I don’t watch soap operas on television. They all seem to be built around some tragic event. I know that some have been running for years and have loyal fans worldwide. So, it comes as no surprise now that one of the longest running soap operas is playing out in the Gaza area of the Middle East.
That soap opera is the negotiations for a ceasefire between the Israeli forces and Hamas. And, it is surely a tragic event. Thousands of civilian lives have been lost to date and there is no sign that any hostages will be released by Hamas anytime soon. None the less, it has its followers world wide and the audience seems to grow with every news cast.
The one soap opera that has drawn my attention is the one underway on the main campus of the University of Toronto and full disclosure, it is my alma mater. The woke types that inhabit the encampment on the campus have clearly been there too long.
These are the same people that had professor Jordan Peterson removed from the faculty for refusing to use certain pronouns in reference to certain individuals. Clearly a case of exercising academic freedom but guess who backed the woke types? You got it, the University. A bit hypocritical for an institution that espouses freedom of ideas and expression.
As far as camps go it does not look that big. Oh, the press seems to think that there are thousands of people protesting the invasion of Gaza, who are waiving Palestinian flags and chanting anti-Israeli slogans and wearing costumes that otherwise would never be seen on a university student this side of the Atlantic.
So who is stirring up all this protest? Is it really the student bodies of the universities involved? I doubt it. Too big, too organized and too expensive for most college kids who should be focusing on their studies at this time of year instead of protesting how badly the University is behaving by not divesting its investments in the Israeli area.
How do these kids know what is invested in which organizations in Israel? Why they are told by those behind the protests with the funds to search out which companies and/or organizations have any part of their operations funded by the University. It takes big bucks to search a corporation and its partners. I used to do it for a living, with of course, other people’s money.
The University’s reaction to date has been tentative at most and lop-sided at best. They have cited the protesters with a tress-pass notice but police have taken no action. Then the University went to court for an injunction and has to wait weeks for an answer, playing into the hands of the protesters yet again.
Now on the television news this morning, a protester who was trying to set up a tent on the main campus of the University was told by security to remove it and himself and his accomplice immediately! Why? He was flying a Canadian flag and carrying an Israeli flag. Again, a bit hypocritical for an institution that espouses freedom of ideas and expression.
Is this hypocritical approach to social issues unique to the University of Toronto administration? Not really. Hart House, an old institution embedded within the University community since the end of the First World War reacted in a similar fashion not so long ago.
In the era of David Miller, then Mayor or Toronto, the one who banned shooting ranges on properties owned by the City of Toronto, the shooting range in the basement of Hart House was shut down in woke compliance with Miller’s war on legal shooting clubs.
This lead to nearly four-hundred student members of the Hart House shooting club with no place to shoot! Fortunately, a local private club accommodated these students and sacrificed a weekly night of activity for their own members in order to let them shoot.
We in the shooting sports are somewhat used to hypocritical government policies and in legislation, but, it seems to be all around us as well. Universities should be places of free and open debate, regardless of the issues, not partisan. Let us hope that the soap opera in Gaza ends soon as too many innocent people have been lost already.