A Dime a Dozen Blog

The photo above is from a demonstration in Toronto in 2006. Demonstrators shouted anti-Israel slogans and waved the Hezbollah flag. Hezbollah, as you may know, is the Syrian-funded Lebanese terror organization that started the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war .

What is remarkable about this demonstration is that present was the NDP’s candidate for Toronto-Centre – El Farouk Khaki.

This from the Muslim Canadian Congress:

Eight board members of the Muslim Canadian Congress have resigned their positions, apparently over internal disagreements about a Lebanon war protest at which Hezbollah flags and photos were displayed.

“They resigned after the board passed a non-confidence motion against them,” said Tarek Fatah, the congress’ former communications director who is speaking for the organization until his position is filled.

“We went to the (Aug. 12) demonstration and found that there were Hezbollah flags and pictures of the Iranian president,” Fatah said.

“They [the resigned members - including El-Farouk Khaki] are Canadian supporters of Hezbollah … This sort of blind following is not acceptable to us.”

I don’t repeat that allegation lightly – largely because Khaki is a lawyer – but I have had his presence at the rally confirmed by his law office staff member and political supporter, Andrew Hwang [the confirmation was made in the comments to this post].

Why did the NDP see fit to nominate such a compromised person as their standard bearer against Bob Rae? Or put more precisely, what were they thinking in nominating an anti-Zionist in Rosedale?

The fact of the matter is that the NDP likely didn’t see his marching under that flag or his anti-Zionism as problems of any significance, in fact they pale in significance compared to what is tolerated by the anti-war base of their party.

Vancouver writer, Terry Glavin, has published a ‘J’accuse’ piece in ‘Z Word’ Magazine that talks about that base in detail. He has been covering the Left and the NDPs brown-shirted affiliates for some time. In his new article titled “The Cairo Clique: Anti-Zionism and the Canadian Left”, Glavin reviews the degeneration of the Canadian left, from the afterglow of 9-11 to the evolution of the post-materialist, post-western anti-war movement.

Here is Glavin on a seminal event in the devolution – the Cairo conference:

In April, 2007, the Egyptian English-language weekly newspaper, Al-Ahram, contained a glowing account of an international gathering in Cairo, under the headline, “Anti-Globalists Reach Out to Islamists.” Swapping notes with senior officials from Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood were 20 Canadian activists, including representatives of the Canadian Peace Alliance.

Among them was James Clark of the Toronto Stop The War Coalition, who was quoted verbatim to the effect that “Islamophobia” in the west could be exploited to “educate and mobilize” against western governments. He vowed that Canadian anti-war activists, inspired by the “Arab resistance” in Lebanon and Iraq, would work with Muslims in Canada to help defeat imperialism.

The involvement of so many Canadians at the Cairo conference eventually attracted some unwelcome attention in the Canadian news media, but it was after the fact. Canadian journalists, who do not generally subject the politics of the “anti-war” movement to any serious scrutiny, were obliged to rely mainly on the accounts of the conference participants themselves, and the Al-Ahram report. This presented something of a problem, context-wise…

In the fall of 2003, with the war in Iraq in full fury, Canadian “anti-war” activists made their way to Cairo for another gathering. While the first Cairo conference billed itself as the International Campaign Against US Aggression, by 2003 it had elevated its purposes to the International Campaign against US and Zionist Occupations.

The 2003 conference declaration mentioned Afghanistan only in passing, but Israel was singled out for particularly vituperative treatment. Again, Zionism was conflated with global capitalism. Delegates declared their support for the Palestinian right to resist “with all means, including armed struggle,” and they committed themselves to organizing cultural, political and economic boycotts of “the Zionist entity.” The declaration also called for a reconstitution of the United Nations resolution equating Zionism with racism, which was rescinded by the General Assembly in 1991.

On it went like this, year after year.

Back in Canada, the Cairo conventioneers dutifully carried out their annual work plans, organized “Israeli Apartheid” campaigns, and in their “anti-war” propaganda they took pains to conflate Canada’s military contributions in Afghanistan with the Anglo-American effort in Iraq, and with the Israel-Palestine conflict. They set the Canadian Peace Alliance and its affiliates to the tasks of the Cairo agenda, recruited for more Cairo delegates, and continued the work of forging common cause with Islamists.

To see where that goes, check out the rest of Glavin’s article in Z Word.

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One thing in closing – I lived and studied in Cairo back before 9-11 and had as a classmate a now prominent ‘Orientalist’ writer and one-time senior editor of Al-Ahram. Glavin’s article reminds me of something of his I read a while back. At the time I thought it emblematic of the thinking of the new ‘progressives’ – reading the Z World piece, I’m more sure of this.

Here is that writer giving his arguments against the Iraq invasion:

In the end, perhaps turning a blind eye would have been the moral thing to do. After all, many beaten women, despite everything, keep on loving the brute who beats them, as do their children. Ultimately, it is their choice, and to go knowingly against their wishes … is really only to sink further into the moral quagmire.

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As always when I talk about things like this – I implore you to read the Euston Manifesto, buy Nick Cohen’s “What’s Left?” and pending that, take the time to listen to this interview on Shire Network News.

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