Good ol' fashioned Jew-hate from the Presbyterian Church of Canada

The Canadian Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center reported today about a one-sided, anti-Israel presentation by representatives of the Presbyterian Church of Canada that occurred at St. Andrews Church in Toronto on Thursday December 15, 2011. It was the account of a few Presbyterian representatives who responded to the anti-Semitic KAIROS Palestine document  that dismisses violence against Israel and includes terminology such as “The West sought to make amends for what Jews had endured in the countries of Europe, but it made amends on our account and in our land. They tried to correct an injustice and the result was a new injustice.”

The KAIROS Palestine document seeks to delegitimize any biblical attachment between Jews and the land of Israel and explicitly calls for “resistance” against Israel while ignoring the causes of the middle east conflict, Israel’s need for security due to the many and ongoing acts of terror by Palestinians and Arabs against Israelis.  

The document is a disgrace, which wrong-headedly attempts to lend the ideology of Christianity to support Palestinian renunciation of the peace process.  

Rick Horst, the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Canada, reported on his impressions of the Israel Palestine conflict after a trip there and seems to have taken the idiot's guided tour, which features complaints about Israeli "injustice" but neglects to mention the suicide bombings, the Palestinian state TV shows that call for the murder of Jews, and the Palestinians' government-sponsored incitement to violence in their schools and mosques .

Horst, who is also Minster of the Barrie, Ontario`s St. Andrews`s Church, decided to  utilize a common  anti-Semitic canard in his report and said (see from 8:16 in linked video), "Palestinians are daily harassed and abused and treated with indignities that are simply not allowable under international law,  yet it continues to persist  because of frankly the power of the Jewish and Zionist lobbies both in America and frankly all around the world including Canada`.  

You get that? According to the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Canada, the plight of the Palestinians isn't due to their ongoing attempts at terror, or their failure to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. The fact that Palestinians impose the death penalty on anyone who sells land to a Jew doesn't make them an Apartheid state. It's because of an evil Jewish plot. And our politicians' support for Israel, like that of the Prime Minister of Canada, or federal Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney, or Liberal Party leader Bob Rae isn't because they have sided with a free, liberal democracy that provides equal voting rights to all its citizens over an undemocratic entity devoted to terrorism. Horst's implication is that it's because Canada's political leaders are under the influence of the Jews and Zionists.

What Horst is reporting is not a very accurate reflection of the situation in Israel and Palestine. But it is a sad reflection of the deplorable infusion of classic anti-Semitism at the highest reaches of Canada's Presbyterian Church.

UPDATE: Some interesting background on Rev. Horst. It seems the fellow ran for a federal Liberal nomination a few years back while still a member of the NDP. After that was exposed, he was defeated for the nomination in a special re-vote.

UPDATE 2: Here is the document produced by the "Bethlehem Call" to which Rev. Horst responded so enthusiastically.

It produced idiotic, morally reprehensible statements such as:

"Today, the illegal regime and illegal forms of the Israeli occupation of Palestine assumes

dimensions of systemic injustice whereby the unthinkable and unimaginable becomes globally accepted, supported and normalized. This is an example of Empire (global domination) at work."

"The brutality in the “violence of silence” internationally provides an almost impenetrable shield for the Israeli government to implement its evil designs in blatant disregard for human rights and international law. Silence is an opinion. Inaction is an action. We witness decidedly spineless cowardice in failure to resist the Israeli government by the majority of governments, political parties, media outlets, businesses, most of organized religion including Christianity and the silence of  prophets worldwide."

"The deligitimization and criminalization of the Israeli government and its local and international support base is gaining unstoppable momentum."

There's plenty more, all equally stupid.

Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic Bob Rae condemns jihadis

But only the ones who aren't really jihadis in the Prime Minister's office.

Yet he remains strangely silent about the real Canadian jihadis who want to launch The Sea Hitler.

With Mr. Rae's expressed desire to repatriate Omar Khadr to Canada, maybe he was using "jihadis" as a compliment.

Screwing Up Again: Liberals hitch wagon to KAIROS

The most notable achievement of the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper has been to render the federal Liberals ineffectual as an opposition party. Not that they didn't have help from the Bloc Quebecois, whose self-interested positions often forced the Liberals to vote with the Tories. And no one gave Harper more help than the Liberals themselves. That assistance was provided, for the most part, by selecting uninspiring, uncharismatic party leaders, but only slightly behind that is a series of political blunders by which they attempt to over-reach and end up with egg on their face.

They must either think Canadians are stupid, or as a party  the Liberals must be as cynical as the NDP if they think they can keep pushing the "Harper is undemocratic" line. How many times do the Liberals need to get the message from opinion polls and their own fear of facing the electorate that Canadians can see through that unconvincing sales pitch?

Aside from the obvious fact that the Conservatives were democratically elected and haven't done away with a single democratic right, they have a minority government! The other parties can bring in a non-confidence motion any time they like and call a new election. Hardly the stuff dictatorships are made of.

Last year, when Harper prorogued Parliament, the Liberals thought they were on to something. An anti-prorogue group on facebook had signed up tens of thousands of members and there were even demonstrations across Canada. The Liberals thought they had Harper on the ropes.

It turned out Harper was playing rope-a-dope with them.

Anyone familiar with social media knows facebook groups are trends that have virtually no meaning in the real world. A group that was formed to convince a woman to name her baby "Megatron" got more than seven times the number of the anti-prorogue group. The demonstrations attracted a few thousand people in various cities across Canada. Which would almost be impressive until you consider that the numbers at the demonstrations were even less than the combined memberships of the Liberal party and NDP. Which means the federal opposition parties couldn't even manage to get all their own members out in the street to protest against Harper, let alone get the rest of the country worked up.

By the time it was over, Harper and the Conservatives' popularity had actually gone up further in the polls.

Now the Liberals think they smell blood about the Beverly Oda signature issue.

And as usual, the Liberals are going to screw it up.

Because rather than just making it about whether Oda had mislead a parliamentary committee, the Liberals have also decided to Heap praise on KAIROS, the anti-Israel organization that was working against Canadian business interests abroad whose denial of federal funding spurred the controversy.

Just as with their failed anti-prorogue efforts, Harper's popularity will not be harmed by the transparent attempt to capitalize on the issue.

So instead of making this about a politician's integrity, the Liberals have stupidly decided to hitch their wagon to an organization working against government policy. Whether or not people support those policies, no reasonable person would dispute Harper's statement about the responsibilities of a democratic government:

“We were elected to ensure that when we give out taxpayers’ money that that taxpayers’ money is used for purposes that will further the objectives of policy.”  

Some of KAIROS' supporters have claimed that allegations about the organization's anti-Israel stance is exaggerated. KAIROS hasn't helped them by choosing one of their first opportunities to exploit the Oda controversy by publishing a retort to the government on rabble.ca.

Rabble.ca is one of the most virulently anti-Israel media sites in the Canada. Its writers routinely slander Israel as an "apartheid" country, while calling for its sanctions. It is the media supporter of an effort to support terror-organization Hamas with an effort to attempt to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. It supports 9-11 conspiracy loons and Rabble's user forums have called for violent socialist revolution in Canada.

Those are the people KAIROS turned to first for support.

The Liberals, by throwing their lot in with the most fanatical elements of the fringes of the Canadian political spectrum, have yet again shown their main interest is not principled leadership. It's a familiar face of the worst aspect of Liberal Party of Canada politics.

The Liberals are pushing a petition to get Beverly Oda to resign. Based on the petition's numbers, they haven't even convinced all the members of the Liberal Party to sign it, let alone the overwhelming majority of Canadians who have shown complete indifference to this issue.

Here is a video the Liberals produced. It's an embarrassment to them. In the background are chants of  "shame" that sound like they could have been made by the cultists of Queers Against Israel Apartheid during a meeting in one of their bunkers.

The Liberals desperately need a better class of political advisers and consultants.  They way they're going, they are steering Canada towards a Conservative majority in the next election.

UPDATE:  A good Macleans piece that points out how the Liberals are using the KAIROS  issue as a red herring that even they don't believe.

Is the NDP's Joe Comartin getting his talking points from British demagogue George Galloway?





George Galloway spent a good deal of the introduction to his speech at the York Region Islamic Society on November 20 praising NDP MP Joe Comartin.

Comartin applauded proudly beside the defeated British ex-parliamentarian,  then took his rightful place behind the demagogue on the stage as Galloway launched into his familiar narcissistic diatribe about being persecuted by the Canadian government and Jason Kenney and a lot of other unoriginal babble that he has been giving in just about every speech he's delivered for the last 5 years.

But one of the rare new twists he provided was his extended extolment of Joe Comartin, Galloway's favorite man in Ottawa. Is it a surprise that Comartin is now calling for the Federal government to restore funding for the discredited anti-Israel group KAIROS?

And who else is Comartin consorting with? None other than "brother" Zafar Bangash.

Bangesh is an Islamic movement journalist and commentator notable for his desire to exclude school children from learning anything about homosexuality, his admiration for Iranian pedophile Ayatollah Khomenei, and shares his idol's belief that America is "The Great Satan." Bangash is also known as "the Helen Thomas of York Region" who said Israeli Jews should "go back where they came from:the US, Canada Europe, Russia, or whoever is willing to take them in."

A question for the voters of Windsor - Tecumseh is whether they want their parliamentary representative to be someone so closely associated with a bigot and a supplier of funds to a terror group.