"Anti-Semitism" Committee A Rearguard Defence Of Israel's Crimes

It's nothing new really - the right wing, who can barely make their lips form the words "anti-racism", spend boatloads of cash to "take a stand" against anti-Semitism. Except that what they're really defending are the odious actions and policies of the state of Israel. That's exactly what this hokey Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism is all about.

When there was serious, life-threatening anti-Semitism prior to and during the Second World War, with the rise of Jew-hating fascism, did the Canadian Parliament set-up any special committees? No, the Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King pronounced that "none is too many" and turned away desperate Jewish refugees. Back then the Jews weren't of any particular political use to the ruling class in Canada or the US or the UK - or numerous other countries that turned them away. It's still the case that most Jews aren't of any particular political interest to the Canadian political elite. Most Jews don't live in Israel and aren't any more pro Israel than the rest of the population. In fact, this bullshit "coalition" specifically excluded a Jewish organization that didn't have a pro-Israel agenda, Independent Jewish Voices of Canada.

It's also worth noting that Parliament has never set up a committee to combat Islamophobia - even as Muslims suffered job and income losses, suffered harassment and attacks in the streets, campaigns against their places of worship and demonization in the media, not to mention no-fly lists that disproportionately target Muslims, etc. But then Canada's Parliament has facilitated that particular form of discrimination and oppression.

Nor has there been a coalition to combat homophobia, a fact that gay, former MP Mario Silva might want to ponder as he stands shoulder to shoulder with Tory MPs who would happily take away his right to get married, enjoy same sex spousal benefits or any other legal equality that has been fought and won in the last thirty years.

But, besides demonstrating an utterly craven hypocrisy on the question of racism, the existence of this committee also demonstrates something of greater significance - after all, we knew that Parliament was a corrupt dung heap filled with sycophants and toads. Israel and its racist, genocidal policies - it's Apartheid - is suffering the deepest international crisis of legitimacy in its history. The old methods of justifying Israel's uncivilized and inhumane practices by referring to the inhumanity suffered by the Jews during the Holocaust and, more generally, as a result of European anti-Semitism, has faded in potency. After all, why should the Palestinians be punished for crimes committed by Europeans over half a century ago?

Nor is the underlying racist, colonialist justification holding the same weight as it once did. The argument that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East is less impressive when not only are their Arab neighbours overthrowing dictatorships in favour of democracy, prominent Israeli officials have more than once expressed their dismay that they are losing "reliable" leaders. The truth is revealed that Israel's existence depends precisely on neighbouring dictatorships to suppress the solidarity felt by the Arab peoples of the region for their Palestinian brothers and sisters. The $2 billion/year that the US spent to prop up Hosni Mubarak actually saved billions more that Israel didn't have to spend on its military in fear of being swamped by the hostile nations around it. Israel could instead focus on their real goal and pleasure - squeezing the Palestinians bit by bit, through illegal settlement expansion, though constant harassment and humiliation, through economic destruction of any indigenous economy, with the goal of driving them out and taking over the whole of "eretz Israel" - from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. This has been the goal from before the founding of Israel and has never been particularly hidden.

And just as Israel's "democratic security" depended upon pliant dictatorships for neighbours, it is dependent upon a pliant dictatorship to rule over the Palestinians. The real outrage over Hamas, and the illegal and ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip is entirely about the fact that the Palestinians - even faced with the full horrors of Israeli Apartheid, refused to submit and voted for a party not sanctioned by their Israeli/American overlords. They are to be punished in perpetuity for voting incorrectly. But as the recent high profile fiascos (and massacres) involving anti-Israel protestors has revealed - whether it is blockading aid boats or shooting unarmed protestors on Israel's border - Israel is just another tinpot dictatorship that allows a small minority within its borders to vote and have full rights.

What Mario Silva - happily voted out in my riding of Davenport - and the goons on Toronto council who tried to deny funding to Pride based upon the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid don't realize is that they are fighting against the wheels of history. And with the revolutions in the Middle East still roiling and reshaping the region (and the world), the wheels of history have just sped up. Their pathetic committee will have no real impact on the inevitable: Israeli Apartheid will be revealed for what it is and defeated.

Anti-Semitism on the rise at Canadian universities, committee says - The Globe and Mail

Toronto Council Bans Everyone Everywhere Who Has Ever Had An Independent Thought

Newsflash: failed-mayoral candidate Georgio Mammoliti and creepy-mayoral candidate Rob Ford took a break from swatting each other Three Stooges style to put forward a jointly sponsored motion to protect the citizens of Toronto from Free Thought.

"It is obvious that there are a lot of scumbags, probably unemployed bums and thrill-seekers, who are running around threatening our way of life with radical ideas," said Ford, while he plucked the wings off of pigeons to demonstrate his commitment to a clean city.

"AAaaaaaaaaah!," Georgio Mammoliti added. "Want make Toronto people think! Must be crushed."

The idea for the motion came to the two city councillors after reading a news story that revealed both Dustin Hoffman and Meg Ryan had backed out of attending an Israeli film festival after Israeli commandos were forced to kill several unarmed passengers on a Gaza aid flotilla in international waters. Israel was ruthlessly and unfairly singled out for responsibility in the deaths of the 9 Turkish nationals as though it were their fault.

"People die all the time," said an Israeli spokesperson. "Why are the media only talking about people we killed? Why is nobody talking about heart attacks and strokes? They kill a lot more people - almost all of them unarmed civilians."

The councillors agreed. "These people are scumbags," Ford noted. "AAaaaaah!" concurred Mammoliti.

While the soon-to-be-banned actors were the spur for the motion, it also includes mention of several other potential terrorists. 

Ireland recently expelled an Israeli diplomat after the alleged illegal use of forged Irish passports in the killing of a Hamas official in a Dubai hotel in January.

"Ireland is banned," said Ford. "All of 'em. Have you seen that country? It's filled with goddamn redheads. And you know what red is - it's the colour of communism. We're better off without 'em."

New Pentagon Supremo David Petraeus is also being proposed to be on the banned list for criticizing Israel. So too did vice-president Joe Biden who told Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that Israel's actions were costing America lives in the Middle East.

"What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace," he said.
British journalist Jonathan Freedland, who writes for the Guardian, is also on the list for penning an article that pointed out that Israel's friends increasingly also think that they are nutso, including several high profile people in the American foreign policy establishment like Anthony Cordesman - not to mention the relatively new Jewish organization J Street, which is critical of the crazier aspects of Israeli policy.
"These people are scumbags," Ford re-iterated. "Ban 'em. Ban 'em all."
"AAaaaaaah," Mammoliti reiterated.
According to the two councillors they have lined up what will likely be a unanimous vote. One "progressive" councillor who declined to be named told redbedhead that "we'd like to oppose this but we're afraid that we'll be banned too. Or worse, voters might notice we exist and you know what that means - people might have a reason to vote against us. Then what the hell would I do?"

Toronto Council Votes To Silence Dissent

Who the hell are these guys and why do we pay their salaries? I mean, twice in one day these jerks demonstrate their utter disdain for the right to free speech and the right to protest without getting your head cracked in. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't there supposedly some "progressives" on city council? What the hell - first they congratulate the cops for a $1 billion cock-up that left people injured, windows smashed and growing numbers of people and organizations clambering for an independent inquiry. They must be, like, the last people in the city who don't think that G20 policing was a total farrago.

And now this almost-unanimous vote - including "progressives" - to delay future Pride grants because they permitted, under enormous pressure, the right of a group critical of Israel to march in the parade.

Now, I know there's still some people out there that thinks the sun shines out of Israel's arse and that genocide is really just a civilizing mission with a case of bad marketing but to threaten the funding of one of Toronto's most successful festivals in order to squelch any criticism of a foreign government? Would they do the same if the group had been Queers Against Iranian Repression or Queers Against Radical Islam? I suspect not.

I'm not surprised that some of the council scumbags would support this - Mammoliti is a long-time anti-gay bigot who left the NDP provincial caucus because of his opposition to same sex spousal benefits. Rob Ford's ignorance on gay rights is on the record for all to see. But to see that people on the left of city council would engage in this sort of disgusting witch-hunting tactic is truly enraging. I suggest that people send a letter to their councillor asking them why they are spending our money to squash free speech.

Israeli Apartheid, Gay Pride & Craven Journalism

There's no doubt that Palestinians have gotten the shaft the entire world over. Their suffering at the hands of Israeli colonialism and its knock-on effects has been ignored, denied, facilitated and funded to the tune of billions of dollars.

In the immediate aftermath of the Nakba ("the Disaster"), as the founding of Israel is called by Palestinians, nobody was interested in how the Palestinians were made to suffer. To utter this truth in 1948, with the Holocaust so close at hand, was politically impossible in the West. The West, after all, had to take collective responsibility for the suffering and horror faced by Jews in Nazi Germany. They closed their doors to them. They closed their eyes to it. They refused to take action to stop the systematic slaughter. There was no moral authority amongst European and North American governments to say anything because it would expose their own hypocrisy.

But more than that. As far back as Lord Balfour in Britain it was recognized that a European Jewish colony in the Middle East could play an important Spartan role as a client state. As Balfour described it, a Zionist state would be a loyal "Jewish Ulster" in reference to the similar role played historically by Protestants in Northern Ireland.

So the Palestinians were sacrificed in the interests of a multi-layered realpolitik in which they were merely obstacles to larger strategic and political goals.

Not much has changed really - except for the rather important sea change in popular consciousness. The Holocaust, horror that it was, is now mostly a historic memory and is less and less a lived one. The daily misery that is the plight of Palestinians is here and now. The reference to a directly remembered event as justification for every crime and atrocity committed no longer functions in the same way that it once did for Israel's leaders. Even at the level of the elites ruling class commentators like John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have expressed dissatisfaction with the policies of Israel. To be clear, they aren't so much concerned about the plight of the Palestinians as they are at the perception that with the rise of modern Arab regimes, the Israeli watchdog is becoming a liability to American interests in the region.

However, it is also clear that this is a contradictory and fraught process. More and more people may be skeptical of Israel's right to commit genocide and nearly countless war crimes in the name of past oppression. But the media and most of the establishment are still largely and fulsomely supportive of whatever the Israeli state does. And they condemn as beyond the pale, anti-Semitic, etc. anyone who questions this. And, of course, backing them up are the large institutions that politically dominate the Jewish community, collectively known as the Jewish Lobby. Their power to determine policy has been over-state for certain - Israel is supported because Israel is useful to western interests full-stop - but it would be wrong to think that they don't have sway.

All this was a rather long way of saying that our side - the side of Palestinian liberation - is gaining ground in a difficult but inexorable way. Every time Israel commits another war crime it is exposed. Every time Israel grants a concession it is also exposed for the repressive and genocidal apparatus that it still maintains. That's why the massacre on the Mavi Marmara of Turkish nationals participating in a humanitarian mission exploded in Israel's face the way that it did. The groundwork had already been laid by years of dedicated campaigning. And it's also why the petty concessions that Israel is offering up viz the siege of Gaza - without actually lifting a siege widely recognized as illegal - is also generating condemnation. Like the South African Apartheid regime, Israel is in a losing game against the forces of historical progress. The ethno-religious fundamentalism that underpins its raison d'etre are an anachronism that lacks any moral foundation.

The question then, to my mind, is not whether Israeli Apartheid is finished - I believe that we are seeing the beginning of the beginning of the end. It is a question of what methods will be used to sustain the unsustainable. They are, of course, different in different places but here in Toronto we have recently seen a battle fought and won by the pro-Palestinian side.

Recently the Pride Committee of Toronto, dominated by conservative, gay, white men (including the loathsome Kyle Rae), came under pressure from the even more loathsome Harper Tories and then Toronto City Council to exclude from the Pride Parade the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid. The Committee also voted to exclude the use of the term "Israeli Apartheid" on the march.

Fortunately, the gay and lesbian activists and supporters behind QuAIA were persistent and mobilized a multiplatform campaign that ultimately forced Toronto Pride to rescind its ban (including its attempt to force all placards to be pre-vetted by an "ethics committee" - ugh). This happened on June 28 and QuAIA marched on Pride weekend. Yay for QuAIA!

Enter the craven and disposable Star columnist Martin Regg Cohn with his piece on this victory in today's Toronto Star, "Not All Apartheid Is Created Equal". He uses the usual Israeli hasbara method of the red herring. Why are QuAIA talking about Palestinian oppression under Israel and not about Palestinian oppression under Lebanese rule? he asks, suggesting that this is typical hypocrisy. After all, Arabs are given full rights in Israel but other Arab countries don't give Palestinians - their Arab brothers and sisters, no less - the same equal treatment. What's more, gays and lesbians are free in Israel whereas they are oppressed under Muslim/Arab regimes. Then he goes on to suggest that it would be only reasonable for QuAIA to march in the Santa Clause parade, St. Patrick's Day, etc.

Now, this is all utterly, utterly dishonest or the product of a profoundly stupid man. I'm sure Mr. Cohn would rather be dishonest than an imbecile, so we shall grant him intelligence. In which case he would know that the reason there are 600,000 Palestinians in Lebanon is because they were expelled from Israel either in 1948 or in 1967. And nobody has justified the treatment of Palestinians at the hands of Lebanon - or Egypt or Jordan for that matter. But as regards Lebanon, let's show some further honesty. There was a civil war in Lebanon back in the late 1970s in which Palestinians and the Lebanese left were on the brink of victory - which would have dismantled "Lebanese Apartheid" as he calls it.

What happened to that victory? Israel illegally invaded Lebanon, bombed civilian areas, slaughtered Palestinians - remember Sabra and Shatilla? - and occupied the country for 20 years to ensure that such a situation never re-emerged. How did Israel during that occupation bring equality to the Palestinians of Lebanon? The answer: they didn't. In fact, so horrible was the Israeli occupation, so racist against the Lebanese, that the Shi'ites of southern Lebanon who had originally supported Israel against the Sunni Palestinians (and largely Sunni Lebanese left) formed Hizbullah, which drove the Israelis out of their country. And Hizbullah is a vocal ally of the Palestinian struggle and an inspiration to the Muslim world, including Sunnis.

As for Israeli "liberalism" towards gays and lesbians, it has to be said that this is much overblown given the significant and growing power of Jewish fundamentalism in Israel. This year's Pride Parade in Jerusalem was denied a permit for their planned route because it passed by a Yeshiva - a religious school. It was to end at parliament to commemorate and protest the anniversary of the shooting death of two youth at an LGBT event. What's more, the relatively liberal attitudes amongst a majority of the Israeli public are negated by the fact that close to a majority of the population under Israeli rule - which, after 43 years, must be said to include the Occupied Territories - are denied basic civil rights not to mention equal rights more generally. As QuAIA notes:

"Queer struggles against homophobia in Palestine will never flourish as long as Palestinians live under the intolerable conditions of occupation, violence, and Israeli state terror that disrupt and regulate their daily existence. Supporting queer rights in Palestine means fighting the apartheid system that denies self-determination to all Palestinians."

All this is to say that Martin Regg Cohn is exactly what he accuses others to be: a hypocrite. As the Chief of the Toronto Star's Middle East and Asia bureaus he certainly knows this history and the reality of the situation on the ground. He would know that the present Israeli Foreign Minister is an avid and outspoken supporter of ethnically cleansing Arabs from Israel and banning Arab political parties unless they support Israel's right to be an ethnically exclusive state (duh, that's what it means to call Israel "the Jewish State"). And he would know that such ethnic cleansing policies are being carried out both openly and by stealth in parts of the West Bank and, in particular, in Jerusalem as part of a program to "Judaize" the "eternal capital." The fact that he knows all this and can still find the stomach to write such a cringing, schoolyard article thumbing his nose at QuAIA's victory demonstrates two things: 1. Mr. Cohn is pathetic and 2. we are winning. As Ghandi once said: "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."