Wits University has published Advocate Geoff Budlender's report on the events surrounding Limmud at Wits on 9 and 10 August 2009. The background to this event and the terms of reference of the investigation are described in the first few pages of the report.
The report makes disturbing findings about the behaviour of the CSO security personnel, a Jewish security organisation whose members Limmud used for controlling access to the event. It is therefore quite strange and alarming that some voices in the Jewish community, particularly David Saks of the Jewish Board of Deputies, are claiming this report as a vindication, when its findings about the behaviour of CSO personnel are extremely disturbing.
The report describes several credible testimonies of harassment of people, uninvolved in the events surrounding Limmud. Budlender states:
The behaviour of the security guards was, to put it at its lowest, inappropriate. They were in a situation in which sensitivities were high. It is troubling that some of them, at least, did not appreciate the consequences of what they were doing, even when this was raised with them. It is, however, not entirely surprising. The marshals were young people who appear to have been given no training for the sensitive situation in which they were operating. Even skilled and experienced people would have found this a difficult situation. The marshals were not skilled and experienced in dealing with such situations. ... It is likely that this insensitivity to the political and racial context, taken together with the aggressive conduct of some of the marshals, was a toxic mixture. It explains, for example, the experience and response of Dr Tsotsi [a person uninvolved in the events of Limmud who was harrassed by the security - EDITOR].
He further states:
... the marshals – who were initially intended solely to carry out the function of identifying Limmud participants – took over an enlarged “security” function. They were not trained to carry out such a function in a highly charged situation. They do not appear to have appreciated the consequences of the manner in which they performed their functions. They over-reached the bounds of their authority, and some of them acted in an aggressive manner. They were, by their very nature, partisan in a context in which it might be necessary to keep the peace between two disputing parties.
He finds:
I prefer not to use the term “racial profiling”, which has a variety of possible connotations. I have found that the Limmud organisers did not have a policy of treating members of different racial groups in a different manner. However, I have found that at least some such differential treatment did take place. I have suggested some reasons why this was so.
This is an indictment, not a vindication. These findings call for introspection as well as remedial behaviour with regards CSO and the use of their services or the services of CSO personnel at official Jewish events. Budlender's report certainly does not justify the kind of bombastic trumpeting of Mr Saks and others.
There were two protests at the event, one outside the venue predominantly organised and attended by the PSA and another inside the venue predominantly organised and attended by the PSC. Budlender describes testimony of the outside group of protesters who "hurled insults" and called people “baby killers” and “Nazis”. This is thuggery from people who appear to have little interest in Palestinian rights but rather some other undisclosed motive.
Budlender therefore concluded:
I have found that the protesters outside the University gates engaged in inflammatory and offensive slurs of people who were attending the conference.
This is an indictment of the PSA and its disgraceful methods.
But Budlender vindicated the behaviour of the protest inside the hall (the Wits PSC one) as well as the behaviour of the Limmud participants:
I received no evidence that either the protestors on the campus or the Limmud participants engaged in inflammatory slurs. Words were clearly exchanged from time to time, and some of them were angry or intended to be hurtful. However, as far as I have been able to establish, they were exchanges of the kind one would anticipate in this situation, and not particularly offensive.
Here is the full report.
Jewish Voice for Peace has alerted us to this troubling story: