Click here to watch Netanyahu's video message to the canadian participants.
Contributed by Staff Reporter FRANCES KRAFT -The Canadian Jewish News
Two-and-a-half years after a talk by Benjamin Netanyahu was cancelled at Concordia University due to violent protests by anti-Israel students, the former Israeli prime minister was back in Canada to speak to university students – sort of.
In a video hook-up co-sponsored by Betar Tagar, the Jewish Agency for Israel, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Likud Canada, Netanyahu – in Jerusalem – addressed students from 10 Canadian campuses in eight locations across the country last week in a pre-recorded talk.
“Last time I was in Canada they tried to shut me up, but they gave me a platform [to speak to] millions of Canadians on the nightly news, so actually something good came of it,” he said.
“If any people have a right to a piece of land, it is we in Israel,” Netanyahu said, noting that “Arab propaganda is lying” when it says Jews have not had a longtime continual presence in Israel.
Itai Gadot - at Uni of Toronto
The problem, he said, is that Israel is judged guilty by “leftists and anti-Semites” for what it is, not for what it does. “As long as we are guilty of ‘colonialism,’… therefore we are guilty no matter what.” That issue has to be addressed, he said.
Netanyahu’s chief of staff, Yechiel Leiter, answered students’ questions afterward and urged them to make a commitment to visit Israel this year. Netanyahu, who had been scheduled to speak live, was not available because of budget discussions in the Knesset.
Local speakers included Ya’acov (Cobie) Brosh, Israel’s Consul General for Toronto and Western Canada, who spoke at the University of Toronto; and Conservative MP Stockwell Day, who spoke at the University of British Columbia.
Participating campuses also included Carleton University, McMaster University, the University of Manitoba, the University of Calgary and York University. Students from Concordia University and McGill University in Montreal gathered off campus at FEDERATION CJA’s Cummings House.
An estimated 600 students took part in the event, and another 1,000 people saw it on the Internet, according to event organizer Itay Gadot, Betar Tagar’s executive director.
Students at York University
Students at University of Calgary Credit:Ted Jacob, Calgary Herald.
Zoar Shteinbech, right, joins other U of C students Tuesday awaiting a live closed-circuit telecast by former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the end, students had to settle for Netanyahu's chief of staff.