Are you distraught from having to face callous throngs of ignorant masses who not only dismiss your superior understanding of the world, but mock you for it?
Are the frustrations overwhelming from knowing that the 9-11 attacks on New York and Washington were really a plot contrived by Neo-Cons and Zionists, and yet George W. Bush and Dick Cheney remain unpunished?
Have you become clinically depressed when your attempts at economically crippling the Zionist state of Israel go bust because pesky Jews come and buy out all the products you want to boycott?
Then Diana Ralph could be the right therapist for you!
Diana Ralph, denouncing Israel
at the United Church of Canada
You always have been and always will be good, wise, intelligent, beautiful, generous, loving, honest, flexible, zestful, happy, innocent, and unique. Like the Sun, these aspects of yourself are always there. The messages you internalized when you got hurt act like clouds blocking your ability to see the Sun.
I help you to clear away the clouded (incorrect) messages about yourself, to notice again your inherent amazing self, and to free your ability to act in terms of those realities.
We all have been hurt by societal oppressions (sexism, racism, homophobia, able-ism, as well as oppressions from social class, language, religious upbringing, and societal oppression of men). I can help you heal from these hurts and regain your full pride and joy in life. I have devoted my life to ending oppression and injustice. In addition to being a therapist, I am a community organizer and activist on a broad range of issues.I validate the specific damaging impacts of societal oppressions..
But it doesn't stop there! There are other services Ms Ralph offers, like addiction counselling, and let`s face it - all of us are addicted to something. And don`t be discouraged just because for one of her "addictions counselling" resources, Ms Ralph links to Gabor Mate, whom UBC Sociology Professor Emeritus Werner Cohn recently described as a charlatan. Because if you`re at the stage where you need Diana Ralph`s help, you probably have much greater concerns.
As their numbers plummet while the average age of its membership is in the Senior Citizen category, the United Church of Canada is finding some very strange bedfellows in its desperate struggle for relevance.
Unable to find it in a revitalization of religious belief, it has somewhat foolishly turned to finding common cause with radical political movements. In what could be mistaken for an ecclesiastic pantomime of a G20 protest, environmental extremists, anti-Israel fanatics, Omar Khadr aficionados, and immigration reform opponents have all been courted by the current United Church leadership. The result was not new adherents so much as alienating a large number of the rank-and file and continuing the exodus away from the Church's thinning pews.
One of the most controversial and potentially self-destructive moves the United Church has made has been to engage in yet another foray into the quagmire of the Israeli-Arab dispute, with a decidedly anti-Israel bias. Ironically while striving to demonstrate how "progressive" it is, the United Church's embrace of radical leftist ideology has returned it to the ancient, anti-Semitic roots of early Christian theology. The United Church's Working Group on Israel Palestine, whose report recommends a boycott of Israeli settlement goods, heavily draws upon the so-called Palestine Kairos document. That treatise denies a special relationship between Israel and the Jewish people, places all the blame on Israel for its ongoing conflict with the Palestinians, and refers to "the Israeli occupation" as "an evil and a sin that must be resisted and removed." The document, which says of Israelis, "they must liberate themselves from the evil that is in them and the injustice they have imposed on others," is considered by many to be inherently anti-Semitic.
Among the most insidious aspects of the new leftist Jew-hate is its tactic of trotting out ridiculous Jewish anti-Zionist fanatics and displaying them like comical banners at the front of an April Fool's parade. In that vein, the United Church's of Canada's Comox-Nanaimo Presbytery's declaration that they "work with Jewish organizations such as Independent Jewish Voices, which are committed to seeing Justice for the people of Palestine" is less offensive than if Shutzstaffel leader Heinrich Himmler had said "we are working with our Jewish labor camp kapos, who are committed to seeing justice for the Aryan people," but we are only talking about degrees.
Independent Jewish Voices is headed by a 9-11 conspiracy theorist named Diana Ralph. After 12 years hard work of being on Disability Leave from her position of Associate Professor of Social Work at Carleton University, Ms Ralph, who seemed to get around a lot for someone on disability leave, retired from that institution in 2011. With all that additional extra free time, she can now devote herself exclusively to eradicating Jewish national self-determination.
As one might expect, Ms Ralph is not the only 9-11 conspiracy theorist in the organization she co-founded. Her co-Chair and fellow Independent Jewish Voices founder Sid Shiniad shares her views and the organization of fringe radicals is liberally peppered with adherents to a movement that proposes the attack by Muslim terrorists on the World Trade Center and Pentagon was actually the work of "neo-cons and Zionists."
Independent Jewish Voices are, as the National Post's Jonathan Kay observed:
an extremist group whose leaders support a total economic boycott of Israel, defend the UN's original anti-Semitic Durban conference, support the destruction of the Jewish character of Israel through the influx of millions of Palestinians, spread conspiracy theories about the "Israeli lobby," promote the blood libel that Israel deliberately targeted "children playing on roofs" during the Gaza conflict, and cheered on the illegal occupation of the Israeli consulate in Toronto..
If the United Church's leaders think they can shield themselves from being perceived as anti-Semitic by playing footsie with a small group of fringe Jews whose actions and statements could easily be interpreted to suggest serious, unresolved psychiatric issues, they will find themselves sorely mistaken.
Yet in the ranks of the United Church there are still voices of sanity and reason. Reverend Andrew Love of Grace St. Andrew's United Church in Arnprior has launched a campaign to counter the noxious agenda of the denomination's leadership. He says that "there remains an undercurrent of anti-Semitism" in the church. Love has warned that if the recommendations of the Working Group on Israel/Palestine's report are adopted, the United Church, rather than advancing the cause of peace, will destroy its relationship with the Jewish community and render itself irrelevant to playing any role in helping resolve the Israel/Palestine question.
That's an insightful assessment that towers above anything the United Church's leaders have offered on the issue to date. Whether it is one that the Church's leaders heed at its General Council next week will decide less about the future of the mideast than it will about a United Church that is in danger of loosing its bearings.
A group founded by a 9-11 conspiracy theorist and comprised largely of emotionally unbalanced Jews is aggressively lobbying the NDP to reject the front-running candidate, Thomas Mulcair, at its upcoming leadership convention because unlike his rivals, he is a supporter of the Jewish state.
Independent Jewish Voices was founded by Diana Ralph, who has argued that the September 11, 2001 attacks perpetrated by Muslims belonging to the al Qaida terror organization was actually a US government 'inside job.' The group itself is mainly made up of white, middle aged, bitter, childless Jews desperate for attention.
The way they have chosen to feed their narcissism is to try to "stand out from the herd" by being Jews who publicly declare their hate for the Jewish state and anyone who supports it. Independent Jewish Voices lets anti-Semites in the Marxist and Islamists movement use them as cover to deny their desire to see the destruction of Israel is a manifestation of Jew-hatred. In exchange, the useful idiots of Independent Jewish Voices welcome feigned adulation from people who are secretly contemptuous of them. But any sort of attention is welcomed by such people whose unimpressive talents would otherwise not afford them notice of any kind
Not coincidentally, this group of Jewish socialists has chosen to make their announcement at rabble.ca, published by the spouse of Israel-hating NDP MP Libby Davies, herself a supporter of Brian Topp, one of Mulcair's rivals for the NDP's top spot.
UPDATE : The "progressive" Jew-haters that Independent Jewish Voices serve at rabble.ca are upset that the murder of 3 Jewish children in France is being "privileged" above other deaths this week. Employing an insidious moral relativism, the Libby Davies Fan Club ignores that three very young, innocent children were specifically targeted and executed by an Islamic radical expressly for their religion. As is not uncommon for them, these radicals tied to the far left of the NDP have descended into outright anti-Semitism.
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
