The National Post and Canadian Jewish Congress attack Independent Jewish Voices (again)

skdadl wrote:

[URL=http://yahyaottawa.blogspot.com/2010/02/rebuttal-to-national-post-and-cj... Ralph[/URL] of IJV answers Jonathan Kay's (and others') attacks on her in the National Post.

I didn't know that Antonia Zerbisias is Jewish.  Not that that makes what she says any more or less valid.

You can be Canadian, Greek descent, and Jewish. I hereby bestow the Honorary Jew title on Antonia. She's done more than most to merit it.

SSC, no. That is not what she wrote, although I don't have that compressed text before me (including link to a vid of Cotler's statement). But it was clear from what Zerbisias said that she wasn't focused on anything the daughter did -- she was bothered by Cotler's statement, and she addressed that fairly, without dragging his family into it.

Star Spangled Canadian wrote:

And I hereby rescind the honour. This is the woman who posted a despicable Twitter comment questioning Irwin Cotler's loyalty to Canada because his israeli citizen daughter served in the IDF.

Yeah, the McCarthyites of the National Post jumped on that one. [url=http://drdawgsblawg.blogspot.com/2009/09/toronto-neo-mccarthyism.html]Here's Dr. Dawg's deconstruction[/url] of how the character assassination works. We see it on babble all the time.

I won't respond to SSC's hysterical blood libel here. I'll only say that [b]I question Irwin Cotler's loyalty[/b] to the best traditions of the Jewish people.

SSC, have you watched that video? It's Cotler who drags his family in, not anyone else. And it is Cotler's statement that is the problem. And Antonia puts her question to Cotler, not to his family.

I recognize that it is not necessarily illegal for a Canadian to join the forces of another country, or to endorse that, although the potential for trouble seems to me obvious. (See the very fast footwork that the U.S. DoJ is doing, post facto, to cope with Merkins who have fought with forces that were suddenly deemed hostile. Like, this is highly suspect in law.)

The problem was never Cotler's family, and no one would have mentioned them if he hadn't. The problem is what Cotler said. He is not just any Canadian. He is a former minister of justice, and could be such again. It wouldn't matter who he was talking about joining up with a foreign army -- Canadians have the right to wonder about someone with his kind of official power who would urge other Canadians to do that.

This thread will end soon, but SSC is providing another stirring example of what Richard Falk called the "politics of deflection, the tendency by Israel to attack the messenger in order to avoid the message."

I don't think so, SCC. That is more than the statement of a proud father, although Cotler (to my mind) mixes principle and personal stuff up in a most unprincipled way for a parliamentarian, but maybe he does that on purpose, so as to have a sentimentalist defence to fall back on when someone challenges him on principle.

I do not believe that members of our government -- and I include the whole of Parliament -- should be actively encouraging Canadians to join armies of foreign powers. No, that is not illegal -- until it becomes illegal, which can happen very fast (see the U.S. for examples) -- but is that our standard for MPs and ministers? Oh, great: we can elect him because at least he isn't a criminal?

I'm an internationalist. I hope that one day we won't have these problems. But at the moment, we do. And I wonder very much at anyone who would take away the right of a Canadian citizen to question the wisdom of proselytizing for a foreign army. That's what Antonia did, and it is frightening that she was attacked for it.

skdadl wrote:

[URL=http://yahyaottawa.blogspot.com/2010/02/rebuttal-to-national-post-and-cj... Ralph[/URL] of IJV answers Jonathan Kay's (and others') attacks on her in the National Post.

Thank you for the blog link.
It is not surprising the Independent Jewish Voices should be vilified by the organs of the ultra-Zionist Asper media empire.
What is even more disturbing is the fact that a defense against this outrage is relegated to blogs and not other taken up by other major media outlets which are either complicit or cowed by the implicit threat of being labeled "antisemitic" or an "enemy of Jews" by the lobby.

How different the situation was years ago before the pro-Israel penchant for revisionist history made Albert Einstein one of their own:

Quote:

Albert Einstein, Sidney Hook, Hannah Arendt and twenty five other prominent Jews, in a letter to The New York Times (December 4, 1948), condemned Menachem Begin's and Yitzhak Shamir's Likud party as "fascist" and espousing "an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism and racial superiority."[6]

In 1950, Einstein published the following statement on the question of Zionism. This speech was originally given to the National Labor Committee for Palestine, in New York, on April 17, 1938 but republished by Einstein after Israel's creation.

Quote:

I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state. Apart from the practical considerations, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight without a Jewish state.[7]

....
It is clear that Albert Einstein did not support political Zionism and opposed a "Jewish State" based on an ethnic or racial basis. His political views were remarkably consistent and supported universal human rights. He was opposed to war and chauvinistic ethnic nationalism. Today Einstein is a revered as a political and scientific icon. However, many unfortunately forget his wise words on the issue of Palestine and its conflict with political Zionism.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/ALBERT-EINSTEIN-ON-PALESTI-by-Edward-Co...

Yes Ignatieff has done far more than needed to "make up" for that.  There is no difference between the Conservatives and Liberals on Israel anymore.  That's probably why Ezra Levant has decided to write over the top stuff about how Irwin Cotler is the "house Jew" in the Liberal Party (even though there are no Jewish Tory MPs!) and how virtually all Jews now support Harper  and why the Conservatives sent out those flyers.

Read her quote. She mentioned that his daughters joined the IDF and then asked which country he is loyal to.

SSC, it's a tweet. She only has so many characters. Part of that is the link to the video, and the video is text. The question follows.

Have you watched the video?