I DISAGREE....He has a right to be heard

John Ivison: Don't give Michael Neumann an audience
Posted: April 21, 2009
OTTAWA -- Members of Parliament who wish to hear someone demonize Israel don’t have to travel as far as Geneva, where Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the Jewish state of being a cruel and racist regime at an anti-racism conference this week.
In fact, they won’t even have to leave Parliament Hill, following an invitation by the Canada-Palestine Parliamentary Association to Michael Neumann, a Canadian academic who considers Israel an “illegitimate state.”
Mr. Neumann is a professor of philosophy at Trent University in Ontario and is, by any measure, a radical voice in the Middle East debate. He has written that Israel’s goal is the destruction of the Palestinian people — a “kindler, gentler genocide” than that perpetrated by Adolph Hitler.
Earlier this year, he expressed support for a proposed resolution by the Canadian Union of Public Employees to ban Israeli professors from working in Ontario universities.
And in one particularly controversial episode, a Web site that claims to document Zionist influence on popular culture published an e-mail exchange with Mr. Neumann in which he said he would support any “effective strategy” to help Palestinians. “If it means encouraging vicious, racist anti-Semitism or the destruction of the state of Israel, I don’t care,” Mr. Neumann was quoted as writing. He has since said the comments were published against his wishes and has refused to comment on their accuracy.
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