Protest of Police Chief's visit to Israel shut down

By Linda Belanger

Background

On Tuesday, March 1, 2005 more than 30 senior Ontario police officers and other provincial and federal officials traveled to Israel for a week. The stated purpose of the trip was to learn various Israeli "security measures".

"The trip to Israel was organized in the offices of Monte Kwinter, the Ontario Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services. The stated purpose of the trip was for police chiefs to learn anti-terrorist methods from Israel. Sixty percent of the expenses of the trip were paid for by the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC), the United Jewish Appeal  (UJA), the Israeli government and private sources such as an Israeli airline. Ontario taxpayers contributed the remaining 40%, approximately $1,500 for each police chief.

The trip was initiated by Bernie Farber, CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, a man viewed by many Canadian Jews as a right wing extremist and Zionist not representative of the voices of most Canadian Jews.  The pro-Israeli groups that organized the Canadian police trip did not include a visit to the occupied territories of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, or Palestinian refugee camps on their tour."

During this trip, the police chiefs met with Israeli police, politicians and the Israeli "Defence" Forces who are the main military front of the Israeli government. The delegation included the Hamilton Chief of Police Brian Mullan.

In response to this trip, McMaster Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) filed a formal complaint with the Hamilton Police Service Board who had approved this trip as well as approved spending taxpayers' money for it. Similar complaints were filed by organizations across Ontario to their local boards. Locally, the Community Coalition Against Racism (CCAR) also lodged a complaint.


Lack of Response of the Hamilton Police Service Board (HPSB)

For months, the Hamilton Police Service Board (HPSB), and its Chair Bernie Morelli, made no response to the complaints. Finally, SPHR and CCAR were informed that the HPSB was intended to defend its decision to participate in the trip.  When CCAR requested delegate status to the HPSB meeting in order to present its views, the HPSB never responded. It was only through a press release in the Hamilton Spectator that both SPHR and CCAR were made aware that a Public Meeting regarding this complaint was to be held on Wednesday, September 21, 2005. Neither CCAR nor SPHR were invited to attend or speak. Like any person, we had to register to speak and were given 10 minutes to give our views. We were given no guidelines although we did request them.

This meeting was in itself not an appropriate process for an internal complaint. Furthermore, rather than actually being given an opportunity to speak, the Police Service Board and its Chair Bernie Morelli made clear that the whole Arab and Muslim and solidarity community of Hamilton was not to be allowed a voice. 

How the Meeting Violated Democratic Principles

Opponents of the trip felt that from the beginning of the meeting, Chair Morelli made it clear that he had no interest in listening to their opinions at all. It seems that he took his cues completely from the accompanying crowd of very vocal and aggressive pro-Israeli Zionists.

The first speaker, Ken Stone of CCAR, was repeatedly interrupted by the Zionists, who shouted him down and made it literally impossible for him to speak. Morelli only made a token comment asking this to end. But his actions were to reinforce the bullying and aggression because he repeatedly took direction from the Zionist audience members.   When the Zionists screamed "off topic" to speakers, Morelli turned to the speaker and said "off topic". When the Zionists shouted "no politics" Morelli parroted "no politics".

It is clear that in fact, the whole issue is political.  Furthermore, as mentioned earlier,  Palestine Solidarity participants were not given any guidelines even though they were requested.

The next speaker, Mariam Ibrahim from SPHR began by informing the audience that she would not tolerate being interrupted and that everyone could have registered to speak if they so desired. She too was cut off from her chance to speak by being shouted down.

Ms. Ibrahim turned to Morelli, saying that she would like to remind him that as the Chair of the meeting, it was his responsibility to keep the audience in check. To this, Morelli claimed that anyone who interrupted would be escorted out and that if they could not be escorted out, the meeting would be shut down. The only time the room was quiet was when one speaker was making comments in support of the trip, showing that only the Zionist audience members were acting like undemocratic bullies.

The next speaker, Susan Howard-Azzeh, was not allowed to use the Powerpoint presentation that she had prepared although Morelli's staff had helped set up the projector prior to the start of the meeting. It was only when Chair Morelli saw the content of the slides and the crowd began yelling that he told her to turn it off. When she refused, he told her to leave the podium. The presentation was made up of photos of Israeli police firing on Palestinian children and Israeli police beating Palestinians etc.. Ms Howard-Azzeh assured him that the photos were not offensive and that it was necessary for the audience to see the photos because these were the Israeli police tactics we did not want imported to Canada.

At this point, Morelli ended the meeting, admitting that he could not control the audience. This was a police services board meeting with many police officers present, but no attempt was made to escort the disruptive people out of the room. 


Mr. Morelli unfit for Chair of Hamilton Police Services Board

Morelli allowed people to attack the speakers and made no effort to defend them or the integrity of the meeting.

His behaviour exposes the anti-democratic nature of the HPSB in regards to this issue. The Zionists had a week during the trip to have their views heard by the Hamilton Chief of Police, while those opposing the trip were not even given a 2 hours to air their views.

It is not surprising that in a letter to the Hamilton Spectator, the McMaster Zionist club thanked Morelli for shutting down this event. Students for Palestinian Human Right submits that Morelli facilitated the shut down of this meeting by the Zionist crowd who have a history of censoring the truth from the public.

Residents of Hamilton should be asking themselves if Mr. Morelli is fit to chair the Hamilton Police Service Board, which is meant to be a bridge between the police and the community.

(This report was compiled from e-mail interviews with participants at the Hamilton meeting.)