Bob Rae rose in the house today to defend the opposition against the PM’s suggestions of anti-semitism:
“I am disturbed that there are some elements in our political system, there are even some members of Parliament we saw during the confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah a couple years back — some that were willing to cater to that kind of opinion,” Harper said.
Rae asked Conservative House Leader Peter Van Loan to identify the MPs Harper was referring to. Harper was not in the House on Friday during question period.
“Now I’d like to ask the minister, perhaps he will understand the sensitivity that all of us feel as members of parliament, perhaps the minister can tell us perhaps who exactly are the anti-Semites that the prime minister is talking about,” Rae said.
Who exactly is the PM talking about? It’s a long list Mr. Rae - but try looking around. In fact try this, stand in front of the opposition benches - throw a rock. Odds are you’ll hit an anti-semite.
Here are some quotes and facts on the NDP and on some Liberals. You be the judge - any anti-semites there?
Libby Davies (NDP) on the Israel-Lebanon War:
I am deeply concerned with the recent escalation of violence by Israeli forces in Lebanon, and deeply disappointed with the Conservative government’s response to this crisis. Many constituents have contacted my office expressing their outrage and concerns about Canada’s response. By calling Israel’s military response to the kidnapping of three of its soldiers as “measured”, Prime Minister Harper has failed to show leadership on such a critical issue.
Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj on the Israel-Lebanon War:
“Over 1,200 dead and counting. Over 40,000 apartments and houses flattened. A country’s infrastructure dismembered. You look around here,” said Wrzesnewskyj (Etobicoke Centre). “I believe what’s happened is absolutely criminal.”
Ezra Levant on Omar Alghabra (Liberal):
1. Alghabra has condemned CanWest newspapers for labelling groups like Hamas and Hizbollah “terrorist” groups;
2. Alghabra has welcomed al-Jazeera to Canada and railed against any restrictions on it, but condemned the CRTC for allowing the “abusive” Fox News Channel in;
3. In the wake of the Arab riots at Concordia that shut down a speech by former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Alghabra had the temerity to blame Jewish students for silencing campus discussions, and supported an Arab conference on campus whose stated mission was the elimination of Israel;
4. Alghabra has called for the total abolition of Canada’s anti-terrorism laws;
Terry Glavin on the NDP’s anti-semitic “anti-war” links:
I’m not the one who presented Bodine as the featured opening-night guest speaker at last November’s British Columbia New Democratic Party convention. The NDP did.
I’m not the one who happily accepted Bodine’s transparently bogus claim that she was the victim of a government plot to “target” anti-war activists. I’m not the one who chose not to notice, two weeks before she got a standing ovation at the NDP convention, that her story had been exposed as rubbish.
It’s not as though MAWO’s blackshirt conduct and deranged ideology was unknown to NDP activists, either. And yes, I mean deranged: “Wherever Islam is fighting against imperialism, ‘The Left’ must join with Muslims in this fight. . . the Muslims of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine who are fighting on the front lines against imperialism.”
This has been no secret, especially on the left. Years before NDP convention organizers thought it would be cool to get in on Bodine’s radical-chic celebrity, MAWO’s lunacy was well-known to New Democrats, especially NDPers involved in “anti-war” activism.
The truth of it is, I feel a bit sorry for Layton.
His big challenge is the work of triangulating a progressive and coherent left-wing position on Afghanistan that still somehow appeals to the NDP’s activist base, which has been largely addled by MAWO-type polemics at one end, and the kind of “revolutionary defeatism” that animates the broader-based, Islamist-friendly Canadian Peace Alliance at the other.
Unrelated:
Truthers have high praise for Bob Rae for standing up to the Joooz!
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Tags: Anti-semitism, Canada, Conservative, israel, Liberal, Politics
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Good reiteration of Harper’s gaffe. You’ve quoted two specific criticisms of Israeli policy, and insinuated that their originators are therefore anti-Semitic.
Nope.
There are no doubt critics of Israel’s policies who are anti Semitic. There are also many critics of Israel’s policies, including Jews in residing in Israel, who are presumably NOT anti Semitic.
I think this is a dangerous little game Harper and bloggers like yourself are playing. You’ve pretty much drained the notion of anti-Semitism of meaning. If you equate criticism of some Israeli state policy (not criticism of Jews, nor of Judaism) with the views held by the folks at Stormfront, you’re suffering from a pretty serious lack of perspective.
