestinians pay for this, when they had nothing to do with it?” he asked.

He later insinuated that Israel is the reason for all strife in the Middle East. In response to questions about his denial of the Holocaust and his hosting of a conference of Holocaust deniers last year, the Iranian leader said that studying the issue is like any other scientific pursuit and that it should continue, regardless of how well the Nazi killings have been documented.

Emily Boulter, 22, a member of the Canadian contingent, described the sentiment among students at the protest – organized by the pro-Israel advocacy groups Stand With Us and Hasbara Fellowships – as “a palpable sense of frustration and anger at the [Columbia] administration.”

The University of Toronto student, a major in Near Eastern studies, said Betar joined others ranging in age from 15 to 60. She said there were also a large number of Hebrew day school children and teenagers.

But not everyone who came to protest expressed their disapproval of Ahmadinejad. There were about 15 demonstrators waving placards reading, “Bush is a bigger war criminal,” and shouting their message of “academic freedom,” but they were up against a sea of Israeli flags, Hollander said.

Despite “what [Ahmadinejad] said in the past about Israel and the Holocaust… there was a minority of protesters supporting [him]. We were incredulous,” Boulter said.

Ran della Stua, 21, a U of T political science major, said he got the sense that most New Yorkers weren’t going to put up with the dictator’s visit.

“Across the city, it was clear that people were going to protest this,” he said. In fact, Ahmadinejad had planned to visit the area where the World Trade Center towers toppled on 9/11 – Ground Zero – but he was denied access.

“His views are radical, extreme, and giving him a platform meant the university recognized his views as legitimate. Columbia is considered to be an Ivy League school, the pinnacle of higher education, and yet they gave a platform to the head of a murderous regime.”

Ben Feferman, the Hasbara Fellowships campus co-ordinator for Canada, said the group from Betar was the only Canadian organization to attend.

“I think that when a tyrant comes to a renowned university, we needed to send a message,” Feferman said. “Ahmadinejad represents state-sponsored terrorism, human rights violations, and intends to wage religious war against the West… He represents an extremist position. We wouldn’t have the Ku Klux Klan or [Osama] bin Laden come to speak at Columbia University, nor should we have Ahmadinejad.”

Feferman said the events at the UN and Columbia will lead his organization to encourage students to be more active in promoting freedom.

The message of protest won’t end in New York, he added.

“We are launching a ‘divest from Iran’ campaign,” he said. “Every day money flows to Iran through businesses… and that ends up funding Iranian terror. There’s a lot of endowment funds, and pension funds, sponsoring Iran. We’re really going to be pushing a new initiative.”

That initiative includes encouraging governments and businesses to re-examine their economic interactions with Iran.

“Businesses have to stop investing in Iran. There hasn’t been that grassroots movement, and it’s time to start. As for the government, we’re in the position with the Harper government to put this on the forefront.”

With files from JTA