By: Nathaly Schneider

Hello!

Hope all of you Canadians out there are enjoying your Thanksgiving weekend, all of you Americans are having a fantastic Columbus day, and that everyone else who may be reading this is just having a plain old good day.

This week has been an eventful one for many Ontario campuses (for better or worse)!

Last Monday, Ryerson University held its first pro-Israel event of the year welcoming the J Post’s Ya’akov Katz.  Katz gave a fantastic presentation about the complexities of reporting news on Israel.  As a reporter who often covers from the front line, Katz gave some fantastic insight into the big picture of the Arab/Israel conflict that rarely gets covered.  Katz shown some particular light onto the challenges of reporting news stories in a time when most people want an instant report of events.

As Winston Churchill put it best, “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on”.  In Israel’s case, it’s fair to say that while speculations happen instantly, the truth takes time. With so much of our news information being a product of the internet and fast paced media, its often hard for Israeli sources to report accurate events before misinformation has already been spread.  Ya’akov left all in attendance with some great information and a new outlook when digesting the news.  Kudos to everyone from Hillel @ Ryerson for a great event!

This Wednesday, Toronto welcomed Tzipi Livni, leader of Israel’s opposition party for an event presented by the UJA.  Speaking to a packed house of students, Livni spoke about the current Iranian regime being a threat not only to Israel, but to Canada and the US as well.  Livni also expressed her distaste for the UN giving Iranian president Ahmedinijad a platform to spew his hateful views time and time again.  The event had a very optimistic tone with Livni commending Prime Minister Netanyahu and his cabinet on their efforts with the peace talks.  Congratulations to all of those who helped plan this event, including Hasbara fellows Naomi Elmaleh and Brandon Crandall who each spoke at the function.

Alas, few weeks go off without a hitch, and unfortunately, this week was no exception.  Queen’s University saw it’s first big anti-Israel event of the year with SPHR bringing in Yves Engler for a speaking engagement.  Engler is best known for serving as Vice President of the Concordia Student Union in 2002 and participating in a violent riot while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was giving a speech at the school.  Capitalizing on his highly publicized suspension from Concordia Engler come to Queen’s with presentation entitled “Canada: The Most Pro-Israel Country in the World?”.  Engler’s lecture took the apartheid claim to a new and even more misguided level suggesting that both Canada and Israel practice as “apartheids”.  Last I checked, both Canada and Israel were free, democratic countries, and this blogger is proud to align herself with both!  Great job to Jacob Martin, Mitchell Rattner and the entire Queen’s IOC board for monitoring this event.

Have an event that you’d like mentioned in an upcoming Campus Pulse or in our event’s calendar? e-mail me at nschneider@hasbarafellowships.org!