The Canadian Jewish Congress calls a press conference
After averting its eyes for a week, the Canadian Jewish Congress has grudgingly acknowledged that there is anti-Semitism in Canada that is not perpetrated by ageing Indian chiefs or teenagers on Internet chat sites. They've called a press conference for Wednesday to talk about the bigoted pro-Hamas rallies that have been raging across Canada.
According to a release, the CJC's press conference will be staffed by Bernie "Burny" Farber, Mark Freiman and Sara Saber Freedman.
Burny, as we all know, has a section 13 fetish. He has become Canada's loudest defender of censorship -- which is why I've changed the spelling of his name to Burny. He's the 21st century equivalent to a book-burner.
And that's a problem. Because it's one thing to use the law to bully a single political offender for "promoting hatred", and grind him through years of punitive legal hassles, with the final result being the removal of a single website on the Internet (how pitiful). But what do you do when there's 10,000 people who have engaged in hateful acts on the city's streets, and they're looking forward to doing it again next week?
Try taking 10,000 people to a human rights commission. (Oh, the commissions would love it, though, wouldn't they? Bigger budgets; a bigger sense of self-importance; more control over more peoples' lives.)
But you can't use section 13, actually, because it only applies to hate spread over phone lines and the Internet.
And the Criminal Code provisions require an enormous standard of guilt -- what we saw in those rallies, with the possible exceptions of the support for terrorist groups, is likely below the standard of a criminal conviction. Shouting "kill all the Jews" isn't specific or imminent enough to be taken as a real death threat. It might breach the criminal code provisions against hate speech. But how do you apply that to a mob of hundreds or thousands chanting their Jew-hatred, often in Arabic, often with masks hiding their identities?
Mark Freiman is a lawyer who has worked on the CJC's section 13 cases, and is a defender of those laws. Not encouraging.
The problem with Burny and Freiman is that they don't actually know how to fight real anti-Semites, because they've been fighting Internet anti-Semites for so long. It's like the difference between playing Guitar Hero really well, and then being asked to play a real guitar. They only know how to fight "hate" on the Internet, like a video game.
Burny and Freiman don't know what to do when they're faced with thousands of people who disagree with them. They don't know how to argue. They don't know how to organize. They've become lazy, outsourcing their political resopnsibilities to the government.
Sara Saber Freedman works for the Canada-Israel Committee, not the CJC. I imagine that her presence is as an expert on Hamas, Gaza and international issues. But I also think that she is there as some sort of grown up supervision. While Burny and Freiman have indulged their pet issue of censorship this past year, Freedman has actually had the real work of trying to promote Canada-Israel relations.
In other words, while Burny and Freiman have been playfighting, re-enacting the last Holocaust, even fighting against "Nazis" on the Internet, Freedman has been busy trying to prevent the next Holocaust, perpetrated by real people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hassan Nasrallah and others.
I think she's there to keep an eye on Burny and Freiman, and make sure they talk about thousands of Muslim radicals, rather than their favourite subject -- Internet "neo-Nazis".
I look forward to hearing what they have to say. I wonder if Burny will be forced to call off his love affair with the Canadian Arab Federation, one of the many anti-Semitic groups Burny has engaged in "dialogue" with. They were one of the sponsors of the anti-Semitic rallies. I wonder if Burny can quit them.
(And will Jennifer Lynch, the chief commisar of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, quit the Canadian Arab Federation, too? The CHRC proudly lists the CAF as one of their "stakeholders". Will Lynch drop the CAF? Or will she continue to take their advice -- the kind of advice that allows anti-Semitic bigots escape the CHRC's prosecution, if they're Arab?)
I can't attend the press conference, but I'll review the media reports from it.
I have a feeling, though, that no matter what question you ask Burny and Freiman, you get the same answer: government censorship, though slow and cumbersome legal processes.
In other words, you have a wholly inappropriate response to a quick-moving, massive political problem.
When all you have is a censorship hammer, everything looks like a section 13 nail.
I predict all they'll do is ask for hate speech charges -- under the Criminal Code -- to be laid.
And I predict that, two years from now when the trial finally happens, whoever is charged will be acquitted, just like Ahenakew was, and with the newfound fame and following that Ahenakew has.
I've already given some of my thoughts about what should be done. Here are a few, in point form:
According to a release, the CJC's press conference will be staffed by Bernie "Burny" Farber, Mark Freiman and Sara Saber Freedman.
Burny, as we all know, has a section 13 fetish. He has become Canada's loudest defender of censorship -- which is why I've changed the spelling of his name to Burny. He's the 21st century equivalent to a book-burner.
And that's a problem. Because it's one thing to use the law to bully a single political offender for "promoting hatred", and grind him through years of punitive legal hassles, with the final result being the removal of a single website on the Internet (how pitiful). But what do you do when there's 10,000 people who have engaged in hateful acts on the city's streets, and they're looking forward to doing it again next week?
Try taking 10,000 people to a human rights commission. (Oh, the commissions would love it, though, wouldn't they? Bigger budgets; a bigger sense of self-importance; more control over more peoples' lives.)
But you can't use section 13, actually, because it only applies to hate spread over phone lines and the Internet.
And the Criminal Code provisions require an enormous standard of guilt -- what we saw in those rallies, with the possible exceptions of the support for terrorist groups, is likely below the standard of a criminal conviction. Shouting "kill all the Jews" isn't specific or imminent enough to be taken as a real death threat. It might breach the criminal code provisions against hate speech. But how do you apply that to a mob of hundreds or thousands chanting their Jew-hatred, often in Arabic, often with masks hiding their identities?
Mark Freiman is a lawyer who has worked on the CJC's section 13 cases, and is a defender of those laws. Not encouraging.
The problem with Burny and Freiman is that they don't actually know how to fight real anti-Semites, because they've been fighting Internet anti-Semites for so long. It's like the difference between playing Guitar Hero really well, and then being asked to play a real guitar. They only know how to fight "hate" on the Internet, like a video game.
Burny and Freiman don't know what to do when they're faced with thousands of people who disagree with them. They don't know how to argue. They don't know how to organize. They've become lazy, outsourcing their political resopnsibilities to the government.
Sara Saber Freedman works for the Canada-Israel Committee, not the CJC. I imagine that her presence is as an expert on Hamas, Gaza and international issues. But I also think that she is there as some sort of grown up supervision. While Burny and Freiman have indulged their pet issue of censorship this past year, Freedman has actually had the real work of trying to promote Canada-Israel relations.
In other words, while Burny and Freiman have been playfighting, re-enacting the last Holocaust, even fighting against "Nazis" on the Internet, Freedman has been busy trying to prevent the next Holocaust, perpetrated by real people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hassan Nasrallah and others.
I think she's there to keep an eye on Burny and Freiman, and make sure they talk about thousands of Muslim radicals, rather than their favourite subject -- Internet "neo-Nazis".
I look forward to hearing what they have to say. I wonder if Burny will be forced to call off his love affair with the Canadian Arab Federation, one of the many anti-Semitic groups Burny has engaged in "dialogue" with. They were one of the sponsors of the anti-Semitic rallies. I wonder if Burny can quit them.
(And will Jennifer Lynch, the chief commisar of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, quit the Canadian Arab Federation, too? The CHRC proudly lists the CAF as one of their "stakeholders". Will Lynch drop the CAF? Or will she continue to take their advice -- the kind of advice that allows anti-Semitic bigots escape the CHRC's prosecution, if they're Arab?)
I can't attend the press conference, but I'll review the media reports from it.
I have a feeling, though, that no matter what question you ask Burny and Freiman, you get the same answer: government censorship, though slow and cumbersome legal processes.
In other words, you have a wholly inappropriate response to a quick-moving, massive political problem.
When all you have is a censorship hammer, everything looks like a section 13 nail.
I predict all they'll do is ask for hate speech charges -- under the Criminal Code -- to be laid.
And I predict that, two years from now when the trial finally happens, whoever is charged will be acquitted, just like Ahenakew was, and with the newfound fame and following that Ahenakew has.
I've already given some of my thoughts about what should be done. Here are a few, in point form:
- Demand that politicians specifically denounce the bigoted rallies. This means the Prime Minister and MPs; the premiers and MPPs/MNAs/MLAs of Ontario, Quebec and Alberta; and the mayors and aldermen of Toronto, Montreal and Calgary. The fact that neo-Nazis and Arab crypto-Nazis have marched so brazenly demands a political rebuke.
- All the organizations that participated -- CUPE, the postal union, the various Palestinian lobby groups -- must be attacked using every tool of civil society. They must be marginalized in public; any politicians who truck with them must be marginalized, too; their leadership must be challenged legally and politically. Sid Ryan must face a backlash from his membership, including a lawsuit if an appropriate cause of action exists. A lawsuit to allow non-terrorist-supporting union members to witthhold union dues that are being used for such pro-terrorist ends is one that comes to mind.
- I think that one of the problems is the media itself. As Debbie Gyapong points out, the media is so historically illiterate, they don't see the anti-Semitism in these protests. I think that there ought to be a tour of newspaper editorial boards and TV and radio stations showing videos of these protests, and painstakingly explaining how similar they are to the S.A. and S.S. rallies of the 1930s in Germany. I think that public service-style or political campaign-style TV and radio ads should be aired as well, reaching directly to the general public, which is more sensible and less anti-Israel than the press.
- A large problem, of course, is that the Jewish community itself gives political cover to many of these anti-Semitic groups. I mentioned above how the CJC has trucked with the CAF. There must be a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to anti-Semitism before Jewish groups -- including synagogues -- have interfaith activities with Muslim groups.
- And it's not just Muslim groups. I understand that the Catholic Church in Montreal was in some manner involved with the protest there. I think that the leadership of the Jewish community must meet immediately with Catholic leaders to explain just how inappropriate that is.
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