B’nai Brith’s recent response to Canada’s Israel Advocacy Scene According to Israel Leibler.

I’m interested in knowing what you think. Please be in touch with your comments. Take a look after the break for the full press release.
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If you haven’t heard about the recent hate speech at McMaster University please read the full Tribune article, I was quoted as saying:

“We are calling on the Attorney General to act on the request of the Hamilton police. Failure to bring this matter to a resolution is at odds with the severity of the offence. Campus is an important microcosm of society where there can be no immunity from hate. As universities across Canada gear up for a new academic year, any further delay leaves Jewish students at risk.”

What do you think?

B’nai Brith has characterized as “threatening” and “deplorable” the hate messaging scrawled on a billboard for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Scrawled on the billboard was the message ‘Kill all Jews” along with Nazi swastikas. We reported the incident to police and are calling for a full investigation into this hate crime.

It is the height of irony that a billboard for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, which promotes tolerance and respect, was defaced with messages of hate. This violent, threatening message to ‘kill all Jews’ and the use of Nazi swastikas should signal to everyone the ongoing need to combat antisemitism and racism in this country.

I was a member of the Museum’s original advisory board and this disturbs me greatly. I am also urging community members to call B’nai Brith Canada’s toll-free 24-7 Anti-Hate Hotline to report all incidents of antisemitism: 1-800-892-2624.

Many of you have been inquiring about B’nai Brith’s position on human rights commissions. Below (after the break) is the release issued today calling for major reforms to the system. As always, I’m interested in hearing from you. What are your comments? Your feedback?
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FYI- I thought the item below (after the break) would be of interest. I welcome your comments.
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Today in Canada you can be politically correct and still spew hate speech as much as you want. Only, of course, if that hatred is directed against the Jewish People.

Learn to use your nuances properly and you can command an entire lecture hall on campus, influencing impressionable students with your virulently anti-Israel rhetoric. It doesn’t matter if there is no correlation between the propaganda being advanced and existing realities. As long as you are only attacking Israel, you are safe.

Hold a hate-fest on campus and call it Israel Apartheid Week, and the university administrator will rush to your defense in the name of academic freedom.
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There are those who have only cynicism for Israeli politicians. I, on the other hand, am most complimentary and admire the self-sacrifice that so many of these politicians have made to help society become a better place. Throughout the years, I have gotten to know many parliamentarians from across the Israeli political spectrum and while I may disagree with some of their perspectives and ideological thrusts, I have tremendous respect for their integrity.

The range of such individuals is indeed enormous, from people like Yossi Sarid, Yossi Beilin and Naomi Chazan of the far-left Meretz Party, to Moshe Arens and Uzi Landau of the Likud Party, and to Rabbi Benny Elon and Benny Begin representing the nationalist Zionist camp.

They are indeed a diverse bunch, and while I certainly do not endorse the Oslo Accords initiated by Yossi Beilin and company, I understand it is consistent with his world view. Some might see his stubborn clinging to a vision of a post-Oslo universe as woefully out of touch with today’s reality. And they are likely right. However, these same people can look beyond his ideological shortcomings and view him as a man of integrity who has never waivered in trying to bring about the reality he openly and publicly has advocated throughout his entire career.
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On the Friday preceding the President’s Conference convened by Shimon Peres in Jerusalem in May, I partook of one of my most favourite activities. I visited the Pomerantz Bookstore, located at #5 Be’eri St. It is a marvelous experience to browse through this Judaica store, with its exceptionally helpful personnel whose knowledge of Jewish issues is without a doubt the best there is. I was interested in one particular book and within minutes they were able to track it down. The book in question is entitled, Sacred Fire: Torah from the Years of Fury 1939-1942, and is written by Rabbi Kalonymos Kalmish Shapira who was the Rabbi of the Warsaw Ghetto. I was interested in trying to understand how men of faith related to what was happening around them as Jews were rounded up, beaten, starved and humiliated on a daily basis. How did Rabbi Shapira address this issue in his writings and his commentaries?

The book is well worth reading for those who are interested in the topic of how Job persevered when all he loved was taken from him. But the book also began to hold increasing relevancy for me as I attended the President’s Conference. I began to understand more poignantly one’s ability to exist in parallel worlds. Inside the venue of the President’s conference persons moved about, seemingly content in their own world, trying as much as possible to filter out reality. Eclectic personalities moved about in an atmosphere at once insular, as well as intellectual, highly motivating, most inspiring and also entertaining, without any real reference to the reality of what was occurring outside the conference hall.

The conference was aptly named Facing Tomorrow, not Today and Tomorrow, for if it had to address the current on-the-ground realities, the fanciful speeches and visionary thinking dreaming up a new Middle East and its glorious future would be shattered.
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Canadians may not know it, but they are being duped. The Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC), Palestine House and the Canadian Arab Federation have joined together to distort truth and justice in an effort to promote a vehemently anti-Israel agenda of hate to young Canadians. All three have sponsored an inflammatory essay contest for students aged 17-27 that will reward (with cash) writing that perpetuates the myth of what contest organizers call “the ethnic cleansing of Palestine” — a notion that pretends Jews were not indigenous to Israel and the Middle East. According to its sponsors, the contest is being held “in response to the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel within Palestine.”

The contest announcement features points of interest for potential essay topics, including “May, 1948 through October, 1957 (the Israeli war against Egypt).” Conspicuously omitted is any reference to Israeli statehood, or for that matter the fact that the Arab armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon invaded the nascent Jewish state, triggering the first of many wars to follow. According to organizers, the Suez war of 1956 also falls into this category — but in their inverted version of events, it is Israel that was the initiator rather than Egypt, which triggered the war by blocking entry into the Suez Canal to British, French and Israeli shipping.

On it goes. The years 1957-1967 are listed as “the Israeli war against Egypt, Syria and Jordan,” when in reality Egypt, Syria and Jordan, bolstered by Iraq, Algeria and Kuwait, joined together in an attempt to destroy the Jewish state.
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