Palestinians in the GTA appeal to federal government to help loved ones flee Gaza

2023/10/24 Leave a comment

As always, the response will be judged in relation to other groups fleeing violence like Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan and others. Also as always, there will be degrees of inconsistency, and, security concerns regarding possible Hamas supporters.

Largely academic for the moment until there is a corridor for civilians to flee, which likely will be a secondary priority compared to Canadian citizens and Permanent Residents:

A group of Palestinians living in the GTA are appealing to the federal government to bring family members living in Gaza to Canada faster than standard immigration policies allow.

Milton local and permanent resident Abdallah Alhamadni says they’re hoping Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) will create a humanitarian pathway for Palestinians fleeing from the Israel-Hamas war, similar to those implemented for people escaping violence in places like Syria and Ukraine.

“I have a great hope, it’s not impossible to do that,” said Alhamadni, adding Canada has a reputation for helping people around the world find safe haven in the country during times of crises.

Source: Palestinians in the GTA appeal to federal government to help loved ones flee Gaza – CBC.ca

Filed under Immigration, Refugees Tagged with , ,

Israel-Hamas War Has Scrambled ‘Cancel Culture’ Tribes – The Daily Beast

2023/10/23 Leave a comment

Consistency is hard in practice…

After the tragedy, the farce.

While Israelis and Palestinians are burying their dead, pundits and activists in America are busy contradicting their principles to further their political claims.

Take America’s self-styled free speech warriors on the Right and the so-called intellectual dark web—you know, the ones who rail against cancel culture and woke censorship, making millions of dollars while complaining that they’ve been shut out of the institutions of journalism.

All of a sudden, now that it’s far-left voices being canceled, the response has been… mixed.

Meanwhile, the tactics and rhetoric of the left have contradicted everything progressives say they stand for in terms of solidarity and safety, at times spilling over into overt antisemitism.

Case in point: Harvard University, where a bunch of left-wing students issued (to my mind) an outrageous, shortsighted, and offensive statementholding Israel “entirely responsible” for Hamas’ massacre of more than 1,400 Israeli civilians, including the elderly, babies, and, as it happens, numerous peace activists as well.

There is much about this statement that is repellant: conflating legitimate resistance with kidnapping toddlers and grandmothers, denying moral agency to Hamas (after all, they can’t be expected to engage in moral reasoning), and not even mentioning the slaughtering innocent civilians part.

But even if the statement is wrong-headed, offensive, and even, in its gross insensitivity to the mass slaughter of Jews, borderline antisemitic, it is political speech, after all.

Yet in response, students have had job offers withdrawn, been doxxed by hard-right trolls (which has exposed them to death threats and harassment), and have faced calls from CEOs to have them blacklisted.

Meanwhile, Harvard, for the sin of not condemning the students (the president of Harvard did condemn the attacks and rightly noted that student organizations do not speak for the university), has itself been widely condemned, with donors and at least one Jewish foundation withdrawing their support. (Remarkably, in my online cohort of mostly liberal American Jews, there has been widespread support for this BDS-in-reverse decision.)

This is cancel culture writ large: unpopular political opinions being met with reprisals, firings, harassment, and worse. And it’s not just Harvard—similar controversies are also brewing at Columbia, Penn, and elsewhere.

And yet, “classical liberal” YouTube host Dave Rubin has called for pro-Palestine protesters to be deported, retweeting an asinine post analogizing the Jewish Voice for Peace protest this week at the Capitol to the Jan. 6 insurrection. (Another supposed free speech absolutist, Ben Shapiro, retweeted Rubin’s remark.) Newsweek senior editor-at-large Josh Hammertweeted a video of a protest outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., with the text, “Every single person here who is seen supporting Hamas and who is not a U.S. citizen should be deported posthaste.” (Meghan McCain gave it a retweet.)

To be fair, there have also been voices applying free speech principles even to objectionable speech acts. “Let the Activists Have Their Loathsome Rallies,” advised Thomas Chatterton Williams in The Atlantic. FIRE, the civil libertarian, heavily-Koch-funded free speech organization, has defended the right to free speech for pro-Palestinian voices and “recommended a pause” to the businesses seeking to punish students for exercising their free speech rights.

And Bari Weiss’ Free Press site ran a piece by Nadine Strossen (formerly of the ACLU) and Pamela Paresky entitled, “Even Antisemites Deserve Free Speech.” (Weiss herself seized on the latest extreme remark by Columbia professor Joseph Massad to continue her 20-year-long feud with him, and does not appear to have condemned the widespread canceling of left-wing voices.)

