What happened to the CJC?

St. Paul's Progressive wrote:

I have to say I'm very dismayed with the CJC's opposition to allowing George Galloway speak - especially since Bernie Farber initially said he supported his right to speak, then changed his mind. And contrary to what a lot of people think here, the CJC has been a progressive organization, in the areas of human rights and poverty. In the 1990s they led the fight against extreme right groups. They were very supportive of gay rights long before it was popular. But it seems to be lining up more and more with the agenda of the Jewish right (keeping out Galloway, doing nothing about the JDL) - who I don't think represent the community mainstream.

Bnai Brith also used to be progressive - I remember a time when you could find a lot of NDPers in Bnai Brith lodges - but it's now on the far right. But they are no longer a significant force.

http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2008/08/05/1969/

I say this with dismay because I don't think this behaviour is congruent with the progressive community I grew up with. I'm not talking about Israel's right to exist or Zionism or anything of that nature. I don't think my views are out of the mainstream.

That's a falacy. The fight against the extreme right groups in the 80's and 90's was led by the Native Canadian Center, by Rodney Bobiwash, through Clanbusters, with the help of the ARA. The CJC backed this formation and supported it, and used its profile to win legal definitions against hate speech to be use in law.

Anti Racist Action and the Native Canadian Center is the Native Canadian Center, in Toronto. Most of the front line action against racist skinheads, Zundel and Heritage Front took place in Toronto, and there was more or less a co-ordinated allaince organized between Rodney Bobiwash (who was the director of the NCC) who founded an organization called Clanbusters, and Bernie Farber of the CJC and the ARA, to directly confront these right wing organizations on the ground.

Rodney Bobiwash

Quote:

Rodney gave his time and knowledge and skills, sometimes even jeopardizing his own safety, for the greater good of all Native people. He was the key figure in two successful human right proceedings against hate crimes, resulting in the silencing of the Heritage Front (a neo nazi hate group) in Toronto. He also served as a member of the Toronto Mayor's Committee on Race Relations, co-chaired the Ontario Joint Aboriginal Anti-Racism Task force and wrote extensively on issues related to human rights and anti-racist organizing.

It is a sad thing that more people don't know about Rodney. There isn't even a Wiki article on him, sadly. 

Thank you, and I have heard of him, after reading the link you gave and had forgotten him. How sad is that?

Perhaps someone should start a wiki article on him?

LOL,  but surely it wouldn't take to much? Once started it could be added to by others.

I would, if I was an actual wiki member and not on dial up, as even loading a wiki article takes forever for some reason.

Joey, want to start a wiki article on him?

Okay, no problem, it must be even harder to do than what I imagine it to be though. Perhaps I will start a thread asking if someone wants to start one, and direct them to this thread for the commencing info.

Cueball wrote:

That's a falacy. The fight against the extreme right groups in the 80's and 90's was led by the Native Canadian Center, by Rodney Bobiwash, through Clanbusters, with the help of the ARA. The CJC backed this formation and supported it, and used its profile to win legal definitions against hate speech to be use in law.

Whether or not the CJC led or merely followed though, the point is CJC allied with these anti-racist groups.  They wouldn't be caught dead with people like that today (I don't recall them saying anything about the white backlash in Caledonia, for instance or the candidacy of Gary McHale, for instance). .

I've noticed that since the outcry over the Lebanon operation in 2006, Farber and the CJC have moved further and further into the arms of the Conservative party.  It seems in proportion to the degree of isolation and condemnation of Israel.  Moreover, topics that once were either not addressed or taken seriously, such as the influence of the pro-Israeli lobby in the U.S. and Canada and the one-state solution, are now being openly discussed and contemplated.  This further has unnerved Farber and the CJC, and made them more willing to make common cause with the right.

That's an honest statement.

However backing the banning Galloway as a threat to national security is not reasonable, it is Fascist.

