1970: A Varsity Editor Reports Back Part 1
The period between March 2nd and March 18th, 1970, offers a uniquely sustained public political exchange in the pages of the Varsity. In February, the Israeli Government Ministry of Tourism had provided Brian Johnson, Editor of the Varsity and twelve American college newspaper editors a one week, all-expense-paid trip to Israel. Upon their return, Johnson wrote a series of three articles that prompted an outpouring of letters from U of T students, and erupted debate in the paper about Palestine and Israeli Zionist state project. Prior to and following Johnson’s series, the Varsity is also replete with notices for pro-Israel events, initiatives and meetings.
Johnson’s reflection begins in Qalqiliya, described as a “small Arab town in what used to be Jordan” wherein the Israeli military government had “destroyed 120 homes of suspected terrorists.” (We note here and throughout the articles, the generalized “Arab” is used in place of referring directly to Palestine and Palestinians.) Johnson describes renting a car with his fellow journalists on the one evening they had free during the week, to “find out what the other side had to say.” There were three others with Johnson, “Rob from Columbia, Peter from Wisconsin, and an Israeli girl from Tel Aviv University… For her own safety, the Israeli girl posed as a Canadian journalist” (March 2, 1970, p. 10).
The journalists had visited a local bookstore, where they asked the shopkeeper and others about how their conditions had changed since the Six Day War of 1967. They were initially told that the men could not answer political questions as they would be thrown in jail for doing so. Soon, however, they share more. The journalists are told that life is “not good,” and that Palestinians are denied freedom of speech and freedom of movement. “We cannot go back to our homeland. If I go back to my farm they will put me in prison.” The shopkeeper shows them the travel permit he is required to show for movement through military check points within the occupied territories, which he says anyone can get “but you must have a good reason.”
The shopkeeper explains that during the war, Israelis had stolen books from his store and others, and had changed the word “Palestine” to “Israel” in the textbooks. “They tried to change the thinking of the Arabs, but that is very hard.” When the student journalists ask what the men think is the solution to the situation, they are met with a question themselves: “why does America send napalm weapons to bomb us, burn us?” The shopkeeper continues, “If the Jews return our land and return refugees to their land — if they return them to their homes — there would be no war, there would be peace. They must return us our freedom. There must be freedom for all people to say what they want.” The shopkeeper emphasized that if Arabs “speak about what is here in the West Bank, they will be in prison” and that he had “many friends in prison.” Johnson’s narrative shifts to recall a scene they would encounter on the formal tour, driving through Nablus:
About 400 Arabs were massed in front of the main gates of a large stone building surrounded by concrete walls. They were shouting and pressing against the gate.
‘They are Arabs waiting to see relatives inside the prison,’ our guide explained. He said they were all political prisoners (p.10).
A group of about 20 people eventually gathers around the journalists at the bookstore and children peer in from outside. Having quickly earned the trust of their hosts, the visitors are served coffee, and “offered the traditional Arab hospitality that guaranteed our safety.” Their hosts continue to respond to their questions, explaining how the Israelis were blowing up and bulldozing Palestinian houses based on suspicions that terrorists were harboured in them.
An elder teacher is brought to speak to the journalists, and asks them why they were there, and why they had not come sooner. He says, “We are from Palestine. The Jews are not from Palestine” (p.11). The teacher explains that the Palestinians’ desire for peace was being prevented by “the leaders and their policy” adding that “Every leader belongs to a big country. Some to US. Some to Russia. Some to France.” He describes the displaced Palestinian refugees, “cold, hungry, in huts, tents” who only want to go back to their homes. Echoing the shopkeeper’s earlier assertions, the teacher tells the journalists that America is supplying weapons to Israel and “some supply Arabs,” leading to killing and the destruction of towns.
Two days after Johnson’s article appears, a letter to the paper signed by Rick Kardonne denounces it as “bullshit” and “typical Arab propaganda.” Kardonne advises the Varsity to “stick to your very fine exposes of American domination of Canada, the university issues, and internal Canadian affairs — and keep your fucking noses out of the Middle East. The Mideast war is solely up to us (Jews) and the Arabs to solve — without any outside advice” (March 4, 1970, p. 5).
The second installment of Johnson’s series is also published on that day (March 4, 1970, p. 8). The article opens with the assertion that while Palestinians account for nearly half the population under Israeli rule, they are “second class citizens” living in poverty and without political freedom. Johnson writes that an Israeli government economist told him that “The Palestinian question is of no significance to Israel,” and that Israelis could “deal with it with both hands tied behind our back.”
The four journalists had stayed an extra day in Jerusalem after their official tour had ended, and along with three more of the college editors, had rented a car to visit Jericho. They were stopped by Israeli soldiers who told them they were not allowed to speak with anyone, and likewise, the people they met would not speak to them and referred them to the mayor. Johnson describes their meeting with the mayor, Saleh Abdo, in a hotel that he owned, conversing with him through a translator. The mayor explains to them that 95% of the 60,000 refugees that had lived in Jericho had fled to Jordan after the 1967 war. He shares that Jericho’s tourism industry is “finished” and expresses support for the creation of “two Palestinian states.” When the journalists share the discrepancy between what the mayor is saying and what the people in Qalqiliya had told them, the mayor suggests they speak to the politicians instead: “Oh well. The mayor knows everything, not the people. The people know nothing. You should have visited the mayor in Qalqiliya, the mayor in Hebron, the mayor in Nablus… Did you visit the mayor of Hebron? He’s a good man, he’s a strong man — you should visit him.”
The translator offers them the further information that Abdo is a “good friend” of the Prime Minister of Jordan, and a “rich man” and a “big landowner” who owns many properties. The journalists learn that Abdo has not been elected, rather he had been made deputy mayor after the elected mayor had fled to Jordan. There had been no elections since the war.
The Friday, March 6th issue of the paper offers an additional unplanned piece by Johnson, wherein he addresses the “barrage of letters criticizing the two articles on Israel” that he had published that Monday and Wednesday. He describes the letters as not only an attack on the Varsity, but on his “personal integrity as a journalist,” as they imply that he is “a liar, an antisemite, and a fascist” (p. 4). He goes on to address each of four assumptions that he identifies the letters are based on: that he has “presented only one side of the picture; that the stories form a political polemic or analysis rather than a description of an experience; that a criticism of Israeli policy in the occupied territories constitutes support for the surrounding Arab states; [and] that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.”
On the latter, Johnson argues,
I was freer then to discuss and criticize Israeli policy with Israelis than I am now with supporters of Israel at U of T. Israelis are not monolithic in their support for the present military policy in the occupied territories. Most do not see a criticism of that strategy as fascistic. Many are aware of the oppression of the Arabs in the occupied territories and oppose it.
And to take an anti-Zionist stand in Israel is not to take an anti-Semitic stand. Zionism, a religious form of nationalism, is rapidly fading in Israel. (March 6, p.4)
Johnson concludes by stressing that the “problem in the Middle East is political, but the war takes the form of racial conflict” (p.4).
The following page of the Varsity features three of the letters responding to Johnson’s articles and two responding to Kardonne’s letter. Johnson is accused of ignoring the concerns of Israel and Israelis, and three of the letters redirect attention to Egypt under Nasser’s presidency as a key problem. In one of these, Howard English, of Students for Israel, admonishes Johnson for not having sought to understand “what Zionism means to the Jewish people. That is something of which Johnson shows no conception;” English writes, “the founding after thousands of years of a Jewish purpose, a Jewish identity, a Jewish liberation in the land of Israel.”
Suggested citation
rosalind hampton (2024). 1970: A Varsity reporter reports back, part 1. Coalition Building on Campus. https://coalitionbuildingoncampus.ca/cboc-story/1970-a-varsity-editor-reports-back-part-1/