The campaign against Mustafa Bayoumi, a Brooklyn College professor and author, that was reported on this site yesterday by Zenowich/Kane recalls a Canadian case about which we lately received correspondence. David Noble is a social scientist at York University in Canada and a sharp critic of Israel, who, following a campaign against him in 2004 led by Israel lobby organizations, sued several groups. He wrote the following piece in the third person, advocating this path. Noble:
Over the last few years, as criticism of Israel has intensified worldwide, pro-Israel advocates have escalated their effort to identify such criticism as anti-semitism and, in some instances (Canada) as a hate crime. The recent Yale conference on anti-semitism highlights the fact that the campaign has gained some legitimacy in the U.S. In Canada a committee of Parliament has been conducting one-sided deliberations on the same theme. Throughout North America, meanwhile, attacks on critics of Israel, especially in academia, have continued with a vengeance. Victims of these assaults have on occasion reacted with the appropriate outrage and dignity, sometimes fighting back in the press or organizing resistance; more often they have retreated into retractions and lame apologetics. But in all cases the response has been defensive and, hence, defeatist – with one notable exception.
In 2004 historian David F. Noble, a Jewish professor at York University, came to the aid of a Jewish student Dan Freeman-Maloy, who had been summarily suspended and banned from the campus by the university president for his ardent participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Noble hired Freeman-Maloy as his research assistant to defy the ban and went on to investigate the ties between the university, and, in particular, its fund-raising foundation, and Canada’s pro-Israel lobby, preparing and distributing a two-page flyer on the connections. In less than a day the university, its foundation, and Hillel issued press releases, in concert with the United Jewish Appeal of Greater Toronto and the Canadian Jewish Congress/Ontario, publicly condemning Noble as an anti-semite, bigot, and racist. The following day articles denouncing Noble appeared in Canada’s leading newspapers.
So far the story is painfully familiar. Noble’s response, however, was different. Rather than assuming a defensive stance Noble immediately went on the offense, demanding a public apology from his detractors. When this was not provided, he filed a grievance against the university for violating his academic freedom, a case he ultimately won in arbitration. Far more important, he filed a $20 million defamation lawsuit against the York University Foundation, the UJA, Hillel, and the CJC, which is still before the Ontario Superior Court. In February, 2010, he won a landmark interim decision ordering the defendants to disclose all of their ties with the state of Israel and Israel-advocacy organizations.
The jury is still out on this case but the benefits have already been accruing from the discovery process. [Documents disclosed in that case are here] Above all, the case has put the Israel advocates on the defensive, as literal defendants, and, in so doing, has demonstrated the value of taking the offensive. It has also demonstrated the value of defamation lawsuits. It is always important to expose and excoriate the outrages and excesses of the pro-Israel propagandists but a lawsuit has teeth; it throws them on the defensive and ensnares them in a legal web of rules and procedures which can be used to great advantage to destabilize them and disclose their deceits. At the same time, it puts to a serious test their facile and malicious identification of criticism of Israel with anti-semitism.
