Regg Cohn: Canadians who seek justice in the Israel-Hamas war should choose their words — and their targets — very carefully

2023/11/13 Leave a comment

Of note. Money quote:

“We used to say that the world needs more Canada.

It can now be said that Canada does not need more Middle East — neither the madness nor the menace.”

Across Canada, protesters are raising their voices for their rival truths on both sides of the Middle Eastern divide. But two harsh realities await:

First, Canadians can’t stop the endless bloodshed in Gaza and Israel from here.

Second, they quite possibly can start a new conflict on the home front — pitting Canadians against Canadians on the streets of Toronto.

That would be the worst possible legacy of the latest war.

In Sunday’s Star, I wrote at length about the continuing war against peace, based on my own journalistic journey covering the front lines in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. Today, the conflict is closer to home.

Tensions are rising here just as they are around the world, notably in European countries where antisemitism and Islamophobia are two sides of the same debased coin. The difference is that Canadians aren’t habituated to so much intolerance and incitement.

Today, demonization is the common denominator.

Antisemitism is being normalized. Islamophobia is being legitimized. And xenophobia is being Canadianized.

Please don’t close your eyes to it, for it is in plain sight. If you can’t feel it — in the air, on the streets and online — then you have lost all feeling.

In my last article, I described how far-right Jewish settlers and inciters undermined the peace process in Israel with an assassination and occupation; how Hamas and Islamic Jihad acted not merely as terrorists but rejectionists, blowing up the peace process with suicide bombs targeting civilians.

Never underestimate the ability of extremists and extreme voices on both sides to hijack the agenda — two tails wagging two warring dogs.

I worry that something similar is happening here in Canada — not with weapons of war, just the weaponizing of words. Some are using social media and megaphones to drive a wedge of division.

Debate is good and democratic. Protests are core to the fabric of freedom and petitions are part of our history.

However, hate speech isn’t protected — antisemitic or Islamophobic attacks can be prosecuted. When a synagogue is hit with Molotov cocktails in Montreal, or a mosque in Ottawa is smeared with feces, it’s against the law.

Small comfort. I worry as much or more about the rhetoric that is perfectly legal yet utterly hostile, if not inciteful.

I’m not pining for a country that bans harsh words or uncomfortable ideas. But it is painful when I see people validate or celebrate protests that devalue what their fellow Canadians hold dear.

I don’t expect every protester to be a model of modulation. I’m not counting on every social media monger to show moderation.

But when it feeds bigotry and bullying, we are moving into perilous territory. There’s a fine line between protesting for peace and provoking a war of words.

That line has been crossed in recent weeks.

Those protesters who seek justice should also show judgment — in choosing their words and their targets. When they criticize Israeli actions over there, and then single out Jewish Canadians over here, it sends a chill here at home that Jews everywhere are fair game.

When crowds chant outside the Jewish Community Centre at Bloor and Spadina (on their way back from a nearby protest), it transmits an unmistakably antisemitic signal across the city that Jews are somehow interchangeable with the Israeli consulate. When protesters yell slogans outside restaurants allegedly to call out Jewish or Israeli connections — intending only to intimidate and berate those trapped inside — it sends an ominous message across the country.

Boycotts are blunt instruments at the best of times. This is the worst of times.

Shall our universities ban books or appearances by bestselling Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, one of his country’s harshest social critics, because of his origins? Should Canada follow the lead of Lebanon and other Arab countries in banning Wonder Woman movies because its leading woman, Gal Gadot, is Israeli?

Beware such sophistry, for it is a slippery slope.

Obviously it is possible to criticize Israel without being antisemitic — as I did and I do. It is also possible to be anti-Zionist without being anti-Jewish — though it is not as simple as it sounds.

For if Zionism is truly racism, and Israel is transparently racist, would we say the same of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan — carved out as the explicit homeland for Muslims during the 1947 partition of the subcontinent, a place where blasphemy still triggers a death sentence and church bombings remain rampant?

Polling shows most Canadian Jews are broadly supportive of Zionism and the existence of Israel (setting aside illegal settlements). So it is hardly surprising that chanting Zionism is racism, or that Israel is an abomination — and calling for its elimination — would raise alarm bells (just as attacking Ukraine’s right to self-determination would trigger anxiety among Canadians with family ties to that country).

Righteous sloganeering is the wrong way to bring people together. Without humility, there is no empathy.

We have already seen violent and hateful incidents in Canada and the U.S. against Jews and Muslims. We have already heard people claiming that pro-Palestinian protesters should be doxxed or deported for speaking out, or listened as Canadian Jews were accused of dual loyalties for having strong opinions.

Instead of reaching out across the divide and joining hands, too many Jews and Muslims can only see themselves as the bigger victim — oblivious to the other — both in the Middle East and now in Canada. But in any competition for victimhood, there are no victors — it doesn’t work over there, and it won’t help over here.

It is not too late for Canadians to regain their footing, recover their balance, reclaim their compass. But we all need better filters.

Campus excesses are today magnified by social media and then amplified by mass media — distorting the dialogue further. An echo chamber has been transformed into a boxing ring where people take their best shots to provoke the worst instincts among cheering throngs.

Instead of joining hands, we have moved to finger-pointing and flag-waving. I wince when I see the Israeli and Palestinian flags affixed to cars whose drivers honk furiously for their rival tribe or team — as if this deadly conflict were a World Cup soccer competition for the loudest fans.

In a world of conflict and ignorance, Canada can remain a country of coexistence and tolerance. At a time of political polarization, Canadians must show the path to pluralism and remain a role model for multiculturalism.

I wake up with a heavy heart when I think of the bloodshed across the Middle East now — as I did in the past for the hundreds of thousands of souls that have died in the countries I’ve covered as a foreign correspondent. But when I wake these days to what is slowly unravelling in Canada, I hear unmistakable echoes — and yes, echo chambers — from my time abroad.

Which makes my heart even heavier.

We used to say that the world needs more Canada.

It can now be said that Canada does not need more Middle East — neither the madness nor the menace.

Source: https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/canadians-who-seek-justice-in-the-israel-hamas-war-should-choose-their-words-and-their/article_8b42ba0a-ee70-59cb-9a40-7125c887c51d.html

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Le rapport sénatorial sur l’islamophobie est le fruit d’une intoxication idéologique

2023/11/13 Leave a comment

The Quebec laicité perspective on the recent Senate report:

Irresponsable ? Catastrophiste ? Incendiaire ? On hésite sur le bon adjectif à utiliser pour décrire le rapport sur l’islamophobie que le Comité sénatorial permanent des droits de la personne (CSPDP) vient de déposer.

Les attentats à la mosquée de Québec et de London ont profondément bouleversé les Canadiens. Tous les crimes haineux mentionnés dans le rapport sont inacceptables, et les gouvernements ont la responsabilité de les combattre et doivent tout mettre en oeuvre pour favoriser la coexistence pacifique et la sécurité de leurs citoyens. Mais amplifier indûment la menace en dépeignant un climat de terreur pour les musulmans canadiens ne peut que nuire davantage. Les chiffres de Statistique Canada infirment d’ailleurs cette thèse alarmiste. Pourquoi taire, par exemple, que les populations noire et juive sont, et de loin, davantage victimes de crimes haineux ?

Ce rapport, s’il suggère bien quelques rares mesures raisonnables, préfère brosser un tableau hideux et sans nuances de la situation des musulmans canadiens. Ils se sentiraient attaqués, des femmes et des filles auraient « peur de quitter leur domicile pour aller au travail et à l’école », certains subiraient même de l’islamophobie tous les jours.

Définition, laïcité et idéologie

C’est que la définition proposée de l’islamophobie est très large afin d’englober le plus de cas possible. Par exemple, le fait de ne pas accorder aux musulmans, dans le milieu de travail, des locaux et du temps pour les prières est considéré comme relevant de l’islamophobie, au sens de racisme antimusulman (p. 66). L’approche intersectionnelle, comme les notions d’islamophobie systémique et de micro-agressions inconscientes, permet également d’amplifier le phénomène.

Le rapport reconduit également une compréhension hautement caricaturale de la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État. Les témoins interrogés, qui confondent le respect des personnes avec le respect absolu des préceptes de l’islam, « s’entendent tous pour dire que la loi 21 est discriminatoire, qu’elle a exacerbé l’islamophobie et qu’elle devrait être abrogée » (p. 65). Elle est même accusée de « déshumaniser les personnes ». On le voit, le CSPDP n’a pas entendu comme témoin un seul des nombreux musulmans qui soutiennent la loi 21.

Le rapport évite également de penser la réalité de l’islamisme violent et la peur légitime qu’il soulève, y compris chez les musulmans. Seul Rachad Antonius, parmi les 138 témoins entendus lors des 21 séances publiques, ose en traiter expressément, mais le rapport le passera sous silence. Il n’y aurait, à entendre les autres témoins, que des préjugés et des stéréotypes à combattre à grands coups de campagnes médiatiques et de formations obligatoires contre les biais inconscients pour tous les fonctionnaires et les élèves.

Le rapport ne retient que ce qui appuie une conclusion tirée d’avance. Tout écart statistique, comme la sous-représentation des musulmans chez les fonctionnaires ou leur surreprésentation dans les prisons, est compris comme une « preuve » d’islamophobie systémique, sans qu’il y ait recherche d’une explication plus plausible. Le rapport confond également idéologie et science en prétendant, sans justification, que « la plus grande menace pour la sécurité nationale provient des groupes militant pour la suprématie blanche » (p. 50). On taira donc un document sur la stratégie antiterroriste du Canada qui précisait pourtant que « l’extrémisme islamique violent est la principale menace pour la sécurité nationale du Canada » .

Une offensive contre les institutions chargées de la sécurité

Ce sont assurément les instances responsables de la sécurité nationale qui hantent ce rapport. Cinq des 13 recommandations y sont d’ailleurs consacrées, mais vont dans le sens opposé à celui qu’on attend de la part d’un comité sénatorial crédible. C’est que ce dernier semble surtout à la remorque des recommandations du Conseil national des musulmans canadiens (CNMC), contre lesquelles nous faisions déjà une mise en garde ici.

Le CNMC ne réclame en effet rien de moins que l’interruption de la stratégie nationale de lutte contre l’extrémisme violent et la radicalisation, et la suspension de la Division de la revue et de l’analyse (DRA) de l’Agence de revenu du Canada (ARC), qui est chargée de repérer les menaces de financement du terrorisme au Canada qui s’exercent par l’entremise d’organisations caritatives. Il propose plutôt que soient scrutés les organismes de sécurité nationale, dont le Service canadien du renseignement de sécurité, et les services frontaliers du Canada, qu’il soupçonne de pratiques racistes, xénophobes, islamophobes et même de subir la « pénétration de la suprématie blanche ».

Le CSPDP approuve tout cela et affirme que « les lois, les politiques et les pratiques relatives à la sécurité nationale sont profondément ancrées dans l’islamophobie et continuent de perpétuer des préjugés à l’encontre des musulmans » (p. 51). La preuve ? Soixante-quinze pour cent des révocations d’associations caritatives posant le plus grand risque de financement du terrorisme au Canada visaient des organismes musulmans, alors que ceux-ci représentent moins de 1 % de l’ensemble des organisations caritatives (p. 57). Malgré le témoignage de Sharmila Khare (directrice générale de la Direction des organismes de bienfaisance de l’ARC), selon lequel « les vérifications de la DRA ne sont entreprises que lorsqu’il y a un risque d’abus terroriste », le rapport conclut néanmoins que la DRA « fait preuve d’un parti pris structurel à l’encontre des organismes de bienfaisance musulmans » (p. 58).

Le simple fait que le modèle d’évaluation du ministère des Finances soit axé sur le risque serait même, selon le professeur de droit Anver Emon, « une déclaration explicite d’islamophobie » . Mieux, qu’un Canadien voyageant à Gaza et combattant pour le Hamas devienne suspect pour le gouvernement serait, ajoute-t-il, un « exemple d’islamophobie systémique » ! Faut-il vraiment relever que le CSPDP perd ainsi toute crédibilité en « oubliant » que le Hamas est sur la liste des entités terroristes du Canada ? Qu’en amalgamant islam et islamisme violent sous le parapluie de l’islamophobie, il mine le sentiment de sécurité de ses citoyens ?

Comment expliquer pareille intoxication irresponsable ? Une partie de l’explication réside peut-être dans le fait que la présidente de ce comité sénatorial, Salma Ataullahjan, est toujours conseillère au CNMC. Rappelons, pour finir, que cette organisation fait partie des plaignants qui sont devant les tribunaux pour faire invalider la loi 21.

Source: Le rapport sénatorial sur l’islamophobie est le fruit d’une intoxication idéologique

Neutral coverage below:

Islamophobia remains a persistent problem in Canada and concrete action is required to reverse the growing tide of hate, says a new Senate report released Thursday.

“The evidence is clear. Islamophobia is an acute threat to Canadian Muslims and urgent action is needed,” Sen. Salma Ataullahjan, chair of the Senate human rights committee, told reporters Thursday.

“We must commit to building a more inclusive country and to better promoting our Muslim relatives and friends, neighbours and colleagues.”

The report, the first of its kind in Canada, took a year and involved 21 public meetings and 138 witnesses.

The report said the committee “was disturbed to hear that incidents of Islamophobia are a daily reality for many Muslims, that one in four Canadians do not trust Muslims and that Canada leads the G7 in terms of targeted killings of Muslims motivated by Islamophobia.”

The report’s finding that one in four Canadians do not trust Muslims comes from a submission to the committee from Maple Lodge Farms, a supplier of Halal meat in Ontario’s Peel region, which said it gathered the information from a “national survey” it conducted of 1,500 Canadians.

The submission does not provide details on how the respondents were chosen or what specific questions they were asked.

The report found that Muslim women have become the “primary targets when it comes to violence and intimidation” because they are easily recognizable from their attire. As a result, many are afraid to leave their homes for work, school or other activities.

“The profound effects of gendered Islamophobia are such that it compels certain women to consider removing their hijabs to enhance their employment opportunities,” the report said.

“Testimonies highlighted the fact that Islamophobia in the workplace is not merely the consequence of a handful of people’s actions; rather, it is a systemic issue that is widespread.”

The report said that as a result, Arab women have the highest unemployment rate of any demographic group in the country.

Sen. Mobina Jaffer, Canada’s first Muslim senator, told reporters Thursday that in 2001, not long after 9/11, she was flying from Vancouver to Ottawa with about 60 members of her family when she and her husband were singled out by airport authorities.

“Coming from a refugee background to be appointed by [former prime minister Jean] Chrétien to be a senator was a great pride for my family,” Jaffer said. “And my husband and I both were called outside. And my husband and I both had to completely undress … and I don’t wish that on anybody.”

‘A confirmation of what we have been seeing over many years’

Uthman Quick, the director of communications for the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), told CBC News that the council was satisfied to see the report highlight the poor treatment of Muslim women in Canada, which he said is a growing problem.

“I think the report is really a confirmation of what we have been seeing over many years, but particularly over the last few weeks, since October 7,” he said.

Quick said there has been an increase in the number of Islamophobic incidents reported to the NCCM since the starte of the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas, a group designated as a terrorist organization by the Canadian government and other nations.

“I am hoping the recommendations are followed through upon. Now more than ever, we can see that they are absolutely needed,” Quick said.

Islamophobia and the media

The report said that the problem can be blamed in part on negative and pervasive stereotypes of Muslims the report said have mischaracterized “concepts of sharia, jihad and hijab.”

“The recurring portrayal of Muslims in media has entrenched these stereotypes, leading them to become falsely accepted as truth,” the report said.

The report found that hate-based information being spread on social media remains a growing problem, with more than 3,000 anti-Muslim social media groups or websites active in Canada.

“The frequency of hate speech and misinformation on social media platforms such as Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram was a common concern for [committee] witnesses,” the report said.

A written submission to the committee from Meta, Instagram and Facebook’s parent company, said its efforts to combat Islamophobia are a “work in progress.” It said it is taking steps that include monitoring hate speech and engaging with Muslim communities.

Representatives from X did not appear or make a submission to the committee.

Recommendations

The report makes a number of recommendations for the federal government:

  • Ensure mandatory, regular training on Islamophobia for all federal government employees and the judiciary.
  • Launch a multimedia campaign and educational resources on Islamophobia that can be incorporated into classrooms.
  • Provide additional money to address hate-motivated crimes.
  • Increase specific Criminal Code offences for hate-motivated crimes.
  • Review the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s mandate to ensure it reflects the needs, interests and aspirations of racialized communities.
  • Introduce legislation to crack down on online hate.
  • Review national security legislation to ensure it takes Islamophobia into account.
  • Modernize the Employment Equity Act to ensure it takes Islamophobia into account.

The report also recommended the federal government introduce legislation in a number of areas to help the Canada Revenue Agency better understand the context for audits of religious organizations and provide quicker decisions on appeals.

The report said that in 2021, 144 anti-Muslim hate crimes were reported to police across the country, with an additional 1,723 crimes reported that were motivated by racial or ethnic hatred.

According to Statistics Canada data used to write the report, there were 223,000 reported cases of hate crime in general in 2020, but the report said those numbers fail to provide a complete picture of hate-motivated violence against Muslims in the country.

Mohammed Hashim, executive director of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, is quoted in the report telling the committee that only one per cent of reported hate crimes are reported to police and only a fraction of those result in charges.

“Muslims in Canada feel like they are under attack. The psychological impact of constant fear and vigilance is a heavy burden,” the report said.

“Survivors of violent Islamophobia live with the trauma of their direct experience, while countless others live with vicarious trauma brought on by justified fear that their communities are not safe.”

Source: Senate report on Islamophobia says urgent action needed to reverse rising tide of hate

Filed under Interculturalisme, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , , ,

The Census Bureau sees an older, more diverse America in 2100 in three immigration scenarios

2023/11/11 Leave a comment

Of note:

By the end of the century, the U.S. population will be declining without substantial immigration, older adults will outnumber children and white, non- Hispanic residents will account for less than 50% of the population, according to projections released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau. 

The population projections offer a glimpse of what the nation may look like at the turn of the next century, though a forecast decades into the future can’t predict the unexpected like a global pandemic. 

The projections can help the U.S. prepare for change, from anticipating the demands of health care for seniors to providing insight into the number of schools that need to be built over the coming decades, said Paul Ong, a public affairs professor at UCLA.

“As most demographers realize, population projection is not an inevitable destiny, just a glimpse into a possible future,” Ong said. “Seeing that possibility also opens up opportunities for action.”

Population changes due to births and deaths, which are more predictable, and immigration, which is more uncertain. Because of that, the Census Bureau offers three different projections through 2100 based on high, medium and low immigration.

Under the low-immigration scenario, the U.S. population shrinks to 319 million people by 2100 from the current population of 333 million residents. It grows to 365 million people at the end of the century under the medium immigration scenario and to 435 million residents with high immigration. In each immigration scenario, the country is on track to become older and more diverse. 

Americans of college age and younger are already part of a majority-minority cohort.

Aliana Mediratta, a 20-year-old student at Washington University in St. Louis, welcomes a future with a more diverse population and believes immigration “is great for our society and our economy.”

But that optimism is tempered by existential worries that things seem to be getting worse, including climate change and gun violence.

“I feel like I have to be optimistic about the future since, if I’m pessimistic, it disables me from doing things that I want to do, that are hard, but morally right to do,” Mediratta said.

Here’s a look at how the U.S. population is expected to change through 2100, using the medium immigration scenario.

2020s

By 2029, older adults will outnumber children, with 71 million U.S. residents aged 65 and older and 69 million residents under age 18.

The numeric superiority of seniors will mean fewer workers. Combined with children, they’ll represent 40% of the population. Only around 60% of the population that is of working age — between 18 and 64 — will be paying the bulk of taxes for Social Security and Medicare.

2030s

“Natural increase” in the U.S. will go negative in 2038, meaning deaths outpacing births due to an aging population and declines in fertility. The Census projects 13,000 more deaths than births in the U.S., and that shortfall grows to 1.2 million more deaths than births by 2100.

2050s

By 2050, the share of the U.S. population that is white and not Hispanic will be under 50% for the first time.

Currently, 58.9% of U.S. residents are white and not Hispanic. By 2050, Hispanic residents will account for a quarter of the U.S. population, up from 19.1% today. African Americans will make up 14.4% of the population, up from 13.6% currently. Asians will account for 8.6% of the population, up from 6.2% today.

Also in the 2050s, Asians will surpass Hispanics as the largest group of immigrants by race or ethnicity.

2060s

The increasing diversity of the nation will be most noticeable in children. By the 2060s, non-Hispanic white children will be a third of the population under age 18, compared to under half currently.

2080s

Under that medium immigration scenario, the U.S. population peaks at more than 369 million residents in 2081. After that, the Census Bureau predicts a slight population decline, with deaths outpacing births and immigration. 

2090s

By the end of the 2090s, the foreign population will make up almost 19.5% of U.S. residents, the highest share since the Census Bureau started keeping track in 1850. The highest rate previously was 14.8% in 1890. It currently is 13.9%.

FOREIGN BORN AND IMMIGRATION

Experts say that predicting immigration trends is more difficult than in the past when migration was tightly linked to the pull of economic opportunity in the U.S. 

When immigration is instead driven by the push of climate change, social tensions exacerbated by authoritarian rulers and gangs, as well as fluctuating anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S., it is harder to predict, said Manuel Pastor, a professor of sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.

“In the past we would say we get immigration from economics, and you can make some reasonable projections,” Pastor said. “Now, we have these push pressures for people to come to the U.S., and we have a further racialized reaction to migration, we have a much wider band or error, or the potential to make mistakes.”

RELIABILITY

How reliable will the numbers be, especially as race and ethnic definitions change, and immigration levels are hard to predict?

While there is an extreme level of uncertainty projecting almost eight decades into the future, it is a good starting point, said Ong, the UCLA professor.

“Over 80 years, birth and death rates, fertility rates and migration rates can be changed through policies, programs and resources,” Ong said.

Mediratta, the college student, imagines that 20-year-olds like her two centuries ago were also concerned about the future, but they didn’t have TikTok or Instagram to amplify their worries. 

“It seems like things are bad all the time,” Mediratta said. “I feel that things were probably bad all the time 200 years ago, but nobody could tell everyone about it.”

Source: The Census Bureau sees an older, more diverse America in 2100 in three immigration scenarios

Filed under Immigration, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Advocates in Geneva to denounce discrimination against Canada’s Black public servants

2023/11/11 Leave a comment

A reminder that the data they use is less solid than presented, based upon the past 6 years of disaggregated data for employee groups and EX, with Black public servants doing as well or in some cases, better than other visible minority groups:

How well is the government meeting its diversity targets? An intersectionality analysis

A delegation from Amnesty International Canada is in Geneva, Switzerland, this week to highlight the country’s human rights failings, including the systemic discrimination of Black workers in the federal public service.

The team is speaking about the issues with various countries ahead of Canada’s participation in the fourth Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on Friday. The UPR is a peer-review process where UN Member States have the opportunity to review the human rights records of others. At the UPR, Canada will be required to share the progress it has made on recommendations provided at the last UPR in 2018.

“Tomorrow, Canada will hear recommendations from all member states,” said Ketty Nivyabandi, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada’s English-speaking section on Thursday. “As of yesterday, there were 164 countries who wanted to speak and wanted to make a recommendation to Canada.”

Discrimination within the public service is an issue that has been top of mind for unions and organizations for the past several years, with a class-action lawsuit filed by thousands of Black public service workers in 2020, alleging workers faced decades of employee exclusion and discriminatory hiring practices.

The Employment Equity in the Public Service of Canada for Fiscal Year 2021 to 2022 report found that Black employees represented 20.6 per cent of the visible minority population, or 4.2 per cent of the entire core public service. Despite growing numbers of workers in equity groups, those employees were over-represented in the lowest salary levels and under-represented at the highest. Though not included as an equity group, the report found that Black employees were disproportionately earning salary ranges below $75,000.

Most recently, a report released by the office of Canada’s auditor general last month, found that government departments and agencies weren’t doing enough to measure inequalities and improve the experiences of racialized employees in the workplace. Despite having established equity, diversity, and inclusion action plans, the report found that the organizations weren’t effectively reporting on progress, sufficiently using data to identify barriers faced by staff and that, at the manager level, there was not enough accountability for behavioural and cultural change.

Nivyabandi said the issue of Black public servants is one of several issues that it’s raising, on top of the rights of Indigenous peoples, migrants and women. She said the organization is also calling for better oversight of how human rights obligations are implemented in Canada.

“We’re very concerned and very little progress has been made,” Nivyabandi said, adding that Amnesty International Canada prepared its own review titled “Canada: Human Rights in Peril” ahead of the UPR. She added that, since the last cycle, Canada has only fully implemented five of the almost 100 recommendations that were made.

“Progress is stalling and we’re here to talk to other member states to make sure that they add pressure on Canada to ensure that Canada finally takes its obligations more seriously.”

Representatives from the Indigenous Nations of Pessamit and Wet’suwet’en as well as Nicholas Marcus Thompson, executive director of the Black Class Action Secretariat (BCAS) joined Amnesty International Canada’s delegation.

Thompson said one of his main goals during the trip was to bring attention to the “egregious conduct” of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the government agency responsible for dealing with complaints of discrimination in employment which itself was found earlier this year to have discriminated against its own employees.

“Our position is that the Canadian Human Rights Commission needs to be held accountable for its human rights violations and that it is violating the Paris Principles which it’s required to adhere to as a human rights body,” Thompson said.

During a speech on Wednesday, Thompson announced BCAS was submitting a complaint to the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions, a body that has the power to decertify or downgrade human rights commissions’ ratings, looking to review the CHRC’s accreditation. Thompson said a formal complaint will soon be filed.

“We’re essentially talking to as many member states as possible, bringing to their attention Canada’s human rights track records, the Canadian Human Rights Commission violating human rights, its poor standing essentially, before the member states deliver recommendations on Friday,” Thompson said.

Action is needed now to address discrimination in the public service, said Thompson, noting the lack of representation in executive positions and little opportunity for workers to advance within the government. And while the federal government recently announced a new panel to help address discrimination in the public service, which is expected to write a public report on its findings in early 2024, a statement from BCAS said there is a need for “immediate and critical policy changes,” rather than more studies.

BCAS is also calling for Canada to release of the Employment Equity Act review, for its recommendations to be implemented, and for the appointment of a special representative to combat anti-Black racism, said Thompson.

“The case of anti-Black racism in the federal public service is very very powerful and emblematic one precisely because it’s happening within the public service where the state has the greatest possibility and opportunity to rectify it,” Nivyabandi said. “It’s very telling when you have a situation of anti-Black racism that has been raised over and over again, it’s still not being resolved.”

“We’re here to make sure that Canada finally takes action.”

After the UPR process takes place on Friday, Canada will have until March to decide what recommendations it will commit to and implement over the next five years.

Source: Advocates in Geneva to denounce discrimination against Canada’s Black public servants

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Tasha Kheiriddin: Canada’s multicultural utopia now a balkanized grievance factory – National Post

2023/11/09 Leave a comment

More of a rant over the current excesses than balanced and diaspora politics and grievances also apply to many communities, including those of European origen.

But yes, more messaging on what we have in common would be helpful, rather than what divides us. Finding that elusive balance between recognizing the identities of specific groups and heritages, needed for integration, and the common values that bring us together, is part of the ongoing challenge of Canada:

Canada has become a nation of diasporas. Rather than wrapping ourselves in a common flag, we huddle in our enclaves: Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Jewish, Chinese, Black and the list goes on. Faith, color and country of origin divide the nation. Everyone is the “other,” and increasingly, the enemy. Violence and acts of hatred are multiplying in our streets.

In a country built by immigration, this is sadly not a new phenomenon. In 1878, Toronto banned the St. Patrick’s Day parade for 110 years after feuding Catholic and Protestant Irishmen turned the event into “one of the wildest nights in the city’s history.” In 1914, violent demonstrations prevented the docking in Vancouver of the Komagata Maru, a ship carrying South Asian migrants considered a threat by the local population. In 1970, Front de libération du Quebec terrorists murdered provincial cabinet minister Pierre Laporte in their fight against Anglophone dominance in Quebec.

In 2023, however, there is a new wrinkle: the importing of larger geopolitical conflicts to Canada. Pro-Palestinian protestors openly demand the boycott of Jewish businesses and call for the eradication of Israel. Ideologically-captured Canadian elites parrot propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), while it intimidates its diaspora on our soil. Sikh separatists in British Columbia hold referendums on Khalistani independence, and India stands accused of assassinating one of the organizers in the parking lot of his gurdwara.

Canada has become a balkanized grievance factory, and all of us are paying the price. You don’t have to be a Jew terrified to put a mezuzah on their door, a Chinese Canadian being intimidated at the ballot box or a Hindu child bullied by Sikh kids on the playground. Instead of uniting around human rights and standing against hate speech, Canadian society is allowing all manner of aggression in the name of fighting “privilege,” and is tearing itself apart in the process.

How did we get here? First, the state-sanctioned multiculturalism policies of Pierre Elliott Trudeau in the 1970s encouraged newcomers to keep their culture of origin, rather than build a common one. Politicians loved it: for decades they handily exploited the so-called “ethnic vote” to court communities who could swing a riding or two in their favour. At the same time, they turned a blind eye to the exploitation of these communities by foreign powers, notably China, as we have learned in the last year.

After 2000, another factor fueled further division: the global rise of identity politics. It was no longer sufficient to call yourself Canadian, or even a hyphenated Canadian; you were encouraged to categorize yourself by privileged/non-privileged, white/non-white, gendered/genderfluid, settler-colonizer/indigenous and a host of other personal characteristics dreamed up in the halls of academia. Experts armed with advanced degrees encouraged this practice in the name of equity in the workplace, school and political arena — and out of fear of cancellation, job loss and social ostracism, most citizens meekly complied.

Then came 2015, and the current federal government’s attempt at Indigenous reconciliation. Rather than focusing on building economic opportunities for the future, it dwells on shaming Canadians for the wrongs of the past, even though the bulk of today’s population have nothing to do with the colonization of Canada hundreds of years ago. Worse yet, newcomers are encouraged to “other” themselves along these lines: white immigrants are lumped in with colonizers, while immigrants of color are considered oppressed and thus allies of Canada’s Indigenous peoples, regardless of whether they may have, ironically, oppressed other groups in their own country of origin.

The result is a nation balkanized along a thousand fault lines. We have not only lost our national identity but are actively repudiating the very things that attracted people to our shores in the first place: respect for peace and good government, human rights, democracy, equal opportunity and personal freedom. We are also eroding our international stature: a country so unsure of itself commands no respect and is even more vulnerable to the whims of great powers.

In an increasingly hostile world, that’s a risk Canada cannot afford to take. United, we thrive; divided, we fall. And the landing threatens to be brutal.

Source: Tasha Kheiriddin: Canada’s multicultural utopia now a balkanized grievance factory – National Post

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Ifill: Bureaucratic efforts are just ‘diversity’ icing on a white cake

2023/11/09 Leave a comment

The overall data, of course, shows marked improvement in the past six years in which desegregated data by equity group, particularly for visible minorities and within visible minorities, for Black public servants including executives.

Somewhat unserious to ignore this data…

Calling for DMs to be replaced may feel good but is unrealistic, and she clearly has little understanding about how government and the public service work and that change, albeit too slow for some, occurs within a bureaucratic context.

As for the call for action, I also tend to be somewhat cynical as it appears to be adding yet another reporting requirement and it is too early to assess whether it has moved the needle beyond process:

In the months following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, and the global protests against police brutality and anti-Black racism that lasted the summer of that year, every corporation and government agency vowed to improve the economic lot of Black people by introducing watered-down diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices. Naturally, I was skeptical, considering my own experiences in the public service with anti-Black racism. I knew that nothing but transformative change led by Black and Indigenous people would suffice. As I wrote in this paper in February 2021, the Privy Council Office clerk’s effort was “a diversity and inclusion endeavour, dressed up as anti-racism. Devoid of an accountability framework, it makes no tangible effort to interrogate the systems that perpetuate racism.”

Two-and-a-half years later, the anti-Black racism measures the Liberals introduced for the public service are as good as six feet under. In the 2021 mandate letter to then-Treasury Board president Mona Fortier, the prime minister directed her to establish “a mental health fund for Black public servants and supporting career advancement, training, sponsorship and educational opportunities.” A year later, Black public servants involved in the fund blew the whistle on the racism they experienced while working on an anti-racism measure. As the Canadian Press reported last December, “The Federal Black Employee Caucus [FBEC] sent a letter to the Treasury Board’s chief human resources officer this month saying the workers supported efforts to address racism within the public service, only to be ‘continuously faced with the crushing weight of it.’”

I feel for those who worked so hard to make these initiatives happen. Countless hours and emotional labour have been added to the workload of many racialized employees for free, only for them to experience more racism. The CBC reported on the treatment of Black employees as outlined in FBEC’s letter to the Treasury Board Secretariat: “The email alleges that senior Treasury Board Secretariat officials created a toxic workplace culture. When the Federal Employee Black Caucus members pushed back, the email states, they were met with micro-aggressions and ‘character assassinations.’”

And those experiences bear out in evidence provided by the auditor general.

On Oct. 19, Auditor General Karen Hogan tabled the semi-annual report on performance audits of the public service—and government writ large—to the House of Commons in a series of nine parts. Report 5 looked at Inclusion in the Workplace of Racialized Employees, and it is not kind. It determined that “Canada’s efforts to combat racism and discrimination in major departments and agencies are falling short,” as reported by the Canadian Press. The AG selected a sample of six organizations“responsible in whole or in part for providing safety, the administration of justice, or policing services in Canada. Together, they employ about 21 per cent of workers in the federal core public administration.” Note that 20 per cent of the public service is racialized.

Let’s look at the highlights from the report:

  • Racialized employees reported rates of discrimination at least 30 per cent higher than non‑racialized respondents;
  • The organizations all established DEI plans to correct the conditions of disadvantage experienced by racialized employees, but failed to develop and institute accountability measures (I called this: “A system without accountability is a corrupt one, and in this system there is no justice”);
  • They failed to collect or use data to assess progress on their plans, and failed to create, assess and implement key performance indicators; and
  • No specific initiatives in action plans to address concerns and complaints related to barriers to raising instances of racism.

So basically, the public service wasted everyone’s time with this theatrical performance of DEI icing on a white cake, as I said they would. But it’s no surprise considering that we’re led by a performative government.

Furthermore, if the public service has discriminated against you, the institutions set up to “help” you only double down on that discrimination. As the Canadian Press reported in March, “The Treasury Board Secretariat found last week that the Canadian Human Rights Commission [CHRC], whose mandate is to protect the core principle of equal opportunity, discriminated against Black and racialized employees.”

Remember the Black Class Action lawsuit? The Trudeau government is still trying to ignore the problem by refusing to negotiate while attempting to get the case dismissed. In response to the CHRC discriminating against Black employees, the Class Action Secretariat said, “It also raises concerns about the CHRC’s capacity to offer justice to the broader experiences of Black workers across the entirety of the federal public service who share similar stories and experiences for over 50 years.”

This is how racism is systemic, systematic, and institutional. I have written about how racism within institutions carries over into public policy. Remember the three words: “the dirty 30.”

There is no reason to trust these corrupt systems that are intended to keep Black and racialized employees in subservient positions to white, male, heterosexual power. Deputy ministers have shown us, through action, that they are unserious “leaders” who are comfortable with overseeing abusive, toxic environments that increase the burden of performance on their employees, according to race. Seems discriminatory in itself.

Those who do not follow the directives from mandate letters and budget direction are committing insubordination, and are undermining political decisions. They should be removed from their positions. Deputy ministers are only supposed to oversee the implementation of policy; they are unelected administrators, not representatives elected by the people. Therefore, their decisions cannot supersede those political directives. Do we really want deputy ministers quietly subverting democracy just because they don’t like particular groups of people?

Source: Bureaucratic efforts are just ‘diversity’ icing on a white cake

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Liberals have forgotten what free speech means – UnHerd

2023/11/08 Leave a comment

Of note:

Away from the horror unfolding in Israel, the past month has provided one long acid test for the West’s commitment to liberal values. What are we to make of middle-class bien pensants asserting that mass murder requires “context”, of the overt antisemitism, and of a police force that makes excusesfor theocrats calling for “jihad” on the streets of London? For some, this is proof of the failure of multiculturalism. For others, it is the final straw that broke the back of liberalism. Hate speech laws must now be strengthened, certain protests ought to be banned, and we must no longer tolerate the intolerant.

Republican senator Tom Cotton has called for those who express support for Hamas to be deported, and Donald Trump has promised to do so if re-elected. In France, Emmanuel Macron has outlawed pro-Palestine rallies on the grounds of maintaining public order, although his decree has been largely ignored. Closer to home, a pro-Palestinian protest has been scheduled in London for Armistice Day, a tactic surely intended to generate as much outrage and attention as possible.

In that respect, it has already succeeded. Rishi Sunak has stopped short of a ban, but has called on the Met Police to make “robust use” of its powers to prevent the Remembrance events being disrupted. In this, he is out of kilter with the majority of the country: only 18% believe it “should be allowed to go ahead”.

Liberalism has always been a tricky prospect, cherishing personal autonomy and freedom of speech up to the point where our behaviour encroaches on the rights of others. To ideologues, it is a poison, because it rejects their insistence that we ought to follow a preordained set of rules. Some even claim that liberalism is itself an ideology, though I see it as the precise opposite: it is the repudiation of ideological thinking — because it refuses to accept oversimplified interpretations of reality, or to outsource our decision-making capacities to an already established creed. This is why there are liberals on the Left, the Right, and everywhere in between

Yet it has been dispiriting to see our commitment to Enlightenment values being assaulted on multiple fronts. There are theocratic extremists who oppose free speech and would happily see blasphemers and apostates executed. There are Western activists intoxicated by the moonshine of intersectional identity politics calling for censorship and other restrictions. And now, we have those who once considered themselves to be “liberal” pronouncing that there should be limitations to freedom of speech and assembly.

Even those who have previously decried “cancel culture” appear to be relishing its impact on their opponents. A lecture at Liverpool Hope University by Professor Avi Shlaim, a critic of Israel, was cancelled out of concern for the “safety and wellbeing” of students; Michael Eisen, a geneticist at UC Berkeley, was fired as editor-in-chief of eLife magazine for sharing a satirical article from The Onion which took a pro-Palestine stance. Eisen, some have pointed out, had previously questioned whether cancellation really exists. But while a degree of schadenfreude is understandable, it is hardly helpful.

That there are no rulebooks to consult is liberalism’s major appeal to those of a free-thinking disposition, but it is also the source of its instability. The authoritarian has no need to engage with his detractors; he can simply have them eliminated. By contrast, the liberal must find a way to coexist with those who yearn to see his freedoms quashed, to somehow reconcile himself to the multiplicity of human outlooks and their inherent incommensurability. But how can you run a marketplace of ideas while there are hooligans trying to overturn the tables?

This essential vulnerability is always tested in moments of crisis. Governments enact “emergency powers” when at war because short-term authoritarianism seems preferable to the alternative. So when protesters at pro-Palestine marches in London are holding signs that openly celebrate the slaughter, rape and kidnapping of civilians, and an official advisor to the Met police is filmed leading a chant of “from the river to the sea”, there will always be pressure from a justifiably incensed public to resort to authoritarian remedies.

Even in peacetime, liberalism is susceptible to changing trends within the nation state. What happens, for instance, when the majority of any given population rejects the liberal values upon which their society is based? What if a government has implemented reckless migration policies that grant citizenship to those who do not recognise the value of individual freedoms? In such circumstances, the principle of democracy could be its own undoing.

Sweden is often considered to be a case in point. According to its national police chief, the rapid surge in migration over the past decade has led to an “unprecedented” rise in gang warfare between those who do not respect the rule of law. On a recent trip to Stockholm, I found myself discussing the implications with a group of residents. One woman expressed the view that Swedish people tended to take liberalism for granted, and that they had assumed newcomers would be eager to adopt the values of the nation that had welcomed them. Now many fear that this was warm-hearted naivety, and that the government had not done enough to ensure widespread integration.

Liberal countries acknowledge their moral responsibility to offer asylum for those in need, and typically take a compassionate view towards foreigners seeking a more prosperous life. At the same time, there must be a degree of societal consensus for the ethos of these nations to survive at all. For where such a consensus is jeopardised, either through mass immigration or radical domestic political movements, the temptation to dispense with liberal values is inevitable. But to call for the deportation of citizens who actively seek the demolition of our culture is to surrender our principles to the very people who oppose them. It is to resign oneself to authoritarianism in a perverse effort to defeat it.

Inevitably, one thinks of Karl Popper’s famous paradox that “in the name of tolerance” we should claim “the right not to tolerate the intolerant”. This is often invoked by activists to defend censorship of their opponents, typically in the form of a well-known cartoon meme that decontextualises and misreads Popper’s formulation:

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”

Popper’s next sentence is often omitted, in which he emphasises that so long as public opinion and rational argument can “keep them in check”, suppression of intolerant views would be “most unwise”. Protesters who take to the streets to celebrate murder fall into this category because they are self-discrediting. They are impervious to reason, but their sentiments are so essentially rebarbative that there is no risk of public opinion shifting in their favour.

But, some might respond, if liberalism is so delicate and continually under threat, why bother with it at all? In short: because it works. For all the claims by identitarian activists that the Western world is a racist hellhole, few living in the era of Jim Crow could have conceived of the advances we have made since then. The triumph of social liberalism is evident in multiple studies that show how Western societies are the most tolerant and diverse to have ever existed. It is no coincidence that all of the major civil rights movements — for black emancipation, feminism and gay rights — have traditionally been underpinned by a commitment to free speech and liberal ideals.

Of course, it is only natural that our patience is wearing thin. Having already witnessed pro-Palestine protesters in London throwing fireworks at police, and chanting in support of “Intifada” on the Tube, there can be no guarantees that such behaviour won’t be repeated on Saturday. The timing seems not only calculated to maximise publicity, but also as a declaration of contempt for British values and history.

But even if unruly and disrespectful, it would be self-defeating to ban the protest, or to insist on deportations for the worst offenders. Taking action against direct incitement to violence is one thing, but compromising on our key values is another. If we renege on our principles at the very moment when they are most imperilled, we risk undermining the very foundations upon which our civilisation is built. The authoritarian instinct may be a human constant but, with vigilance, it can be forestalled.

Source: Liberals have forgotten what free speech means – UnHerd

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Anti-Zionism Is Not Anti-Semitism – The Atlantic

2023/11/08 1 Comment

Important distinctions:

On October 7, the Islamist militant group Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, killed more than 1,400 people in Israel. Israel responded with military operations that have killed several times that number of Palestinians in Gaza, a territory described by Human Rights Watch as an “open-air prison” as a result of an Israeli and Egyptian blockade. In both cases, most of the casualties are civilians. The conflict has reverberated into other areas of the world, including the United States, where anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim incidents have included the killing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy. The bloodshed has revived the perennial debates about anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

“Look, it’s clear that the hardened anti-Zionists from the far left are the photo inverse of the white supremacists from the far right,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt told CNN’s Dana Bash earlier this week. “There is no argument anymore that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, that is as plain as day. And to think that extremism only comes from one side of the spectrum is a joke.” Greenblatt’s sentiments were echoed among supporters of Israel, including in publications such as The Wall Street Journal and The Jerusalem Post, which editorialized that “to deny the Jewish people, and only the Jewish people, a right afforded to all nations—is to discriminate against Jews.”

The claim that “there is no argument anymore” is curious. Even within the ADL, staffers have objected to the argument that anti-Zionism is necessarily anti-Semitism, as Jewish Currents reported last year.

Political Zionism, defined concisely, is the belief that the Jews should have a Jewish state in their ancestral homeland. Anti-Zionism, in similarly brief terms, is the opposition to that belief. It should be no surprise that most Palestinians and those who sympathize with their plight are anti-Zionist. “The Arab has been on the receiving end not of benign Zionism—which has been restricted to Jews,” Edward Said wrote in The Question of Palestine, “but of an essentially discriminatory and powerful culture, of which, in Palestine, Zionism has been the agent.”

There are certainly forms of anti-Zionism that are anti-Semitic, such as the belief that Jewish Israelis should all be expelled or killed or that they should be forced to live as second-class citizens under an Islamist government. Storming the tarmac at an airport in Dagestan in the hopes of participating in a mob lynching of passengers arriving from Tel Aviv, or vandalizing synagogues in Madrid and New York in response to the Israeli government’s actions, or threatening Jewish students with rape and murder, are clear expressions of hatred toward Jews. Americans, both Jewish and not, can underestimate how common anti-Semitism remains in the rest of the world.

But there is nothing anti-Semitic about anti-Zionists who believe that the existence of a religious or ethnically defined state is inherently racist, and that the only real solution to the conflict is, as the Palestinian American advocate Youssef Munayyer writes, “equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians in a single shared state,” with a constitution that would “recognize that the country would be home to both peoples and that, despite national narratives and voices on either side that claim otherwise, both peoples have historical ties to the land.” Perhaps you think this idea naive or unrealistic; that is not an expression of prejudice toward Jews.

For one thing, there were prominent Jewish advocates for this idea before the founding of Israel, such as Hannah Arendt and Martin Buber. In 1921, the Jewish philosopher Ahad Ha’am wrote that Arab Palestinians “have a genuine right to the land due to generations of residence and work upon it. For them too this country is a national home and they have the right to develop their national potentialities to the utmost.” There are also some prominent Jewish supporters of a single binational state today, such as the former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg. The Jewish American writers Tony Judt and Peter Beinart have also made the case for a one-state solution.

I should say here that I do not have an answer to this question. Two states or one, my preference is for both Israelis and Palestinians to be able to live freely and in peace and equality, in whatever arrangement allows them to do so.

Nevertheless, it is a cruel absurdity to demand of Palestinians that they not only acquiesce to Israel’s existence, but also actively support the idea of an ethnically defined state that excludes them from equal citizenship, one that was made possible only by the flight and expulsion of 700,000 of their forebears in the Nakba of 1948. It is not anti-Semitic to want equal rights in the land you share with others, and to oppose a political arrangement that has resulted in what Israeli human-rights groups justifiably describe as a form of apartheid. While Jewish Israelis retain their rights wherever they go within Israel’s borders, Palestinians are subject to draconian restrictions on their lives and freedoms depending on their location.

“My mom was born and raised a mere 10-minute walk from my childhood home, but my father’s family is from Tulkarem, a small city in the West Bank. And so my dad, my siblings, and I have West Bank IDs while my mom, a Jerusalemite, has a Jerusalem ID,” the journalist Abdallah Fayyad wrote in The Boston Globe in 2021, describing life in his childhood neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. “That meant that while my mother had a right to live in Jerusalem, the rest of us were only guests in our own home, living there because we renewed travel permits that technically allowed us only entry into Jerusalem, not a permanent stay.”

Palestinians in the West Bank who have been displaced at gunpoint by Israeli settlers, Palestinians in Gaza who have watched their children die in Israeli missile strikes, Palestinians who have been evicted from their homes in Jerusalem as part of an effort to Judaize the city—are none of these people allowed to question whether a Jewish state is an optimal arrangement for them? Are none of their relatives, friends, and loved ones abroad allowed to do so?

Nor is the question of national self-determination as straightforward as the Post would have it. Since the beginning of the occupation in 1967, maintaining the Jewish character of the state of Israel has required an extraordinary amount of violence, because Jews are not a clear majority in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank put together. Even if they were, however, it is not as though Palestinian demands for equal rights would cease. Opposing that violence, or believing that it stems from the state having a specific ethnic character, is not a form of bigotry. It is not “self-determination” if you are determining the fate of your neighbors because they lack the same rights as you.

In the United States, the ADL itself has highlighted those on the far right who believe “they are fighting against demographic and cultural changes that are destroying the ‘true America’—a white, Christian nation,” and who want Jews to “either leave the country or be converted.” Sadly, this is a racist chauvinism that echoes sentiments expressed by politicians in the current Israeli government.

Few Americans who are not themselves white nationalists would think it prejudiced for those who are not white Christians to oppose such an arrangement in the U.S., least of all Jews.

Obviously, there are factors in Israel that make a commitment to one state with equal rights for all more complicated than in the United States, where the concept is foundational even if the execution is not. For generations, Palestinians have borne the brunt of the violence of war, occupation, and discrimination. The near-destruction of European Jewry is less than a century old, and the flight (both voluntary and involuntary) of the Mizrahim, who make up the largest portion of Israel’s Jewish population, from other Middle Eastern and North African countries is younger than that. Fears and grudges build up over years of conflict and separation, making the personal and emotional connections necessary for such reconciliation difficult, although brave souls on both sides of the divide are trying.

The ideal version of the one-state solution also remains unpopular for now among both Israelis and Palestinians (except for Arab citizens of Israel). You may think it impossible. You may prefer a different outcome. You may think it is dangerous. But the vision itself is not an expression of anti-Jewish hatred and should not be treated as such.

The effect of equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is to silence the criticism of the Israeli government by Palestinians and their advocates. Characterizing all such criticism as an inherent form of bigotry is used to justify the exclusion of such critics from mainstream society, to suspend them from their schools, or to fire them from their jobs. But it is not anti-Semitic to want equal rights for all in Jerusalem, in Tel Aviv, in Gaza, in Ramallah. That is, after all, what generations of Americans have sought in their own home.

Adam Serwer is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Source: Anti-Zionism Is Not Anti-Semitism – The Atlantic

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The Economist: Book reviews on ‘How to cancel “cancel culture”’

2023/11/08 Leave a comment

Helpful summaries:

The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time. By Yascha Mounk. Penguin; 416 pages; $32. Allen Lane; £25.
The Cancelling of the American Mind: How Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us All. By Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott. Simon & Schuster; 464 pages; $29.99. Allen Lane; £25

Yascha mounk’s book contains several jolting stories, which encapsulate the extreme thinking of some on the American left. When covid-19 vaccines became available, most countries dispensed them first to health workers and the elderly (who are much more vulnerable to the disease than young people). Yet America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention urged states to offer priority to 87m “essential workers”, which included package-delivery drivers and film crews. Its rationale was “racial equity”, because old people were more likely to be white, even though such a policy would probably cause thousands more deaths.

In another story, an African-American mother tried to get her seven-year-old into a class at school. The principal said no: “That’s not the black class.” This was not a scene from the Jim Crow South of the 1950s, but from present-day America, where a growing number of “progressive” schools group children by race and teach them to think of themselves as “racial beings”, all in the name of “antiracism”.

Mr Mounk, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, is a man of the left. (“Barack Obama is the American politician I most admire.”) He grew up believing that “humans matter equally irrespective of the group to which they belong.” His book, “The Identity Trap”, explains why many on the left abandoned “universalism”. He summarises the “woke” left’s logic as follows: “to ensure that each ethnic, religious or sexual community enjoys a proportionate share of income and wealth…both private actors and public institutions must make the way they treat people depend on the groups to which they belong.”

Most of the people who espouse this view aspire to improve the world, and many of the injustices they rail against are real. But the policies they advocate “are likely to create a society…of warring tribes rather than co-operating compatriots”. The word “liberal” has long been used in America to mean “left-wing”, but many on the left now reject basic liberal notions such as universal values and free speech. Across the English-speaking world and beyond, they have become intolerant of those who do not accept their dogma or their identity politics. 

Dismissing “wokeness” as just well-meaning millennials pushing for social justice is therefore a mistake, Mr Mounk argues. Not enough people understand that the far left is “moving beyond—or outright discarding—the traditional rules and norms of democracies”. He has long been concerned about the authoritarian right but says it is reasonably well understood (democracy-deniers and all), whereas the intellectual history of the authoritarian left is “oddly unexplored territory”.

How did views that are unpopular with the general public become so influential? In Mr Mounk’s telling, it starts with group psychology. When like-minded people debate political or moral questions, their conclusions become “more radical than the beliefs of their individual members”, he writes. This tendency is compounded when the group feels under threat, as progressives did during Donald Trump’s presidency. Dissent is suddenly seen as betrayal: hence the fury unleashed on anybody who violates the group’s unwritten and shifting norms. More than three out of five Americans now say they avoid airing their political views for fear of suffering adverse consequences; only a quarter of college students say they are comfortable discussing controversial topics with their peers.

Students who imbibed what Mr Mounk rather clunkily calls “the identity synthesis” on campus went on “a short march through the institutions” after they graduated. Since about 2010 they have carried their new ideology into the workplace and, thanks to the power of social media to create hurricanes of outrage, intimidated bosses like no previous generation. Young activists-cum-employees pushed the American Civil Liberties Union to scrap its iron commitment to free speech and risk-averse corporate managers to sign off on some counter-productive “diversity, equity and inclusion” training. A slide in a presentation at Coca-Cola, for example, exhorted employees to “try to be less white”.

