Vancouver Jewish Book Festival

I had a great time last week at the Vancouver Jewish Book Festival. I've done a ton of events this past year in support of my book, Shakedown, but in a way my favourite ones were at Jewish venues. That's because I see it as my personal duty to disabuse Jews of the notion that censorship is in any way compatible with Jewish values. Fortunately, it has been an easy task. Most Jews -- like most other Canadians -- are largely unaware of the facts about censorship and Canada's human rights commissions, and are shocked to learn the truth about them. That shock transforms into genuine fear when they learn how radical foreigners like Mohamed Elmasry and Syed Soharwardy are using the HRCs to prosecute their soft jihad of "lawfare" against Jews or other Zionists. Any support my Jewish audiences have for laws against "hate speech" is paper thin and not thought through; simply walking through the logical arguments against censorship and the HRCs quickly turns most people around.

Here's a sympathetic review of my Vancouver presentation from a blogger in attendance. And here are a few video clips posted to YouTube by another blogger there. (And blogger Rick Hiebert, of Western Standard fame, was there, too!)

The first clip has some of my usual riffs on the subject; but the second clip has content more tailored to the Jewish audience. As I said about censorship laws: "if it's kosher it's halal". In other words, if Canada's Jews think that a censorship law will remain their own private preserve to attack their own special list of political enemies, they're deluding themselves. Thin-skinned Jews set the precedent, and radical Muslims are following it. Severely normal Jews understand this. The Official Jews probably do, too, but are too proud to admit they've been wrong. Here are the vids: