Friday, December 05, 2003
Daniel Pipes At UBC: Question Period
There was a part where Dr. Pipes called for Israel and other democracies to leave the UN (for an international organization for democratic states only), which was met with resounding applause. I must say that I'm glad to know that I'm not alone in seeing the ridiculousness of dictatorships voting alongside democracies and the false legitimacy that the UN supposedly gives to everything these days.
I think it was a really great tactical move for Gordon (president of Hillel) to ask Dr. Pipes on the famous "The Palestinians are a miserable people...and they deserve to be." line (which was used by the PSG in their propaganda). The line, of course, was a total falsehood, and it was a great opportunity for Dr. Pipes to refute it himself.
Of course, there had to be a guy that yelled that Dr. Pipes, with his "unfounded" views, will live on as the most evil man in history. Sometimes I wonder why people embarrass themselves like this.
It was unfortunate that question period ended on a somewhat sour note. A young lady had been in line for a microphone, but it was made clear much earlier that the previous question would have been the last. She grabbed the mike anyways and pleaded to ask a question. Seeing that the situation was essentially out of his hands, Ariel, president of the Israel Advocacy Club, asked that she be given thirty seconds. The lady then goes on to ask "as a fellow human being" (uh-oh you know what's coming is gonna be a doozy), how Dr. Pipes proposes to "win the hearts" of Palestinians and the world. Dr. Pipes replied matter-of-factly that in the current war, survival, not "winning hearts", should be the issue. So far, so good, right? But now the questioner claims that Dr. Pipes said that the only way out was killing (or something of that sort), which was totally false, disgusted a vast majority of the audience, and Dr. Pipes had to simply leave the podium to avoid giving credit to such slander.
Overall, I would say that the question period was not quite as intellectually stimulating as the speech itself, but it was a good opportunity for Dr. Pipes to speak on some other things that he didn't touch on before.
