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Why is the Canadian Jewish Congress so defensive?

By Ezra Levant on May 17, 2009 4:14 PM | | |

I've been a conscientious objector to the Canadian Jewish Congress ever since they rented themselves out to the government in the 1992 Charlottetown Accord referendum.

To be more accurate, the CJC rented me out, for they claimed to speak for me and all other Canadian Jews when they endorsed that document on behalf of all Jews.

Seriously: since when did an ethnic advocacy organization become a partisan shill for a constitutional amendment that had nothing to do with Jews or Israel? It was a grotesque revelation for me: the CJC didn't represent Jews. It represented the political amibitions of its own staff and their echo-chamber clique.

Nothing's changed since then. As recently as last fall, the CJC's political enforcer, Bernie "Burny" Farber, unilaterally decided that all Jews must share his radical environmental agenda, so he endorsed some crackpot global warming campaign -- a not so subtle dig at the Conservatives, just days before the campaign was called. Some Jews might agree with Burny; some might not. But what was a Jewish group doing taking a partisan position, on behalf of the whole community, on an issue that had absolutely no relation to Judaism? Here's Jonathan Kay's scathing critique of some of the CJC's other bizarre antics in the last election.

The "J" in CJC is a fraud; they're a left-wing advocacy group with very little democratic support amongst real Jews. Here's an Op-Ed I wrote almost ten years ago about the subject, when Burny was showcasing his anti-Christian bigotry. It's gotten worse since then.

Over the years I've pointed out the left-wing, anti-Christian agenda of the CJC. And they usually ignore me, which is probably the smartest thing for them to do.

But I've never seen such a concerted attempt -- and such a clumsy attempt -- by them to rebut me as they have done in response to my documentation of their role in building up the "Canadian Nazi Party" of the 1960s.

Why is that?

I mean, it's one thing for them to disagree with my political conclusions. I think their support for John Beattie's rag-tag group was foolish, immoral and contrary to the interests of Jews (and all other Canadians). They could argue that it was smart (or at least they thought it was smart at the time); that it was in Jewish and Canadian interests. And we would just disagree.

But, instead, they've engaged in a strange and high level attempt to deny they even engaged in their Nazi schemes. They've even had their figurehead president, Rabbi Reuven Bulka, sign a public letter in response to me (you can read it here.) I have no idea why Rabbi Bulka agreed to sign such a letter, clearly written by Rabbi Bulka's boss, Burny. Putting aside the fact that Rabbi Bulka embarrassed himself with Burny's factual errors, why would the figurehead president of the CJC lower himself to reply in specific response to me? I'm not being falsely modest. I'm just saying: seriously, why is containing this PR issue something that he would spend his time on, instead of giving it to one of the CJC's many spin doctors?

Why?

Why deny something that has been meticulously documented, both in daily newspapers and in history books? Take their denial that they spent Jewish donations propping up the Nazis. John Garrity, the CJC's main infiltrator into John Beattie's pitiful Nazi crew, outlines how he billed the CJC on a monthly basis for his work as Beattie's bodyguard and membership boss. Garrity billed the CJC thousands of dollars in 1966 money -- tens of thousands in 2009 dollars. Why would the CJC even try to deny that? Just to name one example.

I don't get it. I think it's because, when combined with the CJC's current and ongoing support for members of Nazi organizations -- such as Richard Warman, a member of at least two Nazi organizations, who has published hundreds of anti-Semitic comments online -- it starts to add up to a pattern. In other words, the CJC's Nazi fetish wasn't some ill-advised lark in the 1960s. It's a continuing strategy, that goes on to this day.

I haven't quite figured it out, but I think it goes back to an article I discovered when I was reading about the CJC's antics in the Toronto Star archives I came across this article by Mark MacGuigan, then a law professor, soon to be a Liberal MP. MacGuigan was part of the Cohen Censorship Committee that used the CJC's Nazi scheme as a pretext to recommend inventing new "crimes" that would abridge our ancient freedom of speech. MacGuigan's whole article is an exercise in political trickery, including a laughable appeal to psychological arguments that we ought to outlaw "hate", because they could lead to certain illegal "attitudes" -- as if any emotion could be criminalized.

Read the whole thing. But look at these paragraphs in particular:

MacGuigan excerpt.jpgMacGuigan admits that "hate speech" is a novel concept never before accepted in our common law tradition. He -- and the CJC -- just plain made it up, based on their psychobabble theory that "man's personality is formed by his primary group membership". Oh, really? So all Jews think alike; blacks think alike; gays think alike, etc.?

So Martin Luther King's edict -- to judge a man by the content of his character, not the colour of his skin -- was wrong? That, in fact, we were merely parts of our race or other group, never individuals?

Wasn't that exactly the claptrap we fought against when the Nazis promoted it?

So, based on this pseudo-scientific junk law, MacGuigan and the CJC lobbyists proposed to limit "grossly abusive expressions of disagreement." Not crimes; not torts; nothing violent; no-one hurt. Just people who disagreed with each other too much.

What a con.

But this is the Marxist theory that the CJC -- especially life-long leftists like Burny -- have bought into, hook, line and sinker. The CJC, like other grievance hustlers and race hucksters, have completely bought into the group rights, ethnic identity politics of the radical 1960s. They still buy into it -- and for that reason, they can't let go of their love for censorship laws. Because to them, people aren't individuals. They're merely pawns on a chess board. The CJC certainly thinks that way about little Jews -- they aren't allowed to think for themselves; they need a CJC political officer to tell them what to think on everything from the Constitution to global warmning. And they certainly don't think that individual non-Jews have individual rights, such as freedom of speech. No-one has individual rights anymore, under MacGuigan's kooky theory -- and that's the theory the CJC operates under to this day. They helped write it.

What an embarrassment. I think the CJC knows it's embarrassing. But instead of abandoning a discredited, racist ideology, they choose to hold onto it -- and just try to contain the PR damage it causes.

 

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This page contains a single entry by Ezra Levant published on May 17, 2009 4:14 PM.

The Canadian Nazi Party -- a party of one was the previous entry in this blog.

Winnipeg Free Press reviews Shakedown is the next entry in this blog.

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