And because irony is truly not dead, the Center/Right has even tried to take a rhetorical trope from the Left, complaining that pro-Palestinian professors create a hostile, “unsafe” environment for Jewish students.

To be sure, this is sometimes true, as when a Stanford University instructor reportedly made Jewish students stand in a corner, alleging that this is what Israel does to Palestinians. Meanwhile, leftist students, who last month were focused on making sure every campus is a safe space for all, have harassed and targeted Jewish students in hideous ways. So much for “your opinions make me feel unsafe.”

It’s also true that some statements are not mere political speech, but are (potentially criminal) incitements to violence. For example, one UC Davis professor called for harassment or violence against “zionist journalists,” saying “they have houses w addresses, kids in school. They can fear their bosses, but they should fear us more.” That is chilling, and well outside the bounds of civil discourse.

But it is not the case that a professor’s support of Palestine is ipso facto hostile to Jewish students, who are depicted as snowflakes that melt at any exposure to anti-Israel opinions. Part of the problem is the efforts by some Jewish organizations (often catering to their right-wing donors) to define any speech that “demonizes” or “delegitimizes” Israel as antisemitic. But that is simply not true, no matter how often it is repeated.

Jewish Voice for Peace is an anti-Zionist Jewish organization. Are they all self-haters, trapped in some neurosis of internalized antisemitism? Or are they, in fact, sincere Jewish people with a hard-left political opinion?

To repeat, I found the Harvard student letter not only wrong-headed but personally painful to read, especially as it came out as I was doomscrolling through videos of murder and kidnapping at a festival site I attended a few years ago. But should all those students be canceled? Doxxed? Pilloried?

And conversely, is it not possible for left-wing activists to express solidarity with Palestine without equating all Jews with right-wing Zionists, harassing us, and taunting us while we are still reeling from the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust? The Left has done more to alienate progressive Jews in the last two weeks than in the last 20 years.

To be sure, neither left-wing activists nor American Jews are the real victims here. The victims are thousands of dead, kidnapped, orphaned, or traumatized Palestinians and Israelis who are caught between two extremist governments who reject the very notion of coexistence, and do everything to undermine it.

Seems like a lot of Americans are acting the same way.

Source: Israel-Hamas War Has Scrambled ‘Cancel Culture’ Tribes – The Daily Beast

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Coren: Peace is possible in Israel and Palestine — if enough genuinely want it

2023/10/18 Leave a comment

Money quote:

If I had the ability I would silence the Islamists, the Jew-haters and the predictable Marxists who know nothing of humanity; as well as the fundamentalist Israeli settlers, the extreme Zionists, who care for nobody other than their cause, those diaspora Jewish people who are more extreme than most Israelis and their right-wing Christian friends who want to fight the end times war to every last Jew and Arab.

Well said:

I’m a Christian priest with three Jewish grandparents. So, to an antisemite I’m a Jew. Even worse, I’m an infiltrator, trying to destroy the church from within. Believe me, when I’m attacked on social media that abuse becomes abundantly and repeatedly clear.

My family fled Russian pogroms in 1900, then lived in the east-end of London during the threat of pre-war fascism. They had direct, physical confrontations with Nazis.

I’ve also visited Israel and Palestine numerous times for 40 years and have dear friends on all sides of the debate. I studied there, lived there, and unlike so many sudden and instant experts, genuinely understand the region, its history and complexities.

Because of this I refuse to play the sordid game of triumphalism and exclusive truth, will not stand with Israel or with Palestine and won’t utter platitudes and simplistic slogans about a situation that demands so much more than that. If I stand with anything, it’s justice and peace. Let the extremists roar but I will not be moved.

There are simultaneous truths that have to be made clear and they really aren’t so difficult. First, the Hamas slaughter of the innocents was barbaric and grotesque. To refuse to condemn it, let alone condone it, is a moral outrage. No relativism, no excuses, no infantile radicalism. Just explicitly reject rape, infanticide and the murder of blameless people.

Second, the open wound of injustice toward Palestine and Palestinians remains and until that is addressed there can be no lasting solution. Of course, there are lies and distortions, of course the local as well as the super powers are hypocritical and exploitative and of course the Palestinian leadership has often been disastrous. But none of that changes the reality of the Palestinians losing their homes and homeland.

Third, while Israel’s campaign in Gaza may well destroy Hamas as a threat, it will come at the cost of countless innocent lives and will also achieve little if anything in the long run. Revenge is not policy, and an Israeli child killed by a blood-lusting terrorist is little different from a Palestinian baby pulled from the rubble after an Israeli missile attack. It will create another generation of young people eager to martyr themselves to attack Israel, it will alienate world opinion, but most of all it will bring further agony to a people already living in appalling conditions.

If I had the ability I would silence the Islamists, the Jew-haters and the predictable Marxists who know nothing of humanity; as well as the fundamentalist Israeli settlers, the extreme Zionists, who care for nobody other than their cause, those diaspora Jewish people who are more extreme than most Israelis and their right-wing Christian friends who want to fight the end times war to every last Jew and Arab.

They hold the edges of a great net and caught in it are the mass of ordinary Israelis and Palestinians. I’m not naïve, not inexperienced in the ways of conflict and tribal bitterness, but I also know that most on both sides want to live in dignity and safety and are willing to make the compromises that are vital if anything of value is to be achieved. I’ve seen it repeatedly and know it can happen. My God, it won’t be easy, but then little that is worth achieving ever is.

Just a few weeks ago I sat in a small house in Belfast with a man whose father had been shot dead by a paramilitary gang. The murdered man wasn’t involved in politics, just of a different religion to those who killed him.

For many years my host had wanted revenge, then he gave up, then he devoted his life to peace and reconciliation. Now he lives in a country where there is a peace nobody ever thought remotely possible. Actually, it always is. Even in Israel and Palestine. If enough genuinely want it.

Rev. Michael Coren is a Toronto-based writer. @michaelcoren

Source: Coren: Peace is possible in Israel and Palestine — if enough genuinely want it

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Rioux: Terroriste, mais encore…

2023/10/14 Leave a comment

Of note:

Ce n’est pas un hasard si le mot razzia nous vient d’Algérie. Depuis le Moyen Âge, Arabes et Ottomans menèrent des razzias ininterrompues sur les côtes méditerranéennes, où ils capturaient des otages qui étaient ensuite vendus comme esclaves, jetés dans des harems ou réduits aux travaux forcés.

Ce n’est pas un acte de guerre, mais une razzia à la puissance mille qu’a perpétrée le Hamas le 7 octobre dernier en pénétrant dès l’aube en territoire israélien pour « tuer du Juif » et assassiner plus d’un millier de militaires, de civils, de femmes et d’enfants confondus. Sans oublier de rafler une centaine d’otages qui serviront de boucliers humains, de monnaie d’échange ou de chair humaine dans des exécutions diffusées sur les réseaux sociaux afin de terroriser les mécréants.

Ceux qui font profession d’aveugles n’y verront qu’un attentat de plus dans la longue histoire du conflit israélo-palestinien. Nous sommes pourtant devant le pire carnage commis depuis 1945 à l’égard de civils juifs, assassinés pour la seule raison qu’ils étaient juifs. Sur leur chemin, les djihadistes ont abattu 260 jeunes qui participaient à la rave party Supernova. Quand ils ne les ont pas égorgés ou violés. Des fous de Dieu surgis d’un autre âge face à l’insouciante jeunesse mondialisée de Tel-Aviv, le contraste ne pouvait être plus étourdissant. Pour nombre de juifs, dont le secrétaire d’État Antony Blinken, cela n’évoquait rien de moins qu’un pogrom.

Certes, cette offensive poursuivait aussi des objectifs politiques. Il s’agissait de torpiller les accords d’Abraham, qui étaient sur le point de réconcilier diplomatiquement Israël et l’Arabie saoudite. Une alliance particulièrement inquiétante pour l’Iran, principal soutien du Hamas. Notamment parce qu’elle montre que juifs et musulmans peuvent vivre en harmonie, comme l’illustrent les 150 000 Israéliens qui visitent chaque année les Émirats arabes. Autre vision intolérable pour le Hamas, car le moindre signe de réconciliation signerait son arrêt de mort.

Ce carnage n’a donc rien à voir avec la cause nationale palestinienne, et encore moins celle d’un État indépendant. Il s’inscrit au contraire dans la lignée des grands attentats islamistes du 11 septembre, de Charlie Hebdo et du Bataclan.

Le mot terrorisme, que la prude CBC et l’extrême gauche française se refusent à prononcer, est d’ailleurs largement insuffisant pour désigner cette organisation islamiste, antisémite et totalitaire qui tient Gaza sous sa férule. Ses crimes vont bien « au-delà du terrorisme », pour reprendre les mots du bédéiste Joann Sfar. Car le Hamas n’a rien d’un banal mouvement de libération qui aurait commis quelques attentats. Créé en 1988, il est la branche palestinienne des Frères musulmans, nés en Égypte dans les années 1920, qui ont notamment soutenu l’alliance entre Hitler et le grand mufti de Jérusalem. Ici, l’oumma remplace la nation, l’islamisme le nationalisme, et le califat l’État démocratique.

Radicalement opposé aux voix libérales palestiniennes — que les Frères musulmans ont d’ailleurs souvent éliminées physiquement —, le Hamas n’a jamais eu d’autres buts que d’islamiser la société palestinienne et d’empêcher que ne s’impose une direction laïque soucieuse des intérêts nationaux de son peuple. « La mort sur le chemin de Dieu est la plus éminente des espérances », proclame sa charte fondatrice qui stipule aussi que « la bannière d’Allah » doit flotter « sur chaque pouce de la Palestine ». L’État palestinien ne pouvant être, à la rigueur, qu’une étape avant l’expulsion complète des Juifs de la région.

L’idée qu’avec le temps, le Hamas deviendrait un interlocuteur sérieux apparaît aujourd’hui comme un leurre. Cette organisation a toujours agi afin de faire capoter toute perspective de paix et de création d’un État palestinien. C’est ce qui faisait dire au journaliste israélien Stéphane Amar, que nous avions interviewé à Tel-Aviv, en 2016, que « le rêve des deux États est mort depuis longtemps ». Il ne pourrait renaître que le jour où Israël, seule démocratie du Moyen-Orient, trouverait un interlocuteur qui ne souhaite pas son extermination.

Nous avions alors constaté sur place combien la seconde Intifada, avec ses attentats kamikazes contre les civils, avait achevé de tuer tout espoir de paix, anéantissant du coup la gauche israélienne depuis longtemps ouverte au compromis. Tant que l’islamisme dominera le mouvement palestinien, la théorie des deux États demeurera un mythe. Quel État dans le monde souhaiterait la création à ses frontières d’une théocratie doublée d’un État terroriste ?

Les véritables défenseurs du peuple palestinien aujourd’hui ne sont pas ceux qui, trop heureux de s’en laver les mains, renvoient dos à dos les potentats du Hamas et le gouvernement démocratiquement élu de Benjamin Nétanyahou. Ce sont ceux qui combattent l’islamisme dans l’espoir que renaisse un jour un leadership palestinien digne de ce nom.

Le temps de juger les graves erreurs de Nétanyahou viendra bien assez vite. On peut compter sur le peuple israélien pour cela. Comme pour exiger une riposte ciblée et proportionnée. Mais, pour l’instant, constatons que la guerre que mène le Hamas pour détruire Israël n’a rien d’une lutte nationale et tout d’une guerre de civilisation.

On pourrait rêver d’un autre combat. Mais on ne choisit pas ses ennemis. C’est eux qui nous choisissent.

Source: Terroriste, mais encore…

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with ,

Nicolas: La vérité, le temps, le pouvoir et la paix

2023/10/13 Leave a comment

Balanced and relevant reflections:

Quatre choses fondamentales semblent nous filer entre les doigts et échapper à notre vue, alors que le monde tente de prendre acte de la violence en Israël et à Gaza.

La vérité. Nul besoin de s’étendre face au malheureux mélange du journalisme en crise, de l’explosion de l’intelligence artificielle et de l’effondrement de Twitter (renommé X). Les petits crochets « vérifié » ne garantissent plus la crédibilité de personne, les services de modération du contenu et de vérification des faits des plateformes ne sont d’aucune efficacité et les fausses informations abondent. Résultat : il n’a jamais été aussi difficile de s’informer en ligne d’un conflit où les actions — et les morts — évoluent d’heure en heure.

Le temps. Bien des observateurs ont comparé l’attaque du Hamas contre des civils israéliens, y compris beaucoup d’enfants, samedi, à Pearl Harbour ou au 11 septembre 2001. Ce qu’on essaie de transmettre par cette image, c’est le sentiment d’une brèche. Il n’y a jamais eu autant de morts du côté israélien, tout comme les Américains n’ont pas l’habitude d’être attaqués sur leur propre sol. Les États-Unis ont disposé de temps pour entrer en deuil national, puis réagir : la guerre du Pacifique qui s’est soldée par deux bombes atomiques d’un côté, la guerre en Irak et la déstabilisation du Proche-Orient de l’autre.

On ne dispose pas, ici, de temps. La contre-offensive de l’armée israélienne à Gaza est déjà en cours. Le nombre de civils décédés monte d’heure en heure, dont là aussi, beaucoup d’enfants. Vu le déséquilibre des forces en présence, on craint ce qui suivra.

La quasi-totalité de la classe politique canadienne a condamné les manifestations propalestiniennes du week-end, comme si chaque personne dans la rue était là pour « célébrer » l’attaque du Hamas, et donc des morts juives. Bien qu’il y eût, certes, parmi les organisateurs, des personnages aux objectifs hautement condamnables, bien des participants en étaient mal informés et se montraient plutôt profondément inquiets, ainsi que solidaires du peuple palestinien, plus largement.

Comment peut-on vouloir envoyer ce message de soutien aux Palestiniens alors que les corps des victimes du Hamas sont encore chauds ? Parce qu’il n’y a pas de temps, justement. Toutes les préoccupations, les peurs, les colères et les deuils s’empilent les uns sur les autres, se blessent et s’enterrent les uns les autres. Dans un conflit où les émotions sont aussi à fleur de peau, le manque de temps envenime tout.

Le pouvoir. C’est une chose de souhaiter une couverture médiatique équilibrée et qui met de l’avant une représentation juste des points de vue de chaque partie impliquée, de chercher à traiter avec respect chaque victime de la guerre. C’est indispensable, même. C’en est une autre de gommer, de perdre de vue, ou de feindre de ne pas remarquer comment le pouvoir et ses iniquités affectent différemment chacun des camps.

Un exemple criant, parmi tant d’autres. D’un côté, Gaza fait l’objet d’un blocus depuis des années, et l’Égypte ne permet la sortie que de quelques personnes au compte-goutte au poste frontalier de Rafah, qui est d’ailleurs bombardé par Israël depuis le début de la semaine. De l’autre, on planifie avec l’appui de la communauté internationale des évacuations de l’aéroport de Tel-Aviv, où une proportion importante des Israéliens a une double citoyenneté, et d’où on peut circuler dans le monde sans visa.

Tout le monde cherche à fuir devant la peur, la peur atroce, la terreur, les morts. La peur peut être aussi grande de chaque côté. La peur est propre à chacun. La peur ne se mesure pas. Les moyens de fuir, eux, se mesurent.

La paix. J’ai le sentiment que chaque reportage, chaque entrevue doit se terminer sur un « avez-vous l’espoir de voir la paix un jour » ? Non seulement c’est cliché, mais il est aussi irritant de voir la paix présentée comme un processus qui appartient à une poignée d’hommes qui accepteraient un jour de parlementer autour d’une même table.

La paix n’est pas qu’un état politique, c’est une action que l’on peut choisir de mener, ou non, chaque jour. La paix est un moteur derrière nos gestes et nos paroles aussi.

On se souvient tous du « soit vous êtes avec nous, soit vous êtes avec les terroristes » de George W. Bush au lendemain du 11 septembre. C’était là une logique guerrière, qui a mené tout droit à la guerre réelle. Cette logique est manichéenne. Elle prend toute entreprise de contextualisation comme une injure, et est persuadée que de chercher à comprendre les actions du camp adverse, c’est les justifier, les excuser ou même s’en solidariser.

Cette logique guerrière pullule. Elle accélère la droitisation de la société civile israélienne et prend sa gauche, qui souhaite une Palestine libre, en étau — alors que cette gauche est essentielle aux efforts de paix. Elle mène à des tensions douloureuses au sein des communautés juives d’ici, et rend d’autant plus ardue et coûteuse le partage de perspectives qui dissonent d’avec celles des grandes associations. Elle soutient tout autant le processus de radicalisation qui a permis l’émergence du Hamas et marginalisé le leadershipde l’Autorité palestinienne. La logique guerrière refuse de faire la distinction entre le soutien à une Palestine libre et un cri de ralliement terroriste. Elle ramène du même souffle toute la population d’Israël, et même tout le peuple juif, à l’administration de Nétanyahou.

La paix, comme choix à la portée de tous, c’est le choix de faire de la place dans son esprit et dans son coeur à plusieurs émotions et vérités en même temps. La paix cherche à comprendre à la fois le rôle du trauma de l’Holocauste et des siècles d’antisémitisme dans la charge symbolique que porte Israël, les 75 ans de délocalisation, d’oppression et de marginalisation du peuple palestinien, le rôle du colonialisme dans le contrôle britannique du territoire palestinien au moment où il a été donné à Israël et le pouvoir continu de l’Occident sur la région depuis. La paix cherche à écouter tout, entendre tout, faire assez de place pour tout.

Anthropologue, Emilie Nicolas est chroniqueuse au Devoir et à Libération. Elle anime le balado Détours pour Canadaland.

Source: La vérité, le temps, le pouvoir et la paix

Filed under foreign policy, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

John Ivison: Tolerating the glorification of terror and slaughter is societal suicide

2023/10/12 Leave a comment

Of note:

Sukhdool Singh, an alleged gangster, was gunned down in Winnipeg last month, in a tit-for-tat killing between rival gangs.

Singh was wanted in India for extortion and murder, and was alleged to have links to the Khalistan Tiger Force, which has been designated a terror organization by the Indian government. He is said to have escaped to Canada on a forged passport in 2017 and India has been trying, unsuccessfully, to extradite him ever since.

Singh’s case is instructive because it is at the heart of the dispute between Canada and India. The Indians say Canada has offered a safe haven for Khalistani terrorists in return for votes from the Sikh community.

Canada says that its hands are tied because freedom of speech is protected under the Charter of Rights.

By its actions, the Canadian government has also endorsed the recent findings of the House of Commons justice and human rights committee that concluded suspects could be abused and tortured if returned to India and a host of other countries. Only six people were extradited to India between 2002 and 2020 and none of them were suspected Khalistani terrorists.

Canada is seen as being soft on terror, with some justification.

Its record on clamping down on terror financing is abysmal, as noted by B.C.’s Cullen commission into money laundering, which found that the federal Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre (FINTRAC) is ill-equipped to share intelligence with law enforcement. Proof of FINTRAC’s impotence is the lack of any charges laid between 2009 and 2016, even though it uncovered 683 transactions linked to terror financing

The government is in the process of beefing up its efforts against money laundering and terror financing, with a number of proposed legislative changes aimed at giving FINTRAC and law enforcement more powers.

But Canada’s perennial balancing act with rights and freedoms leads to much hand-wringing. For example, the Canada Revenue Agency has been accused of unfairly targeting Muslim-led charities, leading to calls for the agency to suspend its terror-financing investigative unit. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed his sympathy for what he called the systemic Islamophobia in the CRA.

However, the atrocities that the world has witnessed over the course of the past weekend in Israel may tilt that balance away from the indulgence that has prevailed.

The scenes that played out on Saturday night in Mississauga, with joyous crowds cheering and honking horns, as if their team had just won the World Cup, were abhorrent. This was the glorification of the mass murder of children, such as the 40 dead babies discovered at the Kfar Aza kibbutz in southern Israel. This was celebration of Hamas’ deliberate and systemic targeting of civilians to kill as many as possible.

To his credit, Trudeau renounced such scenes in his remarks at a Jewish community centre in Ottawa. “The glorification of death and violence and terror has no place anywhere, especially here in Canada. Hamas terrorists aren’t a resistance, they’re not freedom fighters, they are terrorists and no one in Canada should be supporting them, much less celebrating them.”

Canada has a law against displaying hate — Section 319 of the Criminal Code, which says that anyone who incites hatred against an identifiable group where incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace is guilty of an indictable offence.

But such is the power of section 2b of the Charter when it comes to freedom of expression, it has been used sparingly — just 20 times between 2001 and 2019.

That is a good thing. I am proud to live in a country where truth cannot be put down by persecution. As John Stuart Mill said about free speech, conflicting doctrines often share the truth between them.

But it is quite another thing to witness fellow citizens lionize rape and murder.

In 2015, the Senate committee on national security and defence released a report in the wake of the terror attack on Parliament Hill.

It made a number of recommendations that were never enacted, including establishing a “no visit” list of identified ideological radicals and working in Muslim communities to create an effective counter-narrative to Islamic fundamentalism.

But one conclusion that it drew has special resonance today — that our hate laws should be updated to ban the glorification of terrorists, terrorist acts and terrorist symbols. The committee said it recognized issues with the Charter of Rights but noted that France and U.K. have similar laws.

There are clearly issues with what constitutes “glorification” — a grey zone where there may not be specific calls for action. France’s law appears to go too far: one 25-year-old man was handed a suspended sentence for scribbling “Vive Daesh” (aka ISIL) on a toilet wall.

Yet, antisemitic chants calling for the destruction of Israel, or in the case of Canada’s Khalistanis, building a carnival float that celebrates the assassination of Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi (as happened in Toronto in 2023) create the conditions for violence. The British law includes a clause that specifically says the offence occurs when members of the public might reasonably be expected to infer that what is being glorified is being proposed as conduct that should be emulated.

The introduction of such legislation may go a long way to healing the rift with India — and that cannot be done quickly enough.

We are entering a period of what historian Niall Ferguson has predicted will be a “cascade of conflict,” where Russia, Iran and China will do their best to overturn the international order by testing a fiscally overstretched America in three theatres: Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. It will be no surprise to anyone if China makes an illegal move in the South China Sea in the coming weeks.

Canada needs to recognize that, in W.B. Yeats’ words, anarchy is loosed upon the world and innocence is drowned; that “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

We need to stand with our allies, even if we don’t often like what they do. India’s Narendra Modi is a thin-skinned chauvinist; Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu may be corrupt and is certainly incompetent.

As the former Shin Bet chief, Ami Ayalon, told Le Figaro, the Netanyahu government is largely responsible for the divisions that created an opportunity for Hamas, with its controversial push for justice reforms and a policy that marginalized the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

But these flaws pale in comparison to the what the great autocracies would have in store for us.

I’m haunted by a quote in Avi Shavit’s superb history of Israel: My Promised Land, where he talks about the vitality of the nation. “And yet, there is always the fear that one day, daily life will freeze like Pompeii’s.”

For too many Israelis, life did indeed freeze this weekend. The existential threat there is palpable. Canada cannot allow pluralism and reasonable accommodation to plant the seeds of our self-destruction.

Source: John Ivison: Tolerating the glorification of terror and slaughter is societal suicide

Filed under Multiculturalism, Radicalization Tagged with , , , ,

Sean Speer: Shocking pro-Hamas, anti-Israel rallies lay bare the limits of Canadian pluralism

2023/10/11 Leave a comment

Expect to see more similar commentary. The formal limits are essentially our laws and regulations with informal limits even harder to enforce consistently. Without getting into “both side-ism,” the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and repression of Palestinians draws insufficient coverage and commentary. But the barbarism of Hamas needs to be condemned without reservation:

As Palestine supporters continue to organize themselves in different Canadian cities to effectively demonstrate in favour of Hamas’s abhorrent attacks on the State of Israel, the inherent tensions and limits of pluralism have been laid bare for everyone to see. 

Pluralism is a key part—arguably the key part—of Canada’s conception of itself and our common citizenship. The country’s basic promise is one of peaceful co-existence. Our institutions, norms, and practices are set up to accommodate a multiplicity of viewpoints and persuasions concerning the most fundamental questions about justice, human flourishing, and what constitutes the good life. 

Pluralism is also a key—arguably the key part—of my own worldview. Although, as I’ve grown older, I’ve become more comfortable in my own thinking about these questions, I’ve also grown less comfortable with the idea of imposing my answers on others. Our own limitations (what Kant referred to as our “crooked timber”) invariably constrain the individual pursuit of truth. The public square should therefore be a crowded, complicated, and contentious marketplace of ideas. The state must resist imposing a singular conception of truth on the society. 

Yet pluralism cannot be an open-ended promise either. Just because our ability to discern the truth may be imperfect and incomplete doesn’t mean that we should give into an empty relativism. Some ideas are bad and wrong. We cannot permit our pluralistic commitments to provide license for those who reject our society’s basic values or even wish to do it harm. Pluralism cannot be a one-sided surrender to illiberal and reactionary forces. 

We’ve witnessed in recent days these tensions and limits inherent to Canadian pluralism. While most of us mourned and lamented the inhumanity of Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Israel, a small minority among us have defended and even celebrated them. These individuals and organizations have relied on Canada’s promise of freedom to countenance and glorify the indiscriminate violence of a group designated as a terrorist organization by our own government. 

There have been pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the country that have effectively affirmed Hamas’s terrorism. The videos from these pro-Hamas rallies in cities such as Mississauga and Montreal have been shocking. It must be said that rallies in support of a terrorist organization that has carried out a systematic campaign of killing women and children are incompatible with Canadian values.

Meanwhile, groups such as the Muslim Association of Canada and National Council of Canadian Muslims (which according to online records have received more than $1.34 million in federal funding between them since 2018) may be more careful in their messaging, but they’re still ultimately equivocal about what the world has witnessed. Their tendency towards “two-sideism” and other prevaricating devices have obscured the extent to which they implicitly affirm Hamas’ narrative. If in the face of overwhelming evidence of brutality and cruelty against Israelis your first instinct is to lament “the tyranny and terrorism of the Zionists” or criticize Israel’s democratic leadership, you’ve for all intents and purposes exposed your true character. 

Which it must be said is fair enough as far as some pluralistic protections go. One can oppose the current Israeli government or even critique the State of Israel itself and of course still find him or herself able to avail Canada’s protections of freedom of conscience or expression. We cannot and should not police one’s thoughts per se. But it certainly doesn’t mean that radical groups are entitled to taxpayer dollars or that individuals who cross the line from reasonable disagreements to the promotion and glorification of violence shouldn’t face sanction. 

These basic observations shouldn’t in and of themselves be controversial. Our commitment to pluralism must be uncompromising up and until it comes to undermine the basic security and stability of our own society. As my former boss Brian Lee Crowley has often said: “[we cannot permit] our list of freedoms to become our suicide note.”

Drawing these lines is of course complicated. Our default assumption must be highly permissive. Just because an idea is controversial or at odds with the majority’s views isn’t a reason to exclude it from the public square. The health of our society is measured in part by our willingness to protect ample space for such views. Imposing parameters around the public square therefore comes with great risk. Those parameters can be misapplied, misread, or even wielded by those whose primary goal is to constrain ideas that don’t match their own preferences. Just because it’s hard, however, doesn’t mean that it’s a task that we should shrink from. 

There are perspectives that should rightly be denounced, marginalized, and precluded from receiving public dollars. Even if one is squeamish about laws and policies that criminalize acts like the glorification of terrorism, there ought to be a minimum agreement that we have a collective responsibility to condemn such behaviour in order to effectively raise its social costs and signal to those inside and outside of our society that our pluralism isn’t a license for depravity or violence. 

Canada has essentially bet its future on pluralism. As our population gets more and more diverse, the multiplicity of views will grow and pluralism will be crucial for managing our diversity. I think it’s a good bet. Unlike some conservatives, I’ve tended to disagree with the instinct to mock Prime Minister Trudeau’s assertion that “diversity is our strength.” I think it’s broadly true. But if our pluralism isn’t principled, if it doesn’t involve some limits, then diversity will cease to be our strength and may eventually become the source of our undoing. 

Source: Sean Speer: Shocking pro-Hamas, anti-Israel rallies lay bare the limits of Canadian pluralism

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , ,

Hamas court says women need guardian’s approval to travel

2021/02/17 Leave a comment

Of note:

A Hamas-run Islamic court in the Gaza Strip has ruled that women require the permission of a male guardian to travel, further restricting movement in and out of the territory that has been blockaded by Israel and Egypt since the militant group seized power.

The rollback in women’s rights could spark a backlash in Gaza at a time when the Palestinians plan to hold elections later this year. It could also solidify Hamas’ support among its conservative base at a time when it faces criticism over living conditions in the territory it has ruled since 2007.

The decision by the Sharia Judicial Council, issued Sunday, says an unmarried woman may not travel without the permission of her “guardian,” which would usually refer to her father or another older male relative. Permission would need to be registered at the court, but the man would not be required to accompany the woman on the trip.

The language of the ruling strongly implied that a married woman would not be able to travel without her husband’s approval.

The edict also said that a man could be prevented from traveling by his father or grandfather if it would cause “grave harm.” But the man would not need to seek prior permission, and the relative would have to file a lawsuit to prevent him from traveling.

The ruling resembles the so-called guardianship laws that long existed in ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia, where women were treated as minors requiring the permission of a husband, father or even a son to apply for a passport and travel abroad. The kingdom loosened those restrictions in 2019.

Hassan al-Jojo, head of the Supreme Judicial Council, told The Associated Press that the ruling was “balanced” and consistent with Islamic and civil laws. He dismissed what he called “artificial and unjustified noise” on social media about the edict.

He justified the measure by citing past instances in which girls had traveled without the knowledge of their parents and men had left their wives and children without a breadwinner.

Israel and Egypt have largely sealed Gaza’s borders since Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces in 2007. Israel says the restrictions are needed to isolate the militant group, which has fought three wars with Israel, and prevent it from acquiring arms.

The territory is home to some 2 million Palestinians. All Gazans must go through a lengthy permit process to travel abroad and largely rely on the Rafah crossing with Egypt, which only opens sporadically. The restrictions make it difficult for people to seek medical care or higher education outside the narrow coastal strip.

The ruling sparked criticism on social media, where many accused Hamas of rolling back women’s rights even as Saudi Arabia has eased its restrictions, including by allowing women to drive. The Palestinian People’s Party, a small left-wing group, called on Hamas to reverse the decision.

Zainab al-Ghunaimi, an activist who runs a Gaza-based group focused on women’s rights, said the ruling contravenes the Palestinian Basic Law, which grants equal rights to adults, and means that authorities are “going backwards in protecting human rights.”

She noted that the same legal body allows a woman to marry at age 16 and get travel documents on her own.

Hamas has not imposed the kind of harsh interpretation of Islamic law championed by other armed groups, such as the Islamic State group and the Taliban in Afghanistan. But it has taken some limited steps to enforce the territory’s conservative mores, including the imposition of an Islamic dress code on female lawyers and high school students.

Source: Hamas court says women need guardian’s approval to travel

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