In the coverage of the event that tells what actually happened, Jonathan Halevi who speaks Arabic, reports:
Tharwat Muhammad Anwar Nafi’ (ثروت محمد انور نافع), a member of the dissolved Egyptian Upper house, the Shura Council, also attended the protest. In his fiery speech he argued that Israel and the US are behind the military coup and the turmoil in the Middle East.
Here’s an excerpt of his speech: “The Egyptian armed forces, designated to protect the people, are now carrying out massacres in Egypt under the auspices of Israel and USA. What happened in Egypt and what is happening in all Arab states is being done under the auspices of the Zionists and Americans to crack down on any possible democracy or any democratic thinking in the Middle East.”
"Michelle and I were saddened to learn of the passing of Helen Thomas. Helen was a true pioneer, opening doors and breaking down barriers for generations of women in journalism. She covered every White House since President Kennedy’s, and during that time she never failed to keep presidents – myself included – on their toes. What made Helen the “Dean of the White House Press Corps” was not just the length of her tenure, but her fierce belief that our democracy works best when we ask tough questions and hold our leaders to account. Our thoughts are with Helen’s family, her friends, and the colleagues who respected her so deeply."
PLAYBOY: Let’s get to something else
you said more recently. In a speech in Detroit last December, you told an Arab
group, “We are owned by the propagandists against the Arabs. There’s no
question about that. Congress, the White House and Hollywood, Wall Street, are
owned by the Zionists. No question, in my opinion. They put their money where
their mouth is. We’re being pushed into a wrong direction in every way.” Do you
stand by that statement?
THOMAS: Yes, I do. I know it was
horrendous, but I know it’s true. Tell me it’s not true and I’ll be happy to be
contradicted. I’m just saying they’re using their power, and they have power in
every direction.
PLAYBOY: That stereotype of Jewish
control has been around for more than a century. Do you actually think there’s
a secret Jewish conspiracy at work in this country?
THOMAS: Not a secret. It’s very
open. What do you mean secret? ... [Jews have] power over the White House,
power over Congress. ... Everybody is in the pocket of the Israeli lobbies,
which are funded by wealthy supporters, including those from Hollywood. Same thing
with the financial markets. There’s total control.
PLAYBOY: Who are you thinking about
specifically? Who are the Jews with the most influence?
THOMAS: I’m not going to name names.
What, am I going to name the Ponzi guy on Wall Street [Bernard Madoff] or the
others? No.
PLAYBOY: Then how do you make the
claim that Jews are running the country?
THOMAS: I want you to look at the
Congress that just came in.
PLAYBOY: In America you’re talking
about a relatively small community. Jews make up roughly two percent of the
U.S. population. On a worldwide level, the percentage is well under one
percent. Those numbers don’t exactly spell domination.
THOMAS: I get where you’re leading
with this. You know damn well the power they have. It isn’t the two percent.
It’s real power when you own the White House, when you own these other places
in terms of your political persuasion. Of course they have power. You don’t
deny that. You’re Jewish, aren’t you?
PLAYBOY: Yes.
THOMAS: That’s what I thought. Well,
you know damn well they have power.
PLAYBOY: Were you surprised that
people like David Duke and even Hezbollah came out and said you were courageous
and a hero for them?
THOMAS: I don’t want to be a hero to
anyone. I just want to be me, and I want to tell the truth. I want everyone to
accept the truth.
It may be inconceivable for Iranians, in whose country homosexuality is considered a grave sin and is punishable by death, that Canada affords equal rights to Gays and respects sexual orientation as a personal matter. It may surprise them further that legally and in the opinion of virtually every credible person in leadership positions in Canada, an individual's sexual orientation is immaterial to their ability to perform their job.
So it's understandable that homophobic Canadian acolytes of Iran's monstrous dictatorship would try to tie a politician's alleged sexual orientation his exercising his role in government.
That is what, Joshua Blakeney, the Canadian correspondent for Iran's propaganda service, PRESS TV has done to try to rationalize Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird's strong support for Israel.
Previously, in a typically irrational diatribe about a small, unimpressive protest against Toronto Mayor Rob Ford that Blakeney tried to magnify beyond reality, he digressed into a weird, homophobic theory. Evidently forgetting that Gays have equal rights in Canada, as opposed to the persecution they face by his Iranian paymasters, Blakeney suggested Canada's government is "replete with homosexuals" who could be targets for blackmail, thus accounting for particular national policies.
Taking it a step further, Blakeney is now naming names, Clearly quite clueless about how government works in Canada, he has attempted to explain that Canada's stalwart support for Israel is due to, Blakeney alleges, Foreign Affairs Minister Baird being Gay.
John Baird is the most principled, honorable and effective individual to hold the office of Foreign Affairs Minister in generations. He has condemned specific human rights abuses and has been outspoken against dictatorships and nations that trample on freedom, like Iran, more forcefully than any of his predecessors since Confederation.
But what irrational, uninformed people like Blakeney don't realize is that the Canadian Foreign Minister, despite the title, does not make foreign policy. The Prime Minister, with advice from Cabinet has final say on foreign policy decisions, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs would never act without that approval.
