The firmly-Zionist author Elie Wiesel (right, above) and self-declared Muslim apostate Salman Rushdie (center) shared a number of awkward moments last night at a synagogue in midtown Toronto.
This was not surprising, given that the event—a question-and-answer for about 2,300 Torontonians on the subject of freedom of expression and human rights—was itself a bit awkward, in light of the day’s earlier events: the Gaza Aid flotilla raid.
Rushdie and Wiesel were keynote speakers at the “Spirit of Hope” benefit, the largest yearly fundraiser in support of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies (FSWC).
The fundraising plan itself made sense: have Wiesel, the distinguished Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor, and Rushdie, the British-Indian author and Fatwah target, answer diverse questions posed by former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Presumably, the effort raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s projects, as intended.
But at an event like this, on a day like yesterday, the litany of contradictions quickly piled up.
Firstly, one did not need be reminded of a tinge of irony when the FSWC names itself in its official literature a, “human rights organization” working “to improve Canadian society by combating hate and anti-Semitism and supporting projects that promote tolerance, justice and human rights.” Of late, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s “tolerance” has been steeped in controversy, most recently after Haaretz reporter Nir Hasson charged its workers with having removed human bones from Mamilla, an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, to clear ground for a planned “Museum of Tolerance.”
This is not the type of thing the Wiesenthal Center’s dean and founder, Rabbi Martin Heir, risked addressing as he courted cash from his Canadian donors. Nor was there a chance of addressing the incendiary anti-Muslim remarks made by the FSWC’s last speaker, Wafa Sultan, who spoke of an “Islam of rape, murder and hate,” at a comparable event on March 3rd, one with staunch neoconservative academic Daniel Pipes as her interlocutor.
Still, Rabbi Hier couldn’t ignore talk of the Gaza Flotilla.
When both keynote speakers were asked at an afternoon news conference to discuss their thoughts on the day’s events— the flotilla, the violent clashes between protestors who died at the hands of the Israeli military—Wiesel said he didn’t know enough about it yet. “I will speak about it tomorrow,” he said.
Rushdie, on the other hand, had been following the news, and said, “There is clearly a dispute about the facts. The first kneejerk reaction is that this was an excessive use of force.
“The initial response is that it would be much better not to start shooting people,” he said, wryly.
At that point, Hier, named by Newsweek in 2008, “the most influential rabbi in America,” interjected, in a bit of a huff. “Israel does not want to conduct an embargo on Gaza,” he said, then noted “the tragic loss of lives,” as a result of the day’s events.
He did go on to stress that, “there is no international flotilla to go to Gaza to try and help (imprisoned Israeli soldier) Gilad Shalit !” (He felt this point needed repetition before the entire audience: “There’s always a flotilla to help a terrorist organization…” he said. “Have you ever seen a flotilla to help Gilad Shalit?”)
Shortly after the first questions regarding the flotilla at the news conference, Rabbi Hier silenced a reporter from the Toronto Star for following up with further comments about yesterday’s events, as well as a question about the fact that the mediator, Former Prime Minister Mulroney, was found that morning to have had “inappropriate” financial dealings with a lobbyist, breaching the Canadian government’s ethics guidelines. It was suggested that it was somewhat ironic to have Mr. Mulroney mediating a discussion on ethics, human rights and free speech yesterday.
But it was doubly ironic that Rabbi Hier tried to silence the reporter, calling both his question about Mulroney and about the Gaza Flotilla “inappropriate,” given that Rushdie had said only moments earlier that, “Nothing is protected from debate. This is at the heart of the free speech argument.”
Some of the evening’s themes seemed to have fallen by the wayside.
Evan Wexler is a freelance journalist in New York City. He has also lived and worked in Canada, in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
