More than 150 people fairly filled the room to hear Kinsella, a firebrand political consultant, lawyer and journalist (for Postmedia most recently), and while precise demographics weren\u2019t available, the majority weren\u2019t current students.<\/p>\n
Though a few families came out, as did members of the Jewish Law Students Association that invited Kinsella, most in attendance were decades removed from their college days and would have heard about the lecture through the B\u2019nai Brith and other organizations that supported the JSLA. Likely the average age of his audience this night was lowered by those who live-streamed the event online.<\/p>\n
The lecture was promoted as Truth on Trial: Information Warfare, Democracy and the Rule of Law, and Kinsella focused on Hamas and the terror organization\u2019s influence of public opinion and capture of political favour in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that killed killing at least 1,195 people during the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah.<\/p>\n
Penguin Random House Canada published Kinsella\u2019s latest book this spring, The Hidden Hand: The Information War and the Rise of Antisemitic Propaganda. He also produced and narrated a documentary, The Campaign: Disinformation in a Time of War, that seized on the same themes.<\/p>\n
Rather than a reading of an excerpt of screening of clips from the documentary, Kinsella spoke extemporaneously about the rise of anti-Israeli sentiment and stoking of antisemitic fires.<\/p>\n
Kinsella, who served as a key adviser to former Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien and worked on political campaigns \u201cfrom California to Israel,\u201d so it was almost with professional envy as well as disgust that he laid out the roll-out of Hamas\u2019s sophisticated messaging apparatus. Within minutes of the attack, while Hamas was still in Israel, thousands of bots on social media were ramped up, disinformation and propaganda landing with hundreds of millions on platforms worldwide \u2014 not so much convenient selection of facts or even conflations and distortions, but fabrications, whole-cloth fictional narratives<\/p>\n
\u201cThe messages were highly disciplined and strategic,\u201d Kinsella said. \u201cHamas knew they could never beat Israel militarily \u2014 Israel would always beat them on the battlefield. What did they do instead? They started a campaign, a propaganda war to change public opinion in the west, an information war, because that they knew they could win. A campaign to isolate, delegitimize, and ultimately erase the Jewish state from the map and destabilize Western democracy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was designed to capture the hearts and minds of young people. Main target was young people in places like (Queen\u2019s). They are winning using this.\u201d<\/p>\n
At this point, Kinsella held up an iPhone. He\u2019d later note the irony of Israel, a leader in the development of technology, being undone by some of the innovations that sourced to the nation. The misinformation campaign hit the mark with unbelievable speed and efficiency \u2014 Kinsella cited a Harris poll in the almost immediate wake of the Oct. 7 attacks that found 70 per cent of the Gen Z demographic support Hamas. He also said that pollsters privately confided to him that the numbers \u201cwere much worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
To Lauren Schwartz, co-president of the JLSA at Queen\u2019s, Kinsella\u2019s read of both the student-aged demographic and the mechanism of opinion shaping was regrettably on the mark. <\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, most people in my generation rely on TikTok and Instagram reels for information regarding the Israel-Hamas war and misinformation is rampant,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Winning those hearts and minds were not a goal, as Kinsella pointed out, but a means to an end, which is political influence, and he pointed to Prime Minister Mark Carney.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne year ago, he went to the United Nations and said Canada was going to recognize the Palestinian state (only if the Palestinian authority) stopped their pay-to-slay-Jews program, reform governance there, have elections for the first time in 20 years, and demilitarize Palestine,\u201d Kinsella said. \u201cNot one of those conditions has been met, but he recognized Hamas-run Palestine anyway.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy? Why, before even one of the conditions were met?\u201d<\/p>\n
Kinsella reduced it to one word: polls. <\/p>\n
\u201c(Politicians) pay attention to one thing more than anything else,\u201d he said. \u201cPoliticians are as addicted to polls like it\u2019s heroin.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simple awareness of the Hamas misinformation campaign is to Kinsella\u2019s mind the first step to claw back opinion.<\/p>\n
While he dedicated most of his time to the global issues, including the financing of Hamas\u2019s social media campaign by Qatar and the expertise sourced to Al-Jazeera, Kinsella spoke at some length about fights against racism and antisemitism much closer to home, including taking on and taking down a Toronto community newspaper that was covertly an operation back by neo-Nazis \u2014 first by threatening to out advertisers and others associated with the newspaper, then by litigation, receiving no support for to charge or prosecute hate-speech crimes.<\/p>\n
Schwartz said she was proud that the JLSA staged the event in the wake of the Belleville attack. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s telling that it falls on the shoulders of Jewish students to organize this rather than have our law school openly stand up for the rights of Jewish students,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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