Showing posts with label Ed Corrigan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ed Corrigan. Show all posts

The Canadian "NDP’s anti-Palestine sentiment is part of a much wider problem

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Here is an article of interest on the NDP and their position on Palestinian human rights. The author, Tyler Levitan is the Campaigns Coordinator for Independent Jewish Voices – Canada, a national human rights organization that promotes a just peace in Israel and Palestine based on the application of international law and respect for the human rights of all parties.

Ed Corrigan 
http://ijvcanada.org/2014/ndps-anti-palestine-sentiment-is-part-of-a-much-wider-problem/
Originally published on IJV’s rabble blog.

NDP’s anti-Palestine sentiment is part of a much wider problem

Paul Manly aimed to run as a federal NDP candidate for the new riding of Nanaimo-Ladysmith, British Columbia. His key focus areas range from environmental and energy issues to health care, but he has been denied candidacy for this riding by the federal NDP because of his association to the issue of Palestine.
Paul’s father, Jim Manly, is a retired United Church Minister and former NDP MP. He and his wife Eva are vocal supporters of Palestinians’ human rights. In 2012, Jim was on a boat carrying humanitarian aid to the besieged people of Gaza. The boat was illegally seized by Israel in international waters. Jim was imprisoned by the Israelis and held incommunicado, and the NDP never spoke up about this violation of a Canadian’s human rights. His son, Paul, criticized the NDP caucus and spoke publicly about Israel’s violation of international law through its illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip as he campaigned for his father’s release.
While the federal NDP has not given a written reason for denying party candidacy to Paul Manly, a spokesperson told him over the phone that the reason related to what he said and did during his father’s imprisonment in Israel. This will not surprise anyone who has followed the NDP’s record on Palestine since Thomas Mulcair’s ascendancy to the party’s leadership.
In 2008, during Israel’s bombing campaign of Gaza in which it killed roughly 1400 Palestinians—including over 300 children—Mulcair stated, “I am an ardent supporter of Israel in all situations and in all circumstances.” In 2010, when Vancouver MP Libby Davies stated that Palestine has been occupied by Israel since 1948 (a perfectly legitimate position to take based on historical realities), Mulcair referred to her comments as “grossly unacceptable.” Across the party, there was a lack of support for Davies’ right to express her views on this issue.
As Independent Jewish Voices and others in the Palestine solidarity movement warned in advance of the NDP leadership vote in 2012, Mulcair’s abhorrence of Palestinian rights made him a grossly unacceptable candidate for the leadership of a social democratic party. Today, the shift of the NDP to the centre is complete, and its allegiance to pro-Israel lobbying groups is secured.
This allegiance is obvious in the behaviour of Foreign Affairs critic Paul Dewar in recent months. During our Prime Minister’s recent junket to Israel, Harper made a speech in the Israeli parliament that condemned the use of the term “apartheid” in reference to Israel. He chastised students for daring to echo the language of Israeli and international critics who have found Israel guilty of this international crime. In a debate entitled “Canada’s Role in the Mideast” on CBC’s Power and Politics featuring Dewar, Evan Solomon asked the Liberals’ Marc Garneau whether he would “condemn those on campuses who talk about Israel as an apartheid state”; Garneau answered, “Yes I would…. I think it’s incorrect, and that ultimately it is anti-Semitic, yes.” When Solomon asked Dewar if he would say the same, he responded, “I’ve said that publicly before.”
More recently, Dewar participated on a panel for a conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—widely considered to be one of the most powerful lobby groups in Washington, and accused of having a corrupting influence on American democracy. One of several pro-Israel lobbying organizations in Canada—the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs—boasts on its website about its “impact” in 2012-2013. A couple of examples are: they sent over 400 “influential Canadians” on missions to Israel, including MPs, Student Leaders, Journalists, Christian leaders, and University Presidents (they also send First Nations leaders, Police Chiefs, and business leaders), and this accounts for only 12% of their budget. They boast about having distributed over 100,000 “pro-Israel products” on Canadian university campuses—the same site upon which our Prime Minister, and MPs representing the other major political parties in this country, claim that Palestine solidarity activism equates to a hatred of Jews.
What is abundantly clear is that Canada’s pro-Israel lobby (which also includes Christian Zionists and others with an interest in Western imperialism), which is by no means a “Jewish lobby”, has a disproportionate influence over our political decision-makers. While a debate was sparked in the United States about the corrupting influence of the pro-Israel lobby after publication of professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer’s bestselling The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy, no such discussion has taken place north of the border.
It is time to break the taboo and begin public discussion of this issue. Christian Zionists, Conservative Jewish organizations that falsely claim to represent Canada’s diverse Jewish communities, and other Canadians with vested interests in Western imperialism, are bullying those of us who support equal rights in Israel/Palestine by exploiting use of the term anti-Semitism. When they do this as a way to silence dissent against the Israeli government’s racist policies, they cheapen the real suffering of Jews who have been discriminated against simply for being Jewish. And of course, they make it very difficult for us to have an honest and open discussion about the facts on the ground in Israel and Palestine. The daily oppression of Palestinians is real, as is the continued ethnic cleansing to which they are subjected.
It is not anti-Semitic to expose the corrupting influence of this lobby over Canadian domestic and foreign policy, just as it is not anti-Semitic to criticize the racist policies of a foreign government—even if that government claims to represent each and every Jewish person on the planet. The NDP’s latest iteration of anti-Palestinian sentiment is part of a much wider problem in Canada that needs to be called out for what it is.