Eliezar, I watched the interview yesterday (it was on the CTV site, don't know if it still is). Farber actually claimed that Galloway would be raising money in Canada that would go directly for the funding of rocket attacks into Israel. You might find that "compelling, direct and honest" but I think it's pretty clear to any reasonable person that it's a defamatory statement unless Farber believes that Hamas was going to take the diapers, medical supplies and other humanitarian aid Galloway brought, put it in a catapult and fling it at Sderot. Farber has a penchant for letting his rhetoric get the better of him and I think this time it could cost him.

Farber's other problem is he's trying desperately not to be outflanked on the right by the Bnai Brith, the JDL or the co-Presidents of the CJC! Remember, his piece in the National Post a week or so ago condemned Galloway but actually supported his right to speak. By that very afternoon, after the banning had been announced, Farber reversed himself (without ever admitting he'd reversed himself) in order to praise the banning and subsequently he went to greater and greater lengths to top himself, Weinstein and others with more and more fanciful language culminating in what may end up being a very fateful interview on CTV.

aka Mycroft wrote:

Eliezar, I watched the interview yesterday (it was on the CTV site, don't know if it still is). Farber actually claimed that Galloway would be raising money in Canada that would go directly for the funding of rocket attacks into Israel. You might find that "compelling, direct and honest" but I think it's pretty clear to any reasonable person that it's a defamatory statement unless Farber believes that Hamas was going to take the diapers, medical supplies and other humanitarian aid Galloway brought, put it in a catapult and fling it at Sderot. Farber has a penchant for letting his rhetoric get the better of him and I think this time it could cost him.

I saw the link FM placed here and heard Farber on another occasion on CTV. Farber actually asked (possibly rhetorically) for what Hamas might use the $45,000 in cash that he handed over to Haniyeh. He rightly speculated that any cash being raised for terrorist groups could very well be used to buy weapons. And it is probably firmly in the realm of fair comment to suggest that a terrorist group like Hamas might use cash for ammunition. Galloway may want to close his eyes to this possibility but I can understand (and I think most others would as well) that Farber would be more than concerened with cash that goes directly into the hands of a terrorist group like Hamas.

What I actually find ironic is that while Galloway complains that his rightb to speak freely in Canada has been stifled he at one in the same time by issuing defamation threats on what many see as fair comment, tries to chill others from being  critical of his work. Not exactly the poster boy for free speech in Canada.

Yes very true aka Mycroft. Problem is that some will use defamation laws frivolously as a means to create a speech chill. So in this case where Canada makes no differentiation between Hamas and whatever divisions it makes internally, according to Canadian law Hamas is a terrorist group. Hence anyone suggesting that cash given to a terrorist group may be used to buy what terrorists need to commit terror (ie ammo etc) is making a perfectly reasonable point. In my view Galloway's bluster about defamation is strictly an attempt to muzzle while he goes on and on and on and on........He should better stick to being led around on a leash by a dominatrix pretending to be a cat  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ButQKpZ3uzg

Eliezer Zusken wrote:

Yes very true aka Mycroft. Problem is that some will use defamation laws frivolously as a means to create a speech chill.

I don't see what Conrad Black has to do with this. Or are you referring to Stephen Harper's lawsuit against the Liberal Party?

remind wrote:

Ah...resorting to personal and gratuitous attacks against Galloway, as opposed to;  recognizing the implications of banning a British MP from Canada, the chill against calling Israel on their actions, the implications of someone like Meir Weinstien, affliated to a terrorist organiztion influencing Canadian government policy,  recogniziing the lies of Farber and much more.

Seems to me that as long as Canada has ruled that Hamas is a terrorist group
Then it is fair game to consider that anyone who provides cash to
Hamas is supporting terrorism. I saw the CTV link posted here and
I think Farber's comments in light of our law were fine.

Remind, he did provide cash, of that there is absolutely no doubt. You can see Galloway here:

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/03/30/interpal-and-the-convoy/

 

providing that cash and making no bones about it. He even challenges his own government to take him to Court. Now he is being a little to cute by half since the UK has accepted that there is a military wing of Hamas which they have relegated as terrorist and a political wing which is legit. No such distinctions here in Canada. So technically Farber is right. By Canadian law Galloway has handed money to Hamas a terrorist group.

Harry's Place is one of the UK's most popular blog sites. And the fact you can't see it doesn't mean you can negate it. The video is one of Galloway in Gaza at a celebration of thousands where he hands over cash, by his admission thousands in cash, to Hamas that he basically admits to smuggling into the country by giving the border inspectors treats.

Remind, it is what it is.

Why is it Zionists always resort to half-truths and lies when charater assissination (the tactic of choice) fails? Hamas is a democratically elected government as legitimate as the Zionist government. That Hamas is regarded as "terrorist", a political designation to be sure, by our own government only serves as evidence as to the moral cowardice of our government.

I imagine these supporters of our government's efforts to slander a man who had the courage to assist a people victimized by the racist and genocidal regime of Israel (as an aside, is it fair to state that those who support Israel by extension support racism and genocide? By Farber's and the Zionists' logic it would seem so ... so you fellows support Israeli racism and genocidal policies - as does the Harper government, yes?) would also agree with Canada's refusal to accept Jewish refugees in 1939 because, after all, it was policy and they were fleeing a legitimate and recognized government.

"...if these Jews were to find a home (in Canada) they would likely be followed by other shiploads. No country could open its doors wide enough to take in the hundreds of thousands of Jewish people who want to leave Europe: the line must be drawn somewhere".

Governments led by moral cowards are always drawing lines.

Eliezer, the chill is in Farber, Irwin Cotler, Allan Dershowitz, Phyllis Chesler et al trying to silence legitimate criticism of Israel by conflating it with anti-Semitism.

"The question before us is whether or not Farber has defamed Galloway in accordance with Canadian law."

If that's the question then a court will decide, but as Farber alleged, on television, that Galloway, an anti-war activist and member of the British Parliament, supports terrorism, then I would suggest Galloway has an excellent case and I hope he takes him for every penny he has. As an advocate for peace, Galloway is more a hero than any of the apologists for Zionist racist supremacy.

Interesting, while banning Galloway, Canada allowed in an open racist who claims PM Harper acted on her behalf for entry to Canada twice.

The lesson here is that racists and supremacists are welcome in Canada and anti-racists are not.

Quote:

"... at a Thursday evening lecture to a Jewish advocacy group, she would speak of the Muslim world as representing "inhumanity," "evil" and "the enemy."

Ms. Gabriel told her audience that the Prime Minister has twice intervened to permit her entry into Canada, in the face of efforts to keep her out."

While a tortured Canadian with an Islamic name is tortured some more by our own government.

 

Yeah yeah. Hide behind the "law". In more distant times that kind of thinking was called the "banality of evil".

One can discuss the principle of Canada's anti-terrorism laws fairly and your point may be a fair one. My comments were focused legally on the threat by Galloway to sue Farber for his comments on CTV. These comments amounted to Farber claiming that Galloway raises money for a terrorist group-Hamas. My position is that in law Farber is correct and such a libel action has no chance. Galloway does this in order to put a chill on Farber's speech while he is free to say whatever he wants which he has again and again.

Cueball you may not like the designation of Hamas as a terrorist group but in Canada it is a fact. That Farber makes use of it is fair comment. Now if you want to have a discussion on the appropriateness of this law I urge you to start another thread.

Hypocrisy is not the issue. We are discussing law. That you want to complicate the discussion of this one legal issue by insinuationg your bellief that Canada is heading down a similar road as did Nazi Germany (absurd in my belief) is off-topic. Farber did not call Galloway a "terrorist". He has claimed that Galloway raises money for terrorist causes. That is true by Canadian law.

If you want to discuss Farber's hypocrisy that is an entirely different discussion.