Gawain of Orkeny
06-26-2005, 18:15
Well that other thread was getting out of hand, Lets hope we can keep things civil here.
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Jewish Political Studies Review
Jewish Political Studies Review 16:3-4 (Fall 2004)
Anti-Semitism in Canada
Manuel Prutschi
Canada is characterized by a set of fundamental values that help create a multicultural democracy and that are intended, among other goals, to protect vulnerable minorities. This article examines how these values, unfortunately, have not immunized Canada from anti-Semitism. It traces Canadian anti-Semitism's domestic historical evolution and puts the phenomenon in the context of its current worldwide resurgence.
The article analyzes the last four years, identifies anti-Semitism's Middle Eastern roots, and examines the nature and sources of its manifestations. It focuses, furthermore, on the period between March and July 2004. Analyzing individual anti-Semitic incidents, it finds that while little if any pattern emerges, at least in certain quarters anti-Semitism may have become almost systemic.
Using specific cases from the last four years as examples, the article concludes by demonstrating how Canada uses a specially designed legislative framework as one important way of combating anti-Semitism.
A New Wave of Anti-Semitism
The Canadian Jewish community dates back to the 18th century and its members come from all parts of the world. Today it numbers approximately 370,000, constituting 1.1 percent of the Canadian population. Well over half reside in the country's three largest cities, Toronto (180,000), Montreal (93,000), and Vancouver (22,500). There are many other cities with smaller yet self-sufficient Jewish communities of varying size.1
Anti-Semitism has always confronted Canadian Jews. Its contemporary threatening presence forms part of a continuum dating back to the community's origins and was only briefly interrupted in the early 1940s, when Canada went to war against the Axis powers.
In the earlier part of the last century, anti-Semitism involved quotas, discrimination in employment and public facilities, and restrictive land covenants. It took a particularly virulent form in the 1930s and at the very beginning of the next decade, when a policy of "none is too many"2 closed the door to Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe. Anti-Jewish discrimination strongly persisted in the two decades after WW II. In the next wave of anti-Semitism, white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups responded to an increasingly multicultural Canada with a vitriolic anti-Semitism incorporating Holocaust denial.
Understanding contemporary anti-Semitism in Canada requires appreciating its international, and particularly Middle Eastern, context. Anti-Jewish acts are but an extension of the murderous terrorist campaign against the State of Israel in what is an unrelenting geopolitical war. Conversely, anti-Semitism, which had been a Diaspora phenomenon, also came to target Israel after its establishment in 1948.
Zionism and its tangible expression, the State of Israel, constitute the culmination of the Jewish people's striving for an end to perennial persecution, for self-determination and the fulfillment of its destiny. For the Canadian Jewish community, therefore, Israel is central and ties with it are very strong. Some four hundred Canadian Jewish soldiers, after they were discharged from their service in WW II, went to fight for the new, endangered Jewish state while the community provided support in other ways. Canadian Jews have often traveled to Israel, studied in it, and worked in it, and significant numbers have emigrated to it. Hence, most Canadian Jews are tied to the state not only by history, peoplehood, and religion but also by family.
In other words, Israel and Jews, Zionism and Judaism, are inextricably intertwined. The essentially false distinction between Jew and Zionist has been adopted principally by anti-Semites.
The Last Four Years: Overview
When the Israeli-Arab conflict intensifies there is anti-Semitic spillover against Jewish communities worldwide, as the line between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism blurs almost completely. Anti-Semitism's upsurge can be traced to the late September 2000 launching of the most recent campaign of Palestinian violence against Israel, and is part of a global pattern that has encompassed Canada as well.
What makes anti-Semitism so formidable is its flexibility, its ability to unite what would ordinarily be the most disparate elements - rightists and leftists, Islamists and Arabists, purported antiracists and white supremacists. This "new" anti-Semitism, as it has come to be called, is rooted in Christian and Muslim theologies of hate, in visceral rather than ideological loathing. Anti-Semitism has also infected elements of the New Age and antiglobalization movements, and is also espoused by many anti-Americans.
Incidents: October 2000-March 2004
Sources documenting anti-Semitism in Canada indicate an increase in the number of incidents, many in the serious category.3 Hatred has been propagated and incited, institutions and other property have been vandalized, synagogues and schools have been firebombed and cemeteries desecrated, while individuals and groups as well as the community as a whole have been harassed, threatened, and attacked.4
Such language is common in anti-Israeli demonstrations and has found its way into declarations, telephone calls, letters, emails, websites, and articles. The Arabic intonation of "Death to the Jews" has been heard on the streets of Canadian cities. Indeed, Arab or Muslim individuals have perpetrated many of the above-mentioned crimes.5
Although many more of the anti-Semitic incidents likely are the work of ordinary hate-mongers, certain Arab ambassadors to Canada have not helped the situation with their own rhetoric. After the tragedy of September 11, the Saudi ambassador, to deflect the attention that was being directed at his country, blamed the "Zionist lobby" for disseminating lies: "You find [the Zionist lobby] everywhere. You find people in government, in the media, in the Parliament...it's not a secret....They control the media."6 In December 2002 the Lebanese ambassador, in an interview with the Arabic-language newspaper Sada al Machric, held the Zionists or Jews (the two are used indistinguishably) responsible for Canada branding Hizballah a terrorist organization. As he elaborated to the National Post: "I wanted to say exactly that 90 percent of the mass media in Canada is controlled by Jews or Zionists, and those Jews and Zionists, they are also supported by other organizations in the States." He also confessed to the Post that "he might have phrased [the remarks] differently if he were addressing English readers."7 But this did not stop him from vilifying the Canadian Jewish community once again in August 2003.
The notion of a world Jewish conspiracy, perhaps the most enduring anti-Semitic libel, underlies the very up-to-date claim that 9-11 was an Israeli-Jewish plot. On 26 September 2001, only two weeks after the calamity, cars in downtown Calgary, in the province of Alberta, were leafleted with that accusation.8 In October 2001 and May 2002, the white-supremacist National Alliance distributed leaflets throughout the province blaming the attack on American support for Israel and calling for cutting iff all aid to the Jewish state.
"Let's stop being human shields for Israel!" the flyers proclaimed, favorably quoting from a 1998 interview with Osama Bin Laden, whom they described as a "Muslim leader," in which he said the United States must come to realize that Jewish interests are alien to American ones.9
A particularly virulent manifestation of anti-Semitism was the outburst of David Ahenakew, a former leader of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations and the Assembly of First Nations. On 13 December 2002, in a speech to a Federation meeting in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and in an immediately subsequent interview, Ahenakew blamed Jews for WW II, justified their annihilation by Hitler, and predicted that through their "killing [of ] people in Arab countries" they would start a Third World War. The connection with the Middle East has, of course, become standard fare for many anti-Semites.10
The blending of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism has manifested itself most concretely on Canadian campuses. All too often, the normative exchange of ideas has been supplanted by hostility, vilification, and intimidation. In December 2001, for example, the Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights movement distributed, at the University of Ottawa, The Day of Quds, a publication by a group calling itself the Muslim Students Federation. The pamphlet is virulently, indeed genocidally anti-Semitic and makes use of classic Judeophobic themes. It purports to concern itself with "Zionist Jews," who are "false" Jews, but clearly refers to the Jewish people as known from antiquity to the present day. The "true" Jews are figments of the pamphleteer's imagination.11 The most egregious example, however, remains the September 2002 riot by anti-Israeli protesters that prevented Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking at Concordia University in Montreal, at an event sponsored by the university's Hillel Society for Jewish students. The rioters caused considerable property damage and assaulted some of those seeking to attend.
Anti-Semitism has infected parts of the New Age fraternity as well. Emerging from legitimate popular protest and alternative movements, these New Agers have made common cause with far-Right "world Jewry" conspiracists. Fred Kyburz of Coleman, Alberta, whose website Patriots on Guard was shut down by the Canadian Human Rights Commission for disseminating anti-Semitism, is an example of an individual straddling these two worlds. He began his activities over ten years ago, blaming Jews for all the evils of mankind while also abhorring the central government and taxes. More recently, New Age anti-Semitism has invariably been linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well.12 New Age radicals share paranoia, anti-establishmentarianism, anti-imperialism, and anti-Israelism with the likes of Kyburz, while adding environmentalism, alternative health practices, and antiglobalization to the mix. They identify globalization of the world economy with Jews, whom they regard as affluent internationalists.
Incidents: March-July 2004
The anti-Semitic activity of the last three and a half years has not abated. Between 14 March and 14 July 2004, twenty-four incidents have been identified as anti-Semitic (two of these allegedly so) in Newfoundland, Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa, the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), and some smaller Ontario communities, breaking down as follows:
* Four synagogues
* Six cemeteries
* Four schools, two Jewish and two public
*
Four multiproperty defacements in the GTA, involving private homes, cars, businesses, signs for the United Jewish Appeal, and public property in three separate neighborhoods, two of them Jewish and two non-Jewish
* One defacement of a non-Jewish private home
* One defacement in a non-Jewish neighborhood
* One case of hate postings on numerous poles
* One case of harassment and threats
* One alleged physical attack
* One arson of a manufacturing company, with allegedly racist overtones
Only two of these incidents were Middle East-related. In the most serious, the firebombing of a Jewish school's library in Montreal during the Shavuot holiday, the perpetrators left a note attributing their attack to Israel's targeted assassination of the Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin. In the other, the culprits posted high-quality color flyers of the American flag, the Star of David, and swastikas with the claim that Israel and the United Kingdom (of all things) had misled the United States into the Iraq War.
Swastikas, Nazi slogans, and anti-Semitic profanity characterized the defacements. In five of the six cemeteries, however, tombstones were toppled, without any graffiti.
The claimed physical attack seems more invented than real. The "victim" reported that two men attacked him while walking in the early morning hours and scrawled a swastika on his forehead with a blue marker. Police investigators concluded that "To say the least, the circumstances are odd."13
There have been six separate arrests, involving twelve accused. Seven of the perpetrators are teenagers aged 13-18.
Two boys, 13 and 14, harassed the family of another teenager they knew with anti-Semitic and threatening phone calls. One 18-year-old and two 15-year-olds, over a two-day period, overturned tombstones in a Jewish cemetery, vandalized a synagogue and defaced it with swastikas, and committed a number of other anti-Semitic acts. Very ironically, the father of the 18-year-old works at a Jewish cemetery across the street from the cemetery his son vandalized and is described as a tzadik (righteous person) who treats his work at the cemetery as "sacred labor." The two 18-year-olds in the school firebombing are Canadian Arabs but, peculiarly, Lebanese Christians.
The 29-year-old accused in the Newfoundland synagogue vandalism was no stranger to its congregants since he had appeared at the site before, in one case uttering a threat. Police knew him and had previously characterized him as harmless. A psychiatric examination found him fit to stand trial.
The arson of the manufacturing company, which included spraypainted swastikas, appears to have been self-inflicted by its owners, a 30-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman who now face a myriad of charges including arson, fraud, and obstruction of justice.14
The one anti-Semitic perpetrator who probably is Muslim is a 46- year-old Iranian Canadian. He arrived from Iran in 1987, is married, and holds a responsible job at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. He is, in other words, the least likely sort of individual to be involved in such antisocial activity. Yet police have charged him with spray painting a swastika, the equal sign, and a Star of David in a non- Jewish area, specifically on a hoarding at a construction site for a condominium being built by Jewish developers. The company, it turns out, has been caught up in a conflict with the neighborhood's residents over the project. Furthermore, identical graffiti had been appearing on the same hoarding for three to four months.
Although the incidents mentioned above might have appeared on the surface as a single anti-Semitic spree, little if any pattern emerges as to motive, targets, graffiti, vandalism, or perpetrators. What, then, is to be made of it all?
Why, for instance, would Lebanese Christian teenagers torch a Jewish school in response to Israel's assassination of a Muslim terrorist leader? One plausible explanation - that it is the community within which they live that has radicalized them - has wide applicability if it is accurate. It may be that the ultimate responsibility for the anti- Semitism rests with the prevailing environment in contemporary society. In certain quarters at least, anti-Semitism may have become almost systemic - to the point that even the delusional can have blue swastikas painted on their foreheads by strangers, the mentally unstable target Jewish sites for vandalism, and criminals cloak fraudulent arson with anti-Semitic motivation. This new anti-Semitism combines classical Judeophobia and modern anti-Zionism.
The demonization of Zionism and the State of Israel is not a new phenomenon. It dates back at least to the newly emergent Palestinian movement in 1964 and the Soviet Union's elaboration and dissemination of the theme equating Zionism with Nazism, a campaign that culminated in the United Nations' "Zionism is racism" resolution of 1975. In other words, the anti-Zionist themes and actions at the misnamed UN World Conference against Racism in Durban were not new but, rather, a recapitulation.15
Canadian attitudes toward the Israeli-Arab conflict are inevitably influenced by the international misuse of multilateral organizations as weapons against Israel and by the efforts to boycott Israeli academics, coerce universities and other institutions into divesting their holdings in Israel, and impede the importation and sale of Israeli goods. The well-established principle in Canadian human rights law that not only motivation but also impact, even when unintended (although willful blindness can be a clue to motivation), results in "adverse effect discrimination"16 is very applicable to identifying anti-Zionism as anti- Semitism.
It is with this criterion in mind that one can assess the rhetoric on the Israeli-Arab conflict within sectors of the labor movement, NGOs, faith groups, and the media as having degenerated significantly, all too often crossing the line from legitimate expression of political opinion into anti-Semitism. There is a failure, in other words, to distinguish between criticizing Israeli policies and attacking Israel, between fair speech and hate speech. Lack of balance and fairness combined with hostility to Israel leads to anti-Semitic fallout.
The concept of victimhood has become a central, perhaps the central, contemporary motif. Palestinians in particular and Arabs and Muslims in general have managed successfully to exploit victimization for political ends, leading to the view of Palestinians as Israel's victims. Sectors of the Left and many of the human rights organizations that are its outgrowth have, therefore, adopted the Palestinian cause as their own. Jewish victimhood, on the other hand, is being denied or treated as unimportant if not irrelevant by much of civil society.17
There were indications of this in Durban. Some Canadian NGO delegates supported or were co-opted to go along with the anti-Israeli propaganda. Many were indifferent to the virulent anti-Semitism so long as their own issues had been dealt with. Some others did speak out, but there was no public disavowal. This indictment stands even if, as partially mitigating circumstances, it is adduced that agendas were too single-issue specific and NGOs were not organized into a Canadian caucus but were dispersed among the conference's various other caucuses.18
In discussing the Ahenakew affair, Guy Gavriel Kay, the Canadian Jewish novelist and poet, summarizes the problem as today's "climate of discourse," an atmosphere in which "things can be said in public that are loathsome."19 Such an atmosphere enables latent anti-Semites to express themselves openly and malcontents (unhappy over Israeli actions, for example) to resort to anti-Semitism, or make use of the readily available vocabulary of ant-Semitism, in expressing their criticism.
To prevent a further exacerbation of the poisoned environment, the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) took issue with a license application made to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) by Canadian cable providers to carry digitally the Qatar-based, Arabic-language TV network Al-Jazeera. The CRTC is the body that regulates broadcasting in Canada.
The thrust of CJC's objection was not the channel's skewed reporting of the Israeli-Arab conflict nor its anti-Americanism. There was no intent to invite the counterargument that Israeli and American spokespeople are interviewed on Al-Jazeera (even though this is a cover for a partisan position devoid of balance), or to appear to be politically motivated, intent on censoring anti-Israel viewpoints. Instead CJC focused strictly on anti-Semitism, stressing that Al-Jazeera's treatment of Jews featured inaccurate reporting, fantastic and unverifiable rumors and defamatory accusations, repugnant and gutterlike language, threats to their rights and physical security, Holocaust denial, support for terrorism, and glorification of suicide bombings. Remarks made by the American journalist Eric Sevareid on the risks involved in unedited presentation of "facts," CJC argued, well applied to Al-Jazeera: "[It] has given the lie the same prominence and impact the truth is given...has elevated the influence of fools to that of wise men, the ignorant to the level of the learned, the evil to the level of the good."20
CJC noted its support for ethnic television stations that serve Canada's various communities and reflect its multiculturalism, and affirmed its belief that while freedom of expression and presenting diverse viewpoints are essential to democracy, such freedom is not absolute. CJC's opposition to Al-Jazeera, it emphasized, was based on the imperatives to combat the dissemination of anti-Semitic hatred, to affirm Canadian values, to respect Canadian law and standards, and to uphold the Canadian public interest.21
For this atmosphere to be changed, governments, schools, universities, NGOs, businesses, ethnocultural and faith-based groups, unions, and the professions, among others, have a special responsibility to promote respect for diversity and express zero tolerance for anti- Semitism just as for other forms of racism. They must not only repudiate anti-Semitism in general terms, but also publicly denounce its perpetrators and abettors in specific cases and ensure that corrective action is taken.
Combating Anti-Semitism: The Canadian Legislative Framework22
Law is by no means the only instrument to invoke against anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, but it is a very necessary one. Over the past half-century, Canada has developed an evolving body of jurisprudence to counter hate and bias activity against identifiable groups. This jurisprudence, enshrined in a variety of legal provisions, is found in the Criminal Code (the Code) and related statutes, the Anti-Terrorism Act, the Canadian Human Rights Act, provincial human rights codes, regulations of the CRTC, and other acts in the areas of broadcasting, education, and immigration. The following are examples.
The Criminal Code
The Code's S. 718.2, calling for enhanced sentencing where bigotry is a motivating factor, is one of those provisions. It has been successfully used in the conviction of (now) 22-year-old Yousef Sandouga, a Jordanian- born Palestinian who immigrated to Canada with his family as a child, and firebombed Edmonton's Beth Shalom synagogue on 31 October 2000. Sandouga was sentenced to one year in prison and three years probation on 10 June 2002 after he pled guilty, apologized, and made restitution. The prosecution, however, argued before a three-judge panel of the Alberta Court of Appeal for the sentence to be increased because the crime was "politically motivated," with racial hatred and bias as aggravating factors; and the court more than doubled his sentence to two and a half years. On 27 August 2002, the court stated that Sandouga's "revenge-based arson was a terrorist act, a hate crime and an act of religious intimidation." It went on to stress "the need to denounce Sandouga's actions and to unequivocally indicate that such hate crimes and terrorist acts will not be countenanced.... Such crimes chip away at our human dignity, our fundamental freedoms, our multicultural tolerance and our sense of safety and security....All Canadians are entitled to live, gather and worship without fear of attack."23
As for bigotry-motivated attacks on places of worship and cemeteries, the Code's S. 430 (4.1), as amended by the Anti-Terrorism Act of December 2001, now specifies these as crimes carrying maximum sentences of up to ten years indictable or up to eighteen months on summary conviction. The three teenagers on the two-day anti-Semitism spree were charged under this Section on 31 May 2004.
The Code's S. 319, one of what are called Canada's antihate laws, criminalizes incitement and willful promotion of hatred and carries a maximum two-year sentence. On 9 June 2004, the attorney-general of Ontario added this charge to the others already being faced by the young anti-Semitic trio. Back on 11 June 2003, the attorney-general of Saskatchewan laid the same charge against Ahenakew.
It is unfortunate, on the other hand, that the school firebombers will only face charges of arson and conspiracy, serious as these are. Their act neither falls under the antihate-law provision (S. 319), because strictly speaking the note they left did not promote or incite hate, nor, technically, involved mischief to places of worship and religious property because a school is outside these categories. On conviction, however, the enhanced sentencing provisions can be invoked.24
Broadcasting Legislation and Regulations
Section 3 of the Broadcasting Act mandates that programming be of high standard, balanced, and reflect the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canadian society. Section 8(1)(b) of the Broadcasting Distribution Regulations prohibits the distribution of programming that contravenes the law, or that contains any abusive comments or pictorial representations that are likely to expose a group to hatred or contempt on the basis of, among other things, race, color, religion, national or ethnic origin. Programming is furthermore governed by voluntary industry codes enforced by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, namely, the CAB Code of Ethics and the Voluntary Code Regarding Violence in Television Programming.
It was in this legislative context that CJC developed a two-pronged strategy toward Canadian cable providers' application to carry Al- Jazeera. For one, it opposed the granting of a license, especially because non-Canadian broadcasters licensed by the CRTC were not bound by Canadian law and regulations, which apply only to broadcasts "originating in Canada." CJC, however, did not want the issue to become an all-or-nothing proposition, fearing that if the CRTC chose to approve the license (as it was most likely to do) it would do so outright. Therefore CJC, as an alternative, suggested a second option, a classic Canadian compromise: that if the license should be approved, Al-Jazeera would be subject to some stringent conditions.
The CRTC acknowledged the validity of CJC's concern and, in its precedent-setting ruling of 15 July 2004,25 placed exceptional and unprecedented conditions on would-be Al-Jazeera licensees designed to ensure that Al-Jazeera's broadcasting was subject to Canadian standards. Under the license agreement, distributors are required to record and keep all Al-Jazeera programming for a specified period, enabling the CRTC to verify any complaints. Distributors are also prohibited from broadcasting any programming that violates Canadian broadcasting regulations, and are allowed to alter or delete portions of programming that would contravene those regulations and lead to abusive comment.
Conclusion
The CRTC, in its ruling on Al-Jazeera, struck a balance between two Canadian values that CJC has regarded as fundamental to a multicultural democracy: the right of vulnerable minority communities to be protected from hatred, and the right to freedom of expression. These two values are part of a larger set identified with being Canadian that include the dignity and security of the person; inviolable rights and liberties; the rule of law; a division between church and state that fosters the parallel growth of distinct spiritual and civic identities, free from religious fiat and control; and civility and compromise in dealing with disputes.
These values, unfortunately, have not immunized Canada from contemporary worldwide anti-Semitism. But, though not eradicating elements harmful to social harmony, they have enabled the Jewish community to be a thriving and well-adjusted minority in a Western democracy, retaining their unique identity while being fully integrated and contributing greatly to Canada.
Anti-Semitism always seeks to move from the periphery to the center. Although it may already have partially succeeded in doing so elsewhere, in Canada so far it has not. Still, to prevent anti-Semitism from threatening the status of Diaspora communities and of theworld's only Jewish state, we must either keep it out of the mainstream or, where the center has been breached, push it back to the margins.
* * *
Notes
1. Statistics Canada, "Religions in Canada, 2001 Census," 13 May 2003, http:// www.statcan.ca/start.html.
2. See Irving Abella and Harold Troper, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948 (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1982).
3. See "Log of Anti-Semitism in Canada: Incidents and Descriptions, October 1 2000-December 31 2002," in Manuel Prutschi, Essays and Studies on Contemporary Antisemitism: A Canadian Perspective (Canadian Jewish Congress, December 2002); League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith Canada, Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents (2000, 2001, 2002).
4. Physical attacks on individuals may even have included the murder of a visibly Orthodox Jewish man in Toronto in July 2002. The homicide's circumstances thus far remain unclear, though they did involve a confrontation with individuals other than the victim. The alleged killer, a white male (now 21 years old) with no established political affiliation, is under arrest and determination of motive awaits the trial.
5. It should be noted, however, that various Arab and Muslim individuals and organizations have publicly condemned some of these acts and expressed solidarity with the Jewish community.
6. F. Abbas Rana, "Saudi Ambassador Blames 'Zionist Lobby'," The Hill Times, 1 October 2001.
7. Stewart Bell, "Lebanese Ambassador Says Zionists Run Media," National Post, 10 January 2003.
8. "Anti-Semitic and/or Middle East Related Incidents in Canada, September 11-December 31, 2001," in Prutschi, Essays and Studies.
9. Ibid., and May 1-June 30, 2002.
10. James Parker, "Ex-FSIN Chief Praises Hitler in Speech," Saskatoon Star Phoenix, 14 December 2002.
11. See Manuel Prutschi and Len Rudner, "An Analysis of the 'Day of Quds'," Canadian Jewish Congress, 15 February 2002.
12. "Anti-Semitic and/or Middle East Related Incidents in Canada, May 1-June 30, 2002."
13. Paul Lungen, "Bizarre Incident Leaves Police Puzzled," Canadian Jewish News, 8 April 2004.
14. "Pallet Company Owner Charged with Arson in March Explosion," Toronto Star, 27 May 2004.
15. Manuel Prutschi, "The New Anti-Semitism," in Dina Porat and Graciela Ben-Dror, eds., The 6th International Seminar for the Research of Antisemitism, Mexico, 2002 (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2003), pp. 35-42.
16. See Tannis Cohen, Race Relations and the Law (Canadian Jewish Congress, n.d.), pp. 33-39.
17. Not in the case of government, however. Canadian governments at the provincial and federal levels have all, without exception, passed laws institutionalizing Holocaust memorial days on the actual date of the Hebrew calendar.
18. See "Final Report on the UN's WCAR," Canadian Jewish Congress, 17 October 2001.
19. Guy Gavriel Kay, "It Goes beyond One Man's Vicious Speech," National Post, 18 December 2002.
20. W. Carroll, "The Seven Deadly Virtues," Nieman Reports, Vols. 53-54 (Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard University, Winter 1999- Spring 2000), p. 102.
21. See "Submissions of the Canadian Jewish Congress re Public Notice 2003-36: Call for comments on proposals for the addition of non-Canadian satellite services to the list of services eligible for digital distribution, item 1: Al Jazeera," 8 August 2003.
22. See Manuel Prutschi, "Combatting Antisemitism: The Canadian Legislative Framework," Canadian Jewish Congress, 20 June 2002.
23. "Between Her Majesty the Queen, appellant and Yousef Ishag Sandouga, respondent," Alberta Court of Appeal, Edmonton, Alberta, 27 August 2002.
24. Janice Arnold, "Jewish Groups Won't Press for Hate Charges in UTT case," Canadian Jewish News, 15 July 2004.
25. "Broadcasting Public Notice CRTC 2004-51: Requests to add Al Jazeera to the lists of eligible satellite services for distribution on a digital basis," Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, 15 July 2004.
Looks to as if the Canadian government takes this stuff pretty seriously. Its the media who is mostly to blame giving people like Beruit his funny ideas ~D
In general, Israelis and Jews have been given the label of dispossessors and murderers. Israel and the Diaspora community have been equated with the Third Reich, the Star of David with the swastika. The State of Israel and Zionism have been characterized as racist and illegitimate.
Sound familiar?
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Jewish Political Studies Review
Jewish Political Studies Review 16:3-4 (Fall 2004)
Anti-Semitism in Canada
Manuel Prutschi
Canada is characterized by a set of fundamental values that help create a multicultural democracy and that are intended, among other goals, to protect vulnerable minorities. This article examines how these values, unfortunately, have not immunized Canada from anti-Semitism. It traces Canadian anti-Semitism's domestic historical evolution and puts the phenomenon in the context of its current worldwide resurgence.
The article analyzes the last four years, identifies anti-Semitism's Middle Eastern roots, and examines the nature and sources of its manifestations. It focuses, furthermore, on the period between March and July 2004. Analyzing individual anti-Semitic incidents, it finds that while little if any pattern emerges, at least in certain quarters anti-Semitism may have become almost systemic.
Using specific cases from the last four years as examples, the article concludes by demonstrating how Canada uses a specially designed legislative framework as one important way of combating anti-Semitism.
A New Wave of Anti-Semitism
The Canadian Jewish community dates back to the 18th century and its members come from all parts of the world. Today it numbers approximately 370,000, constituting 1.1 percent of the Canadian population. Well over half reside in the country's three largest cities, Toronto (180,000), Montreal (93,000), and Vancouver (22,500). There are many other cities with smaller yet self-sufficient Jewish communities of varying size.1
Anti-Semitism has always confronted Canadian Jews. Its contemporary threatening presence forms part of a continuum dating back to the community's origins and was only briefly interrupted in the early 1940s, when Canada went to war against the Axis powers.
In the earlier part of the last century, anti-Semitism involved quotas, discrimination in employment and public facilities, and restrictive land covenants. It took a particularly virulent form in the 1930s and at the very beginning of the next decade, when a policy of "none is too many"2 closed the door to Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe. Anti-Jewish discrimination strongly persisted in the two decades after WW II. In the next wave of anti-Semitism, white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups responded to an increasingly multicultural Canada with a vitriolic anti-Semitism incorporating Holocaust denial.
Understanding contemporary anti-Semitism in Canada requires appreciating its international, and particularly Middle Eastern, context. Anti-Jewish acts are but an extension of the murderous terrorist campaign against the State of Israel in what is an unrelenting geopolitical war. Conversely, anti-Semitism, which had been a Diaspora phenomenon, also came to target Israel after its establishment in 1948.
Zionism and its tangible expression, the State of Israel, constitute the culmination of the Jewish people's striving for an end to perennial persecution, for self-determination and the fulfillment of its destiny. For the Canadian Jewish community, therefore, Israel is central and ties with it are very strong. Some four hundred Canadian Jewish soldiers, after they were discharged from their service in WW II, went to fight for the new, endangered Jewish state while the community provided support in other ways. Canadian Jews have often traveled to Israel, studied in it, and worked in it, and significant numbers have emigrated to it. Hence, most Canadian Jews are tied to the state not only by history, peoplehood, and religion but also by family.
In other words, Israel and Jews, Zionism and Judaism, are inextricably intertwined. The essentially false distinction between Jew and Zionist has been adopted principally by anti-Semites.
The Last Four Years: Overview
When the Israeli-Arab conflict intensifies there is anti-Semitic spillover against Jewish communities worldwide, as the line between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism blurs almost completely. Anti-Semitism's upsurge can be traced to the late September 2000 launching of the most recent campaign of Palestinian violence against Israel, and is part of a global pattern that has encompassed Canada as well.
What makes anti-Semitism so formidable is its flexibility, its ability to unite what would ordinarily be the most disparate elements - rightists and leftists, Islamists and Arabists, purported antiracists and white supremacists. This "new" anti-Semitism, as it has come to be called, is rooted in Christian and Muslim theologies of hate, in visceral rather than ideological loathing. Anti-Semitism has also infected elements of the New Age and antiglobalization movements, and is also espoused by many anti-Americans.
Incidents: October 2000-March 2004
Sources documenting anti-Semitism in Canada indicate an increase in the number of incidents, many in the serious category.3 Hatred has been propagated and incited, institutions and other property have been vandalized, synagogues and schools have been firebombed and cemeteries desecrated, while individuals and groups as well as the community as a whole have been harassed, threatened, and attacked.4
Such language is common in anti-Israeli demonstrations and has found its way into declarations, telephone calls, letters, emails, websites, and articles. The Arabic intonation of "Death to the Jews" has been heard on the streets of Canadian cities. Indeed, Arab or Muslim individuals have perpetrated many of the above-mentioned crimes.5
Although many more of the anti-Semitic incidents likely are the work of ordinary hate-mongers, certain Arab ambassadors to Canada have not helped the situation with their own rhetoric. After the tragedy of September 11, the Saudi ambassador, to deflect the attention that was being directed at his country, blamed the "Zionist lobby" for disseminating lies: "You find [the Zionist lobby] everywhere. You find people in government, in the media, in the Parliament...it's not a secret....They control the media."6 In December 2002 the Lebanese ambassador, in an interview with the Arabic-language newspaper Sada al Machric, held the Zionists or Jews (the two are used indistinguishably) responsible for Canada branding Hizballah a terrorist organization. As he elaborated to the National Post: "I wanted to say exactly that 90 percent of the mass media in Canada is controlled by Jews or Zionists, and those Jews and Zionists, they are also supported by other organizations in the States." He also confessed to the Post that "he might have phrased [the remarks] differently if he were addressing English readers."7 But this did not stop him from vilifying the Canadian Jewish community once again in August 2003.
The notion of a world Jewish conspiracy, perhaps the most enduring anti-Semitic libel, underlies the very up-to-date claim that 9-11 was an Israeli-Jewish plot. On 26 September 2001, only two weeks after the calamity, cars in downtown Calgary, in the province of Alberta, were leafleted with that accusation.8 In October 2001 and May 2002, the white-supremacist National Alliance distributed leaflets throughout the province blaming the attack on American support for Israel and calling for cutting iff all aid to the Jewish state.
"Let's stop being human shields for Israel!" the flyers proclaimed, favorably quoting from a 1998 interview with Osama Bin Laden, whom they described as a "Muslim leader," in which he said the United States must come to realize that Jewish interests are alien to American ones.9
A particularly virulent manifestation of anti-Semitism was the outburst of David Ahenakew, a former leader of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations and the Assembly of First Nations. On 13 December 2002, in a speech to a Federation meeting in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and in an immediately subsequent interview, Ahenakew blamed Jews for WW II, justified their annihilation by Hitler, and predicted that through their "killing [of ] people in Arab countries" they would start a Third World War. The connection with the Middle East has, of course, become standard fare for many anti-Semites.10
The blending of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism has manifested itself most concretely on Canadian campuses. All too often, the normative exchange of ideas has been supplanted by hostility, vilification, and intimidation. In December 2001, for example, the Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights movement distributed, at the University of Ottawa, The Day of Quds, a publication by a group calling itself the Muslim Students Federation. The pamphlet is virulently, indeed genocidally anti-Semitic and makes use of classic Judeophobic themes. It purports to concern itself with "Zionist Jews," who are "false" Jews, but clearly refers to the Jewish people as known from antiquity to the present day. The "true" Jews are figments of the pamphleteer's imagination.11 The most egregious example, however, remains the September 2002 riot by anti-Israeli protesters that prevented Benjamin Netanyahu from speaking at Concordia University in Montreal, at an event sponsored by the university's Hillel Society for Jewish students. The rioters caused considerable property damage and assaulted some of those seeking to attend.
Anti-Semitism has infected parts of the New Age fraternity as well. Emerging from legitimate popular protest and alternative movements, these New Agers have made common cause with far-Right "world Jewry" conspiracists. Fred Kyburz of Coleman, Alberta, whose website Patriots on Guard was shut down by the Canadian Human Rights Commission for disseminating anti-Semitism, is an example of an individual straddling these two worlds. He began his activities over ten years ago, blaming Jews for all the evils of mankind while also abhorring the central government and taxes. More recently, New Age anti-Semitism has invariably been linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well.12 New Age radicals share paranoia, anti-establishmentarianism, anti-imperialism, and anti-Israelism with the likes of Kyburz, while adding environmentalism, alternative health practices, and antiglobalization to the mix. They identify globalization of the world economy with Jews, whom they regard as affluent internationalists.
Incidents: March-July 2004
The anti-Semitic activity of the last three and a half years has not abated. Between 14 March and 14 July 2004, twenty-four incidents have been identified as anti-Semitic (two of these allegedly so) in Newfoundland, Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa, the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), and some smaller Ontario communities, breaking down as follows:
* Four synagogues
* Six cemeteries
* Four schools, two Jewish and two public
*
Four multiproperty defacements in the GTA, involving private homes, cars, businesses, signs for the United Jewish Appeal, and public property in three separate neighborhoods, two of them Jewish and two non-Jewish
* One defacement of a non-Jewish private home
* One defacement in a non-Jewish neighborhood
* One case of hate postings on numerous poles
* One case of harassment and threats
* One alleged physical attack
* One arson of a manufacturing company, with allegedly racist overtones
Only two of these incidents were Middle East-related. In the most serious, the firebombing of a Jewish school's library in Montreal during the Shavuot holiday, the perpetrators left a note attributing their attack to Israel's targeted assassination of the Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin. In the other, the culprits posted high-quality color flyers of the American flag, the Star of David, and swastikas with the claim that Israel and the United Kingdom (of all things) had misled the United States into the Iraq War.
Swastikas, Nazi slogans, and anti-Semitic profanity characterized the defacements. In five of the six cemeteries, however, tombstones were toppled, without any graffiti.
The claimed physical attack seems more invented than real. The "victim" reported that two men attacked him while walking in the early morning hours and scrawled a swastika on his forehead with a blue marker. Police investigators concluded that "To say the least, the circumstances are odd."13
There have been six separate arrests, involving twelve accused. Seven of the perpetrators are teenagers aged 13-18.
Two boys, 13 and 14, harassed the family of another teenager they knew with anti-Semitic and threatening phone calls. One 18-year-old and two 15-year-olds, over a two-day period, overturned tombstones in a Jewish cemetery, vandalized a synagogue and defaced it with swastikas, and committed a number of other anti-Semitic acts. Very ironically, the father of the 18-year-old works at a Jewish cemetery across the street from the cemetery his son vandalized and is described as a tzadik (righteous person) who treats his work at the cemetery as "sacred labor." The two 18-year-olds in the school firebombing are Canadian Arabs but, peculiarly, Lebanese Christians.
The 29-year-old accused in the Newfoundland synagogue vandalism was no stranger to its congregants since he had appeared at the site before, in one case uttering a threat. Police knew him and had previously characterized him as harmless. A psychiatric examination found him fit to stand trial.
The arson of the manufacturing company, which included spraypainted swastikas, appears to have been self-inflicted by its owners, a 30-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman who now face a myriad of charges including arson, fraud, and obstruction of justice.14
The one anti-Semitic perpetrator who probably is Muslim is a 46- year-old Iranian Canadian. He arrived from Iran in 1987, is married, and holds a responsible job at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. He is, in other words, the least likely sort of individual to be involved in such antisocial activity. Yet police have charged him with spray painting a swastika, the equal sign, and a Star of David in a non- Jewish area, specifically on a hoarding at a construction site for a condominium being built by Jewish developers. The company, it turns out, has been caught up in a conflict with the neighborhood's residents over the project. Furthermore, identical graffiti had been appearing on the same hoarding for three to four months.
Although the incidents mentioned above might have appeared on the surface as a single anti-Semitic spree, little if any pattern emerges as to motive, targets, graffiti, vandalism, or perpetrators. What, then, is to be made of it all?
Why, for instance, would Lebanese Christian teenagers torch a Jewish school in response to Israel's assassination of a Muslim terrorist leader? One plausible explanation - that it is the community within which they live that has radicalized them - has wide applicability if it is accurate. It may be that the ultimate responsibility for the anti- Semitism rests with the prevailing environment in contemporary society. In certain quarters at least, anti-Semitism may have become almost systemic - to the point that even the delusional can have blue swastikas painted on their foreheads by strangers, the mentally unstable target Jewish sites for vandalism, and criminals cloak fraudulent arson with anti-Semitic motivation. This new anti-Semitism combines classical Judeophobia and modern anti-Zionism.
The demonization of Zionism and the State of Israel is not a new phenomenon. It dates back at least to the newly emergent Palestinian movement in 1964 and the Soviet Union's elaboration and dissemination of the theme equating Zionism with Nazism, a campaign that culminated in the United Nations' "Zionism is racism" resolution of 1975. In other words, the anti-Zionist themes and actions at the misnamed UN World Conference against Racism in Durban were not new but, rather, a recapitulation.15
Canadian attitudes toward the Israeli-Arab conflict are inevitably influenced by the international misuse of multilateral organizations as weapons against Israel and by the efforts to boycott Israeli academics, coerce universities and other institutions into divesting their holdings in Israel, and impede the importation and sale of Israeli goods. The well-established principle in Canadian human rights law that not only motivation but also impact, even when unintended (although willful blindness can be a clue to motivation), results in "adverse effect discrimination"16 is very applicable to identifying anti-Zionism as anti- Semitism.
It is with this criterion in mind that one can assess the rhetoric on the Israeli-Arab conflict within sectors of the labor movement, NGOs, faith groups, and the media as having degenerated significantly, all too often crossing the line from legitimate expression of political opinion into anti-Semitism. There is a failure, in other words, to distinguish between criticizing Israeli policies and attacking Israel, between fair speech and hate speech. Lack of balance and fairness combined with hostility to Israel leads to anti-Semitic fallout.
The concept of victimhood has become a central, perhaps the central, contemporary motif. Palestinians in particular and Arabs and Muslims in general have managed successfully to exploit victimization for political ends, leading to the view of Palestinians as Israel's victims. Sectors of the Left and many of the human rights organizations that are its outgrowth have, therefore, adopted the Palestinian cause as their own. Jewish victimhood, on the other hand, is being denied or treated as unimportant if not irrelevant by much of civil society.17
There were indications of this in Durban. Some Canadian NGO delegates supported or were co-opted to go along with the anti-Israeli propaganda. Many were indifferent to the virulent anti-Semitism so long as their own issues had been dealt with. Some others did speak out, but there was no public disavowal. This indictment stands even if, as partially mitigating circumstances, it is adduced that agendas were too single-issue specific and NGOs were not organized into a Canadian caucus but were dispersed among the conference's various other caucuses.18
In discussing the Ahenakew affair, Guy Gavriel Kay, the Canadian Jewish novelist and poet, summarizes the problem as today's "climate of discourse," an atmosphere in which "things can be said in public that are loathsome."19 Such an atmosphere enables latent anti-Semites to express themselves openly and malcontents (unhappy over Israeli actions, for example) to resort to anti-Semitism, or make use of the readily available vocabulary of ant-Semitism, in expressing their criticism.
To prevent a further exacerbation of the poisoned environment, the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) took issue with a license application made to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) by Canadian cable providers to carry digitally the Qatar-based, Arabic-language TV network Al-Jazeera. The CRTC is the body that regulates broadcasting in Canada.
The thrust of CJC's objection was not the channel's skewed reporting of the Israeli-Arab conflict nor its anti-Americanism. There was no intent to invite the counterargument that Israeli and American spokespeople are interviewed on Al-Jazeera (even though this is a cover for a partisan position devoid of balance), or to appear to be politically motivated, intent on censoring anti-Israel viewpoints. Instead CJC focused strictly on anti-Semitism, stressing that Al-Jazeera's treatment of Jews featured inaccurate reporting, fantastic and unverifiable rumors and defamatory accusations, repugnant and gutterlike language, threats to their rights and physical security, Holocaust denial, support for terrorism, and glorification of suicide bombings. Remarks made by the American journalist Eric Sevareid on the risks involved in unedited presentation of "facts," CJC argued, well applied to Al-Jazeera: "[It] has given the lie the same prominence and impact the truth is given...has elevated the influence of fools to that of wise men, the ignorant to the level of the learned, the evil to the level of the good."20
CJC noted its support for ethnic television stations that serve Canada's various communities and reflect its multiculturalism, and affirmed its belief that while freedom of expression and presenting diverse viewpoints are essential to democracy, such freedom is not absolute. CJC's opposition to Al-Jazeera, it emphasized, was based on the imperatives to combat the dissemination of anti-Semitic hatred, to affirm Canadian values, to respect Canadian law and standards, and to uphold the Canadian public interest.21
For this atmosphere to be changed, governments, schools, universities, NGOs, businesses, ethnocultural and faith-based groups, unions, and the professions, among others, have a special responsibility to promote respect for diversity and express zero tolerance for anti- Semitism just as for other forms of racism. They must not only repudiate anti-Semitism in general terms, but also publicly denounce its perpetrators and abettors in specific cases and ensure that corrective action is taken.
Combating Anti-Semitism: The Canadian Legislative Framework22
Law is by no means the only instrument to invoke against anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, but it is a very necessary one. Over the past half-century, Canada has developed an evolving body of jurisprudence to counter hate and bias activity against identifiable groups. This jurisprudence, enshrined in a variety of legal provisions, is found in the Criminal Code (the Code) and related statutes, the Anti-Terrorism Act, the Canadian Human Rights Act, provincial human rights codes, regulations of the CRTC, and other acts in the areas of broadcasting, education, and immigration. The following are examples.
The Criminal Code
The Code's S. 718.2, calling for enhanced sentencing where bigotry is a motivating factor, is one of those provisions. It has been successfully used in the conviction of (now) 22-year-old Yousef Sandouga, a Jordanian- born Palestinian who immigrated to Canada with his family as a child, and firebombed Edmonton's Beth Shalom synagogue on 31 October 2000. Sandouga was sentenced to one year in prison and three years probation on 10 June 2002 after he pled guilty, apologized, and made restitution. The prosecution, however, argued before a three-judge panel of the Alberta Court of Appeal for the sentence to be increased because the crime was "politically motivated," with racial hatred and bias as aggravating factors; and the court more than doubled his sentence to two and a half years. On 27 August 2002, the court stated that Sandouga's "revenge-based arson was a terrorist act, a hate crime and an act of religious intimidation." It went on to stress "the need to denounce Sandouga's actions and to unequivocally indicate that such hate crimes and terrorist acts will not be countenanced.... Such crimes chip away at our human dignity, our fundamental freedoms, our multicultural tolerance and our sense of safety and security....All Canadians are entitled to live, gather and worship without fear of attack."23
As for bigotry-motivated attacks on places of worship and cemeteries, the Code's S. 430 (4.1), as amended by the Anti-Terrorism Act of December 2001, now specifies these as crimes carrying maximum sentences of up to ten years indictable or up to eighteen months on summary conviction. The three teenagers on the two-day anti-Semitism spree were charged under this Section on 31 May 2004.
The Code's S. 319, one of what are called Canada's antihate laws, criminalizes incitement and willful promotion of hatred and carries a maximum two-year sentence. On 9 June 2004, the attorney-general of Ontario added this charge to the others already being faced by the young anti-Semitic trio. Back on 11 June 2003, the attorney-general of Saskatchewan laid the same charge against Ahenakew.
It is unfortunate, on the other hand, that the school firebombers will only face charges of arson and conspiracy, serious as these are. Their act neither falls under the antihate-law provision (S. 319), because strictly speaking the note they left did not promote or incite hate, nor, technically, involved mischief to places of worship and religious property because a school is outside these categories. On conviction, however, the enhanced sentencing provisions can be invoked.24
Broadcasting Legislation and Regulations
Section 3 of the Broadcasting Act mandates that programming be of high standard, balanced, and reflect the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canadian society. Section 8(1)(b) of the Broadcasting Distribution Regulations prohibits the distribution of programming that contravenes the law, or that contains any abusive comments or pictorial representations that are likely to expose a group to hatred or contempt on the basis of, among other things, race, color, religion, national or ethnic origin. Programming is furthermore governed by voluntary industry codes enforced by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, namely, the CAB Code of Ethics and the Voluntary Code Regarding Violence in Television Programming.
It was in this legislative context that CJC developed a two-pronged strategy toward Canadian cable providers' application to carry Al- Jazeera. For one, it opposed the granting of a license, especially because non-Canadian broadcasters licensed by the CRTC were not bound by Canadian law and regulations, which apply only to broadcasts "originating in Canada." CJC, however, did not want the issue to become an all-or-nothing proposition, fearing that if the CRTC chose to approve the license (as it was most likely to do) it would do so outright. Therefore CJC, as an alternative, suggested a second option, a classic Canadian compromise: that if the license should be approved, Al-Jazeera would be subject to some stringent conditions.
The CRTC acknowledged the validity of CJC's concern and, in its precedent-setting ruling of 15 July 2004,25 placed exceptional and unprecedented conditions on would-be Al-Jazeera licensees designed to ensure that Al-Jazeera's broadcasting was subject to Canadian standards. Under the license agreement, distributors are required to record and keep all Al-Jazeera programming for a specified period, enabling the CRTC to verify any complaints. Distributors are also prohibited from broadcasting any programming that violates Canadian broadcasting regulations, and are allowed to alter or delete portions of programming that would contravene those regulations and lead to abusive comment.
Conclusion
The CRTC, in its ruling on Al-Jazeera, struck a balance between two Canadian values that CJC has regarded as fundamental to a multicultural democracy: the right of vulnerable minority communities to be protected from hatred, and the right to freedom of expression. These two values are part of a larger set identified with being Canadian that include the dignity and security of the person; inviolable rights and liberties; the rule of law; a division between church and state that fosters the parallel growth of distinct spiritual and civic identities, free from religious fiat and control; and civility and compromise in dealing with disputes.
These values, unfortunately, have not immunized Canada from contemporary worldwide anti-Semitism. But, though not eradicating elements harmful to social harmony, they have enabled the Jewish community to be a thriving and well-adjusted minority in a Western democracy, retaining their unique identity while being fully integrated and contributing greatly to Canada.
Anti-Semitism always seeks to move from the periphery to the center. Although it may already have partially succeeded in doing so elsewhere, in Canada so far it has not. Still, to prevent anti-Semitism from threatening the status of Diaspora communities and of theworld's only Jewish state, we must either keep it out of the mainstream or, where the center has been breached, push it back to the margins.
* * *
Notes
1. Statistics Canada, "Religions in Canada, 2001 Census," 13 May 2003, http:// www.statcan.ca/start.html.
2. See Irving Abella and Harold Troper, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948 (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1982).
3. See "Log of Anti-Semitism in Canada: Incidents and Descriptions, October 1 2000-December 31 2002," in Manuel Prutschi, Essays and Studies on Contemporary Antisemitism: A Canadian Perspective (Canadian Jewish Congress, December 2002); League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith Canada, Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents (2000, 2001, 2002).
4. Physical attacks on individuals may even have included the murder of a visibly Orthodox Jewish man in Toronto in July 2002. The homicide's circumstances thus far remain unclear, though they did involve a confrontation with individuals other than the victim. The alleged killer, a white male (now 21 years old) with no established political affiliation, is under arrest and determination of motive awaits the trial.
5. It should be noted, however, that various Arab and Muslim individuals and organizations have publicly condemned some of these acts and expressed solidarity with the Jewish community.
6. F. Abbas Rana, "Saudi Ambassador Blames 'Zionist Lobby'," The Hill Times, 1 October 2001.
7. Stewart Bell, "Lebanese Ambassador Says Zionists Run Media," National Post, 10 January 2003.
8. "Anti-Semitic and/or Middle East Related Incidents in Canada, September 11-December 31, 2001," in Prutschi, Essays and Studies.
9. Ibid., and May 1-June 30, 2002.
10. James Parker, "Ex-FSIN Chief Praises Hitler in Speech," Saskatoon Star Phoenix, 14 December 2002.
11. See Manuel Prutschi and Len Rudner, "An Analysis of the 'Day of Quds'," Canadian Jewish Congress, 15 February 2002.
12. "Anti-Semitic and/or Middle East Related Incidents in Canada, May 1-June 30, 2002."
13. Paul Lungen, "Bizarre Incident Leaves Police Puzzled," Canadian Jewish News, 8 April 2004.
14. "Pallet Company Owner Charged with Arson in March Explosion," Toronto Star, 27 May 2004.
15. Manuel Prutschi, "The New Anti-Semitism," in Dina Porat and Graciela Ben-Dror, eds., The 6th International Seminar for the Research of Antisemitism, Mexico, 2002 (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2003), pp. 35-42.
16. See Tannis Cohen, Race Relations and the Law (Canadian Jewish Congress, n.d.), pp. 33-39.
17. Not in the case of government, however. Canadian governments at the provincial and federal levels have all, without exception, passed laws institutionalizing Holocaust memorial days on the actual date of the Hebrew calendar.
18. See "Final Report on the UN's WCAR," Canadian Jewish Congress, 17 October 2001.
19. Guy Gavriel Kay, "It Goes beyond One Man's Vicious Speech," National Post, 18 December 2002.
20. W. Carroll, "The Seven Deadly Virtues," Nieman Reports, Vols. 53-54 (Nieman Foundation for Journalism, Harvard University, Winter 1999- Spring 2000), p. 102.
21. See "Submissions of the Canadian Jewish Congress re Public Notice 2003-36: Call for comments on proposals for the addition of non-Canadian satellite services to the list of services eligible for digital distribution, item 1: Al Jazeera," 8 August 2003.
22. See Manuel Prutschi, "Combatting Antisemitism: The Canadian Legislative Framework," Canadian Jewish Congress, 20 June 2002.
23. "Between Her Majesty the Queen, appellant and Yousef Ishag Sandouga, respondent," Alberta Court of Appeal, Edmonton, Alberta, 27 August 2002.
24. Janice Arnold, "Jewish Groups Won't Press for Hate Charges in UTT case," Canadian Jewish News, 15 July 2004.
25. "Broadcasting Public Notice CRTC 2004-51: Requests to add Al Jazeera to the lists of eligible satellite services for distribution on a digital basis," Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, 15 July 2004.
Looks to as if the Canadian government takes this stuff pretty seriously. Its the media who is mostly to blame giving people like Beruit his funny ideas ~D
In general, Israelis and Jews have been given the label of dispossessors and murderers. Israel and the Diaspora community have been equated with the Third Reich, the Star of David with the swastika. The State of Israel and Zionism have been characterized as racist and illegitimate.
Sound familiar?