In yesterday’s post about the Canadian authorities’ kid-glove treatment of the Islamic community, there’s a quote from Hussein Hamdani, a lawyer and member of the government’s cross-cultural roundtable on security:

[Hussein Hamdani] and others tried to explain to police why they had to engage the Muslim community.

“We would say, ‘Look, you’re doing a negative job when doing outreach because you have this wall of silence,’ ” he said. “I don’t think they listened for a long time.”

In 1998 at the University of Western Ontario, Hussein Hamdani reached out to the Jewish Student Union’s celebration of Israel Independence Day, showing up with a friend dressed in a shirt with fake blood stains and a kaffiyeh covering his face and head.

Celebration of Israel disrupted.

For the second consecutive year, a Jewish celebration was disrupted by a single student protestor in the University Community Centre. The celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Independence of Israel was hosted by the Jewish Students’ Union yesterday.

The demonstrator, dressed in an artificially blood-stained shirt with his face and head covered with a scarf, was handing out pamphlets modeled after the JSU’s posters used to advertise yesterday’s celebration. The flyers acuse Israel of tyranny, oppression and bloodshed.

“The celebration was not intended to be a political statement, although there are certain people who do not accept Israel because they want a completely Arab area,” said Michael Bloom, public relations officer for the JSU. He added the event is held annually to celebrate the birthday of Israel.

The University Police Department and Entertainment Productions manager Pete Stanbridge, who is responsible for booking the space in the UCC, were contacted shortly after the protestor appeared and asked the student to leave, Stanbridge said. “The concern was that it would disrupt the event or create a situation where tempers might flare.”

Although the protestor refused to comment, his accompanying friend Hussein Hamdani, a first-year law student, spoke to members of the UPD and University Students’ Council questioning their grounds for asking the protestor to leave. “I am not protesting anything – I heard that they had restricted someone from walking around,” Hamdani said. “This person was doing nothing illegal – a paying member of the USC has the right to walk around the student centre.”