Far from solving the real injustices that persist, this way of thinking and talking threatens to exacerbate them. And instead of bracing the country to withstand Mr Trump’s influence, it helps him, as Middle America leans right in response to the far left’s excesses. Mr Mounk’s answer is a return to classical liberalism: a rediscovery of universal values and neutral rules, allowing people to make common cause with others of different beliefs and origins. People should live up to the ideals on which liberal democracy is based rather than abandoning them because they are so difficult to achieve, he says.

While Mr Mounk’s message is global, Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott focus on America. “The Cancelling of the American Mind” is a cri de coeur for both sides to reclaim “free-speech culture”. (The authors work for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech group.) When two sides cannot even agree on facts, “it undermines faith in all of the institutions we rely on to understand the world,” they write.

Mr Lukianoff and Ms Schlott offer a critique of the left, pointing out how cancel culture has eroded academic freedom at universities. But they are equally critical of the right. They note that some of Florida’s new education laws (including one that bans certain subjects from being taught) are “without question unconstitutional”.

Both books are bold, timely and buttressed by data. They also offer plausible remedies. The far right can be defeated only by the right and the far left by the left. So left-of-centre people who can see what is happening should speak up but not vilify those who disagree. (Political disagreement is not moral failure, Mr Mounk reminds readers.) People should appeal to the reasonable majority, he argues, since most people are neither “woke” nor Trumpist. They should not let their indignation turn them into reactionaries.

The advice from Mr Lukianoff and Ms Schlott is more personal: raise kids who are not cancellers. Teach them that life is not a battle between wholly good and bad people. Not every “harm” that someone, somewhere calls out is really harmful. Educating children about differences, rather than coddling and insulating them, is essential.

“The Cancelling of the American Mind” advises companies to foster an intellectually diverse workforce. Bosses should make clear that a commitment to free speech is a condition of employment. And universities should scrap political litmus tests for tenure and get back to teaching students how to debate ideas.

The post-liberal right and post-liberal left are much closer to each other than many people realise. Both are intolerant; both prioritise the power of the state over individual liberty. They “see each other as mortal enemies”, but “feed on each other”, Mr Mounk warns. That is why “everyone who cares about the survival of free societies should vow to fight both.”

Source: How to cancel “cancel culture”

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Chait: It Is Actually Possible to Oppose Bias Against Jews and Muslims at the Same Time – New York Magazine

2023/11/07 Leave a comment

Indeed, but not so simple in practice:

Here is a simple proposition: You can oppose antisemitism without condoning hatred of Muslims or Arabs. Likewise, you can oppose bias against Muslims and Arabs without condoning antisemitism.

This may sound like a simple idea. Yet it is one the entire Republican Party seems unable to grasp.

Last May, the Biden administration announced what it called the most ambitious strategy to oppose antisemitism ever undertaken. In the wake of Hamas’s terrorist attack last month, President Biden and Second Gentleman Douglass Emhoff held a roundtable with Jewish leaders to express support for Israel along with opposition to antisemitism. And as antisemitism has grown on campuses, the administration recently announced new stoops to combat it.

Republicans insist Biden and his party are complicit in antisemitism. The main reason they give is that the Democrats also oppose bigotry against Muslims and Arabs.

Given that I am accusing the Republicans of failing to grasp a principle a literal child could easily understand, you may be justifiably suspicious I am either making it up or picking on one or two random outliers. So I am going to supply several examples, all taken from published journalism, not random social-media posts.

Daniel Henninger has written a Wall Street Journal column headlined, “Democrats Have an Anti-Semitism Problem.” Many of the examples he cites consist of people protesting the Democratic Party’s positions (progressive activist groups released a “Gaza 2024 statement” asserting they won’t vote for Joe Biden “if he does not end U.S. support for Israel’s brutal war in Gaza. … Anti-Israel protesters paraded in front of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s house in San Francisco last Saturday evening.”), which is obviously evidence for the complete opposite of his point.

But in the midst of that confusion, he cites this as evidence for Democratic antisemitism:

Because the Democrats now consider Muslim Americans an important part of the party’s voting coalition, meetings were held this week at the White House with Muslim leaders. Mr. Biden in his national address last month spoke at length against ‘Islamophobia.’

In a National Review column headlined “Why Joe Biden Is Caving on Israel and Antisemitism,” Charles C.W. Cooke asks, “Why, at this moment, is [Biden] launching a bizarre ‘National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Related Forms of Hate,’ when everyone with eyes can see that we are in the midst of the worst bout of antisemitism in recent memory?”

The Federalist’s John David Danielson sneers:

On Wednesday, the White House announced a “National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia,” the necessity of which, according to awkwardly scripted remarks by Vice President Kamala Harris, is that Muslims endure a disproportionate number of ‘hate-fueled attacks and other discriminatory incidents,” Leave it to the Biden White House to pick a moment when a wave of antisemitism is surging across America to announce this.

The New York Post has a news story asserting, “The Biden administration faced backlash Wednesday after announcing that it would develop ‘the first ever US National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia’ in the US amid rising levels of antisemitism.”

Tom Cotton attacks the administration for calling Islamophobia America’s top concern.

If you watch even a few seconds of the video he links, you can see Kamala Harris labels hatred the top concern, and defines this to include hatred against both Jews and Muslims or Arabs.

Cotton is simply lying about this, but there’s a genuine confusion in the right-wing mind about the relationship between Islamophobia and antisemitism. It is true that, broadly speaking, the conflict between Israel and Arabs has pitted antisemites and Islamophobes against each other. But that does not mean that opposing one form of prejudice requires accepting or embracing the other. Not every political conflict must be resolved in zero-sum terms.

Conservatives — ironically, like many radical leftists — see the world in zero-sum terms, so that opposing prejudice against one party to a conflict means accepting it toward the other. Segments of the anti-Israel left cannot bring themselves to denounce antisemitism precisely because they see doing so as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. The right’s mentality is a mirror image of that thought process.

But the conservative refusal to denounce Islamophobia is an important reason why it is necessary for liberals — especially liberals who support Israel — to do so.

Muslims and Arabs do, in fact, face a lot of prejudice in the United States. This prejudice is routinely inflamed by Republican leaders. Donald Trump has routinely attacked Muslim Americans as foreign and unworthy of participation in civic life, smeared with fake claims of having supported 9/11, and recently vowed to keep them out of the United States unless they accept “our religion.”

The American conservative movement is institutionally committed to ignoring Trump’s flagrant racism, even while it hyperactively engages with the most deranged claims about institutional racism from activists and academics. Meanwhile, Trumpian racism against Muslims and Arabs has spread quickly within the party.

In recent days, prime time Fox News host Jesse Watters said:

“I want to say something about Arab Americans and about the Muslim world. We — and when I say we I mean the West and western technology — have created the Middle East. We made them rich. We got that oil out of the ground, our military protects all of these oil shipments flying around the world, making them rich. We fund their military. We respect their kings. We kill their terrorists. Okay? But we’ve had it. We’ve had it with them!”

Notice how Watters, not unlike Trump, conflates “Arab Americans” with people living in the Middle East, dismissing them all as enemies. It is almost impossible to find Republicans who will denounce any of this rhetoric.

The Republican idea that the Democratic Party’s opposition to prejudice in general somehow weakens any of the particulars is a projection of their own ethnographic view of the world. What they are attempting, instead, is to leverage their dehumanization of Arab and Muslim Americans into a play to attract Jews. But the ultimate safeguard of Jewish security in America lies not in subjugating and demeaning other minorities, but in enshrining the principle of civic equality.

Source: It Is Actually Possible to Oppose Bias Against Jews and Muslims at the Same Time – New York Magazine

Filed under Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism Tagged with

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