Rebel News Podcast - YorkU reinstates Herut Canada Jewish student group after Lauren Isaacs fought back

00:00:00.000 Hello Rebels, I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching a free audio-only recording of my

00:00:05.460 Wednesday night show, The Gunn Show. My guest tonight is Lauren Isaacs of Hayroot Canada.

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00:01:32.780 A Jewish student group was on the receiving end of a riot but York University banned the Jewish student

00:01:41.940 group along with the rioters. You won't believe this story. I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're watching

00:01:47.720 The Gunn Show.

00:02:05.660 Free speech on Canada's university campuses is under attack. I don't think it's even

00:02:10.080 the slightest bit controversial to say any of that. In a story I very recently covered, the University

00:02:17.160 of Ottawa Student Union retroactively rigged the rules to keep students for life from becoming

00:02:25.080 an officially recognized campus group. And the University of Alberta pro-life group has recently won

00:02:31.920 a five-year-long legal battle with the school over mob tactics and censorship that they faced on

00:02:39.760 campus. But it's not just pro-lifers that are under attack. There's another, what I would call a free

00:02:46.240 speech canary in the coal mine, Jewish student groups. Campus culture is overwhelmingly left-wing.

00:02:53.000 Again, that's not a controversial statement. And the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement

00:02:57.880 against the state of Israel is fully integrated with far left-wing culture. Which means that Jewish 0.99

00:03:06.020 student groups are often targets of boycott, divestment and sanctions, except it's their

00:03:11.940 rights being boycotted and their ability to speak freely being sanctioned, often by the university

00:03:18.000 and even sometimes with a riot, as my guest tonight will explain. Joining me tonight to talk about her

00:03:24.840 recent free speech victory for her Hey Root Canada Campus Club is York University student and

00:03:31.780 freedom fighter, Lauren Isaacs, in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon.

00:03:51.700 Joining me now is Lauren Isaacs from Hey Root Canada. Lauren Isaacs is a university student at York University

00:03:58.660 and she's been embroiled in quite a bit of controversy, I guess, over the last three months.

00:04:05.680 Lauren, I know you're on your lunch break. Thank you very much for joining me. Why don't you tell us a

00:04:10.000 little bit about yourself, first of all, because I think you're a fascinating young lady. And also tell us

00:04:15.660 about Hey Root Canada and what you're trying to do within that organization.

00:04:21.680 Thank you. It's great to be here. So my name is Lauren Isaacs. I'm the director of Hey Root Canada and I'm also a student at York University.

00:04:30.680 Hey Root Canada is a Zionist organization. We're an educational organization. We teach about Israel and the Middle East and we're a pro-Israel organization, obviously.

00:04:40.680 And we started a Hey Root club at New York University campus. It's a mini version of Hey Root Canada.

00:04:47.680 And since we started it, it has been controversial.

00:04:52.680 What does the word Hey Root mean?

00:04:55.680 Hey Root actually means freedom in Hebrew.

00:04:58.680 Isn't that great? Now, yeah, you have been involved in some controversy. I think it started at the end of November.

00:05:07.680 November, you tried to hold a campus event and mob violence broke out. You were boycotted.

00:05:15.680 I mean, it was insane, like something we haven't seen on university campuses in Canada in a very long time.

00:05:24.680 It was the kind of thing you would see at Berkeley when a conservative tries to speak. And that's what happened to you.

00:05:30.680 Why don't you tell us a little bit about that?

00:05:33.680 Right. We brought four former Israeli soldiers to speak at York University.

00:05:39.680 We wanted them to speak about their experiences, about BDS, about anti-Semitism, and engage in dialogue with the audience.

00:05:46.680 Now, they were former Israeli soldiers, not active duty. And since conscription is mandatory in Israel, every Israeli civilian is a former soldier.

00:05:54.680 So really, we were just bringing four Israeli civilians to speak about their experiences on campus.

00:06:00.680 And that's when everything hit the fan and mobs and riots broke out. There were huge protests to our event beforehand.

00:06:09.680 There were calls on Facebook and social media to boycott the event, to disrupt it completely, to have protests, to have Palestinian vigils outside our event, all these things.

00:06:20.680 And on the night of our event, they seriously disrupted us. The protesters intimidated us. We had to have 40 cops there just to keep the protesters outside of our room.

00:06:31.680 They banged on the walls all night. And it was quite something. I've never seen that with my own eyes at a university.

00:06:38.680 I've never seen such rowdy, violent protests before.

00:06:42.680 Yeah, I mean, some of the images coming out of that were really, it was crazy. It must have been very frightening for you.

00:06:48.680 Now, one of the groups that was involved in organizing against you was Students Against Israeli Apartheid, which, you know, I almost said Students for Israeli Apartheid, which is really the case.

00:07:04.680 Because I've been to Israel and, you know, when you're there, the only people experiencing apartheid are the Israelis, because there are places they can't go, as opposed to what the world thinks the other way around, where the Palestinians can't go places.

00:07:21.680 It's, it's the other way around. Now, you've actually, your group has been called the extremist faction within the right wing Jewish movement or Jewish community.

00:07:33.680 I laugh every time I say that. And that was said about you by independent Jewish voices.

00:07:38.680 So, you see independent Jewish voices a lot and you think, oh, okay, well, they're Jewish voices. They must speak for the Jewish community at large. But really, they are the pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist Jewish fringe movement. And they are equating you, I suppose, with white supremacy by saying that you're, you know, the extremist faction within the right wing white Jewish community.

00:08:03.680 Exactly. And it's crazy. Obviously, the whole thing is counterintuitive. You know, our group is pro-Israel. We are pro-Jewish identity. We believe one of the tenets of our organization is that Israel and Judaism are inalienable. They're connected. 0.91

00:08:19.680 I myself, I'm an Orthodox Jewish girl. So to be called a white supremacist or a Nazi or any of these crazy things, it's just absurd. And it's just, people use these names in order to delegitimize our position. 0.89

00:08:33.680 They use them to label us as something that society will, you know, condemn. And independent Jewish voices, that group, is not actually a Jewish voice in mainstream Jewish thought.

00:08:45.680 They do not speak for the Jewish community at large. They are a fringe group with a small number of people who don't believe anything that mainstream Jews believe.

00:08:53.680 And yes, they are very anti-Israel. They don't believe we should have a state or be allowed to have a country. They side with the Palestinians and the terrorists who want to destroy us.

00:09:04.680 So no, we don't recognize them as a mainstream Jewish group, but we are called a lot of things. We're called a lot of things.

00:09:11.680 Yeah. Now, I wanted to talk to you about the aftermath of, really, that riot that happened at your event at York University. Both your group, Herut Canada, and Students Against Israeli Apartheid were suspended and stripped of your campus club status in the aftermath of the violence, really, that broke out there.

00:09:36.680 And you received some criticism because the Jewish Defense League showed up, as they tend to do when they hear about Jews that are being threatened with violence.

00:09:49.680 And some of the criticism is that the scuffles were induced by the JDL as opposed to the hundreds of violent protesters that showed up to shout everybody down.

00:10:04.680 And both your campus groups were suspended in the aftermath.

00:10:09.680 So can you address the criticism you've received because the JDL showed up and also the university suspending both of you, in particular your group, even though you guys were the victims of violent censorship?

00:10:27.680 Right.

00:10:28.680 Right.

00:10:29.680 So, first of all, the university sends us a letter and says they're going to suspend us, and they sent Asaya the same letter.

00:10:36.680 And this was disgusting. This really was a show of blatant anti-Semitism on the university's behalf.

00:10:44.680 And why? Why is it just anti-Semitic if both groups were suspended?

00:10:47.680 Well, because one group was clearly the victim and one was clearly the violent perpetrator.

00:10:53.680 And this is akin to punishing both the rape victim and her rapist after the fact.

00:10:59.680 It makes no sense. It's immoral and unconscionable and horrifying.

00:11:03.680 We never did anything wrong. We were provided with no information as to what we did wrong.

00:11:08.680 Never a single example of how we broke the student code of conduct or anything like that.

00:11:13.680 We know we didn't do anything wrong. There's no evidence of wrongdoing, and we followed all the rules very, very carefully.

00:11:19.680 They know we didn't do anything wrong, and yet they suspended us anyway.

00:11:22.680 So that's why it's an extremely transparently anti-Semitic move.

00:11:26.680 With regard to the criticism of who showed up for which groups, first of all, I don't have any control over who shows up.

00:11:33.680 And our event was open to the whole community. We invited everyone.

00:11:37.680 We wanted everyone to be there, both friends, supporters, and people who didn't support us to come hear what we had to say.

00:11:43.680 As for the JDL, we are grateful that members of their organization individually showed up, because they protected us.

00:11:51.680 They really did. And thank God, because if they hadn't been there, and had the, you know, 40 policemen and security also not been there,

00:11:58.680 it would have been a disaster, because the rioters were very violent, they were threatening, they were trying to get into our room all night.

00:12:05.680 I don't know what would have happened if they hadn't been there.

00:12:07.680 So while people may, you know, complain that certain people were there, I say thank God they were there.

00:12:13.680 You know, I think a lot of people are complaining just because some Jewish people had the audacity to protect themselves.

00:12:20.680 Much like how you're critical of Israel for doing the same. You know, they say, how dare they fire back after they've been pelted with rockets for days and days and days.

00:12:33.680 And I think it's the same attitude bleeding over into Jewish students trying to have a little bit of a talk on campus.

00:12:40.680 Exactly, exactly.

00:12:42.680 I wanted to ask you about how you ended up being reinstated, because just last week, your group, as well as Students Against Israeli Apartheid, were both reinstated by the university. How did that happen?

00:12:57.680 So, we have a fantastic legal team that has worked tirelessly to get us reinstated, and to kind of hold the university accountable to their anti-Semitic nonsense.

00:13:09.680 And we were reinstated, we had to go to some meetings with the university, and still, even after the meetings, after we were reinstated, up until this moment in time, we still have not been provided a single reason why we were ever suspended in the first place.

00:13:23.680 But they reinstated us, thanks to our lawyers, and we basically said, enough is enough.

00:13:29.680 Our amazing legal team said, if you don't reinstate us today, which was last week, we said we're going to take further action against the school.

00:13:37.680 And we were prepared to do that, we still are, and they reinstated us.

00:13:41.680 Now, it's successful in that we've been reinstated, and now we have free speech like everyone else on campus, but it's a fight that we never should have had to have in the first place.

00:13:50.680 We never should have been silenced or discriminated against, so it was ten steps back to make one step forward.

00:13:57.680 We're happy, but we're not going to forget the anti-Semitism and the anti-free speech policies that are very alive and well at the university.

00:14:07.680 Well, and what would have happened to you if you didn't have legal help?

00:14:10.680 Like, yes, you did have a lawyer who stepped up to help you, but if you were, you know, a smaller Hayroot branch, let's say in Winnipeg or at the U of A here in Alberta, who knows what would have happened?

00:14:25.680 Because you at least had the ways and means to do something about this and fight back against the university.

00:14:30.680 But again, like you say, you never would have, you never should have had to.

00:14:36.680 I think they probably underestimated you is what I think happened here.

00:14:43.680 I think they're ruining the day that they accepted me as a student to the university.

00:14:48.680 But no, that's a good point.

00:14:51.680 We, thank God, have a great community here and a great legal team.

00:14:55.680 And yes, they've come up against me, and I have a little bit of a Jewish chutzpah, as we say.

00:15:00.680 I don't like to let things go.

00:15:02.680 But for years and years and years, the university has been running over Jewish and pro-Israel and free speech students.

00:15:09.680 And they've been silencing them and sweeping their complaints under the rug.

00:15:13.680 And they've been successful at bulldozing over so many students.

00:15:17.680 But we finally said, no, no more.

