Confrontation at Concordia
| Confrontation at Concordia | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Martin Himel |
| Produced by | Martin Himel |
| Written by | Martin Himel |
| Narrated by | Martin Himel |
|
Release date
|
2003 |
|
Running time
|
45 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
Confrontation at Concordia is a documentary film by Martin Himel which documents the September 2002 protest at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. The film chronicles how pro-Palestinian student activists staged a direct action aimed to cancel the former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address on campus. The talk by the prime minister had been organized by Hillel, a Jewish student organization.
The documentary portrays the events that took place in a negative light, and reportedly contributed to the ensuing media debate over them. The Concordia Student Union (CSU) responded by taking legal action against its producer.
The documentary opens with scenes of the violence at the event, depicting fighting between protesters and Jewish students attempting to enter the venue. This is followed by an interview with student Samir Elitrosh, a leader of the Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights and the leader of anti-Israel violence who was later suspended. It also features interviews with Concordia's Hillel president Yoni Petel and Concordia rector Frederick Lowy, and concludes with a discussion of what it sees as the growing trend of anti-Israel activities on North American campuses.
The documentary presents footage of pro-Palestinian activists breaking windows and pushing and shoving to block the only entry to the lecture hall. The pro-Palestinian students had objected strongly to Netanyahu's attempt to give scheduled speech.
In a segment of the film Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the conduct of Concordia students:
... what you have is an implantation in North America of this same unforgiving fanaticism that says “we will not allow the engagement of a contest of ideas, we will not allow a free market of ideas,” which is precisely a microcosm of the problem that we have in these societies that spawn and produce terrorism. They rigidly control what their people hear and see so that they can control what they think and feel. And this is the essence of the problem. If the real solution to this fanaticism is ventilation, the aeration of various ideas, then you got a whiff of the underlying root cause of terrorism in Concordia. That is the unwillingness to have a free exchange of ideas. The root cause of terrorism is totalitarianism.
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Wikipedia