FP: Howard Rotberg, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Rotberg: Thank you.

FP: Let’s begin with the trouble you began having after the release of your novel.

Rotberg: Several years ago, at a book lecture at the Waterloo Ontario store of the monopoly book retailer in Canada (with 72% of Canadian retail book sales), I was attacked by a Palestinian and an Iraqi, who shouted me down, with shouts of “you have no right to be heard if you are pro-Israel.” Then when I could no longer speak, and folded up my notes, and audience members asked the hecklers to be quiet and let me speak, the Iraqi shouted “he is a fucking Jew.” The lecture was stopped.

The only employee present was a young woman with a hijab. She later told some people in attendance that she was Palestinian and knew the hecklers. She later reported to her boss, fraudulently, that I said that “all Muslims are terrorists.” Later she changed the allegation in a written statement, also fraudulent, that I said that “all Middle Easterners are terrorists.” No matter how ridiculous, the PR person for Chapters stated in a press release that they were sorry that patrons had to hear racist statements from both the hecklers and the guest author.

Later an allegation appeared on the internet that I supposedly said at the lecture that “all Arabs and Muslims deserve to die.” In this case I got the internet site to furnish me with the IP address for the computer from which emanated this terrible allegation. Then I obtained a court order compelling the internet service provider to disclose the name and address of the computer owner. The allegation was posted in the name of a Jewish person, but I had reason to believe that such a person could never state that.

When I got the court order I found out that the source of the internet posting was a Palestinian family who lived a few doors away from the Jewish family whose name they appropriated for the internet allegation. I also did some detective work and found that the daughter of the family was a school friend and fellow member of the local university Muslim Students Association with the Palestinian, then 18 year old, book clerk, who started this little fraud. It had large repercussions. When I complained to the President of the book chain about the press release, she did not take it well. In one week, the book chain “banned” my book, returning some 300 copies to the publisher, and stated on their web site that the book was “unavailable”. Of course, refusing to carry it on their website was an indication of their animus; it costs the chain nothing in terms of shelf space to have it available by web-ordering, but the “fatwa” was a complete one.

FP: So what’s happening now?

Rotberg: I am still trying to get a court case heard against the book chain, but their lawyers are quite successful in stalling the case. Canadian newspapers do not want to cover the matter, because they receive large advertising dollars from the book chain.

In the McCarthyesque tragic-comedy of “tolerant” intellectuals running around looking for evidence of Islamophobia in Canada, people like me don’t stand much of a chance. Fortunately in the U.S. you have good people like yourselves, Mr. Horowitz, Daniel Pipes, Phyllis Chesler, Steve Emerson, and Robert Spencer. In Canada, we have one good group called Canadian Coalition for Democracies, but except for them, and some authors like David Soloway and Ezra Levant, I feel quite alone.

FP: Can anyone even get a copy of your book?

Rotberg: If you are in Toronto, you can still get a copy of my book at the chain’s flagship store at Bay and Bloor. That store ordered 30 copies of my book, not knowing that the president of the chain, had put her personal “fatwa” on the book, after I had a personal telephone call with her, demanding that she retract the press release stating that I had said “racist” things at the lecture. Her Vice-President of Supply Chain Management wrote the publisher within a week or two of our phone call returning 300 copies of the book, chain wide, not even keeping any copies where the 7 book allotment for each store had sold out entirely. Then when the publisher placed one last ad for the book in the (Toronto) Globe and Mail’s Book Section, stating that the book was available at the chain’s Bay and Bloor store “and other fine bookstores,” someone at the chain took a fit, and ordered all the books off the shelves. So on the Sunday after the ad appeared on Saturday, people went into that store asking for the book, and the poor store clerks couldn’t figure out what happened since they had so many copies in stock. Finally the staff was told to offer people coupons to be redeemed against different books.

When the publisher later sued in Small Claims Court for nominal damages, we were able to use the court process to gain access to the store's employee written statements. The actual written allegation was that I said that "all Middle-Easterners are terrorists", which of course I did not say. But even had I said such a thing, it would just be stupid rather than racist, because to me Middle Easterners include those of many religions, ethnicities and races, although I daresay that to the Islamist mind, Middle Easterners should only be Muslims, and the allegation is instructive as to the state of the Islamist mind.

No matter - having been labelled a "racist", that marked the end for me as a serious writer in Canada. The book chain alleged that the reason for the return of every single copy from every single store was "slow sales". In any case after that first weekend, someone had a change of heart and put the books back on the shelf, but just at the one store in the whole chain. However, the damage was done (although even with the books buried back in the fiction section, 18 books were sold in that location, which shows the marketability of the book). It has been a horrible experience, especially with so few willing to stick their necks out and support me.

FP: What is the significance and meaning here?

Rotberg: Well, what I see is that, in a country like Canada, without a strong national ethos, "multiculturalism and "tolerance" seem to have become predominant aspects of identity and culture, especially amongst left-liberals who are influential in our universities, our media, and other elites. I see myself as a casualty of the assault on freedoms which Islamists can so easily effect in this cultural milieu.

Lately, writers like Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant and the publications carrying their work have found themselves under attack by Islamists who are using our "Human Rights Commissions" to silence us, in Canada. These commissions were originally set up by provinces to protect human rights, and were originally intended to give protections to minorities in the workplace, in education and in non-profit organizations.

Alan Borovoy, the founder and head of the Canadian Civil Rights Association, has now come to rue the use of these commissions by Muslim organizations and activists to try to censor and intimidate any criticisms of radical Islam, together with attempts to entrench religious rights for Muslims in secular areas. The Commissions, once they accept a complaint for prosecution, fund wholly the prosecution, so the complainant has no legal costs and the defendant must pay fully the costs of a legal defence.

So, as I discussed earlier, some three years before the complaints against Steyn and Levant, I experienced the success of Islamists in censoring my work simply because they did not like what was written in a novel. Unfortunately, although my book received good reviews, I received no support from Canadian human rights organizations, writers' rights organizations, or even Jewish organizations. Canada's monopoly book retailer, with 72% of the Canadian retail market, ended up effectively "banning" the book, and returning every one of the 300 copies on its shelves, even where it was selling well, and stating on its website (falsely) that the book was "unavailable." All this, because of a scheme by an 18 year old Palestinian book clerk, and some friends of hers, who shut down a lecture I was giving at one of their bookstores, yelling that I had "no right" to speak if I was "pro-Israel" and when audience members pleaded with them to be quiet, they retorted that I was simply a "fucking Jew." It took me a year to write the book but the 18 year old Islamist and her friends were able to “get rid” of the book so easily, in about a week’s time.

FP: Tell us some of the reasons you wrote your novel.

Rotberg: My somewhat bizarre story started during the after-effects of the Oslo Process in the Middle East. Many observers with some sympathy to Israel's predicament as the only non-Muslim, liberal democracy in a sea of extremism, totalitarianism and backwardness, began to notice a sad fact. Israel's concessions to Yasser Arafat and his "Palestinian Authority", in terms of vesting a graduated sovereignty and even weapons to be used by its security apparatus, did not bring peace, but seemed to embolden the Palestinians, including militias reporting to Arafat, into ever more warlike and self-destructive behaviours, evidencing a fundamental rejection of a two-state solution. With uncritical and unconditional support from the United Nations, major NGOs, self-described "progressives" and "intellectuals", the Palestinians turned to a policy of encouraging their young people to become suicide bombers, with incitement through the controlled media and education system, to perfect a long-term policy to drive out what they saw as a Jewish "cancer" within lands believed to be wholly and rightfully Muslim.

I was concerned that terrorism, primarily, but not limited to, suicide bombings was having a very successful effect, one I would later conceptualize as a "Cultural Stockholm Syndrome". Rather than having the Western World recoil in horror at such barbarian behaviour, the suicide bombers were in fact increasing the support for the so-called "plight" of the Palestinians, in particular in the United Nations and on university campuses throughout the West.

At the same time, the West began to adopt a moral and cultural relativism, which meant we were encouraged (aided by the Critical Theorists in the universities) to critique every aspect of our own societies, but any critiques of other societies or cultures were damned as constituting "racism". The very concept of "racism" was re-defined so that it could only apply in the case of words or actions by more powerful groups against less powerful groups. The rise of "political correctness" meant that reasoned discourse was difficult in the face of a subversion of language and a "closing of the American mind". Any discourse on Israel was met with discussion-ending use of improper terms such as "cycle of violence", "occupation", "apartheid", and "peace process" (which of course was anything but).

To make matters worse, I began to note a serious failure to educate our young people about the nature of ideology as a series of viewpoints, values, and assumptions through which every society at every time must necessarily view the world. The Politically Correct, over-represented in the teaching profession, were taking the absurd position that they alone, being beacons of tolerance and pacifism, were ideologically neutral and free of ideology, and that only the Right Wing, Bush, the evangelicals, and supporters of Israel were ideological in their militarism, lack of tolerance and racism. Alarmingly, even a large portion of educated American Jews were agreeing with that position.

Accordingly, I decided to write a novel to explore a number of these themes.

FP: What were some of the themes you addressed in your novel?

Rotberg: I decided to make my main character a Canadian Jewish professor of cultural history, writing a book about the situation in the Middle East. Five years ago, when it was written, I took the then radical approach of having my "fictional" professor write a book-within-a-book arguing that we are witnessing the start of a Second Holocaust against the Jews, this time focussed on the Jews of Israel. My fictional format allowed me to shift back and forth between the life of the professor and what he writes, thereby attempting to shed light on his political and historical perspective, his ideology, and give the reader the benefit of evaluating his fictional non-fiction in the context of the ideology of a Professor who is the son of a Holocaust survivor, and hence brings a certain perspective to his studies.. In addition, I have the Professor's daughter, while studying at an Israeli university on a year abroad program, become injured in a terrorist attack on a restaurant, so the Professor finds himself personally thrust into the middle of the terrorism of the Second Intifada.

Then, to address my concerns about Political Correctness, I have the Professor get in trouble for some slightly inappropriate wording used by him at a lecture, with catastrophic results.

The Professor is an observant Jew and a widower, and I have him fall in love with the beautiful Israeli physician who is treating his daughter. The doctor, however, is completely secular, so the problems they face in their relationship serve as a metaphor for the problems in modern Israel between the secular and the religious.

FP: There is an eerie relationship between the professor you write about and what ended up happening to you, yes?

Rotberg: Absolutely. Imagine the irony, having written a book about a professor who gets in trouble at a lecture, and myself being a lawyer (who is naturally very careful about my choice of words), that I found myself in trouble for something that I was alleged to have said a lecture, at a book promotion lecture at a branch of Canada's largest book retailer.

The difference between what happened to me compared to my fictional professor is that I had him use some wording that he should not have. (In answering a question at a fictional lecture at the height of the suicide bombings in early 2002, as to what the Israelis could do to protect themselves, I have him answer that one solution then being discussed was the erection of a large security fence; and I have him say that such a fence would help "keep the animals in the zoo". This of course in the book results in actions against him at his university for comparing Palestinians to animals, and thus apparently showing that he was biased against Muslim students.) In my case, I said nothing wrong, but some young Palestinians just made up something.

FP: Did you ask help from the police?

Rotberg: Yes, I asked the Police to charge the hecklers who stopped me from lecturing, not with a hate crime, but with the relatively minor offense of "causing a disturbance." They declined to do so. I asked for an internal review. The detective who reviewed the matter told me to stop pursuing the matter or else the police might have to charge me (with what, I didn't quite understand). I was quoted in the Canadian Jewish News to the effect that it would have helped matters if the Canadian Jewish Congress, or any of the numerous other organizations from whom I sought support, would have asked the police to take action. The Executive Director of the Canadian Jewish Congress (to whom I had previously offered sworn affidavits from professors in the audience, but he chose to ignore the matter) replied in the story that he had "no way" of knowing what happened at the store, and that he had "every confidence" in the local police force.

FP: So what are the lessons learned from all of this?

Rotberg: I have learned that the groups that I always thought would protect authors in Canada, such as PenCanada, the Writers Union, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Freedom to Read, and others, only want to protect authors whose views fit their ideologies. I am sad to say this, but it is true. Most fancy themselves as some kind of "progressives" but their ideas on what constitutes a progressive are really suspect. If a writer is pro-American or pro-Israeli, he or she is outside their area of interest. Very few of these organizations would even answer my emails. They wanted nothing to do with me, because I think they have convinced themselves that the biggest threat to tolerance in Canada is Islamophobia, and that any criticism of any branch of Islam, to these naifs, is equivalent to criticizing all Muslims everywhere.

I have learned that many of those in the NGOs, the public sector unions (who now dominate the Canadian labour movement), the schools and universities and even many traditional Canadian churches (the ones that are in decline) all want to fancy themselves "progressives", and rather than pay from their pockets for social justice at home, the easier way to be progressives is to criticize Israel. And how much easier is it to criticize some country or group of people who won't threaten to chop your heads off for that criticism. No matter what is done by the Palestinians or on behalf of the Palestinians, I will be seen as a bad and intolerant guy by these progressives for "hurting the feelings" of some Muslim somewhere. Accordingly, I have been shunned by the very organizations and individuals who claim to be furthering the right of freedom of expression and other fundamental freedoms. So, for those of us who love our freedoms in Canada, our first priority should be to expose those who claim to be progressive and pacifist, but who ally themselves with Islamo-fascists who abuse their own people and train their children to hate and to kill Jews, in Israel, and now worldwide.

FP: What are you working on now as a writer?

Rotberg: Much of my writing continues to be informed by my background as a member of the "Second Generation" - i.e. children of Holocaust survivors. While most Second Generation writers have emphasized the traumas of their parents, the dysfunctions of their families growing up, and the need for healing, I have chosen a different course. I write about the need for action to make sure that the Holocaust doesn't happen again. In this respect, I have been writing about the sad way that Holocaust commemorations, memorials and education have been drifting towards the surrounding ideology, that the main lesson of the Holocaust is the need for Tolerance. This is of course absurd and maybe even obscene. We should not tolerate the intolerable. What happened to me, and my lack of support in the Jewish community, reflects an over-emphasis on Tolerance. We do not need "tolerance," we need "Justice" and action. That is my mission; it is a hard go, but I have a strong religious belief that we have to help "repair the world". I hope that The Second Catastrophe will eventually be published and distributed outside of Canada.

In the meantime I continue to write, and a book of essays, entitled Second Generation Radical: The Struggle Against the Second Holocaust is available for free download on my website, www.howardrotberg.ca, with a request that the readers give a voluntary donation to the wonderful academic organization, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. Also, I continue my other career - I am a developer of affordable rental housing for the working poor under government inducement programs for the private sector in Ontario. It is an interesting life.

FP: Can one still buy your novel?

Rotberg: The Canadian publisher, which is basically out of business, is looking for a U.S. publisher to take it over for American publication and distribution. In the meantime, until the second printing is sold out, it can still be ordered from Mantua Books at mantua2003@hotmail.com.

FP: Howard Rotberg, thank you for joining us.

Rotberg: Thank you for having me.