I assert the right of Israel to exist, applaud its achievements in the establishment of a state, a democracy, and a viable economy, and recognize its right and need to defend itself. I take issue with some of its domestic and international strategies for addressing the Palestinian issue, and I debate those issues with informed conservative bloggers who have more cogent thoughts on the subject than an automatic deployment of the stupid “anti-Semitic” ploy.
No one takes the ‘anti semitic’ canard seriously anymore…The boy who cried wolf, kids.
Gratuitous political correctness run amok.
We dont have one rule for “israel” and another for the rest of us.
Welcome to the rule of law, genuine democratic values and Western justice:
Theyre here to stay, whether israel hates it or not.
I’m with Balbulican. Criticism of Israeli government policy does not equate to anti-semetism. I mean, plenty of people of the Jewish faith criticize Israeli government policy as well. Does that make them anti-semetic?
Being critical of Israel is certainly not anti-semitic. That’s a given. Criticizing the location of the West Bank wall is fair, criticizing the settlements in the West Bank is fair - criticizing any one of a thousand policies is fair, criticizing its existence is not. When you go from fair to anti-semitic, is when you begin virulently attacking Israel for things which you consider acceptable if done by the other 190 non-Jewish states. For example, you hear few complaints about the Saudi security wall with Yemen, and few complaints about the settlements in the Western Sahara. A blind eye is turned to those - but not to similar things (wise or not) in the Jewish state.
Look at the Lebanon war, we have quotes from Liberal MPs above who blame the war entirely on Israel - and accept Hezbollah propaganda as fact. That the word of the Jewish democracy carries such little credibility with them that it’s claims can be dismissed in favour of the word of terrorists portrays a latent anti-semitism.
In the last by-election in Toronto Centre, the NDP ran a candidate, Farouk El-Khaki, who was expelled from the Muslim Canadian Congress for marching in a parade with Hezbollah supporters, who on the one hand encouraged Canada’s Muslims to be more political and side with a party, and on the other condemned Jewish Canadians for having “undue influence” on the NDP.
What would you call that?
“Being critical of Israel is certainly not anti-semitic. That’s a given.”
No, it’s not “a given”. As I noted at Stageleft, various conservative bloggers have labelled me “anti-semitic”, “anti-Zionist”, and a holocaust denier. Not only are these lies: they’re lies completely without foundation, and the exact opposite of what I believe. But I earned those labels (I assume) for criticism of Israeli policy.
“In the last by-election in Toronto Centre, the NDP ran a candidate, Farouk El-Khaki, who was expelled from the Muslim Canadian Congress for marching in a parade with Hezbollah supporters, who on the one hand encouraged Canada’s Muslims to be more political and side with a party, and on the other condemned Jewish Canadians for having “undue influence” on the NDP. What would you call that?”
I you provide a link to your sources, I’ll review them and tell you what I’d call it.
Sorry, Robert: “IF you provide…”
I put up a post on Mr. Khaki ages ago. The first post is here: http://rjjago.wordpress.com/2007/06/16/toronto-centre-ndp-el-farouk-khaki/
I got into it with one of his staff members in the comments. He inadvertently confirmed the claim about the parade, but they also attacked Tarek Fatah, so I got Mr. Fatah involved in this post:
http://rjjago.wordpress.com/2007/06/18/comment-from-an-ndp-supporter/
Be sure to check the comments for both.
Okay, I read it, probably not as carefully as you did.
You stated that Mr. Khaki “…condemned Jewish Canadians for having “undue influence” on the NDP.”
That sounds pretty bad…sort of like the old “international zionist conspiracy” libels.
However, a slightly more accurate description of what you’re talking about would be that Mr. Khaki, along with twenty five others, expressed concern that the CJC was having “undue influence”. That’s not a statement about “Jewish Canadians” - it’s a statement about the CJC, a specific advocacy organization, whose goals, quite legitimately, are in part to influence Canadian foreign policy.
For example, you hear few complaints about the Saudi security wall with Yemen, and few complaints about the settlements in the Western Sahara. A blind eye is turned to those
It’s hard to blame us when the media doesn’t really give coverage to these other items. For instance, this is the first time I heard about the Saudi wall with Yemen. What are the issues there? The last time I checked, the boundary between these two states was undemarcated. Are the Saudis acting unilaterally? That _is_ a problem. But I doubt we’ll see any attention to this, unless Yemen goes to war over it.
As for Western Sahara, this _is_ something that I’ve been paying attention to, as seen here. Morocco acting unilaterally, here, is just the wrong thing to do. But I am a bit more optimistic that we might finally get a settlement that both sides can be satisfied with, than the situation as currently exists in the West Bank.
And, for the record, I support the construction of the West Bank wall. I know others of my acquaintance disagree with me, for perfectly valid reasons. We must be careful not to generalize who the critics are, and what criticisms they are making. Suggesting that most of the critics of Israel policy are anti-semetic is just that type of overgeneralization that serves to thwart the majority of honest criticism of Israeli government policy.
I mean, one difference between the Saudi-Yemen issue and the Western Sahara issue, and the West Bank issue is that in the former two, we’re dealing with some of the least densely populated areas of the world, whereas in the West Bank, we have a lot of people in close quarters fighting for land and livelihoods. Of course the media is going to gravitate that way and not to the other two jurisdictions. Indeed, if I had to categorize the tone of the media coverage of the Western Sahara conflict, it’s “they’re fighting over _what_? A whole lot of sand?”
Certainly, some of the comments presented as de-facto anti-semetic are not. Critisizing Isreal’s response in the Lebanon war, saying that it is causing great destruction and is therefore deplorable or “criminal”, I see this as more obviously anti-intelligent over anti-semetic. But it’s too easy to leave it at that. Isreal recieves far harsher condemnation for its responses to genocidal terrorists than even the United States. Yet the war on terror is generally considered legitimate at least in Afghanistan despite the fact that Isreal’s loss for its population totals dozens of 9/11s over the years and is bitterly critisized for assissinating Hamas leaders and blamed for civilian deaths when people who murder Isrealies use citizens as sheilds to hold out to the media when they get killed.
You look at the fact that Egypt has a much larger wall between it and the palestinian territories than Isreal’s and its just considered their uncontroversial business as a legitimate state.
You look at the fact that if you take UN resolutions as your barometer Isreal is the worst human rights offender in the world and you realize that about the only place in the world where the double anti-semitism which holds Isreal’s actions to what I consider impossible and therefore disingenous standards and excuses or ignores the actions of those who would annihilate it as if they were not moral actors is not the prevalent view is in Canada, the US, and Isreal itself.
It was controversial for Harper to oppose a resolution that condemned only Isreal for the Lebanon war when it is patent that they would never have attacked Lebanon without Hezbollah attacking first.
I’m well aware that Isreal’s responses to the attacks on it are nowhere more controversial than in Isreal itself, but the dangerous game is in forfeiting this precious and rare justice.
You look at the fact that Egypt has a much larger wall between it and the palestinian territories than Isreal’s and its just considered their uncontroversial business as a legitimate state.
Well, the question to ask is this: does the Egyptian wall deviate into Palestinian territory, or does it follow the internationally recognized boundary of Egypt?
When I say that I support the Israeli wall, one caveat I have is that it should follow the border of Israel as recognized up to the 1967 expansion into the West Bank. Do we or do we not agree that the West Bank is not a part of Israel? Israel hasn’t officially annexed this territory, and yet the wall deviates into what would be, under a likely two-state solution, Palestinian land.
So, do we believe that Israel should annex portions of the West Bank into its internationally recognized territory? If we do not, I would say that saying so isn’t an expression of anti-semetism.
Right - I’m speaking of the existence of the walls in the first place. My view is that there’s no reason to absolutely set the borders at pre ‘67 lines. If Isreal’s neighbors keep attacking, it makes sense to me to hold as much territory as is tenable. This leaves room to give back land if it is considered to improve the situation, but its important that it should not be expected. It sends a foolish message to expect Isreal to give back land it took for defense especially when it is still under threat. I think that Isreal should say to its neighbors that if no one attacks it for 20 years and suicide attacks are kept to some minimal level they will then negotiate to give the post ‘67 land it only holds because of defensive wars in the first place. Of course, such a plan would probably never be followed by Hamas or Hezbollah so I’m afraid its only value would be to make it clear that it is the fault of Isreal’s enemies that it holds these territories.
I’ve responded to some of the criticisms in the comments here: http://rjjago.wordpress.com/2008/05/11/crossing-the-line-from-critic-to-anti-semite/
“Truthers have high praise for Bob Rae for standing up to the Joooz!”
No, I have high praise for Bob Rae for not rolling over and playing dead in the face of attempted intellectual intimidation. This has nothing to do with political affiliation and ESPECIALLY not religion. As I have noted in my blog entry, Israel has been guilty or numerous crimes, from false-flag ops to inciting pure terror in the Occupied Territories. All of this has been well-documented in hundreds of books, documentaries and press articles. Implying that we’re “standing up to the Joooz” is a convenient way of dismissing important facts about Israel without actually looking at what’s really going on.
A rogue state is a rogue state, regardless if the country’s state religion is Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Discordianism, atheism or anything else.