Re: Banned British MP takes aim at Israel – and Ottawa, March 24

British MP George Galloway may be pro-Palestinian, anti-imperialist, an anti-American and perhaps even a covert anti-Semite. He may be a Neville Chamberlain-style appeaser who played into the hands of Saddam Hussein.

He is not, however, a realistic security threat to Canada. As a Jewish Canadian, I suspect that Galloway's "one-state solution" is code for the abolition of Israel, and that there is likely more than meets the eye to his sympathies with Hamas. However, the very health of our democracy or, for that matter, of the internally split Israeli democracy, depends on the free and open expression of ideas, which can then come under the scrutiny of a free press.

Failing that, the main alternative is the Internet, where individuals often surf for views that confirm their prejudices and then go even further down the rabbit hole of monolithic opinion.

There is no reason to deny George Galloway his soapbox and good reason to have him meet other Canadian intellectuals in debate, which is what happened at Columbia University, for example, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was allowed to vent his implacably anti-Israel views.

If we ourselves can't allow democratic free speech, how can we expect fledgling democracies that were once dictatorships to do so?

Ron Charach, MD, Toronto

Read more about: