CPCCA : Waving at anti-Semitism

Yesterday the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism released its Final Report -two years in the making - on what co-chair and former Lib MP Mario Silva referred to as the "wave of anti-Semitism we are witnessing in our nation". A 71% increase.

Yet a mere seven months earlier in December, here is the CPCCA's other co-chair, Con MP Scott Reid (at the 13:33 mark) :

Avi Lewis : "There's no wave of anti-Semitism in Canada?"

Scott Reid : "No, no, no, no, absolutely not. No, it's funny I've heard people who have criticized us saying that we think this but no there is absolutely no spike in the kinds of anti-Semitic incidents that I think appall us." 

Yet there were both Reid and Silva yesterday - gravely intoning at their presser about the need for government to get involved because "Canada is witnessing an unprecedented increase in anti-Semitic incidents and hateful discourse".

What? Just since December?

Well no, because we're talking "the new anti-Semitism" here, or as Silva puts it : "demonizing Israel as an apartheid state."
Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic, the report explains, unless you refer to its [current right wing] government['s policies] by the word apartheid.
Especially Israel Apartheid Week.
Especially on campus, where the first Israeli Apartheid Week in the world was held in Toronto in 2005, a movement now gone global.

Reports on campus 'new anti-Semitism' and its lefty or clueless profs and administrators take up 21 pages of their 80 page report. And they have recommendations :

All university staff and students should be encouraged to document and report antisemitic incidents whenever they occur.

We recommend that professors be held accountable for academic rigour of their curricula.

We recommend that Federal Government and/or the Inquiry work with the provinces to help administrators develop suitable tools and structures to deal with this burgeoning problem in an effective and principled manner.

On law enforcement : The Inquiry Panel recommends that police forces across Canada send their officers to the "Tools for Tolerance" program at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in LA.
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On funding NGOs to do monitoring :

We recommend the creation of a permanent, publicly accessible “ambassadorial” position under the auspices of the most appropriate Department (Foreign Affairs, Justice, Multiculturalism) to develop and implement policies, projects and research on combating antisemitism, including the provision of funds to NGOs to further these aims.This office should also monitor implementation of priority recommendations and ensure compliance and accountability.

What, like Israel's NGO Monitor perhaps, the group Kenney credited in his defunding of KAIROS?
Well, we're right off the thought-crime map now, aren't we?

But what about actual anti-Semitic hate crime? Via StatsCan : Police-reported hate crime in Canada, 2009 - but in my own words where not in quotes:

54% of all hate crime incidents reported in 2009 were : "mischief, (e.g. graffiti, vandalism to religious property)"

The second and third highest percentage in hate crimes was : "minor assaults (13%), in which little to no physical harm was caused to the victim, and uttering threats (10%)"
All the other hate crime categories were around 1 or 2%.

There were 283 hate crimes targeting Jews reported to police in 2009. 

"In 2009, hate crime rates were generally highest among youth and young adults. For both victims and persons accused of police-reported hate crime in 2009, the rate peaked among those aged 12 to 17 years and generally decreased with increasing age."

Teenagers and hateful graffitti.

Meanwhile 100s of unnamed First Nations women have been kidnapped, beaten, and killed.
No special $½-million committee for them. No Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Aboriginal Death on the world stage for them.
Hell, the Sisters in Spirit aren't even allowed to use their own name anymore and what federal grant money they had to research those missing women has been rolled over into a general RCMP missing persons fund end of that story.

Speaking of funding ....
CPCCA presser June 2, 2009 : "We will voluntarily disclose all sources of funding."

Scott Reid on video yesterday at CBC :

"We had a number of donors who donated on condition of anonymity and uh the uh we passed a bylaw to ensure that no donations from groups such for example advocacy groups, from trade unions, from businesses would be accepted. These were all individual donations ."

I'll bet. And after all that, you still haven't come up with a reasonable definition of your new anti-Semitism.
"Tools for Tolerance" indeed.
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Update : The definitive smackdown from Dr. Dawg
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Avi Lewis : The Canada-Israel special relationship

Avi Lewis : "There's no wave of anti-Semitism in Canada?"

Scott Reid : "No, no, no, no, absolutely not. It's funny I've heard people who have criticized us saying that we think this but there is absolutely no spike in the kinds of anti-Semitic incidents that I think appall us."

