Paul: Civil Discourse on Campus Is Put to the Test

2024/03/08 Leave a comment

More such dialogues needed:

The same week that a U.C. Berkeley protest ended in violence, with doors broken, people allegedly injured, a guest lecture organized by Jewish students canceled and attendees evacuated by the police through an underground passageway, a group of academics gathered across the bay at Stanford to discuss restoring inclusive civil discourse on campus. The underlying question: In today’s heated political environment, is that even possible?

Over the course of two packed days of moderated and free discussion, we would try to test it out.

Paul Brest, a professor emeritus and former dean at Stanford Law School and one of the conference’s organizers, arrived at Stanford in 1969 in the throes of Vietnam War protests. The windows of the conservative Hoover Institution on campus had to be boarded up. In later years, violence broke out in protests over South Africa.

“Back then, it was students against the institution,” he told me. “Now it’s very different because it’s student against student.”

Because I’d written about the difficulties students have had engaging in civil discourse, including a couple of columns on incidents at Stanford, I was one of two journalists invited to take part. Hosted by Stanford Law School and the Stanford Graduate School of Education, the conference brought together professors, deans and academic leaders who were largely liberal, with libertarians and a few conservatives and progressives in the mix. Unfortunately, one of the organizers told me, most of the invited progressives, which is to say the group that currently dominates campus debates, refused to come.

But those who did attend engaged in lively good-faith discussion about several hot-button topics ranging from free expression on campus to institutional neutrality. I’ll write about several of these in the future, but will begin with one of the most divisive: diversity hiring statements, the requirement that all job applicants demonstrate their commitment to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion goals.

Brian Soucek, a professor at the U.C. Davis School of Law and an advocate of D.E.I. statements, started the panel off by making his case. Mere statements of belief in D.E.I. are not enough, he said. In an effort to reach consensus on what a D.E.I. hiring statement should look like, in lieu of U.C. Davis’s current required statement, he proposed an abbreviated version that asked candidates specifically about D.E.I. shortcomings and gaps in their fields of discipline and concrete steps they’ve taken or plan to take to address them.

The rest of the panel wasn’t having it.

Amna Khalid, a historian at Carleton College, endorsed the goal of diversifying staffs. The problem isn’t principle or legality, she said, it’s practice. Diversity according to whom? And in what context?

“It’s always ‘historically excluded and underrepresented,’” she said. “But historically when? Conservatives could argue they have been historically excluded. What’s underrepresented at Hillsdale College will be different from what’s underrepresented in the U.C. system.”

“We all know that there’s a strong political orientation bias being perpetuated,” she continued. “‘Not a good fit,’ they’ll say. It’s fundamentally dishonest and it creates more problems than it addresses.”

“People in the most elite systems know how to game the system,” Jeff Snyder, a professor of educational studies at Carleton, added. “It’s a privileged box-ticking exercise that ultimately degrades the purpose.” Together, he and Khalid filed an amicus brief for the plaintiffs against Florida’s Stop WOKE Act.

Imagine flipping the litmus test on its head, Snyder said. Suppose the requirement was a statement of patriotism at the University of Florida. Suppose they say, just as D.E.I. advocates will say, that the definition of patriotism is expansive. And suppose he writes that his vision of patriotism is political protest in the model of Colin Kaepernick. He wouldn’t get the job. Nor would he get a job if he wrote a D.E.I. statement for Carleton saying he mentored members of the campus N.R.A. group or the Young Republicans Club, both of which are underrepresented minorities on campus. D.E.I. statements are inherently ideological. A chilling effect is inevitable.

“What they want are non-straights, nonwhites and non-men,” said Musa al-Gharbi, a sociologist at Stony Brook University. “But they don’t say it that way. There’s a lack of forthrightness that breaks people in these situations.” In his field, men are underrepresented, and queer scholarship is overrepresented. “But it strains credulity to say that anyone would read a D.E.I. statement about someone’s queer work and say that’s an overrepresented group.”

Soucek gamely continued his defense against what he called “anecdata.” He described an approach Berkeley tried out in 2018, in which it considered candidates’ D.E.I. statements first, before looking at the rest of their applications. Anyone whose D.E.I. statement didn’t pass the first round was eliminated from the next pool.

“People criticized Berkeley afterward that Berkeley didn’t even consider the applicants’ credentials,” Soucek said. “But I would say that D.E.I. statements are credentials.” And let’s be honest, he said. If you look at the cover letter first, you’re privileging another set of credentials first: people’s names — which can tell you a lot — their institutions, their mentors and connections. This was just another and no less valid approach to narrowing the pool.

Why not anonymize all applications? Khalid responded. In fields like history, political science and computer science, 11 universities dominate 50 percent of all tenure positions. Whatever they’re doing now, diversity efforts clearly aren’t working. She compared D.E.I. statements to D.E.I. diversity training. “The whole ‘Look into your hearts and say how racist you are — that does nothing,” Khalid said. “Painful, excruciating and pathetic is the only way to describe them.”

Simply requiring D.E.I. statements gives a pass to universities for not fixing existing problems, added Carol Sumner, the chief diversity officer of Northern Illinois University. She then raised another question: “Is the statement the problem or is it the subjectivity of the person reading the statement you don’t trust?”

Richard Thompson Ford, a professor at Stanford Law School, expressed concern that poorly designed D.E.I. encourages essentialist thinking — the idea that all women or members of the group have similar views or experiences. In his view, D.E.I. programs can be “a way to offload responsibility from the rest of the university and take pressure off them for what actually could be substantive policies that are harder and more expensive.”

One thing on which everyone agreed: Schools are failing at real diversity. D.E.I. statements aren’t necessarily helping. Instead of potentially creating new problems, academia needs to fix existing ones.

“We all had the shared view that diversity and inclusion are good, but that there are legitimate concerns about how we promote these things,” Brian Soucek told me when I spoke to him afterward. Addressing those knotty issues in open dialogue is a good place to start.

Source: Civil Discourse on Campus Is Put to the Test

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Judy Weissenberg Cohen: Does ‘MeToo, unless you’re a Jew,’ hold true?

2024/03/08 Leave a comment

Valid question:

…Then Oct. 7, 2023, happened. Hamas, a listed terrorist entity in Canada since 2002, launched a surprise armed attack on Israel. They massacred more than 1,200 innocent civilians, they kidnapped children, and they raped women. Victims hiding for their lives witnessed the stunningly savage atrocities committed against women and children. The survivors shared their eyewitness accounts. The butchery was meticulously catalogued by the soldiers and first responders — and by the terrorists themselves, who proudly shared footage of their murderous assaults.

Although intentionally documented, the sexual violence has since been denied by Hamas. Many human rights groups — even those with feminist leanings — were either slow to respond, made false equivalencies, or remained silent. It was only after weeks of pressure that Mélanie Joly, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, finally condemned Hamas, in early December. Human rights organizations whose focus is on the protection of women also remained silent for months. It took the UN eight weeks to put out a statement. And yet, when a report with unsubstantiated accusations of sexual violence levied against Israel was published, Joly and many others commented within hours.

Were they silent about Israeli (Jewish) women because the UN’s women’s groups have aligned themselves with Hamas, whom they view as representing the oppressed? And, if they are the oppressed, they can’t possibly have committed rape?

Does the popular hashtag #MeTooUnlessUrAJew hold true?

Is the rape of women during wartime as inevitable as antisemitism?

While I am grateful for how far Holocaust studies have come in recognizing both the unique vulnerability and resilience of women, it is difficult to see silence about the weaponization of gender-based sexual violence continue. Once women suffered this in silence; we must not, 79 years after the end of the Holocaust, allow Jewish women, or any person, to ever do so again.

I am 95, and I am tired, but this is not the time to be idle. On International Women’s Day, we need to listen to women, to hear their voices, and to speak for those who have been silenced. Regardless of our politics, in this we must all be fearless.

Special to National Post

Hungarian-born Judy Weissenberg Cohen survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Death Camp and Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. She was liberated in 1945 following a four-week-long death march. Judy immigrated to Canada in 1948 and worked in the garment industry in Montreal, moving to Toronto in 1961. She is an activist in anti-racism and Holocaust education, with a focus in women’s experiences.

Source: Judy Weissenberg Cohen: Does ‘MeToo, unless you’re a Jew,’ hold true?

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Former cabinet minister Selina Robinson resigns from NDP caucus, says she felt unsupported as Jewish woman

2024/03/08 Leave a comment

Missed opportunity for much needed dialogue:

…In her remarks, Robinson said she felt unsupported as a Jewish woman in her party, and that there are antisemitic voices in the NDP caucus.

Robinson, first elected in 2013, had already announced her retirement and said she won’t be running again in the provincial election this October.

Minister claims double standard in caucus

Robinson resigned her cabinet post as minister of post-secondary education last month after saying modern Israel was founded on “a crappy piece of land.”

Speaking Wednesday afternoon, Robinson said there is a “double standard” within the NDP over how different groups are treated.

“There have been numerous colleagues of mine, intentionally or unintentionally, who have said antisemitic things,” she said. “The Jewish community heard apologies from them, they were accepted and things carried on.”

In contrast, Robinson said she faced continued backlash despite apologizing on multiple occasions and committing to taking anti-Islamophobia training.

“There’s a double standard,” she said, describing herself as the “lone voice,” providing the perspective of Jewish British Columbians within the provincial government.

Robinson also said her decision to step down as a cabinet minister was based on feedback from the premier that he did “not see a way forward” for her to continue in the role.

Asked for a specific example of antisemitism within the party, Robinson cited recent remarks from Burnaby North NDP MLA Janet Routledge. During a debate on the throne speech in February, Routledge compared accusations from opposition party members that the NDP government was incompetent to Nazi propaganda.

“The Holocaust ended in death camps,” Routledge said, attributing her words to a Holocaust survivor in England. “But it started with words. Words are powerful, so let’s use them to bind us together as a civilized society, not tear us apart.”

Robinson said that comparison diminished the reality of the Holocaust, when the Nazis systematically murdered six million Jews.

“To her credit, she apologized right away,” Robinson said, adding she accepted Routledge’s apology — but that same acceptance had not been granted to her.

She also cited comments from Mable Elmore, the parliamentary secretary for anti-racism, whom Robinson said had “outraged the Jewish community” with remarks about the Middle East conflict in November.

“She didn’t lose her role as a result of those comments that were hurtful to that community, but I did lose my role, I was asked to step down,” she said, without further describing Elmore’s remarks.

Robinson said she had asked Premier David Eby if she could work with Muslim and Jewish communities to promote dialogue between them.

She said she wanted to work with the two communities that were “in agony and pain and suffering and fear, and reduce the division that we are seeing because I think that’s the role of government.”

“The premier’s office said they weren’t interested in doing that and that really shattered my heart,” she said.

“If government’s not interested then I can’t be part of a government that chooses to be silent while people are suffering.”

Robinson, who has also previously served as finance minister, said she hadn’t heard from Eby or any other members of the B.C. NDP caucus since informing them of her decision.

NDP house leader denies claims

Speaking to media Wednesday, NDP house leader Ravi Kahlon denied Robinson’s claims of antisemitism or double standards, and said the concerns Robinson voiced during her resignation had not previously been raised by her in caucus.

In his written statement, Eby said Robinson had “made a mistake, and she was doing the work to address the harm that was caused.”

“I wish she had brought her concerns to me directly so we could have worked through them together.”

Kahlon said both the premier and other parties had spoken out on several occasions against instances of antisemitism, including as recently as the past week.

“What we can do is make sure B.C. continues to be a welcoming place for everyone,” he said.

Source: Former cabinet minister Selina Robinson resigns from NDP caucus, says she felt unsupported as Jewish woman

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Zachary Paikin: Canada’s leaders must take the dangers of diaspora politics seriously

2024/03/07 Leave a comment

From my time in the foreign service years ago, virtually all governments have struggle to define the national interest beyond the general, and have struggled with diaspora politics to varying degrees, whether in terms of response to humanitarian disasters and conflicts (e.g., measures for Ukrainians compared to other countries) or “imported conflicts” like the current Israel-Hamas one.

Valid to argue for focusing on what brings us together. But beyond general bromides, and process suggestions for a national dialogue on core national interests, it is unclear how such a process would have a meaningful impact given a fragmented media and social media landscape, not to the political incentives for community targeting. And as the Liberal government has found out with respect to Israel-Gaza, extremely difficult to have clear and consistent messaging and actions:

A massive spike in antisemitic incidents across the country following Hamas’ gruesome October 7th attacks has shocked many Canadians. But these events are only the latest example of how diaspora politics are increasingly putting our national cohesion and international engagement at risk.

