Canada's Refusal to Recognize Israeli Apartheid
The Truth of the Matter
Canada's official circles have declared that identifying Israel as an apartheid state violates what it calls Canadian values. They say it is unacceptable, disgraceful, anti-Semitic and a betrayal of Canadian values. They defame and persecute those who hold that view. They do this in the name of defending democracy. The problem is that no thinking Canadian believes that it is democratic to persecute those who do not hold the same views as the state.
The very
conception of the civil right to free speech and
association was given rise to in defence of those who do not
hold the
same views as the state. It was a defence of the people against
tyranny. To get around this thorny issue, the government accuses
those
who hold the view that Israel is
an apartheid state and that it is committing the crime of
genocide
against the Palestinian people, of racism and promotion of
hatred.
There is no discussion about what is going on in front of everyone's eyes or of the evidence of what constitutes apartheid or an apartheid state or of what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank. The government of Canada, along with the governments of the United States, Britain and other former European colonial powers, think they can get away with using their positions of power and privilege to declare that their anti-people irrational views are the right ones and anyone opposing them is promoting hate or racism and deserves to be punished.
It is a position that Canadians and the peoples all over the world are condemning with their actions and by raising their voices to speak the truth about what is going on in Gaza and the West Bank. The U.S. and countries like Canada, Britain and others which support Israel's "right to self-defence," and who claim it is observing international humanitarian law to the best of its ability are increasingly isolated and bend over backwards to hold on to their support for Israel on the basis of the most convoluted and irrational arguments which everyone can see are false and unacceptable.
As support for
the right of the Palestinian people grows all over
the world, Canada continues to call all opposition to what
Israel is
doing to the Palestinians a betrayal of Canadian values. While
the
government lauds the genocidal attacks against the Palestinians,
it
defames all those who do
not share its opinions and blames them for the rise of anarchy
and
violence in the society, including racist attacks which it gives
the
impression it has nothing to do with inciting.
This has been going on for some years.
In 2011, Canada's award winning "human rights champion" Irwin Cotler (a former Minister of Justice from 2003-2006) stated that calling Israel an apartheid state was within the bounds of legitimate debate. What is not legitimate is to suggest that apartheid must be dismantled, he said. "Where you say that Israel is an apartheid state, even then -- that to me is, it's distasteful, but it's still within the boundaries of argument," Cotler told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. "It's where you say, because it's an apartheid state, it has to be dismantled -- then you crossed the line into a racist argument, or an anti-Jewish argument."
The fact that most people are pointing out that an apartheid state is the antithesis of a democratic state and that apartheid must be dismantled is confounded with the state's own propaganda and a content which does not exist is imposed on its adversaries.
In 2014, the year in which Israel's army killed 2,251 Palestinians, including 551 children and 299 women, then Canadian Prime Minister Harper saved his outrage for what he claimed was "a new strain of anti-Semitism" at Canadian universities. "Most disgracefully of all, some openly call Israel an apartheid state. Think about the twisted logic and outright malice behind that: A state, based on freedom, democracy and the rule of law, that was founded so Jews can flourish, as Jews, and seek shelter from the shadow of the worst racist experiment in history, that is condemned, and that condemnation is masked in the language of anti-racism. It is nothing short of sickening," Harper said.
To confound Israel's raison d'état with democratic principles is to argue based on historical falsification from A to Z.
When the Liberals
came to power, they did not hesitate to take up
Harper's crusade in defence of Israeli occupation, war crimes
and
crimes against humanity. In 2015, Justin Trudeau tweeted, "The
BDS
movement,
like Israeli Apartheid Week, has no place on Canadian campuses.
As a
@McGillU alum, I'm
disappointed. #EnoughIsEnough." At a town hall meeting during
the 2019
federal election, Trudeau said, "But when you have movements
like BDS
that single out Israel, that seeks to delegitimize and in some
cases
demonize, when you have students on campus dealing with things
like
Israel apartheid weeks
that make them fearful of actually attending campus events
because of
their religion in Canada, we have to recognize that there are
things
that aren't acceptable, not because of foreign policy concerns,
but
because of Canadian values."
In 2015, Irwin Cotler, who in 2020 was appointed by Trudeau to be Canada's "Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism," claimed that criticism of Israel was the "new anti-Semitism." He said, "We had moved from the discrimination against Jews as individuals, to the discrimination against Jews as a people, to Israel as the targeted collective 'Jew' among the nations."
Cotler claimed that the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (Durban Conference) held in Durban South Africa in 2001, with a parallel conference of non-governmental organizations gave rise to a "new anti-Semitism." He declared, "In sum, Durban became the tipping point for the coalescence of a new, virulent, globalizing anti-Jewishness reminiscent of the atmospherics that pervaded Europe in the 1930s." As if the people of South Africa do not know what apartheid, racism and discrimination are, Canada would not sign the Durban Declaration.
Cotler also wrote, "The second indicator of the new anti-Semitism is the indictment of Israel and the Jewish people as the embodiment of all evil, including racism, imperialism, colonialism, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and even Nazism.
"And this serves
as a validator for the third indicator, political
anti-Semitism, by which I mean the denial of fundamental rights
to the
Jewish people, and only to the Jewish people. Political
anti-Semitism
includes the denial of Israel's right to exist to begin with,
and the
denial of the
Jewish people's right to self-determination, if not even the
denial of
the Jewish people as a people."
The mass demonstrations all over the world have given a fitting response to the self-serving arguments of the U.S., Canada, Britain, and European countries which are providing Israel with the mantle of impunity by advancing these arguments. Today, the only country pushing political anti-Semitism is Israel. It is denying the right of the Palestinian people to exist and denying their right to self-determination and their very existence as a people.
This is the truth of the matter.
This article was published in
Volume 53 Number 22 - November 17, 2023
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2023/Articles/MS53225.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca