Salman Rushdie decries Israeli flotilla attack

Article of interest on Israeli attack on Gaza humanitarian flotilla. The first article is I believe the first version published and distributed. It is followed by a revised later version. The title for the articles are the same but the content is quite different.

Ed CorriganSalman Rushdie decries Israeli flotilla attack

Acclaimed British novelist Salman Rushdie says it appears that Israeli soldiers used “excessive” force in attacking a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.

Speaking in Toronto, Rushdie recognized that the facts of what happened are in dispute.

At the same time, he said, if the attack took place in international waters it could be seen as “an act of piracy.”

He acknowledged one videotape shows Israeli forces coming under attack.

But he also noted the presence of “some very distinguished people” aboard the aid flotilla.

It would have been far better, he said, not to start shooting people.

At least 10 people, most of them Turkish, were killed in the Monday morning raid and dozens more wounded after the Israeli forces boarded the vessels headed for a blockaded Gaza.

“The first, knee-jerk reflex is this was an excessive use of force,” Rushdie said.

There has been international condemnation of the Israeli action.

The renowned author, who was handed a death sentence by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini for his 1988 “Satanic Verses,” was in Toronto for a benefit speaking engagement.

He was slated to be on a panel discussion with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Eli Wiesel, who declined to weigh in on the flotilla incident.

Rushdie was less reticent.

“There's an argument that it took place in international waters,” he said.

“If it did, then you could characterize it as an act of piracy.”



Here is the second version.

Ed

Salman Rushdie decries Israeli flotilla attack

Freedom of speech is a vital human right, a pair of international celebrities declared during a visit to Toronto on Monday – especially if you have something to say.

As it happened, neither acclaimed novelist Salman Rushdie nor famed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel had anything to say about Brian Mulroney, who was to moderate a sold-out public debate between the two men Monday night on the subject of freedom of speech.

The event was to be Mulroney’s first public engagement following renewed negative publicity about his past financial dealings with German businessman Karlheinz Schreiber.

In a report released in Ottawa early Monday, capping a two-year investigation, Justice Jeffrey Oliphant was harshly critical of the former prime minister, charging him with deliberately trying to conceal a six-figure cash payment by Schreiber.

At a press conference that afternoon, Rushdie and Wiesel both said they knew little or nothing of the former prime minister’s latest tribulations and declined to offer an opinion, freedom of speech or no freedom of speech.

It was not the only point of disagreement between the two men.

Rushdie, who remains under a virtual death sentence as a result of a fatwa delivered by a Muslim cleric more than a decade ago, offered tentative criticism of the Israel Defense Forces for their deadly attack late Sunday on a flotilla of boats carrying humanitarian supplies to Gaza.

“The first knee-jerk reflex is this was an excessive use of force,” he said. “It would have been a much better idea not to shoot people.”

Asked for his assessment of the bloody confrontation, Wiesel declined to comment.

“I don’t know enough,” he said. “For me to say anything now would be irresponsible.”

Both men spoke out in favour of freedom of speech as an essential human right, but Wiesel made a forceful exception in the case of those who deny the Holocaust.

“Holocaust denial today – what it does to the children of survivors,” he said. “I believe Holocaust denial should be illegal.”

Rushdie took a different view.

“I’m not 100 per cent in agreement,” he said. “It’s better that even the worst things be expressed. Evil doesn’t disappear by being obscured.”

Although the fatwa calling for his death has yet to be lifted, Rushdie said yesterday he has been able to resume a more or less normal life.

“It doesn’t affect my daily life anymore,” he said. “It’s been well over a decade.”

Last night’s scheduled debate between the two men unfolded amid tight security, and many of the 2,400 people scheduled to attend the event began lining up two hours in advance, to allow officials at the Beth Tzedec Synagogue on Bathurst St. near Eglinton St. time to search their belongings.

The gathering was this year’s version of an annual event – the Spirit of Hope Benefit – a fundraiser for the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies.