Hate Laws, Israel Boycotts, CBC Lies, Jew-Haters, and Free Speech

Today Neil Macdonald, a CBC reporter who has often demonstrated particular animus towards Israel and its supporters, wrote a story with the inflammatory and misleading headline," Ottawa threatening hate charges against those who boycott Israel." 

Former Liberal Party strategist and political consultant Warren Kinsella infused some perspective in the discussion of Macdonald's tome by calling it what it is, "anti-Israel horseshit" that gives lots of space to Israel's enemies and none to its supporters.

Kinsella quite accurately noted that the "story simply does not back up the shocker of a headline, that the federal government is “threatening” critics of Israel with criminal charges.  The screed is loaded with phrases and words like “could,” “would be,” “if,” “appears,” and so on.  There is no proof, anywhere, that Ottawa has charged a single person or group. And that raises another factual error: to prosecute a hate crime, you first need the approval of the provincial Attorney General – not “Ottawa.” 

I'm not a fan of the demented fanatics whose existences are devoted to destroying Israel through boycotts, but Hate Crimes prosecution is not the way to deal with them, and as Kinsella pointed out, there's no evidence it will happen in Canada. 

The government is correct. The effort to boycott and eliminate Israel IS the new face of anti-Semitism. The anti-Israel vermin who say that the concept of a Jewish state is "racist" have no apparent problem with any other form of ethno-nationalism in the entire world, particularly not Palestinian nationalism.  There are over two dozen countries in the world with Jus sanguinis (right of blood) laws of citizenship, including Italy, South Korea, Ireland, Hungary, and Greece, but according to the Jew-haters, the only example of such laws being "racist" is that of Israel. Twenty percent of Israel's citizens are Muslim Arabs, who have full rights of enfranchisement, are not subject to segregation in any way, serve in that country's the military, on its Supreme Court, hold senior positions in the diplomatic corps and hold elected positions in the national legislature. The Palestinians have laws imposing the death penalty for selling land to a Jew, have proclaimed no Jews will be allowed to live in a future Palestinian state, and the Palestinian government in Gaza has a founding charter which actually calls for the killing of all Jews.

But according to Canada's anti-Israel activists, it's Israel which practices "apartheid."

Such people aren't only anti-Semites, as Canada's government has said; they're also pathological liars.

But hate speech laws are not the way to oppose them. There's a much better way of dealing with those cretins that doesn't do anything to inhibit genuine free speech in Canada. Expose them for what they are and shun them to the extent that no credible person could justify any relationship with them. Not only is it effective, but it can be fun.

At one of the City of Toronto's Executive Committee Hearings a couple of years ago, I gave a brief talk about my opposition to public funding for Toronto's Gay Pride Parade if it included participation by a bizarre hate group called "Queers Against Israeli Apartheid."  The Gay Pride Parade is different than the week-long Pride Festival, the latter of which involves no formal participation by the motley collection of anti-Israel fanatics. However both the Parade and the Festival are important symbols of support for the Gay community and I'm strongly in favor of them. But I'm not in favor of my tax dollars subsidizing a platform for a gang of anti-Semites to spew their venom. 

At one point in my talk, I referred to the pathetic clique of anti-Israel Jews who, desperate for attention and relevance in their otherwise meaningless lives, allow themselves to be displayed up front, like clowns leading a circus parade, to try to deflect charges of anti-Semitism leveled against them.  I refer to such people as Munchausen Jews, since the only value of their "Jewishness" is their masturbatory need to get attention for themselves as "anti-Israel activists." In fact, some of these so-called "Independent Jewish Voices" aren't even Jews. 

Speaking to the city's Executive Committee, I compared those Jews to kapos, those handful of Jews who helped the Nazis during the Holocaust. In fact, I'm of the opinion they're even worse than kapos, since relatively few people outside of those directly involved knew the extent of Hitler's mechanized infrastructure of mass-murder. But today, fully aware of the possibilities, some of these "Independent Jewish Voices" show up in support of the genocidal Iranian dictatorship at the deranged annual al Quds day rallies calling for Israel's destruction. 

One such person took so much offense at my speech that she walked up to me  after I was finished and while I was speaking to an acquaintance, came up within a couple of feet of me, glaring with hate. She was a wretched-looking woman, about fifty, but with a face lined with bitter crevasses formed from decades of being misery.  An foul woman of no intellectual prowess and no beauty, her "social justice activism" was her sole badge of noteworthiness.  She was enraged that I or anyone could dare to denigrate the one thing that gave her existence meaning.  She seemed to think that her infuriated gaze would make me contrite, or perhaps cause me to melt from its inflamed passion. 

Without interrupting my jovial conversation  I glanced at her, smiled slightly as I would if an interesting insect had crawled by, and then ignored her until she went away. That seemed to really piss her off. 

If you heard someone say that they have "identified a racial contract" that "assumes a collusion of interests between the Canadian and Israeli states, "and that Canadian Jews' support for Prime Minister Stephen Harper is rooted in their ambition, as a community "to maintain its place in the racial order," there's agood chance you'd assume you were listening to some crazy Nazi. It was one of those fanatical anti-Israel "Independent Jewish Voices" who actually said that. 

via twitter

Such people, as repugnant as they are, have a right to say what they want and to boycott what they want without threat of criminal sanction.  

And so do the rest of us.

Despite what these pseudo-intellectual creeps may say, criticizing the speech of someone is not suppressing free speech. If they have the right to boycott Israel, then the rest of us have the right to boycott such deplorable hatemongers, and to advocate to deny public funding and tax-exemptions to them and anyone who employs them.

US President Woodrow Wilson once said, "I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking."

I agree with Wilson (and hope he wasn't talking about me), and like the fact that the most vile people in our society have free speech, because that way we know who they are. Exposing them is much more effective than making martyrs of them by trying to shut them up.

It's critical to remember that if we want to claim to be a free society, we can't take free speech away from even the most terrible of people, for to do so threatens free speech for all of us. 

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Cross posted at THE REBEL