Yes you did wrong
The saga of a Vancouver instructor who called the October 7 Hamas attacks "an amazing, brilliant offensive" shot into local news this week with a reinstatement, a self-justification, and a dismissal
On October 28, 2023 Natalie Knight, an instructor at Vancouver’s Langara College, publicly celebrated the October 7 Hamas massacre of 1200 people in Israel. There is no question that she did so, and no question about the words she said. Natalie’s speech was captured on video, and the video was quickly shared online. She stood in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery and spoke into a microphone, with no apparent concern that a journalist was filming her just a few feet away. The video now has some 482,000 views.
The only question is whether Natalie did wrong to publicly call the Hamas attack “an amazing, brilliant offensive.” Enough people immediately found her speech to be wrong to make Langara decide to put Natalie on leave in November, initiate an investigation, and issue an announcement that Natalie’s views did not represent the views of the College.
Natalie had spoken at a rally sponsored by Samidoun and the Palestinian Youth Movement, “two organizations that have openly celebrated the massacres and endorsed the Hamas side in the current conflict,” according to a report in the National Post. Soon after I heard of Natalie’s speech in October, I wrote a column for this substack asking non-Muslim supporters of Hamas in Vancouver and other Canadian cities whether they were familiar with the purely Islamic intentions of the foundational 1988 Hamas Charter and whether they meant to affirm those aims.
The Hamas Covenant
Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes. You who celebrate the Hamas massacres of October 7 in the city of my birth, Vancouver...
Last week two new developments came in quick succession. After their three-month investigation, Langara College reinstated Natalie in her job with no disciplinary consequences. They had determined that her comments were not clearly outside the bounds of protected expression. Natalie saw this as a vindication and again gave a public speech to a group of supporters, declaring, according to a report in the Langara College student paper, The Voice, “It means we won. It means I did nothing wrong. It means none of you are doing anything wrong.”
Evidently it was this second public speech that precipitated Langara’s decision to then dismiss Natalie permanently. They had expected her to “take care to ensure any future remarks could not reasonably be interpreted as celebrating violence against civilians,” as specified in an official statement published January 26.
Meanwhile, Natalie has never walked back the words she publicly declared on October 28. After she was put on leave in November, she agitated through her activist group “United in Struggle.” When given a second chance by Langara, she could not resist the temptation to publicly claim to have been right all along.
The instructor bears responsibility for her celebration of a massacre, but to what extent can her college be said to have provided her with good guidance? Can anyone say anymore that Canada’s post-secondary institutions have a handle on right and wrong? Who can predict whether wrong will be condemned or affirmed there? If the word “wrong” is even heard at colleges and universities these days, isn’t it generally applied to refusal of students and staff to pronounce the progressive shibboleths? The college’s own actions show that it did not judge its instructor’s public celebration of a massacre to be wrong. The college quietly reinstated her without professional penalty, then fired her when she did not act according to its expectations.
It cannot therefore be the college’s decision to reinstate or dismiss, that determines right or wrong. If an employee does wrong, there is no assurance that the college would name it. Not only Langara, but colleges and universities across Canada, as documented this week by observers such as Jesse Kline and Jay Solomon.
It is wrong to celebrate a massacre. By October 28, there was plenty of accessible video and photographic evidence of the depravity of the Hamas attacks. Who could have missed the repeated report that the murder of 1200 in Israel was the worst mass violence against the Jews since the Holocaust? It is wrong to bring a celebration of that violence to the streets of Vancouver, where it definitely has had an evil influence on the life of the city. Even if your employer rewards you, even if all of your friends praise you, even if public opinion is on your side, to celebrate a massacre is wrong.