by KEN HECHTMAN

“Next time we do this,” says Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) member Abdirahman Ahmed, “we put a clock on the wall that shows Palestine time.” Remembering to add seven hours was the least of the challenges faced by Montreal activist Jaggi Singh’s crisis management team during the Montreal activist’s trip to Palestine this week.

Located at SPHR’s downtown office, the war room staff of SPHR and International Solidarity Movement (ISM) members worked around the clock for three days, collecting information from Jerusalem and distributing news in Canada.

Singh was immediately picked up by Israeli authorities upon landing in Tel Aviv Saturday afternoon, his purpose a fact-finding mission in the Occupied Territories. Singh used his first phone call to give a list of people in Canada to the Canadian embassy with instructions that they be alerted to his situation. Fortunately, the embassy complied. Unfortunately, it was the only help he would receive from them. Two of the people on that list were fellow ISM activists Stefan Christoff and Andrea Schmidt, who spread the word to gather at the SPHR offices and plan a press conference the following day.

At the press conference on Sunday, CBC TV arrived with the idea - not to say fixation - that Singh had been barred from Israel not by the Interior Ministry for his politics, like 3,500 previous ISM activists, but by airport security for his Canadian criminal record. No amount of repetition would change their minds, and Israel’s Interior Ministry did initially deny having barred Singh from the country. Later, an SPHR activist imitated a Jewish accent and claimed to be calling from Amnesty International. He couldn’t get Singh brought to the phone, but the panicked airport immigration official was induced to confirm that the order had in fact come from the Ministry.

Update calls went out to all major Canadian media outlets, shaping the breaking story at intervals synchronized to the news cycle, from the breakfast show to the 11 o’clock news.

Then came pure political hardball. Calls went out to the offices of Israeli peace groups like Ta’ayush and Gush Shalom to send supporters to the courthouse. Amzi Bishara, an Arab member of the Knesset, was enlisted as a parliamentary observer. Adala, the civil rights non-governmental organization of Singh’s lawyer Shammai Leibowitz, was contacted for updates almost hourly. On Monday, when the court went into closed session so the prosecution could present secret evidence to the judge in the absence of Singh and Leibowitz, Myra Pasterlow, Canadian Foreign Affairs’ consular case manager for the Middle East, was informed in real time by SPHR member Samer Elatrash. “I have to send out a press release in 10 minutes. Now, what do I say?” Elatrash asked her.

Pasterlow tried, “Say we’re doing all we can?”

“Sure, I could say that - but it would be bullshit!” Elatrash replied. Within the hour, the verdict overturning the deportation came in. At presstime, Singh is free, out on $5,000 (U.S.) bail put up by Ta’ayush, but barred from visiting the Occupied Territories. The war room isn’t standing down just yet. :