Tyler Levitan is the Campaigns Coordinator for Independent Jewish Voices – Canada, a national human rights organization that promotes a just peace in Israel and Palestine based on the application of international law and respect for the human rights of all parties. 
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US granted Israel ‘blank check’ to commit crimes

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Here is the written article based on an interview I did with Press TV on the Israeli assault on Gaza. Also provided is the You Tube link to a fairly lengthy interview done on Monday morning EST. These items may be of interest

Ed Corrigan
The US and its allies have granted Israel a
 “blank check” to commit “a massive
 amount of violence against defenseless” 
Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, a 
journalist and international lawyer in
 Toronto said Monday.

“The United States is clearly not enforcing
 its own laws with regard to Israel’s attack on
 Gaza, and of course [the attacks] are an 
extreme violation of international law,” said 
Edward Corrigan.
“The Americans, the British, the Canadians,
the Australians, a few other countries are giving
 Israel basically a blank check to do whatever it
 wants,” Corrigan told Press TV.
Some 190 Palestinians have so far been killed 
in the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since 
July 8. According to the United Nations, nearly
 80 percent of the casualties in Gaza have been 
civilians.
People around the world have participated
 in protest rallies to condemn Israel’s deadly 
aggression.  
Gaza has been blockaded since June 2007. 
The blockade has caused a decline in the
 standards of living, unprecedented levels of 
unemployment, and unrelenting poverty.
Washington provides $3.1 billion in military 
assistance to the Zionist regime annually. 
The US government is pressured to serve 
Israel’s interests due to the influence of the
 powerful Israel lobby in the United States.
AHT/ARA

 
-- 
Edward C. Corrigan
Barrister and Solicitor
Specialist in Citizenship, 

Immigration and Refugee Law
383Richmond St. Suite 902
London, Ont, Canada, N6A 3C4


Tel: 519-439-4015
Fax: 519-439-7657
Toll Free: 1-800-883-6217


Web site: www.edcorrigan.ca
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Yes, Mr. Harper, it is possible to criticize Israel without being anti-Semitic

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Here is an article of interest criticizing Stephen Harper's comments in Israeli on the so-called "new anti-Semitism," published in Canada's national newspaper The Globe and Mail. There are links to three other articles on this same subject, also published in the Globe and Mail, which are also critical of Harper's stand on Israel and Palestine.

 Ed Corrigan
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/it-is-in-fact-possible-to-criticize-israel-without-being-anti-semitic/article16501029/
Addressing the Israeli Knesset this week, Stephen Harper contended that Israeli policies should not be criticized, especially in public. It’s a familiar case that takes the form of an axiom. As Mr. Harper put it, criticism of Israeli policies is “the new anti-Semitism… It targets the Jewish people by targeting Israel.” Like any axiom, this was presented as needing no further proof, and the Prime Minister offered none.
The worst sin, he asserted, the ultimate proof of anti-Semitism, is accusing Israel of being an apartheid state. This too is apparently a self-evident truth, with no evidence proffered to support it. Yet it’s completely arbitrary. It may be a harsh accusation, but why is it proof of anti-Semitism? Who has the right to rule that it’s beyond the pale of legitimate comment? Stephen Harper?
And since Israel is avowedly a Jewish state, it’s just a debating trick to say that by attacking Israeli policies you attack Jews at the same time. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own Finance Minister Yair Lapid denounces settlement expansion, is he attacking Jews? When Israelis call Israel an apartheid state – as many do – are they anti-Semitic too?
What’s worse, the deplorable truth is that there is a good deal of genuine anti-Semitism in Europe and many parts of the Muslim world, some of it conflating anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli sentiments. But by dogmatically asserting that almost all criticism of Israel is by definition anti-Semitic, Mr. Harper ignores another reality: that criticism of Israeli policies are often completely divorced from any hint of anti-Semitism, and indeed are expressed by Jews like me.
Like in Canada and the U.S., for example. After generations of being “dirty Jews”, one of the great achievements since the Second World War has been the emergence in both countries of Jews as the most successful, influential and secure ethnic group on the continent. The anti-Semitic incidents that do occasionally occur, while deplorable, are largely the work of bored kids, crackpot white supremacists or marginalized thugs. And often what’s denounced as anti-Semitism is in fact criticism of Israeli government policies. The vast majority of Canadian and American Jews now live their entire lives completely untouched by anti-Semitism.
Instead of celebrating this great step forward, over the years the Harper government has shamelessly played the anti-Semitism card as a partisan wedge issue. I have on my desk a publicly-funded pamphlet mailed to Canadians a few years back by Conservative MPs with the statement: “Committed to Canada’s Jewish Community” and the message: “When it comes to fighting anti-Semitism, the Conservative government will not compromise.” What followed were scurrilous and twisted accusations smearing the Liberal Party as anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. It was disgusting.
Think too of the notorious Kairos case. Kairos is Canada’s pre-eminent faith-based human rights NGO run by eleven Christian organizations. But it backed Palestinians who were peacefully protesting against illicit Israeli policies and practices – just as so many Israelis do. But as Jason Kenney shockingly put it, his government had a “zero tolerance” policy towards those who “advocate the destruction of Israel and the destruction of the Jewish people.” Suddenly, from nowhere, the spectre of the Holocaust is invoked! Kairos of course lost its public funding even though Kenney’s accusations were demonstrably false. Yet I heard no one in the Canadian Jewish establishment protest that their Harper government friends had accused a legitimate organization of being anti-Semitic without a single shred of evidence.
But the worst was yet to come: the government’s attack on and ultimate destruction of the human rights organization Rights and Democracy. R&D had begun to vex Mr. Harper because it thought Palestinians should have the same rights as all other people – just as many Israelis think. New board members were appointed to fix the problem. After assessing the situation, one of those appointees pointedly noted the absence of Jews on R&D’s staff. This, apparently, was very suspicious. How he actually ferreted out this state of affairs was never clear, but the bizarre incident remains a low point in the history of the Harper government. R&D was soon history.
These and other incidents seem to have had one clear purpose: to de-legitimize any critical debate in Canada about Israel and to smear anyone who dared criticize Israeli policies as an anti-Semite who wants Israel and the Jewish people to be disappeared. Stephen Harper used the same technique in his Knesset address. But it didn’t work before and it won’t work now.
Why should the government of Israel not be open to criticism as much as the government of Canada? Why should we not assess Israeli governments by the same standards we judge Canadian governments? After all, as we are repeatedly told, Israel is the only Middle East country committed to freedom and democracy. So why aren’t we entitled to judge it accordingly, to criticize it – publicly – when it doesn’t live up to its own professed ideals, without being slandered for doing so?
To Stephen Harper: I speak for many Canadians. We will not be instructed by you about the limits of our free speech, and we will not be silenced in the face of injustice.
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If you think I’m a racist, then Israel is a racist state

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Here is an extraordinary opinion piece published in Haaretz written by the  Mayor of Upper Nazareth. He is wrong on several points. There are Jewish Palestinians as being a Palestinian is a national designation not a religious or racial one. There are Christians, Muslims and Jews and non-Believers who are Palestinian. Palestinian Jews were opposed to the influx of European Jews into their multi-cultural and multi-religious Palestine. There are several Jews who hold high positions in the PLO.  Uri Davis and Ilan Helavi are two that come to mind. He also cites the Balfour Declaration but ignores the promises to not harm the rights of the existing inhabitants or the rights of Jews in other countries.

Consider for a moment if the Mayor of Canadian or American city openly was calling for a maintaining a city as forever white or Anglo-Saxon or any other religious or racial character. We would all recognize such a statement as being racist and discriminatory. Arab Jews still live in many Middle Eastern countries. More than 25,000 Jews live in Iran.  It was the actions and policies of "The Jewish State" and sometimes deliberate programs of the Zionists to force Arab Jews to emigrate to Israel that resulted in the movement of Arab Jews to Israel to replace the Arab Palestinians who were driven out. The mayor to his credit acknowledges that Zionists ethnically cleansed the Palestinians from their homeland.

Ed Corrigan  
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.540278

If you think I’m a racist, then Israel is a racist state

Upper Nazareth’s mayor answers detractors who say his reelection campaign calling for the mixed city to be 'Jewish forever’ is racist.
By Shimon Gapso
Over the past few days, many people have been calling me a racist. Sometimes they also call me a Nazi, a bully or even Hitler. One need only look at the comments on Haaretz’s website to put me before a firing squad. What’s my crime? What act of bullying did I commit? I made a clear and unequivocal statement that Upper Nazareth was a Jewish city.
Yes — I’m not afraid to say it out loud, to write it and add my signature, or declare it in front of the cameras: Upper Nazareth is a Jewish city and it’s important that it remains so. If that makes me a racist, then I’m a proud offshoot of a glorious dynasty of “racists” that started with the “Covenant of the Pieces” [that God made with Abraham, recounted in Genesis 15:1–15] and the explicitly racist promise: “To your seed I have given this land” [Genesis 15:38].
When the Jewish people were about to return to their homeland after a long journey from slavery in Egypt, where they were enslaved for racist reasons, the God of Israel told Moses how to act upon conquering the land: he must cleanse the land of its current inhabitants. “But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those of them whom you allow to remain... as I thought to do to them, so will I do to you” [Numbers 33:55–56].
God gave them an explicit warning. Yes, the racist Joshua conquered the land in a racist manner. More than 3,000 years later, the Jewish people stood bruised and bleeding on the threshold of their land, seeking once again to take possession of it from the wild tribes that had seized the land in its absence. And then, an outbreak of racism flooded the country.
The racist Theodor Herzl wrote "Der Judenstaat" (“The Jewish State,” not “The State of All Its Citizens”). Lord Balfour recommended the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people. David Ben-Gurion, Chaim Arlosoroff, Moshe Sharett and other racists established the Jewish Agency, and the racist UN decided to establish a Jewish state — in other words, a state for Jews. The racist Ben-Gurion announced the establishment of the Jewish State in the Land of Israel, and during the War of Independence even made sure to bring in hundreds of thousands of Jews and drive out hundreds of thousands of Arabs who had been living here — all to enable it to be founded with the desired racist character.
Since then, racially pure kibbutzim without a single Arab member and an army that protects a certain racial strain have been established, as have political parties that proudly bear racist names such as “Habayit Hayehudi” — “the Jewish home.” Even our racist national anthem ignores the existence of the Arab minority — in other words, the people Ben-Gurion did not manage to expel in the 1948 war. If not for all that “racism,” it’s doubtful we could live here, and doubtful that we could live at all.
In these times of hypocrisy and bleeding-heart sanctimoniousness, of the proliferation of flaky types who are disconnected from reality, in the relative security that causes us to forget the dangers we face, we can sit in north Tel Aviv, and cry “racism” to seem enlightened and good-hearted in our own eyes. We can be shocked at a mayor who prefers that his city, which is right next to the largest Arab city in Israel, retain a Jewish majority and not be swallowed up in the Arab area that surrounds it. There will not be a single Jew in the future Palestinian state, but that’s all right. That isn’t racism.
Upper Nazareth is a Jewish city. Fewer than one-fifth of its inhabitants are Arab citizens, and they enjoy full municipal and national rights. Many of them are friends of mine, and I like and respect many of them. I could wish that Jews were treated the way the Arabs of Upper Nazareth are — not only those Jews who lived in Europe of times past, but also those who live in the Arab countries of today. If that were the case, perhaps we of Upper Nazareth would have no need to be “racists.”
The writer is the mayor of Upper Nazareth.
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Israel's supporters suffer humiliating defeat in UK court

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Here is an email I received from the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP). The decision is important as the British Employment Tribunal rejected the attempt to declare the University and Colleges Union support for the Universities of Palestine "anti-semitic." Another victory for Academic freedom and a victory over the abuse of the charge of anti-Semitism being used in an attempt to silence criticism of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians or that support for Palestinian human rights is anti-Semitic.  
Ed Corrigan

Excerpt:
"In an unusually robust judgement the tribunal found the case “an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means” and a case which showed a “worrying disregard for pluralism, tolerance and freedom of expression”.
Dear Friend
Ronnie Fraser, a Zionist member of UCU (University and College Union), with the support of leaders of the UK Jewish establishment attempted to sue his Union for antisemitism on account of its discussions of the situation in Palestine/Israel and its consideration of activity in support of Palestinian rights.
In an unusually robust judgement the tribunal found the case “an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means” and a case which showed a “worrying disregard for pluralism, tolerance and freedom of expression”. In considering whether to accept the ten complaints raised by Fraser the tribunal used such phrases as:
"devoid of any merit", "palpably groundless", "obviously untenable", "the Claimant again fails to make out any arguable complaint ", "obviously hopeless".
In their review of the quality of the witnesses the tribunal concluded:
We regret to say that we have rejected as untrue the evidence of Ms Ashworth and Mr Newmark concerning the incident at the 2008 Congress (see our findings under complaint (8) above). Evidence given to us about booing. jeering and harassing ofJewish speakers at Congress debates was also false, as truthful witnesses on theClaimant's side accepted. One painfully ill-judged example of playing to the gallerywas Mr Newmark's preposterous claim, in answer to the suggestion in cross-examination that he had attempted to push his way into the 2008 meeting, that a'pushy Jew' stereotype was being applied to him. The opinions of witnesses were not, of course, our concern and in most instances they were in any eventunremarkable and certainly not unreasonable. One exception was a remark of MrNewmark in the context of the academic boycott controversy in 2007 that the union was "no longer a fit arena for free speech", a comment which we found notonly extraordinarily arrogant but also disturbing. We did not derive assistance from the two Members of Parliament who appeared before us. Both gave glib evidence,appearing supremely confident of the rightness of their positions. For OrMacShane, it seemed that all answers lay in the MacPherson Report (the effect ofwhich he appeared to misunderstand). Mr Mann could manage without even thatassistance. He told us that the leaders of the Respondents were at fault for the way in which they conducted debates but did not enlighten us as to what they weredoing wrong or what they should be doing differently. He did not claim ever tohave witnessed any Congress or other UCU meeting. And when it came to anti-Semitism in the context of debate about the Middle East, he announced, "It's clearto me where the line is ... " but unfortunately eschewed the opportunity to locate itfor us. Both parliamentarians clearly enjoyed making speeches. Neither seemed at ease with the idea of being required to answer a question not to his liking.
This is another example of the use of the courts in a lawfare campaign to silence criticism of the policies of Israel and support for Palestinian Rights.
You can read the full findings of of the tribunal, BRICUP's reaction and other reports on our website athttp://bricup.org.uk/#236
Mike Cushman
for BRICUP
Follow BRICUP on twitter www.twitter.com/bricup
Keep up to date with the academic boycott at www.bricup.org.uk
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The West Seeks Destruction of Muslim Nations

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Here is the link to my recent interview with Press TV on the conflict in Syria. The audio connection is not the best. It was our first time trying Skype. There is a written text version which contains a number of errors, no doubt, due to the poor quality of the audio. I would have preferred if the title said, "West seeks to weaken Arab and Muslim Nations" which is, I think a more  accurate title for the interview.    I have taken the liberty of editing the transcript to correct a few errors in transcription. 
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/256059.html 
Ed Corrigan


West seeks destruction of Muslim nations: Analyst
An interview with Edward Corrigan, human rights and international lawyer, from London, Ontario

US Republican Congressman Ron Paul has warned that his country is driving Syria into a war by interfering with the ongoing unrest in the Middle East nation.

“Last week the House passed yet another bill placing sanctions on Iran and Syria, bringing us closer to another war in the Middle East,” Paul wrote in an article on the Information Clearing House website.

“When will we learn our lesson and stop intervening in conflicts we don’t truly understand, conflicts that have nothing to do with American national interests?” Paul asked in his article.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Edward Corrigan, human rights and international lawyer, to further discuss the issue. The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: First of all, the residents want to go back to their homes in areas that have been declared safe by the military and government in Syria, but they are being stopped by the insurgents: what do you make of this? What do they have in stopping civilians from returning to their homes?

Corrigan: The insurgency is trying to maintain the position that they have a lot of support with the population. They don’t really do not want the World to see refugees going back to areas that are now under the control of the Syrian government.

It undermines their political position and also what their propaganda is saying. The fact that citizens want to go back to areas that are under control of Bashar’s government, you know, directly contradicts their position that the majority or many Syrians are opposed to the government.

In fact, there is a lot of support for the Bashar regime. I think most of the Syrian population is opposed to the foreign backed parties that are trying to destroy Syria by provoking a civil war.

Press TV: There are some analysts that say that it is in the strategic interest of the West as well as its insurgents to continue a flow of refugees because is sort of gives an impression of a humanitarian disaster in Syria to the outside world and create a consensus for regime change and intervention. How do you interpret this?

Corrigan: I agree with you completely. There’s this whole new mechanism of humanitarian intervention, is really disguised for some other policies.

If there’s refugees or real alleged human rights violations then it does undermine the legitimacy of the regime and it provides the political support for other actions.

But this whole humanitarian intervention is really hypocritical. There’s no humanitarian intervention against Bahrain or Saudi Arabia which are suppressing demonstrators. There’s a massive movement of Salafis, and other al-Qaeda and Sunni extremists, which are brought in from Libya and elsewhere to try to bolster the opposition.

In fact, without that support and without the support of Washington’s powers, the fight would not even be occurring because the regime is very stable and has support of the Christian minorities, the Alawite…the Kurds and actually a large percentage of the Sunni population that appreciates the stability that the Baathist regime has brought to Syria.

Of course, they don’t want to see their country, their homes destroyed, their family members and relatives and other members of the community slaughtered in what is really a senseless war that accomplishes no purposes for the Arab population, the Muslim population, but supports interests of other parties.

Press TV: As this fighting continues in various parts of Syria and the government tries to rid the country from insurgents, the West and its allies are continuing to support them materially, that is. Is the West's desire to see Assad go worth the human cost that its coming at?

Corrigan: No. The West is really not concerned about the human cost. They want the Arab or Muslim states weakened, and if they can be destroyed, and if they can pit the various ethnic and religion communities against each other, they can just sit back and watch as Syria will be destroyed much like the way Iraq was.

Lebanon rebuilt itself and I think the Israelis and other people would like to see Lebanon fragmented into sectarian fighting that occurred from 1975 into the 90s. They accomplished that with Iraq, and now they’re trying to do the same into Syria. It was a lot of the opposition that was brought in from the Sunni community and other groups.

There’s actually a documentation that French troops have been captured in Syria, and a Turkish general was captured in Syria. There are reports saying that there are French and even NATO troops that are actively engaged in the sort of insurgency and attacks against the Syrian government.

Some of the stuff is clearly beyond the capability of regular rebels. Where are they getting tanks? Where are they getting surface-to-air missiles? This can only happen with the support of an organization like NATO, Turkey or Saudi Arabia and Qatar or other parties that are intervening.

This is not for a democracy of Syria. This is not to bring the end of the Bashar regime. This is to cripple Syria and to fragment it, and to prevent it from being part of a region with an element of stability.

Of course, Syria has been a strong supporter of Hezbollah and also supporter of Iran. They want to undermine this connection, and support of the interests of Israel, and more important the support of the West where they want control the oil and the resources, and fragment the area in order to make it easier to control, and pitting groups against each other -- an age old divide and conquer strategy that the British have perfected and certainly as old as the Roman Empire. 
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The Jewish National Fund Award Incompatible with Diversity & Tolerance,

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Here is an article of interest on the policies and practices of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and the President of the Univesity of Western Ontario being honoured by the JNF at one of its fund raising dinners. Also discissed in the article is the JNF role in the destruction of three Palestinian villages after the 1967 Six Day War and the construction of "Canada Park" which veteran Israeli peace activist and former member of the Israeli Knesset Uri Avnery states is a “war crime under international law, and the endorsement of the naming of the park after the name of Canada as implicating Canada with giving a cover to war crimes.”


The four authors are all Professors at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.


Ed Corrigan



Universities must not endorse organizations that act contrary to the institution's mission, say University of Ontario professors Michael Lynk, David Heap, Rebecca Coulter and Randa Farah. [Photo: Richard Gilmore]

By Michael Lynk, Rebecca Coulter, David Heap & Randa Farah

The University of Western Ontario announced in December that university president Paul Davenport would be the 2008 honouree at the Jewish National Fund’s Negev dinner. This is not an isolated case. At least two other Canadian university presidents — at McGill and McMaster — have accepted similar “honours” from the JNF in recent years. But is the JNF an organization which universities should publicly endorse?

Let us state at the outset that we are all supportive of a campus, a community and a world that is tolerant, embraces diversity and advances justice and social equity. Many organizations do so, and are worthy of support and endorsement. The JNF is not one of them. It promotes exclusion, dispossession and institutionalized discrimination, a point which has been made by the United Nations and by human rights organizations representing Palestinian Arabs in Israel and the occupied territories. Even the attorney general of Israel has expressed the view that the JNF’s discriminatory land practices would not stand up to a legal challenge in court.

Four points need to be made.

First, the JNF holds 13 per cent of the land in Israel, and it is reserved by law for exclusive benefit and use by Jews worldwide. Palestinians, who formed a majority in Mandatory Palestine before the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict and today constitute 20 per cent of Israel’s population, are forbidden by the JNF covenant from leasing these lands.

As Israeli historian Ilan Pappe observes, the JNF also acts as the “custodian” responsible for guarding the “Jewishness” of other lands in Israel that it doesn’t own. It does this by playing an influential role in the directorship of the Israel Lands Authority, a state body that manages another 80 per cent of the lands in Israel. Together, these two interlocking institutions control almost all of the land in Israel, which — with a few short-lease exceptions — is not available to Palestinian citizens of the country.

Much of the land originally belonged to externally displaced Palestinians who were expelled or fled under threat in 1948 and had their properties expropriated by Israel. Other property holdings owned by Palestinian refugees inside Israel (classified by the Jewish state as “present absentees”), who left their homes, even if for a short time during the conflict and subsequently, were confiscated under the Absentees Property Law of 1950.

A series of legislative measures allows the JNF and the ILA to act as agents for a disguised state policy of dispossession. In the words of Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, “this discriminatory policy contributes to the institutionalization of racially-segregated towns and villages throughout the state.”

These discriminatory practices — reserving in law almost all of the nation’s lands for the Jewish majority, to the detriment of the dispossessed Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel — are contrary to the values of a modern liberal and democratic state. In 2000, the Supreme Court of Israel issued a ruling (the Qa’dan case) that challenged the JNF’s exclusionary policies and practices.

In July 2007, the Israeli Knesset passed the first reading of the Jewish National Fund Bill, which seeks to undo the 2000 Supreme Court ruling. The proposed statute states that: “leasing of Jewish National Fund’s lands for the purposes of the settlement of Jews on these lands will not be seen as improper discrimination.” The bill was denounced as “racist” legislation in an editorial published last July in Ha’aretz, one of Israel’s most influential newspapers, which noted “The Jewish National Fund’s land policy counters the interests of the state and cannot discriminate by law against the minority living in Israel.”

Second, the discriminatory policies and practices of the Jewish National Fund have been criticized by a number of respected bodies.

In 1998, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights reported that the “large-scale and systematic confiscation of Palestinian land and property by the State and the transfer of that property to these agencies constitute an institutionalized form of discrimination because these agencies by definition would deny the use of these properties by non-Jews. Thus, these practices constitute a breach of Israel’s obligations under the (International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights).”

In 2005, Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz suggested the Israel Land Authority should cut its ties with the JNF because the JNF excludes Palestinian citizens of Israel from leasing its property. Two Israeli civil-rights organizations had appealed to the Supreme Court claiming the exclusion of Arab Israelis from JNF properties was racist and violated the principle of equality.

The Land Authority noted that JNF properties are “intended for the development of Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel,” and that “all the funds of the JNF are from Jewish donors.”

According to an article that appeared March 18, 2005 in the Jewish Daily Forward, Mazuz declined to defend the case, concluding the authority’s claim would not hold up in court. The justices had ruled in an earlier case that “Jews-only” clauses were illegal.

Third, JNF-Canada is the sponsoring organization of Canada Park, which has been built in the occupied Palestinian territories on the ruins of three Palestinian villages (Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba). The villages were deliberately destroyed by Israel in 1967. The destruction of the Palestinian villages, and the denial of the villagers’ right to return to their homes, are grave violations of the 4th Geneva Convention of 1949.

In 1986, a United Nations special committee reported to the secretary general it was deeply concerned “that these villagers have persistently been denied the right to return to their land on which Canada Park has been built by the Jewish National Fund of Canada and where the Israeli authorities are reportedly planning to plant a forest instead of allowing the reconstruction of the destroyed villages.”

The tragedy of Canada Park has also been the subject of a critical investigative documentary that aired in 1991 on the CBC’s The Fifth Estate. The documentary established that Canada Park in Israel was built entirely within the occupied territories, that Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba were intentionally destroyed in order to prevent the villagers from returning and that JNF-Canada is the principal funding body for the park.

In the documentary, former Israeli Knesset member Uri Avnery calls the destruction of the three Palestinian villages a “war crime under international law, and the endorsement of the naming of the park after the name of Canada as implicating Canada with giving a cover to war crimes.”

Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organization affiliated with the International Commission of Jurists, pointed out in a June 2007 legal brief that Canada Park “was funded by donations to the Jewish National Fund in Canada, which were subsidised as tax-deductible by the Canadian government. Thus Canada, far from fulfilling its obligation to put an end to the illegal situation created by Israel in this part of the occupied Palestinian territory, is responsible for breaching its duty of non-recognition and is complicit in the creation of facts which consolidate the illegal situation and prejudice the realisation of the Palestinian right to self-determination.”

Fourth, the JNF is currently promoting the settlement of significant numbers of Jews in Israel’s Negev Desert to the detriment of the indigenous Bedouin Arab population.The Bedouins in southern Israel have had their traditional grazing lands confiscated by the Israeli government, and many Bedouin villages are unrecognized by the government in order to justify Israeli policies that deny them basic services like running water, electricity, garbage collection, proper education and social services.

The JNF’s project, “A Miracle in the Desert,” is intended to settle half a million Jews on land once owned by Bedouins in 25 low-density housing communities over the next decade. This project is being challenged legally and politically by Bedouins wanting to reclaim their land.

Like indigenous peoples in other countries, the Palestinian population, including the Bedouins in the Negev, have been and continue to be dispossessed of their land, their resources and their livelihood for the near exclusive benefit of the occupying population.

While countries like Canada move slowly towards reconciliation with aboriginal peoples through land settlements and compensation, the Bedouins instead face further dispossession, which is materially aided and abetted by the JNF. Funds raised at events, such as the dinners at which university presidents are honoured, contribute to projects which serve to further dispossess the Bedouins and other Palestinians.

Unfortunately, the discriminatory and exclusionary features of the JNF’s practices and policies in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories are not well known in North America. And it is important to note that the JNF’s discriminatory record stands in sharp contrast to that of other Israeli organizations that promote equality and nondiscrimination between Palestinians and Israeli Jews, such as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Adalah, Zochrot and B’Tselem.

When a university president chooses to accept an invitation to be a JNF honouree, this amounts to a statement endorsing its work and is thus contrary to the mission of a modern university in a diverse and tolerant society. Public endorsements are not given to other organizations which discriminate against indigenous, ethnic or racialized groups. They should not be given to the JNF.

Michael Lynk (law), Rebecca Coulter (education), David Heap (French studies) and Randa Farah (anthropology) are faculty members at the University of Western Ontario. Correspondence between 36 concerned faculty members and the president of UWO can be found at http://publish.uwo.ca/~djheap/equalityforall/ along with several related letters and links to background documentation.

The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily CAUT.

Commentary: CAUT welcomes articles between 800 and 1,500 words on contemporary issues directly related to post-secondary education. Articles should not deal with personal grievance cases nor with purely local issues. They should not be libellous or defamatory, abusive of individuals or groups, and should not make unsubstantiated allegations. They should be objective and on a political rather than a personal subject. A commentary is an opinion and not a “life story.” First person is not normally used. Articles may be in English or French, but will not be translated. Publication is at the sole discretion of CAUT. Commentary authors will be contacted only if their articles are accepted for publication. Commentary submissions should be sent to Liza Duhaime.

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!
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Canadians Divided Over Ottawa's Pro Israeli Stand

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Item of interest.

Ed Corrigan

Excerpt from article:

"Its survey of 1,500 adult Canadians, between Nov. 21 and Dec. 14, showed that three times as many Canadians (35 per cent) support the Palestinian bid as oppose it (11 per cent). Notably, more than half of Canadians surveyed (53 per cent) say they have no opinion on the matter.

Support for the Palestinian’s UN initiative, Environics says, is most widely expressed in Quebec and Ontario (especially in Montreal and Toronto), and among men, university graduates, non-European immigrants, and those who support the NDP or Green Party.

Opposition to the bid is most evident among Canadians 60 years of age and older and among Conservative supporters."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canadians-divided-over-ottawas-pro-israel-stand-survey-shows/article2321233/

Globe and Mail Update Jan. 31, 2012

Canadians divided over Ottawa’s pro-Israel stand, survey shows

Patrick Martin

Jerusalem

Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, currently visiting Israel and the Palestinian Territories, can take some comfort from a new public opinion survey on Canadian attitudes toward the Middle East.

Almost half of Canadians surveyed (48 per cent) say they believe the federal government’s policy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “strikes the right balance,” according to a new Focus Canada survey conducted by the Environics Research Group.

The policy of the government, since Stephen Harper became Prime Minister, has been to take a more overtly pro-Israeli position than previous governments. And this is very much the position borne this week by the two Canadian ministers. Mr. Baird has made a point of telling just about every Israeli audience that “Israel has no greater friend in the world than Canada.”

Not everyone agrees. Almost a quarter of Canadians (23 per cent) say the government is “too pro-Israel,” while just 3 per cent say the government’s policy is “too pro-Palestinian.” The proportion of people who say they are unable to offer a clear opinion on the matter increased this year to 27 per cent (from 23 per cent).

Environics says the number of Canadians who believe the government is too pro-Israeli rose in the Prairie provinces, as well as among older Canadians, those with higher socio-economic status and among NDP supporters. Overall, the view is strongest among Quebeckers.

But while the majority of Canadians may share the government’s view toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they differ strongly with the view expressed Monday on the Palestinians’ effort to have their territory recognized as a state by the United Nations.

Mr. Baird told Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Maliki that Canada viewed the Palestinian initiative as “profoundly wrong.”

According to the Focus Canada survey, that is not quite accurate.

Its survey of 1,500 adult Canadians, between Nov. 21 and Dec. 14, showed that three times as many Canadians (35 per cent) support the Palestinian bid as oppose it (11 per cent). Notably, more than half of Canadians surveyed (53 per cent) say they have no opinion on the matter.

Support for the Palestinian’s UN initiative, Environics says, is most widely expressed in Quebec and Ontario (especially in Montreal and Toronto), and among men, university graduates, non-European immigrants, and those who support the NDP or Green Party.

Opposition to the bid is most evident among Canadians 60 years of age and older and among Conservative supporters.

(Environics says that a sample of this size drawn from the population produces results accurate to within +/-2.5 percentage points in 19 out of 20 samples.)

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!
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Canadian Human Rights Lawyer proves to us how that it's not anti-Semitic to criticize Israel

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A London human-rights lawyer and former city councillor who sued a Toronto lawyer for $25,000 in libel damages said a settlement is just days away.

The case began in June 2010 when Ed Corrigan asked Toronto lawyer and investment firm president William Hechter to apologize for several e-mails he reportedly sent to members of the Law Union of Ontario in which he described Corrigan as one of Canada's worst anti-Semites and an idiotic spammer.

The accusations came on the heels of three e-mails in three days Corrigan sent to members that were critical of Israel's Palestinian policies and its treatment of Palestinian civilians.

"The Law Union discusses all sorts of human rights issues, political issues, and people post articles on just about any issue you could think of," Corrigan said.

"I posted an article by Globe and Mail writer Rick Salutin. In the article, he quoted Margaret Atwood, who had published an article called The shadow over Israel. That's when Mr. Hechter attacked me for being anti-Semitic."

Corrigan said he demanded an apology and Hechter dared him to sue.

"So I sued him. I've received over 60 letters from Jewish academics and activists stating that to criticize Israel is not anti-Semitic. Israel, like any country in the world, can be criticized for its policies. That's not criticizing Jews for being Jews, that's criticizing the policies of a state."

The court battle began in September 2010 after Hechter, who is also the president of investment company Excalibur Limited Partnership, filed a defence. With no settlement in sight, the case was elevated to small claims court in Toronto the following March.

It remained unresolved through last Dec. 22, when a judge set a trial date, but since then an agreement in principle has been reached.

Hechter, who would only confirm that an agreement was imminent, said he's not allowed to discuss the details of it.

He wouldn't comment on other aspects of the case, either.

Corrigan said though he won't receive a cent, a "modest" donation will be made by Hechter to an undetermined charity and an apology will be posed on the Law Union site.

"The policies of the current government of Israel are being criticized by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Red Cross, and the World Court. It's absurd to say they're anti-Semitic."

As for the long-awaited settlement, Corrigan said a middle ground he and Hechter can both live with was eventually found.

"We've both had positive and constructive discussions on the issue. We may not agree, but he recognizes that it's not anti-Semitic to criticize a country's policies."

E-mail scott.taylor@sunmedia.ca, or follow ScottatLFPress on Twitter.


The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!
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