00:15:19.680 It's unacceptable.

00:15:20.680 We have a right to speak like everyone else.

00:15:22.680 And they're not going to get away with their stuff without us, you know, being loud about it, publicizing their wrongdoings.

00:15:28.680 And we will continue to do that.

00:15:30.680 You know, I think that's a really great point.

00:15:34.680 You're not asking for special treatment.

00:15:36.680 You're just asking to be treated the same as everybody else, as the same as some of the other controversial groups, like things that would be controversial outside of the university.

00:15:48.680 I think normal people think, yeah, Israel has a right to exist. 0.98

00:15:54.680 But inside the bubble of a university campus, the prevailing attitude is that Israel is an illegitimate state and the Jews, the indigenous people of Israel, don't have a right to be there.

00:16:07.680 It's very bizarre.

00:16:09.680 What do you think is causing that?

00:16:11.680 I agree.

00:16:13.680 It's insane.

00:16:14.680 It's almost that universities are now counterintuitive.

00:16:17.680 They should be the place where exchange of ideas and academic, intelligent thought is expressed.

00:16:23.680 Now it's the opposite.

00:16:24.680 You get more of that outside, but within university walls, you don't really get to discuss ideas anymore or anything, you know, outside of a one specific narrow, one minded train of thought.

00:16:35.680 I think in the culture of postmodernism and progressivism and intersectionality and political correctness, I think, well, when it comes to intersectionality, the Jews fall on the bottom of the totem pole, right? 0.56

00:16:48.680 But I think that's true with Israel and with conservative thought as well.

00:16:53.680 And we're seeing that a lot in the universities.

00:16:56.680 Groups are being silenced just because they don't have, you know, a necessarily leftist progressive idea.

00:17:03.680 And as you say, it's funny because some stuff that goes on in the university wouldn't even be allowed to go on in greater society.

00:17:10.680 You know, the Students Against Israeli Apartheid Club, which is recidivistic.

00:17:15.680 They're repeat offenders.

00:17:16.680 They've been banned several times before.

00:17:18.680 They're not actually a pro-Palestinian group.

00:17:21.680 They're just an anti-Israel group, which is funny. 0.99

00:17:25.680 We're not anti-anyone.

00:17:26.680 We're pro-Israel, right?

00:17:28.680 So the stuff that goes on in universities nowadays is almost like we've moved back in time to a much more oppressive dark age where thoughts and ideas are silenced and we can't speak.

00:17:42.680 And it's almost like, you know, we're cave people again in universities.

00:17:46.680 It's crazy.

00:17:47.680 Yeah.

00:17:48.680 You know, it's funny as you're saying that it occurred to me that these progressive left-wing students who everyone is literally Hitler, if you ask them, they're the ones that share Hitler's view on the Jews in the state of Israel.

00:18:01.680 So it's very peculiar.

00:18:04.680 And I think you and I were talking the first time we tried to record this and that for me, I think pro-life students and pro-Israel students are really the canaries in the coal mine of free speech on campus.

00:18:20.680 Those two groups are routinely subject to having the rules changed on them retroactively.

00:18:26.680 They have motions passed against them by the students union, yet your mandatory dues are extracted from you only so that your campus club can be banned.

00:18:37.680 So, I mean, they can't really have it both ways.

00:18:41.680 They can't take your mandatory dues from you and then not allow you to have a campus club.

00:18:45.680 It's got to be one or the other.

00:18:48.680 Exactly.

00:18:49.680 And they do try to have it both ways.

00:18:51.680 They try to have it all ways as long as it's their way.

00:18:53.680 So we're not playing on an even playing field.

00:18:56.680 We're facing an uphill battle.

00:18:58.680 And we have been from the get-go.

00:19:00.680 But we'll continue to fight for Israel and for free speech.

00:19:04.680 And it doesn't even matter what we're fighting for.

00:19:06.680 We continue to fight for the right to fight for our rights.

00:19:09.680 You know, that's a great way to put it.

00:19:13.680 Now, I wanted to ask you about some of the other things that Jewish students on campus have to face all the time.

00:19:22.680 I mean, Israeli apartheid week on campus is so normalized that you almost forget it's happening every single year. 0.89

00:19:31.680 And, you know, the anti-Semites on campus have become so emboldened that they are making steps so that Jewish students can't access their dietary needs.

00:19:44.680 And this would not happen to any other religious group.

00:19:49.680 Yeah, no.

00:19:51.680 God forbid it would happen to another group.

00:19:53.680 But because it's happening to Jews, it's fair game. 1.00

00:19:56.680 And we've been dealing with this for a long time.

00:19:59.680 And as you mentioned, Israeli apartheid week.

00:20:02.680 At York University, it's more like Israel apartheid month where events just seem to go on and on and on.

00:20:08.680 And, yes, again, it's an anti-, it's a hateful-, it's an anti-Semitic series of events.

00:20:16.680 There's no pro-Palestinian celebrating any-, it's not celebrating their culture, it's disavowing other people of their culture. 0.51

00:20:23.680 So it's a very hateful-, it's a hate fest that goes on every year.

00:20:28.680 And it's normalized.

00:20:29.680 People accept it.

00:20:30.680 And I don't know what the outcry would be if someone tried to have, you know, Islamic terrorist week.

00:20:37.680 I mean, just think, the world would implode if we tried to make that a week on university campuses.

00:20:42.680 So it's very one-sided.

00:20:44.680 And we've been facing this for years.

00:20:46.680 And, unfortunately, I think we'll continue to face it for a long time.

00:20:49.680 So that leads me to my next question.

00:20:52.680 How do you change that culture?

00:20:53.680 How do you change that culture that seems so different from mainstream Canada everywhere else?

00:20:59.680 How do you change what's going on on university campuses?

00:21:02.680 Because I think if it continues, it's going to change the outside culture.

00:21:07.680 Because these people are just going to be barfed out into society.

00:21:11.680 They're so often arts and education students.

00:21:13.680 So they are going to have an influence on the hearts and minds of young people.

00:21:19.680 And whether they want to admit it or not, they are going to bring that ideology into the classroom.

00:21:25.680 How do we change what's going on in campus to save the rest of us?

00:21:30.680 I think we just need to keep exposing people to different ideas.

00:21:35.680 Whether they like it or not, no matter how much they try silence us, we can't go away.

00:21:39.680 We can't be bullied.

00:21:40.680 We can't be silenced.

00:21:42.680 We will continue to wave the Israeli flag everywhere we go.

00:21:47.680 We will continue to state unequivocally that we are Zionists and try to engage people in dialogue whether they want to or not.

00:21:54.680 We will continue to challenge the students on campus and the administration themselves for their anti-Semitic actions.

00:21:59.680 We can't go away.

00:22:00.680 That's what they want.

00:22:01.680 They want to silence us and therefore their ideologies can prevail because there's no counter ideologies.

00:22:07.680 We need to be loud and proud on and off campus and continue to do what's right.

00:22:12.680 We're on the right side of history and we just have to stick to our guns and, you know, be proud of ourselves.

00:22:18.680 Yeah, I don't think you're going to have any problem with that.

00:22:21.680 Lauren, I wanted to ask you, because it's 2020, it's election year in the United States,

00:22:28.680 I wanted to ask you about Donald Trump because he gets called, again, literally Hitler or that he's a white supremacist or a Nazi or whatever.

00:22:39.680 But I don't think that there has, and I'm going to say, I'm going to include Ronald Reagan in this.

00:22:47.680 I don't think there's been ever a more pro-Israel president.

00:22:52.680 He's moved the embassy, his daughter is an Orthodox Jew, and he's now targeting anti-Semitism and Israeli boycotts on campus.

00:23:03.680 What do you have to say about the criticism that President Trump gets leveled all the time from the left and, in particular, on university campuses for being this alleged anti-Semitic mastermind?

00:23:18.680 Where's the disconnect here? Because I think he's the worst Nazi ever. He's not good at this. 0.95

00:23:25.680 I agree with you. He's the worst anti-Semite ever. He just doesn't get the concept. He does way too many pro-Jewish things. 0.99

00:23:32.680 Jews around the world do recognize that. Whether you agree with his policies or not, it doesn't change the fact that they named streets and towns after Trump in Israel because he has been amazing, an amazing friend to Israel.

00:23:48.680 And, yeah, when he gets called, you know, a Nazi or whatever, it's just cognitive dissonance at play. It's just absolute delusion.

00:23:57.680 And people generally nowadays hate Trump, and we can see this through the media and how they spin every story. 0.78

00:24:04.680 Even when he does something positive, he's labeled as a racist or a homophobe or an Islamophobe or something.

00:24:10.680 You know, so anything he does, people are going to find a reason to hate him. And whether you agree with him or not, it doesn't matter.

00:24:17.680 There's facts and there's fiction. And the facts are he's been great to Israel, and he's done some amazing things for the Jewish people and our country's relationship,

00:24:25.680 America and Israel, the allyship between them. He's done amazing things.

00:24:31.680 So to call him a Nazi is just, it's crazy. It's ridiculous. It's, you know, to call Martin Luther King Jr. a KKK member, it just doesn't make any sense. 0.99

00:24:41.680 You know, it's funny because I would say that a lot of the criticism of Donald Trump as some sort of white supremacist anti-Jewish monster

00:24:51.680 often comes from the kind of people who would never own a soda stream because the company is Israeli and they just can't put the two together. 1.00

00:25:00.680 Lauren, you've been so generous with your time today. I wanted to give you a chance to let people know where they can find you

00:25:09.680 and how can they find out about some of the work that you're doing on campus because you said you're planning other things.

00:25:14.680 You're not backing down. I'm sure our people would love to support you. So how do they do that?

00:25:21.680 Great. Thank you. So I'm available. People can find me from Herut Canada, the Herut North America website.

00:25:29.680 If you Google Lauren Isaacs, my email readily pops up. You can contact me directly.

00:25:35.680 And I want people to get involved. I want them to join Herut, become members. Look into us, see what we do.

00:25:41.680 You know, be supportive. We're looking for votes right now for the World Zionist Congress. Go ahead and vote for Herut. 0.89

00:25:48.680 But really reach out. We'd love to hear from you any way they would like to get involved. And they can write to me directly and I will answer them.

00:25:55.680 We can tell them how to be proud Zionists, how to fight for free speech, how to open up Herut chapters on their own campuses. 0.84

00:26:01.680 We'd love to hear from you. So just keep doing what you're doing. Be loud and proud. Don't buckle to the pressures of the universities right now.

00:26:09.680 And I'd love to hear from everyone. So if people reach out, I'll be ecstatic to hear from them.

00:26:14.680 RIP your email inbox because you're going to get inundated. Lauren, I want to thank you so much.

00:26:23.680 And I'd love to have you on the show again, maybe before you plan something so that you can announce it here and probably after when you get boycotted. I hope that's OK.

00:26:35.680 Sure. I'd love to. Great. Thank you so much, Lauren. Have a great day.

00:26:39.680 Thank you. Bye bye.

00:26:48.680 Lauren has exactly the right idea. When someone tries to censor you, guess what? That's when you talk louder. 1.00

00:26:53.680 And she's got a great strategy that has worked for us. When people try to censor you, lawyer up if you can, because the censors know their feelings about what you're saying are not going to hold up in any sort of legal proceedings.

00:27:11.680 I think these people at York University have made a big mistake.

00:27:15.680 If they didn't want any more Lauren Isaacs, picking a fight with her is exactly how you get more Lauren Isaacs. 1.00

00:27:22.680 Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight. Thank you so much for tuning in.

00:27:26.680 I'll see everybody back here in the same time in the same place next week.

00:27:30.680 And remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.

00:27:45.680 We'll see you next week.

Rebel News Podcast - January 23, 2020

YorkU reinstates Herut Canada Jewish student group after Lauren Isaacs fought back

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