The disorder we have witnessed in Canadian cities in recent months, which just this weekend succeeded in shutting down an event between two G7 leaders at the Art Gallery of Ontario, comes on the heels of a major break in Canada-India relations following the killing of Sikh nationalist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, as well as the fiasco surrounding the invitation of former Waffen SS member Yaroslav Hunka to Parliament.

The implication seems clear: An increasingly multipolar international order—one featuring assertive new powers and competing global interests—risks fracturing our diverse society and rendering our foreign policy impotent. To avoid this outcome, we need to do two things. 

First, our leaders need to repurpose our public discourse about multiculturalism toward highlighting the ties that bind Canadians together, rather than focusing on the ways in which we are diverse and different from one another. 

Continual intimidation, harassment, and violence against Jewish businesses, neighbourhoods, and community institutions since October 7th has been unnerving and dangerous. I certainly never thought I would live to see the Avenue/Wilson intersection in Toronto—where I spent the first five years of my life—labelled a “Zionist-infested area,” nor to witness a crowd outside the Montreal Holocaust Museum earlier this week cheer as those inside the building were called “rats.”

The face of Canada has changed considerably since multiculturalism was first adopted more than a half-century ago. One day after introducing the policy in Parliament in October 1971, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s maiden speech to outline his vision of a multicultural Canada was made to the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.

Ten years later, in 1981, Jews still outnumbered Muslims nearly four-to-one in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area (CMA). Yet as of the 2021 census, Muslims accounted for more than 10 percent of the Toronto CMA, now outnumbering Jews by roughly the same four-to-one margin.

Multiculturalism is a unique Canadian success story. And it remains one of the most important assets we have to grow the foundations of our national power and prosperity in an increasingly post-Western international order. But the dramatic change in the demographic composition of Canada over the past four decades means that our population has become subject to a wider range of pressures and ideas. If we fail to pair our growing diversity with a common narrative, then we risk seeing Canadians pitted against one another—as indeed is already occurring—and the whole multicultural edifice being brought down in the process.

Leaders from all parties need to get behind a unifying message, rooted in the founding wisdom of our constitutional order: Canada stands for peace, order, and good government. That means that acts of intimidation and harassment will not be tolerated. But it also means we cannot allow conflicts in distant lands to divide us and shape who we are as Canadians.

This domestic message will resonate even more strongly if accompanied by an adjustment in the way we conduct our foreign policy. Research I have conducted for the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy shows how our political class has difficulty articulating a common idea of Canada’s national interests, beyond platitudes such as outdated conceptions of our “role in the world” as a “middle power” or our desire to be “seen to be a good ally.”

Unable to focus resources and attention on clearly defined core interests, our leaders all too often gear their statements toward domestic audiences for political gain. The current Israel-Hamas war is a case in point: given that Canada’s ability to influence the conflict is negligible, foreign policy statements are used to satisfy demands from this or that constituency. Diversity management takes the place of diplomacy.

A new discourse focused on what does or does not constitute a core national interest would encourage ethnocultural communities to think about foreign policy not as Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, or Ukrainian Canadians, but rather simply as Canadians. Owing to Canada’s location on the map, challenges in the Arctic, Asia, and Europe must rank far ahead of the Middle East when it comes to allocating limited resources in the pursuit of our interests.

By the same token, we should oppose antisemitism not just as Jewish Canadians, but because it offends who we are as Canadians: a civilized country based on peace, order, and good government for all. With a multipolar world exerting growing pressure on our multicultural tapestry, our leaders should focus less on moral posturing toward a conflict over which they have little influence and more on what kind of society we want to build here at home.

Dr. Zachary Paikin (@zpaikin) is a senior fellow with the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy, a Canadian foreign policy think tank.

Source: Zachary Paikin: Canada’s leaders must take the dangers of diaspora politics seriously

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Douglas Todd: Will a new Canadian law lead to less inflammatory speech against Jews?

2024/03/07 Leave a comment

Some good examples of inflammatory speech. As to C-63, most of the commentary notes the sensible aspects (protecting children) and over-reach elsewhere:

…Before examining fraught aspects of Christian and Muslim tradition, the question has to be asked why notorious Montreal Imam Adil Charkaoui, an activist on behalf of Palestinians, has not been prosecuted for hate speech?

That’s despite saying in an October speech: “Allah, take care of these Zionist aggressors. Allah, take care of the enemies of the people of Gaza. Allah, identify them all, then exterminate them. And don’t spare any of them!”