Con MP Scott Reid is Chair of Steering Committee of the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism and vice-chair of the CPCCA's inquiry panel on domestic anti-Semitism.

Thanks, Scott. Good to know. It seems the US Anti-Defamation League agrees with you on that.

Perhaps the misconception about the rise of, you know, actual recorded incidents of anti-Semitism in Canada has arisen from the original CPCCA mission statement put out by yourself and Lib MP Mario Silva in June last year :

"Recorded incidents of antisemitism have been on the rise both locally and globally."

Last week the phrase "rising tide of anti-Semitism" was used in the Ontario legislature to hysterically condemn a two year old MA thesis written by Jenny Peto, a Jewish Palestinian solidarity activist and one of the people interviewed in the vid above. Really reaching here, guys.

Meanwhile the World Zionist Organization is launching a new hasbara program targetting students and Canada was represented there :

"Dozens of students from 14 countries around the world joined together this weekend at a seminar in Paris that launched the World Zionist Organization’s new Global Network for Countering Anti-Semitism.

The students and others like them will be the soldiers on the ground who will report to the WZO about anti-Semitism in their countries and receive advice about how to tackle future incidents. To that end, the WZO launched a media room that will be in touch with activists around the world in several languages.

The global network’s media room will be ... in contact with students acting as antennas on campuses around the world. For instance, if there is a problem on a particular campus, the WZO can contact the university and ask for security or bring in other activists from close by to help counteract the problem.

Media room director Eitan Behar : "With the right work of all our activists around the world and if we are unified, we can win the battle that is going on around the world for Israel’s image."

Because clearly that's what all this is about : Israel's image.

What is less clear is why Canada is so determined to identify with it.

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Inside the Subcommittee on Human Rights

Photo : Afghan women students at Kabul University, 1995.
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Speaking to his fellow members of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights on Tuesday at a meeting which heard that the situation for Afghan women has considerably worsened over the last two years, Lib MP Mario Silva recounted his own conversations with womens groups in Afghanistan this past June :

"They told us when they were young, they had full freedom in terms of education, they didn't have to wear the head scarf, they could go out in public without any problem. It was more restricted with the Taliban but they did have more progrssive attitudes towards women some time ago so I think when we in the West say we have to be culturally sensitive to them and it takes time - I think that is a false argument."

He stated that that all the womens groups told him that concessions to the Taliban were won on the backs of women, that they strongly opposed the Karzai government, and that continued Canadian presence in Afghanistan was important to them.

The only witness Tuesday was Reverend Majed El Shafie of the Christian Toronto-based human rights group, One Free World International.

He testified that while working in Afghanistan four years ago, he was able to connect with local human rights orgs and individuals through their networks but in the last four years, and specifically in the last two, reports indicated the human rights situation is much deteriorated, so in June he returned with the delegation that included committee member Lib MP Mario Silva.

El Shafie outlined three main issues.

Number one - the severe abuse and shocking punishments meted out to women, abetted and sanctioned by the new 2009 laws passed by the Karzai government before the last election.

Number two - Boy play or "bacha bazi" - sexual slavery in which boys are dressed up to dance as girls and afterwards whoever pays the most gets to rape the boy. Members of the government take part, says El Shafie, and some boys are raped six to eight times a day, including by the police if they complain. He has video.

Number three - Persecution of 25 Afghans converting to Christianity, including calls for their deaths by members of parliament, backed up by Karzai's spokesman, the deputy secretary. El Shafie tabled the document authorizing them being stoned to death.

He recommended future Canadian aid be tied to preconditions on human rights improvements.
Although he testified that "our support of Karzai and the corruption of his family is what is negatively affecting our image" to the Afghan people, he made a passionate plea for Canada not to abandon them, to stay on in Afghanistan.

The committee met hours before the defeat of the Bloc motion condemning the Conservative government's extension of the Afghanistan mission without a parliamentary vote.

There is a notable lack of partisan party bickering on this seven member committee - possibly because a majority of them also work together on the Steering Committee of the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism (CPCCA). Scott Reid is Chair of both, Mario Silva is Vice Chair of both, and Irwin Cotler and David Sweet are members of both. So the Steering Committee of the CPCCA holds a majority on the human rights committee.

This also perhaps explains why human rights abuses perpetrated on Palestine/Gaza do not show up anywhere on their radar. Rather unusual for a human rights committee, no?
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