Free Speech is Great, but is Anybody Listening?

Written by Jesse Paikin, Contributor
Wednesday, 25 January 2006

http://www.excal.on.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1317&Itemid=2

Edward Corrigan's letter to President Lorna Marsden regarding the university's alleged "suppress[ion of the] discussion of Palestinian human rights" is a fine example of the right to free speech that we so value at our university and in our country. It is also an example of the drivel masquerading as newsworthiness that so frequently invades Excalibur.
I do not wish to jump back into the ongoing Israel vs. Palestine debate, however, I will briefly address one of the issues that Corrigan raises, as I feel that it is important to present the inherent flaws in his argument.
The most disturbing argument Corrigan presents is his belief in Israel's "ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs", which he believes is "a crime not unlike the one committed against Jews in the WWII". Here, Corrigan resorts to an emotional attack
rather than the constructive criticism that he states he is an ardent supporter of.
Corrigan chooses to ignore the fact that Israel's actions are most certainly not racially motivated and are not carried out with some sort of systematic "final solution" in mind, as he suggests. His correlation is flawed and offensive, and is only designed to provoke an emotional response. This is a prime example of the repeated techniques used by many anti-Israel propagandists. Flinging facts and figures back and forth doesn't hurt people, so instead they use emotional attacks, with such disturbing falsities such as "apartheid state", "ethnic cleansing" and "Nazi-like". These attacks have no place in the arena of constructive criticism and intellectual debate.
The ongoing Israel vs. Palestine debate has apparently shifted from the rotunda of Vari Hall to the pages of Excalibur. It is not hard to ponder why. Those of us who remember how outrageous the atmosphere was in the past are simply tired of the shouting and screaming matches, where the loudest and most provocative voices determined the winner. People got tired of the spectacle and stopped watching. The likes of Corrigan, who are more interested in provoking emotional responses than in stimulating intellectual debate, have been searching for a new arena for their circus-like antics. And they have found it - on the opinion pages of Excalibur.
This in mind, I have been wondering for months if people are just as tired of reading the fights on paper as they were tired of the fights in Vari Hall. Perhaps Excalibur should commission a poll.
This all being said, Excalibur is to be commended for valuing free speech and for keeping the many voices of this debate in some sort of balance. I would hope that future debaters do not waste their valuable right to free speech by flinging intellectual feces at each other.