Bloc Quebec Party Leader Yves-François Blanchet is among those appalled. He maintains the Montreal imam has escaped jail because of the religious exemption in Canada’s hate speech laws. His party has launched Bill 367 to remove it. And two thirds of Canadians appear to agree, according to a February Leger poll.

Marceau is among the many expressing similar worries about the speech of longtime Victoria Imam Younous Kathrada, whose online sermons have for years denounced Jews, as well as Christians and atheists, as “wrongdoing people” who Muslims should never view as allies.

The South-African-trained B.C. imam has urged followers to “destroy the enemies of Islam, and annihilate the heretics and the atheists.” He has told members to not vote for “filthy” and “evil” political candidates who support homosexuality or Zionism.

Despite such inflammatory rhetoric, Kathrada, the organization that runs his centre has received a $5,000 grant from the city of Victoria, according to Global News, and Kathrada has never been charged with hate speech nor been publicly criticized by an elected B.C. official…

Source: Douglas Todd: Will a new Canadian law lead to less inflammatory speech against Jews?

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Gurski: Canada’s foreign interference threat may be worse than we thought

2024/03/07 Leave a comment

Good concluding observation and unclear current inquiry will successfully address issues and oblige government to implement meaningful measures:

…There is no need to over-exaggerate the threat but a wise government would recognize that any diaspora is, in theory, open to such interference, especially if members came to our shores to flee oppressive regimes and are reminding Canadians and others of the nature of their former homeland’s actions. A government that took these threats seriously would properly fund and resource security intelligence and law enforcement organizations, then take the time to read and process their findings (rather than, say, accuse them of “racist” behaviour as the current prime minister has done).

We can both celebrate our diversity and guard against threats from foreign regimes. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We just need government to acknowledge that nations see some of our citizens as inconvenient whistleblowers whom they wish to stifle. We owe it to these newcomers to keep them safe, allow them to call out their ex-leaders, and not suffer as a result.

Phil Gurski is President/CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting, and a former senior strategic analyst at CSIS.

Source: Gurski: Canada’s foreign interference threat may be worse than we thought

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Racial disparities in voter turnout have grown since Supreme Court ruling, study says

2024/03/07 2 Comments

Interesting study and intuitively makes sense:

The turnout gap between white and nonwhite voters in the U.S. is growing fastest in jurisdictions that were stripped of a federal civil rights-era voting protection a decade ago, according to a new study.

The protections in Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act required some states and localities with a history of voting discrimination to obtain federal approval before they could make any changes to their voting laws or procedures.

It most recently covered nine states, most of them in the South, as well as certain counties and towns in a handful of other states.

In 2013, the Supreme Court effectively gutted Section 5 in Shelby County v. Holder — clearing the way for states to pass laws for measures like redistricting, changing poll locations and adding restrictive voter ID requirements without federal review.

A new study by the Brennan Center for Justice, a think tank that advocates for expanded voting access, measured the impact of the Shelby Countydecision between 2012 and 2022.

The researchers looked at nearly a billion voter records and compared the rate at which white and nonwhite Americans vote in elections. The study refers to the difference between white voters and other groups as the “turnout gap.”

The gap can be wide: In three elections from 2018 to 2022, 43% of eligible white voters cast their ballots every time, while that figure for Black voters was 27%, 21% for Asian American voters and 19% for Hispanic voters, according to the Pew Research Center.

Understanding the effect of any voting law can be difficult because a number of factors can alter turnout, including how competitive the election is and who’s on the ballot.

And across the U.S., the turnout gap between white and nonwhite voters is increasing for various reasons.

But the think tank found that the turnout gap was growing faster in places formerly covered under Section 5 and that it was growing fastest between white and Black voters in those areas.

“What we found was that these jurisdictions fell back into their pattern of adopting laws and policies that made voting difficult for people of color,” says Kareem Crayton, the center’s senior director for voting rights and representation….

Source: Racial disparities in voter turnout have grown since Supreme Court ruling, study says

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Blurring the line between criticism and bigotry fuels hatred of Muslims and Jews | Kenan Malik

2024/03/05 Leave a comment

Good balanced and nuanced commentary:

Where do we draw the line between criticism and bigotry? From the uproar over Lee Anderson’s remarks about the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, being “controlled” by Islamists to the condemnation of slogans used on pro-Palestinian demonstrations, it is a question at the heart of current debates about Muslims and Jews, Islam and Israel.

The distinction between criticism and bigotry should, in principle, be easy to mark. Discussions about ideas or social practices or public policy should be as unfettered as possible. But when disdain for ideas or policies or practices become transposed into prejudices about people, a red line is crossed. It’s crossed when castigation of Islamism leads to calls for an end to Muslim immigration. Or when denunciation of Israeli actions in Gaza turns into a protest outside a Jewish shop in London.

In practice, though, that line can appear blurry. Claims about “Islamophobia” or “antisemitism” are often wielded in ways designed specifically to erase the distinction between criticism and bigotry, either to suppress dissent or to promote hatred. Such muddying enables some to portray criticism of Islam or of Israel as illegitimate because it is “Islamophobic” or “antisemitic”. It also allows those promoting hatred of Muslims or Jews to dismiss condemnation of that hatred as stemming from a desire to avoid censure of Islam or Israel.

It is for this reason that I have long been a critic of the concept of “Islamophobia”; not because bigotry or discrimination against Muslims does not exist, but because the term conflates disapproval of ideas and disparagement of people, making it more difficult to challenge the latter. It is, in my view, more useful to frame such intolerance as “anti-Muslim prejudice” or “bigotry”. The issue, though, is not one of wording; what matters is less the term employed than the meaning attributed to it.

The concept of Islamophobia became popularised in the 1990s, partly through an influential report from the Runnymede Trust thinktank entitled “Islamophobia: A Challenge For Us All”. The report acknowledged the term as “not ideal” but thought it “a useful shorthand way of referring to dread or hatred of Islam – and, therefore, to fear or dislike of all or most Muslims”. Ironically, the “useful shorthand” itself exposes the problem, eliding hostility to beliefs (“dread or hatred of Islam”) with prejudice towards a people (“fear or dislike of all or most Muslims”).

In 2018, the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on British Muslims defined Islamophobia as “a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness”, a clumsy formulation that has nevertheless been adopted by the major political parties apart from the Conservatives. The APPG report dismissed the “supposed right to criticise Islam” as “another subtle form of anti-Muslim racism”.

It argued, too, that “Islamophobia” refers to Muslims being targeted by non-Muslims. Yet, the charge of “Islamophobia” or “hatred” is often aimed by Muslims at other Muslims, from Salman Rushdie to Monica Ali, from Hanif Kureishi to Sooreh Hera, to make their arguments appear illegitimate. It is a means of “gatekeeping”, of certain people taking it on themselves to police a community and determine what can be said about it.

The elision of criticism and bigotry works the other way, too: to deflect challenges to hatred. Some commentators have responded to the pushback against Anderson’s conspiracy theories about Khan by claiming that labelling his comments “Islamophobic” is intended “to stop criticism of Islamic extremism”.

The actions of hardline Islamists can have horrifying consequences, from forcing a teacher into hiding to the murder of an MP. Too often, as with the recent parliamentary mess created by the speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, politicians and institutions accede to threats rather than confronting them. None of this should lead us to conclude, though, that challenging anti-Muslim bigotry is a distraction from confronting Islamism. Opposing the one without opposing the other weakens our ability to challenge either.

The historical roots and contemporary manifestations of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hatred are different. Nevertheless, the charge of “antisemitism” can similarly be deployed to marginalise dissent while also providing racists with an alibi for their racism.

Take the insistence that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism”. It is a claim that has become increasingly accepted in recent years by mainstream politicians and organisations, from the French National Assembly to the US House of Representatives.

Zionism is a set of ideas and social practices. Yet, many who insist that Islam, as a set of beliefs and practices, should be open to robust challenge refuse to countenance similar scrutiny of Zionism.

In 2016, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) formally adopted its “working definition of antisemitism”, a definition that has been embraced by many governments, universities and civil institutions. It has also become, in the despairing words of one of its own drafters, Kenneth Stern, “a blunt instrument to label anyone an antisemite”.

For Stern, director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, the IHRA definition was never meant to be a “hate speech code” but developed rather to help monitor antisemitism. It has, however, become a means by which supporters of Israel now “go after pro-Palestinian speech”. “As a Zionist, I don’t agree with some of the speech,” Stern notes, but such speech “should be answered, not suppressed”.

This is particularly so because “there is a deep internal Jewish conflict about … attitude[s] toward Israel”. “For many Jews,” Stern points out, “Zionism, and what it means for Palestinians, is irreconcilable with what Judaism says about treating the stranger or repairing the world.” Again, blurring the line between criticism and bigotry facilitates gatekeeping, in this case by making dissenting Jewish voices seem illegitimate.

The drive to suppress criticism of Israel and support for Palestinians has been aided by some on the left lacing their anti-Zionism with antisemitic tropes. And, mirroring the tactics of anti-Muslim bigots, too many dismiss criticism of their antisemitism as a kind of Zionist shield against scrutiny.

Anti-Zionism is not necessarily antisemitic; but it can be, and too often is. The answer is not to label all expressions of anti-Zionism as antisemitic but to call out the latter, while acknowledging the legitimacy of the former.

In the polarised debate about antisemitism and anti-Muslim bigotry, too many who rightly condemn antisemitism are less robust in challenging bigotry against Muslims. And too many of those who excoriate anti-Muslim bigotry turn a blind eye to the hatred of Jews. In both cases, blurring the line between criticism of ideas and bigotry against people narrows debate and nurtures hatred.

Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist

Source: Blurring the line between criticism and bigotry fuels hatred of Muslims and Jews | Kenan Malik

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Khan: Gender-equality rights, it turns out, aren’t safe from the notwithstanding clause

2024/03/05 Leave a comment

Of note:

… Perhaps the most jarring analysis is the Court’s dismissal of arguments by the bill’s opponents based on section 28, which enshrines gender-equality rights in the Charter. That argument makes the point that Bill 21 disproportionately restricts the freedom of religion and expression of Muslim women compared to men. The notwithstanding clause cannot be used to shield laws that discriminate between women and men – i.e., it cannot override section 28.

In fact, during the drafting of the Charter, Canadian women demanded the exclusion of section 28 from the notwithstanding clause. They had the foresight to ensure that gender-equality rights could not be denied by the potential whims of future governments.

But Quebec’s appeals court took great pains to explain that section 28 is, in fact, included in the notwithstanding clause. How? Well, by actually being included in each of the rights enshrined in sections 2 and 7 to 15, and thus having no stand-alone value in of itself.

For example, the Court considered a hypothetical law that gives police the power to detain and search all women unaccompanied by a male in public between midnight and 5 a.m. This violates sections 8 (security against unreasonable search) and 9 (no arbitrary detention). The Court argues that if the notwithstanding clause was invoked to shield the law, section 28 cannot be used to declare the law unconstitutional on the basis of gender inequality, since its only value lies in its association with existing rights – not rights that have been suspended.

The Court’s logic reminds me of the following imperfect analogy: it’s the pre-1960s era, section 28 is an unmarried woman, and her only value is through her association with a man, say a father, a brother, a husband, a son (any one of sections 2 and 7-15). Where no such man exists, she has no real inherent value of her own.

The Court’s logic is also dangerous, as it means there is no real protection for women against discriminatory laws if a legislature pre-emptively invokes the notwithstanding clause. Her personal agency and equal opportunity can be taken away at the behest of a hostile legislature. Just ask Muslim women in Quebec.

Source: Gender-equality rights, it turns out, aren’t safe from the notwithstanding clause

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Quebec’s latest Bill 21 ruling fuels debate on notwithstanding clause

2024/03/04 Leave a comment

Next likely stop Supreme Court of Canada, which would oblige the government and political parties to take less equivocal public stand, and reinforce the political and public divisionss:

….For groups that challenged the law, the ruling was a disappointment.

“I think it’s important for everybody that we take note of the devastating impact the notwithstanding clause has when it’s used by a government to violate the rights of marginalized communities in a particular location,” said Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, the executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

Mendelsohn Aviv said that while there were a number of reasons the clause was included by drafters of the Constitution — “it was never meant as anything other than a last resort. We don’t think it’s a legitimate use of the notwithstanding clause to use it to violate fundamental rights of minorities.”

But for supporters of the religious symbols ban, the decision was a victory for democracy.

“The Court of Appeal is explicitly saying that this is about democracy, that the notwithstanding clause is not something that violates rights, it’s not something that goes against democracy,” said Guillaume Rousseau, a lawyer for Mouvement laïque québécois, a group that intervened in the case to support the government. “It’s part of our democracy and it’s up to the elected officials to decide.”

Source: Quebec’s latest Bill 21 ruling fuels debate on notwithstanding clause

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