Pro-israel, Anti-israel Groups Greet Sharon in Montreal

Angry pro-Israel and anti-Israel demonstrations took place in downtown Montreal yesterday on the occasion of the visit of former Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, now a Minister-Without-Portfolio in Premier Menachem Begin’s government.

The controversial general was denounced as a “war criminal” by Canadian Arabs and their supporters who protested outside the Ritz Carlton Hotel where Sharon was speaking at a fund-raising dinner for the Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem. Even larger numbers of Jews and other friends of Israel hailed the visitor with chants of “Sharon, Sharon, Sharon.” About 100 police with riot-control gear and gas masks kept the two groups well apart.

Sharon castigated the protestors as a “mob” and said their presence showed “how wise we were when we liquidated the kingdom of terror in Lebanon by the PLO because if we lose a single war we will be exterminated.” He emerged from the hotel briefly to salute the friends of Israel and the “wonderful Jewish community ready to defend the honor of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.”

The protestors numbered several hundred people, mostly Arabs with a sprinkling of members of the pro-Arab Montreal teachers union and some Communist Party members. Yvon Charbonneau, president of the teachers union was not at the anti-Sharon rally. He said he had received telephone threats from Jewish groups. The pro-Sharon rally drew about 1,500 people.

Charbonneau, whose union has been distributing an anti-Israel poster and pamphlets to provincial schools, was the target of another mass protest rally by about 1,000 Jews outside of union headquarters yesterday. He was reviled as “an enemy of the Jewish people, ” a “trouble-maker” and “an evil hate-monger” by speakers and demonstrators who shouted “Long live Israel.” He is “an abomination of Canadian civilization,” declared Bernard Feinstone, president of the Quebec region of the Canadian Jewish Congress, one of the organizations sponsoring the protest. The others were the Canadian-Israel Committee, the Canadian Zionist Federation, B’nai B’rith and Herut.

Sharon, in his address to the 500 dinner guests marking the 100th anniversary of the Shaare Zedek Hospital, defended the war in Lebanon. He said it was “a legitimate defensive war against the PLO kingdom of terror in Lebanon. One year later, we can state affirmatively that kingdom of terror was destroyed and Lebanon is no more the center of local, regional and international PLO terrorism.”

SHARON URGES JEWS TO FIGHT BACK

Sharon declared that Jewish generals, himself included, hate war and make every effort to prevent war. “I have been here 24 hours now and I have found here a wonderful Jewish community ready to defend the honor of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.” He said “the PLO is waging a war of verbal terror” and expressed hope that “Canadian public opinion will reject all villanous accusations and slander.” He said, “I am not afraid of any kind of terror and Jews should fight back smear and anti-Semitism.”

Sharon arrived in Montreal yesterday on a Swissair flight and was escorted to his hotel by eight Canadian Royal Mounted Police cars. His visit engendered intense controversy. The general was forced to resign as Defense Minister last year after a judicial commission of inquiry found him indirectly responsible for the massacre of Palestinian civilians in the Shatila and Sabra refugee camps in Beirut last September by units of the Israel-backed Christian Phalangist militia.

Another bitter controversy was generated by the distribution of the poster and pamphlets accusing Israel of “genocide” against Palestinian Arabs to teachers in the province by Charbonneau’s union. Three Liberal members of the federal Parliament — David Berger, Pierre Deniger and Celine Hervieux-Payette — accused the union leader of anti-Semitism. The same charge was made by Herbert Mark, a Liberal member of the Quebec Assembly. Charbonneau said he would sue the legislators for slander.

The issue of the poster and pamphlets was raised in the Quebec Parliament Tuesday. Education Minister Camille Laurin said the Quebec government cannot prohibit the freedom to express political opinions in the province’s schools because that is the direct responsibility of the school commissions. Laurin noted that the Quebec government is opposed to discrimination of a racial character but it cannot prevent any group from expressing its own views on the Israel-Arab conflict.