Blakeney is someone who is obsessed with conspiracy theories. An apostle of the University of Lethbridge's very weird 9-11 conspiracy theorist professor Anthony J. Hall, the pair seem virtually enraptured in their delusional, bizarre paranoia. Almost every one of Blackeney's PRESS TV reports includes an interview with Hall offering another lunatic conspiracy, like the one where he claimed the Canadian government was killing off wild salmon to subjugate aboriginals in British Columbia.
Whatever John Baird's sexual orientation is may be of import to Blakeney and his Islamist, Gay-murdering bosses in Iran, but to Canadians, the only thing that matters is that he is doing a good job of running his Ministry. And in that, Baird has excelled.
Blakeney commences his deranged report with the statement "whenever a prominent statesman prioritizes the national interest of of a foreign country over the national interest of his own country, it behooves journalists to ask uncomfortable questions."
Prime Minister Harper, like Baird, has plainly articulated the reasons for supporting Israel and they are based on common sense and common interest. Israel is a liberal democracy, like Canada, defending itself from anti-democratic, repressive, terror-supporting, totalitarian states like Iran and Syria.
But it doesn't take a conspiracy theory to explain where Blakeney's interests lie. A person is most likely to represent the interests of those who pay them. As Watergate journalists Woodward and Bernstein understood, to get the answer, follow the money.
John Baird is paid by the Canadian government. Joshua Blakeney is in the employ of Canada's enemy, the government of Iran.
It's the year 2013 and you're in Toronto, the most multicultural, ethnically diverse city in the world. If you were to hear someone talk about how there is a "racial hierarchy," of which white Christians are at the top, you might surmise you were listening to an anachronistic, neo-Nazi idiot who somehow had remained oblivious to the societal advances of the last five decades.
But there's another kind of person who is a proponent of fatuous race-based prejudices. The kind that teaches about racist-sounding subjects like "whiteness theory" and "critical race theory" at the University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, the premier teachers' college in Canada.
Nestel recently authored a lengthy article for a strange fringe group of anti-Israel activists called "Independent Jewish Voices," in which she describes Canada's government as "hell-bent on expanding racism, environmental exploitation, militarization and economic injustice."
And why does she believe that many Canadian Jews support the government of Stephen Harper, which she describes in terms so scathing that anyone ill-informed enough to believe them might confuse our Prime Minister with Benito Mussolini? Certainly not for proficient economic stewardship of the country during a worldwide economic crisis. Nor for sound foreign policy or a cohesive national energy strategy. Nestel concludes that Jews support the Conservatives to reap the "rewards of white supremacy." The OISE professor continues to describe Jews, who in Canada maintain a wide range of political affiliations and diverse public opinions, as "a community anxious to conceal its ideological divisions and maintain its place in the racial order."
Nestel's tome contains such bizarre, anti-Jewish, conspiratorial accusations, it would make a worthy appendage to the notorious Czarist anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Among her preposterous, paranoid allegations, Nestel claims to have "identified an “international racial contract” that extends across nationally defined borders and assumes a collusion of interests between the Canadian and the Israeli states."
"Jews in Canada can be seen in their support for the Conservative government and its policies as being on the “right” side of the “clash of civilizations” a stance which solidifies Jewish whiteness and obscures ideological, sociological and historical differences within the Jewish community. This deal with the devil has been engineered by a small group of prominent and wealthy individuals including Canadian business moguls Heather Reisman and Gerry Schwartz, who managed to dissolve the quasi-democratic Canadian Jewish Congress, replacing it with the Committee for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), a non elected body that dictates Jewish politics across Canada."
Nestel's article is consistent with the sloppy academic belching that characterized the theses she guided which caused the University of Toronto such embarrassment two years ago. She is associated with a highly politicized program at OISE in which adherence to radical ideologies evidently supplants actual education. Part of the program's creed is opposition to Israel and Zionism.
Interestingly, Nestel admits something that her fringe group generally denies, but is well known in Canada's Jewish community; that most anti-Zionist activists like her who self-identify as Jews have no real connection to Judaism, but make their proclamation "to deflect charges of anti-Semitism leveled at those who work"to deligitimize Israel.
Academic freedom is an important principle, and Nestel is entitled to her views, as appalling as they may be. But it is worrisome that students at the University of Toronto's OISE would be indoctrinated to such nonsense without getting a sane counterbalance. For the benefit of its students, it should be incumbent upon the university to ensure that fair balance is a guaranteed part of their education.
While she is well known for her opposition to Islamist terror, with her notoriety for anti-Muslim rhetoric, Pamela Geller, as a subject, was someone whom I generally avoided.
Her campaigns against "Jihad" were notable, but mainly for the reactions they inspired and the way in which it highlighted the hypocrisy that some on the left in America demonstrate when it comes to Free Speech.
Islamism, with its determined mission of suppressing dissent and its fostering of ideals that inevitably lead to terror and repression, is despicable. But just as despicable is prejudice against Muslims and the presumption of guilt or sympathy for terror simply because of someone's ethnic or cultural background. I didn't know if Geller's words justified her reputation as a bigot and, to be honest, I didn't find her interesting enough to inquire, so to my thinking she was irrelevant.
That changed recently when she stirred up a controversy in my part of the world. The York Regional Police Department leaned on one of its chaplains to cancel a speech by her because it didn't reflect their "values of diversity," threatening to remove him as a police chaplain if he hosted her at his synagogue. That would be reasonable if Geller's reputation was true. Yet retaining a Muslim chaplain who attended a conference organized by a group with direct terrorist affiliations, including with al Qaida, demonstrated the York Police's rather odd and hypocritical concept of "values of diversity."
It seemed to me that it would be worthwhile to hear what Geller had to say for herself, rather than to make a judgement based on what others said about her, so I accepted an invitation to hear her speech.
I'm glad I did, because just about everything I'd heard about Pamela Geller was a lie.
There was nothing "anti-Muslim" in anything she said. Her fight is with Jihadism, a fanatical ideology which promotes violence and terror. Geller said her principal motivation is the struggle to preserve individual liberty, which Islamism, like Marxism, fights to repress.
The delivery was fiery and pugnacious, but her message in fact resembled that of Muslim reformers I know, such as Salim Mansur and Tarek Fatah, who struggle to spread the word that it is Muslims themselves who are victimized the most and harshest by Islamist totalitarianism. Like those Muslim reformers, she warned that by turning a blind eye to Islamism in North America, we encourage its growth here.
Geller spoke against the repression of women and female genital mutilation and honor killings and the promotion of terrorism of which most American Muslims find abhorrent, but far too many Islamic leaders, such as those at the York Region Islamic Society, remain silent or even give tacit approval.
I could elucidate further, but that was in essence the entirety of her message and a review of her website and writings suggests that her talk last night is consistent with everything she has said in the past.
That doesn't mean I agree with everything Geller says or the ways she chooses to deliver it.
Her use of quotes from the Quran to vilify Jihadism is unfair. One could as easily cherry-pick quotes from the Old Testament that imply approbation of killing. The importance is not in the wording of ancient texts but the contemporary interpretation within a religion. By some, the verses in the Quran are taken literally, but by most they are considered antiquated and immaterial.
Her controversial anti-Jihad campaign in New York is another example. She had posters placed in the transit system which read, "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man, support Israel defeat Jihad."
I would take issue with the use of the terms "civilized" and "savage." After all, it was the "civilized" Spanish Conquistadors who introduced the sadistic, ghoulish practice of scalping when they fought the "savage" natives of North America.
However, the west is in a war against those who intentionally target civilians for murder, who kill Gays, treat women as little more than property, and who believe free speech is subservient to their dictates. That we should support a liberal democracy fighting to defend its citizens against them is something anyone resembling a modicum of a moral compass should support.
Which raises the question of why Geller's reputation is so rancid.
The answer falls into two categories, one is that there are Islamist organizations whose purposes it serves to suppress her message. Those include Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated groups like the Islamic Society of North America, who portray themselves as mainstream, but have links to the most reprehensible practices and ideologies of hate.
The other are the useful idiots of Jihadism who are primarily concerned with maintaining their image as "community leaders" who promote tolerance, even if it means tolerating a doctrine that calls for suppression of free speech, illiberal treatment of minorities and outright murderous acts.
Unfortunately, some among the so-called leadership of the Jewish community are behaving like self-serving moral pygmies in order to bolster their own image, at what to them must be only the minor cost of truth and integrity.
A group with the grandiose-sounding name of the Toronto Board of Rabbis, which in reality only represents a handful of reform and nominally conservative Jewish congregations, publicly condemned Geller. Referring to her "extreme criticism of Muslims" they say they find her views "distasteful." They are unable to specify any of those distasteful views since they evidently haven't bothered to investigate what she actually has said or written and issued a condemnation based on rumor and reputation.
It is tragic that a group of people with the pretense of being "learned" and "community leaders" behave like small-minded, sanctimonious ignoramuses who are an embarrassment to the biblical teachings they claim to uphold.
Tragic, but not surprising.
It's no secret that there is an implicit understanding among some of the heads of Jewish congregations and organizations. They go out and raise money as "community leaders" and make very good salaries in the process. They are called upon as "official Jews" when the CBC or Toronto Star wants a quote. And all they have to do to maintain that is to play ball and periodically issue worthless platitudes about diversity and cooperation with people who hold them in complete contempt.
Meanwhile the people who actually stand up to those who want to destroy the Jewish State or speak out forcefully against terrorism and for free speech get portrayed by these "official Jews" as a "radical fringe."
But make no mistake about it. Many official Jews profess, albeit very, very quietly, to the radical fringe that they share their concerns. But not too loudly of course, because that might entail a cut in pay and prestige.
There are a few Canadian Jewish organizations, like the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center and CIJA, that do have integrity. But far too many are no better than the appeasers who, in the 1930's felt it would be better to remain quiet and not rock the boat as the Nazis came to power in Germany and went about their work of genocide.
In fact, they are even worse. Because now with the lessons of history, the "official Jews" should know what horrors their appeasement of evil can bring.
Kol Hakavod to the Toronto Board of Rabbis for their strong stand against the anti-Muslim rhetoric of Pam Geller tinyurl.com/cohv5lh
— Bernie M. Farber (@BernieFarber) May 14, 2013
Imagine you'd enrolled in an undergraduate course last fall called "Jewish Women in Historical Perspective" at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. If you thought you would be learning about notable Jewish women like Ruth and Esther from the Bible through to authors like Emma Lazarus and Gertrude Stein, and renowned public figures like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Bella Abzug and their influence on the wider world, you could be in for a big surprise.
The course calendar describes it as being about "Jewish history from biblical to modern times using gender as a category of analysis" including "tensions between competing traditions; influences of paganism, Islam, Christianity." But the syllabus and the course content suggest something very different.
You'd certainly receive a healthy dose of tensions between competing traditions. But rather than Jewish History, it has more of the appearance of indoctrination sessions on the evils of Zionism and the Jewish state delivered by a veritable who's who of Canadian anti-Israel ideologues.
Included on that list are Sylvat Aziz, Palestine Liberation Organization Adviser Elia Zureik, Adnan Hussein, Ariel Salzmann, and a Communist professor named Abbie Bakan whose apparent raison d'etre for the last decade has been to attempt to de-legitimize Israel.
Abigail Bakan addressing a
CASMO al Quds Day gathering
She has also been a featured speaker at al Quds Day gatherings, a 'holiday' invented by Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini for the purpose of rousing Muslim support for Jihad against Israel. At one al Quds event, which she attended at the behest of a Khomeinist group called CASMO, which has posted anti-Semitic videos by the neo-Nazi leader David Duke on their website, Bakan fatuously declared that Israel "is exactly like the apartheid state of pre-1994 South Africa."
Such vicious polemical nonsense has the potential to cause quite a stir. But a directive in the course's syllabus is designed to nip that in the bud at the expense of the belief that university education should be above-board and open to scrutiny. A dictate in the Jewish Women in Historical Perspective's syllabus says:
To build an atmosphere of civility, trust, and participation, and afford reasonable privacy it is necessary and you are requested to abide by the following: -no recording -no cells, Internet, texting -no visitors, no auditors
In order to keep the goings-on secretive, the classes can't be recorded and no outsiders are allowed. It's the Queen's anti-Zionist version of what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. But indications are that what happens at Queen's is more insidious than the affairs at Caesar's Palace.
I telephoned Professor James Carson, the Chair of Queen's History Department under whose aegis the course falls, about its curious nature. He described the course as being about "dialogue." That explanation is indeed supported by another dictum in the course syllabus which states:
"Truths or facts as labels are misleading to understand complex situations. ‘Even handed’ and ‘balanced’ for X may not be acceptable to Y. The important learning event happens in dialogue."
It doesn't require a lot of imagination to picture how that dialogue would be slanted in a course where most of the "authorities" are members of a group called "The Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid."
But what I found perplexing was how something purporting to be a university history course could declare that truth and facts are "misleading" and secondary to a dialogue comprised of feelings and emotion.
It may serve the ideological purposes of the instructors to wave aside facts like five Arab armies tried to eradicate Israel upon its inception as a state, or that the Hamas charter calls for Israel's destruction and endorses the killing of Jews, or that Palestinian state television produces children's programs that glorify suicide bombers and call for war against the Jews. To these Queen's academics, "the important learning event" is the Palestinian feeling of oppression.
But how could that possibly be categorized as history?
Professor Carson attempted to explain it to me using an example from a course he teaches about the First Nations In North America.
He said that the Canadian Indian Act came into being in 1876 and from the government's perspective, it was to "civilize" the First Nations but from the aboriginals's point of view it was an act of "genocide." Carson felt that was an example of how there could be different perspectives on what constitutes a "fact."
I challenged that, observing that there were indeed indisputable facts in his example. The Indian Act was enacted in 1876, the actual wording of The Act is something that can be verified. The intent of these facts could be open to interpretation, but the facts themselves could not.
That agitated Professor Carson, who curtly replied, "I'm not going to engage in a forensic examination of the syllabus with you, thank you for your time." Then he hung up on me.
It's easy to sympathize with Professor Carson's frustration. It would be tremendously difficult to do a forensic examination of anything if you don't believe there's such a thing as a verifiable fact.
It seems the syllabus and curriculum has changed a bit for "Jewish Women in Historical Perspective" in the coming term. For the sake of that course's students and the integrity of Queen's University, it would be a good thing if their History Department's appreciation of historical facts changed along with it.
From a review of The Trial of Christopher Hitchens in the moronic, neo-Marxist website rabble.ca, published by the same-sex spouse of NDP Deputy Leader Libby Davies:
Immediately after the September 11 attacks, he spoke of caution, of not veering into overreaction, yet soon he was picking fights with anyone who dared question U.S. reaction or even contextualize the attacks as "Anti-American" or worse. His early smears of Noam Chomsky and many others allowed for the entry -- even into some quarters of the Left for a short time -- of talk of loyalty and patriotism.
Hitchens became the patron saint of what some came to call "The Decent Left," those who signed the "Euston Manifesto." Seymour’s first book, The Liberal Defence of Murder, gives a history and analysis of this tendency, and is well worth the read. But Hitchens went far beyond even the "decent left" in his calls for civilizational warfare, his shocking and even genocidal Islamophobia (stating that he refused to share a planet with this "enemy"), even, tragically, his disavowal of his early and stalwart anti-Zionism.
The review is peppered with the predictable vapid Marxist jargon; reactionary, comrades, revolutionary socialism, McCarthyist and so on...
Diligent work by the blogger Blazing Cat Fur exposed the Jew-hate of Canadian Shia groups who use anti-Semitism as a scapegoat for the murderous internecine violence between Muslims in Pakistan.
As we bring more Muslims into Canada from backwards counties dominated by hateful ideologies, we're going to see more of this.
This type of insane, conspiracy-laden hate is routinely promoted by deplorable hatemongers like Zafar Bangash, the Imam of the York Region Islamic Centre and various local Shia Muslim groups with links to Iran.
A reader sent a photo of a sign up at the York University Student Centre
and the two students manning the desk inside
The university, with a campus in the north part of Toronto, has denied it has such an atmosphere in a petition filled with academics, many of whom have questionable reputations, but it seems integrity and honesty are not on the curriculum at Hamas York University.
A rancid melange of hummus and hatred will be served up at the municipally-owned Scarborough Centennial Centre when the Khomeinist Canadian Shia Muslim Organization (CASMO) holds its annual dinner and al Quds seminar there this Friday night.
Ward 10 Councillor Pasternak
The news of this event just became public and has outraged Ward 10 Councillor James Pasternak. "It's late in the day to get this cancelled, but the City of Toronto should be playing no role in providing space or shelter to groups that promote hatred and intolerance and I'm shocked they were allowed to use city facilities this year," he said in an exclusive interview with Eye on a Crazy Planet.
The al Quds Day rally planned for the following afternoon at Queens Park has already generated a whirlwind of controversy because of the racist invective featured at last year's rally which CASMO had organized. It featured a local acolyte of Iran's regime, Zafar Bangash, who furiously spewed at US President Barack Obama, to whom he referred as "that black man in the White House" and declared his aspiration to witness a massive Muslim march on Israel to impose Islamic law there, presumably after all its non-Muslim inhabitants were slaughtered. The ravings of Shia speakers spouting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories at the rally became widely known and publicly reviled. The ensuing scrutiny discouraged CASMO from being the applicant for this year's rally.
CASMO received national notoriety after posting anti-Semitic videos of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke on its website. After that public expression of Jew-hatred was publicized, first through through blogs and then the mainstream media, the ensuing humiliation led them to proclaim their ostensive opposition to anti-Semitism while continuing to espouse conspiracy theories about "international Zionism". The Shia group hosts an al Quds Day event to honor Iran's late, theocratic dictator, the Ayatollah Khomeini, who proclaimed the last Friday of Ramadan as a day to rally Muslims to the cause of the elimination of Israel.
Last year, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and Councillors Doug Ford and Pasternak attempted to have the city deny permission for CASMO's use of the Centennial Centre for the dinner. According to City policy, the decision had to be made on the basis of whether the applicant violated the City's anti-Discrimination policy.
Toronto's Manager of Equity, Diversity and Human Rights was the person who was left to make that initial decision. But in a strange twist, that Manager, Uzma Shakir, had written inflammatory anti-Israel articles for the radical leftist website rabble.ca in which she asserted that because of the Canadian government's support for the Jewish state, Muslim immigrants do not owe their full loyalty to Canada.
For his part, Councillor Pasternak intends to contact City officials to ensure warnings are issued to CASMO, as they were last year, and that the gathering is monitored for compliance to make sure the type of hatred invoked at their 2011 Queen's Park rally is not repeated on City property.
"I'm highly offended that groups like this are allowed to spew their hate both on City property and on the steps of the Legislature," Pasternak stated. "There should be no place in the City of Toronto for such groups that attempt to bully and promote hatred and intolerance."
A spokesperson for Mayor Rob Ford's office said the mayor will review the situation regarding the CASMO al Quds dinner and determine which appropriate steps should be taken.
Last year, one of the low points in civic engagement in Ontario was an anti-Semitic hate rally at Queen’s Park held by local Shia Muslim organizations to commemorate what they refer to as “al Quds Day.” This is an event in the Shia calendar initiated by the brutal Iranian despot Ayatollah Khomeini to try to garner support for the destruction of the Jewish state and the so-called liberation of the Holy Land of Israel from the Jews, to be replaced by an Islamic state.
Politicians of al stripes were shocked and embarrassed that an event was held at the seat of Ontario’s government that was anti-Semitic and featured hate mongers like Zafar Bangash, a notorious supporter of the vicious Iranian dictatorship which persecutes and murders dissidents and minorities. Last year, Bangash called for a Jihad against Jerusalem whereby Islamic law would be imposed upon Israel.
In a startling new development, another ‘al Quds Day’ rally at Queen’s Park on August 18 was just announced by a group calling itself the al Quds Committee.
The Sergeant-at-Arms of the Ontario Legislature must approve all demonstrations held at Queens Park. As of 9 am today (July 31), the Sergeant-of Arms office confirms that an application for the al Quds Day demonstration has been submitted but not yet approved.
A seemingly innocuous storefront operation called Beit Zatoun, in downtown Toronto`s funky Mirvish Village, peddles cheap anti-Israel propaganda literature and expensive Palestinian olive oil. A couple of weeks ago, it was the scene of a gathering of grungy fanatics intent on venting their hatred for a democracy surrounded by barbarity.
I was asked to observe by The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC), an organization that advocates for tolerance and provides education about the Holocaust and other examples of the horrors that befall civilization when the basic rules of human behavior break down. I do some work for FSWC on occasion and they wanted me to check out a lecture by Eva Bartlett, a member of the extremist anti-Israel organization, the International Solidarity Movement.
Some of the propaganda art on display
A dismal turnout of about two dozen hard-core anti-Zionists (and I) were the only attendees of the two and a half hours of tedium on June 14th
that had been promoted by the free weekly Toronto newspaper NOW.
With a backdrop of
an exhibit called “A Child’s View of Gaza,” a handful of drawings depicting Jews as bloodthirsty
killers and Palestinians as innocent victims, Ms Bartlett narrated a slide show
that duplicated the message of the artwork. The Canadian Arab Federation’s
former President and Vice President Khalled Muammar and Ali Mallah, Sea
Hitler Gaza boat hysteric David Heap, anti-Israel zealot Karin Brothers and a
smattering of familiar faces from the local anti-Zionist scene made up the whole of the audience. The room resembled a residents’ dietary committee
meeting at a geriatric centre but with worse fashion-sense; the average age of the attendees being about
68.
The anti-Israel community in Toronto is relatively small and close-knit, characterized by a paranoia and narcissism which makes for a curious conflict of needs. On one hand they relish attention, but on the other, they deplore being made to look ridiculous, which given what they say and do is a frequent outcome. It was therefore a little amusing and not unexpected when, prior to Bartlett beginning her talk, she and a frumpy, white-haired woman wearing a Canadian Gaza Boat t-shirt gave me the distinction of approaching to ask my identity. I told my name to Bartlett, who is wispy, high-strung and appears to be in her mid 30's,and she further inquired, "are you Blazing Cat Fur?"
Blazing Cat Fur is a conservative, pro-Zionist Toronto blogger who has been responsible for breaking a number of stories about Islamic extremism and abuse of authority by government and unions at the local, provincial and federal levels. A soft-spoken fellow, he does this all on his own time and expense and his work has often attracted international attention, as in the case of the Valley Park Middle School Mosqueteria. That the coterie of kooks at Beit Zatoun would be so intimidated at the possible presence of that lone, mild-mannered, independent citizen journalist tells volumes about their neurotic fear of being deprived of approbation.
The message of Bartlett’s talk was as vicious as it was facile, saying, “all of the problems in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria are because of the
Zionists.” The so-called peace activist stated that “violent resistance is
legitimate,” while making continual reference to Palestinian “martyrs.” What made this all the more ironic was that the lecture was sponsored by an organization that deceptively calls itselfCanadians for Peace and Justice in the Middle East .
Photographs of one Palestinian family after another appeared on the screen with Bartlett describing each as
“desperately poor.” These families had two, three, six, eight children or more
with most about to expect another soon. Without her realization, Bartlett’s lecture
undermined the message she was trying to convey, that Israel is the sole cause
of the Palestinians' problems. Any middle class North American family would also
be desperately poor if they were to continue to have households of up to
a dozen children without the means of supporting them. Bartlett provided
the additional example of the family of her husband, a Palestinian from Gaza,
who she said had fifteen (15) siblings and also grew up “desperately
poor.” This brought to mind the saying of Israel's Prime Minister Golda Meir, that "peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us." The lack of responsibility in producing multitudes of children they cannot properly care for reiterated that in Palestinian society, children are often just another weapon for propaganda and fodder for jihad. With their pathological fixation on Israel being the cause of all the world's ills, such obvious insights eluded Bartlett and her cultish audience.
The tragedy of events like Bartlett’s speech, as
uninfluential and unimportant as they are, is that by investing all their
energies into trying to delegitimize Israel under the guise of peace activism,
such people merely entrench lies and polarize fanatics into postures that make
achieving peace in the middle east an even more difficult prospect.
David Heap with Eva Bartlett (left)
An unusual addendum to the evening came about in the question and answer period following Bartlett's presentation in a furious tirade by Sea Hitler organizer David Heap. A pudgy, slovenly-looking man with a double-chinned face and neck perpetually full of stubble suggesting an impersonation of the late Yasser Arafat, were you to see Heap while driving past a street corner, your immediate concern might be that he would try to wipe your windshield with a greasy rag. Like so many of his cohorts, he comes off as unrelentingly bitter and aggrieved.
On this occasion, when considering why the media didn't give nonentities like him and Bartlett more attention, Heap angrily railed against a small but effective organization called Honest Reporting Canada. Run almost single-handed by a thoughtful young man named Mike Fegelman, Honest Reporting Canada (HRC) monitors media for distortions and falsehoods they broadcast about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and publicizes them.
Heap indignantly alleged that Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reporters had privately told him they would like to do more stories on Palestine, but the focus from HRC had made their editors wary of it. The attention has compelled the CBC to have to apologize and correct a number of erroneous reports. If Heap's account was true, then having to ensure accuracy in their reporting on a subject must have been a daunting enough prospect for the frequently inept news service of Canada's state broadcaster to make them reluctant to approach it.
Thus Heap's confession of frustration at an evening of bias confirmation, like Bartlett's lecture itself, provided an unintended value; not to them, but to others. The truth that emerged from their huddle of self-affirmation and self-congratulation is not of how much they have accomplished, but of how little and how self-discrediting they are in the process.
I'll get you, you Zionist antagonist!
And your little dog too!
UPDATE (July 7): Ms Bartlett came across this piece which was graciously recommended by National Post Comment Editor Jonathan Kay. Apparently she became so upset that she took to writing an angry essay about it in an anti-Semitic, 9-11 conspiracist website called deLiberation. It also features writers like Jew haters Greg Felton and Gilad Atzom, lunatic Jihad-advocate Lauren Booth, and a slew of 9-11 conspiracy nuts such as Alan Hart and Martin Iqbal, plus links to the Holocaust-denying site Veterans Today. The approving user comments on her piece equal or surpass in hate and bigotry the sort of things one would expect from the neo-Nazi website Stormfront.
"Peace" activist Bartlett, who is a big fan of the terror group Hezbollah, cites discredited 9-11 conspiracist Richard Falk as a "respected" source along with other equally vapid and dishonest attempts to obfuscate an obvious truth. If the leadership of Gaza would explicitly recognize Israel's right to exist and unequivocally commit to a cessation of violence, there would be peace. But we never hear that from these fake "peace" activists, do we?
Oh, and here's an important video about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, home to one of the fattest populations on Earth:
To understand the editorial slant at Walrus Magazine, it would be appropriate to remember that Marci McDonald's anti-Christian screed, The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, was a drawn out version of an article making the same arguments that she wrote for that "progressive" Canadian monthly.
The basic premise of McDonald's much discussed commercial flop was that the Conservative government was driven by a fundamentalist vision of Christianity that believed in an "End Times" scenario. McDonald accounted for Conservative support for Israel was motivated by a urge to hasten the Apocalypse. There was no actual evidence to support McDonald's profoundly ridiculous contentions which singled out Christian and Jewish influence in government as being secretly motivated by religious fanaticism or Zionist fervour, whereas members of any other religious groups got a free pass.
The possibility that Conservatives who happen to be Christian were influenced by their faith's principles of charity, honesty and justice was evidently outside the scope of McDonald's thinking. Similarly, that support for Israel could be due to its shared values with Canada, such as democracy, free speech, an independent judiciary and equality before the law, and that it is in conflict with some of the most repressive, violent, anti-democratic countries in the world, was not something that could permeate McDonald's brain. In her obsessive bias, it could only be more evidence of a sinister conspiracy between Christian fundamentalists and Zionists.
Now, Walrus has clutched on to McDonald's vacuous argument in a way that suits it best, as a comic strip. In this case, one that is filled with anti-Semitic imagery and political bigotry against Christian belief.
The comic projects that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's opposition to the unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood is part of his scheme to bring about Armageddon and The Rapture.
The fact that Harper has not made any statements as a political leader that suggest he has any such beliefs are irrelevant. This anti-Christian narrative is one that the radical Left in Canada has forcefully incorporated into their way of thinking, immaterial of the overwhelming body of evidence that contradicts it.
But why should that be any surprise? These are the same sort of fanatics who continue to embrace Marxist-influenced socialism after that discredited ideology contributed to the murder of 100 million people by Communist Russia, Mao, China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Castro's Cuba, Kim's North Korea, et cetera.
The people at Walrus evidently have a hard time learning.
You can see the comichere at Honest Reporting Canada
The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education is a wonderful centre for self-esteem. Its tax-supported programs are living proof that lack of intelligence need not be an impediment to getting an advanced university degree.
Fortunately for prospective employers, these degrees are offered in easily identifiable programs with fatuous-sounding names like Sociology and Equity Studies in Education. (SESE). That program achieved its greatest fame for having produced an anti-Semitic thesis in 2010, which broke ground for being the first student paper to be denounced by both the governing party and Opposition in the Ontario Legislature.
Now Sheryl Nestel, the same academic advisor to a pair of poorly researched, bigoted polemics that caused the controversy last year, has a new protege who has created a vapid anti-Israel screed to remind the public of the wasteful spending we throw into certain areas of academia.
In "The Appeal of Israel: Whiteness, Anti-Semitism, and the Roots of Diaspora Zionism in Canada," its author, Corey Balsam, who was awarded a Master's Degree on its basis, cites marginal academics and pseudo-academics such as Abigail Bakan, a board member of Mohamed Elmasry's anti-Semitic Canadian Charger website, anti-Israel fanatic Yves Engler, the deranged anti-Capitalist website Znet, and in his acknowledgments, thanks notorious 9-11 conspiracy theorist Diana Ralph.
Filled with anti-Semitic tone ("the elite British Jew Baron Walter Rothchild"), half-baked efforts at psychoanalysis ("In Freudian terms, the end of a Jewish state is perceived as akin to castration and therefore something to be resisted at all costs"), and obsessively focussed on circumcision and Jewish body types, Balsam's thesis is a reminder of Judy Rebick's admission that radical activists often are acting out from their own personal psychological and emotional problems. That was clearly the case of the two previous anti-Israel theses for SESE guided by Nestel, both of which had lengthy introductions in which the authors described their childhood traumas and how it led them to their present-day activism.
Another question that arises in the case of individuals like Mr. Balsam is, are they too stupid to understand the material they reference or are they intentionally deceitful about it? A case in point is his assertion that "Under the leadership of Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky (1880-1940), the revisionist movement took a much more right-wing, even fascist, approach to the achievement of Zionist goals."
Balsam cites Jabotinsky's famous "Iron Wall" article as proof of Zionism's "fascist" approach. But what fascist would write (in the same article, but which Balsam omitted):
"this does not mean that there cannot be any agreement with the Palestine Arabs. What is impossible is a voluntary agreement. As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope in return for either kind words or for bread and butter, because they are not a rabble, but a living people. And when a living people yields in matters of such a vital character it is only when there is no longer any hope of getting rid of us, because they can make no breach in the iron wall. Not till then will they drop their extremist leaders, whose watchword is "Never!" And the leadership will pass to the moderate groups, who will approach us with a proposal that we should both agree to mutual concessions. Then we may expect them to discuss honestly practical questions, such as a guarantee against Arab displacement, or equal rights for Arab citizen, or Arab national integrity. And when that happens,I am convinced that we Jews will be found ready to give them satisfactory guarantees, so that both peoples can live together in peace, like good neighbours."
The "Iron Wall" that Jabotinsky alludes to is an enforced creation of a democratic Jewish state, and as he says in the essay:
"What need, otherwise, of the Balfour Declaration? Or of the Mandate? Their value to us is that outside Power has undertaken to create in the country such conditions of administration and security that if the native population should desire to hinder our work, they will find it impossible. And we are all of us, without any exception, demanding day after day that this outside Power, should carry out this task vigorously and with determination.In this matter there is no difference between our "militarists" and our "vegetarians". Except that the first prefer that the iron wall should consist of Jewish soldiers, and the others are content that they should be British."
Say what one will about the British during the Palestinian Mandate, but their behavior was honorable and no intelligent, honest person could possibly describe it as "fascist." One need not look far for other ludicrously misleading statements from Balsam, such as "many Canadian Jews, particularly workers in the garment industry, “rejected Zionism as unfeasible, in favor of class solidarity, or out of loyalty to a project of internationalist struggle for progressive social change." Balsam doesn't even seem able to follow his own arguments from one paragraph to the next, because only a few pages earlier, he wrote, " Labour Zionism became the dominant Zionist ideology in the 1930s and remained so into the nascent years of Israeli statehood." Perhaps Balsam is unaware that the Garment industry was heavily unionized and formed the core of the Zionist Labour Movement in Canada in the 1930's.
Of course, intelligence and honesty are not hallmarks of OISE's SESE program, which seems exclusively devoted to demonization of western capitalist democracies, fanatical hatred of Israel and the promulgation of hare-brained racist theories hiding behind the veneer of "Equity Studies." The program promotes values that are the polar opposite of what fair-minded democracies have been striving towards. As we as a society aspire to treat everyone on their own merits as an individual, SESE continues to proselytize an ideology that views everyone less as an individual than a representative of a racial group. An ample illustration is another Master's Thesis recently guided by Nestel that asserts that Western feminists opposed to female genital mutilation are motivated by racism and their obsession with genetalia. It is an approach that can lead nowhere but continued racism, and the University of Toronto would be well advised to reconsider the continued existence of a program such as SESE which remains an embarrassment to the university's reputation.
UPDATE: Werner Cohn's analysis elucidates the total absence of scholarship in Balsam's thesis
Blogger Blazing Cat Furchronicled the CASMO-organized al-Quds Day rally at Queen's Park on Sunday, August 28.
Speakers spewed hate-filled, racist invective.
Mayor Rob Ford and Councillors Doug Ford and James Pasternak attempted to prevent CASMO from using city property, but were stymied by the City Manager. Questions remain about how and why the City Manager reached the decision to allow a hate group to use city facilities while denying other city facilities to a peaceful, legal gathering the very same day.
UPDATE: An individual identified as representing the United Church of Canada lends support to the bigots and racists of CASMO:
Brian Lilley and Tarek Fatah discuss the hatefest at Queen's Park: (Video courtesy of Blazing Cat Fur)
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