Let’s take a quick look at Mulcair’s statement as recorded in the National Post:

“No member of our caucus, whatever other title they have, is allowed to invent their own policy,” said Mr. Mulcair. “We take decisions together, parties formulate policies together, and to say that you’re personally in favour of boycott, divestment and sanctions for the only democracy in the Middle East is, as far as I’m concerned, grossly unacceptable.”

If the NDP caucus truly believes this, then it’s a sea-change for public discussion of foreign policy vis a vis Israel and the Palestinians in this country. The ideology behind boycott and divestment campaigns against Israel are firmly relegated to the land of 9/11 Truthers, Creationists and the more nefarious minds behind the Rhino party.

For political pragmatists like myself, the BDS campaign has always been an extreme phenomenon that never carried any official support from any legitimate political party or their rank and file, or at least shouldn’t have. Yet there’s no question that NDP rank and file were far more likely to have sympathy with the “Israel Apartheid State” view than their Liberal or Conservative party counterparts (and nobody really cares what Bloc members think about this stuff, anyway).

Now, many NDP members, particularly those a little higher up in the food chain, are forced to confront the reality that the BDS ideas they’ve flirted with for years are simply not part of the NDP platform — and really never have been. If NDP supporters want to retain ties to BDS, it will have to do so in a fairly clandestine manner; in the same way that when some Conservatives decide to make a statement about pro-life abortion politics, they do so in a private venue amongst their close colleagues. The days of NDP MPs like Libby Davies coming out overtly in favor of a controversial BDS campaign are now over.

That is to say, those days are over if the NDP really do mean what they’re saying.

Libby Davies Puts Her Foot In It

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There’s just no doubt anymore. The passengers on this boat wanted a fight. Well, they got one.

Now they have their martyrs. Of course, it’s a very different image of martyrdom than the traditional heroic definition.

A cop tries to pull your car over. You get out and hammer him with a club before he gets a chance to ask for your license and registration. Your buddies pile on with the chains, rods and slingshots you just happened to have readily to hand.

That doesn’t make you a martyr when his partner puts a bullet in your gut. It just makes you a dangerous wack-job.

The Israelis could have handled this differently. But I’m inclined to believe that the idiots on the boat who ended up going home in coffins pretty much got what they had coming.

H/T to Blazing Catfur

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Well, yes. I suppose that chasing a couple of Jews (or at least, people you think are Jews) down the street and trying to hack their heads off with a machete would be un-Canadian… at the very least.

I’m certain there ought to be something in the university’s code of conduct for students that might apply.

We seem to have reached a tipping point in Canada.

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Operation Glowing Hearts is aborted.

Our plot has been found out. While it is clear that these plucky freedom fighters have not yet stumbled on the details of our plan, it will only be a matter of time before they discover the nuclear weapons we stowed underneath the Olympic Oval and GM place. Your new orders are to immediately retrieve all radioactive materials and evacuate Canadian soil.

It is incredible to believe that this Sherlock Holmes-type character who runs the Ziofascism blog was able to put together all of the clues. After all, this operation was premised on the idea that it could not possibly be blamed on us; who would suspect the only nation that had ever had its Olympic athletes massacred by terrorists to be behind the latest Olympic terror incident?

This one has somehow been able to deduce that Jews were behind not only the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks, but behind all of the acts of terror committed from the beginning of time. Surely he will soon stumble upon our simple 10-step guide book for how Jews can convince Jew-hating fundamentalists and fanatics to martyr themselves for the deeper Zionist cause.

We can only hope that this man does not somehow manage to find the documentary evidence that we were indeed behind all of the wars of the past six centuries. He certainly seems to be on the right track.

The Jewish nation thanks you for your efforts. We will regroup and continue the fight to ensure permanent Jewish control over the nations of the world and a sustainable supply of gentile blood for our Passover matzoh. Shalom.

Further Reading
A Mossad attack on Vancouver?

These Anti-Zionists Are On to Something. They Must Be Eliminated

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Intrepid journalist Terry Glavin reports this insanity and it is promptly receives national attention. Very quickly, the Al-Ameen site scrubs the antisemitic propaganda from its pages, noting “This article has been removed due to lack of supporting facts. we appologize for any inconvinience.”

Then the BCMA denies any association with the Al-Ameen, even though a cached web page appears to show the executive board of both organizations was one and the same.

There being no actual list of executives or contributors on the Al-Ameen website, someone’s going to have to do a little investigation to find out who was really behind the site. Perhaps they could start by asking Al-Ameen webmaster Mohammed Bhamji of Surrey, BC, who appears to work for Bimex Marketing & Distribution Inc? Perhaps he could clear up exactly who actually runs and funds Al-Ameen. I mean, who pays this guy’s invoices? Just an idea.

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First of all, what is antisemitism? In Canada, you’ve got the extreme and obvious examples, like shouting “Jewish child, you are gonna fuckin’ die!” at a public protest. Spray-painting swastikas on Jewish cemetery walls also is clearly antisemitic. You get the idea.

Then there’s intimidation of Jewish students on North American campuses.

All of the activities described above are already dealt with under our existing laws (uttering threats, vandalism, assault). Not just Jews, but the vast majority of Canadian society already sees these things as beyond the pale.

Things get a bit more insidious when it comes to Israel. Ideological enemies of the Jewish state are always careful to preface their arguments by saying that “criticism of Israel is not by definition antisemitic” — which of course, is quite true, and I’m not aware of any supporter of Israel who has argued the point. Anyone can criticize Israeli policies, just like one can criticize Canadian policies, or Chinese ones, or Pakistani ones. Criticizing China for allegedly using prisoners to profit from organ transplant businesses is clearly not a racist slander against all Chinese; likewise, criticism of Israel for, say, building settlements in the West Bank, is also not a slander against all Israelis or all Jews in Israel for that matter.

But when Canadian “human rights” organizations, cultural representatives and other informal groups undertake continual letter-writing campaigns, boycotts drives, unending calls to prosecute Israeli politicians, bureaucrats and soldiers, or more chilling calls to action that all Israeli citizens over the age of 18 are valid targets for killing, and do so without any corresponding calls to action on ending the brutal human rights violations of Israel’s neighbors, such as suicide bombings or torture carried out in Hamas jails (or in Egypt, or Syria, etc) — indeed, without any discussion of the context for behavior by the Israeli state — it seems clear that antisemitism likely plays a part in these types of campaigns. Antisemitism can be inferred, but is virtually impossible to prove — hence, it is that much more difficult to combat.

The event this evening is not about whether antisemitism exists (as it clearly does), but how one responds to it. Whether the antisemitism is overt (eg. shouting “Jews to the gas!“) or obfuscated in human rights jargon and letters-to-the-editor, the obvious answer is that it should be answered — in editorial pages, speeches, blogs and such, without relying on legal constraints such as human rights commissions that trample on our hard-won Western freedoms.

But if the end goal is to reduce antisemitism in Canada by shining a light on antisemitic acts and words, then the way to do it is not through a tribal, “let’s-stick-together-because-no-one’s-going-to-help-us” mentality of Jews as besieged victims.

A far better strategy for Jews in Canada is to reach out more robustly to fellow Canadians from all ethnic and political stripes; it is clear that so much of the modern antisemitism is also tied to an anarchic and extreme (mostly left-wing, but also far-right) movement that is at odds with Western democracy, civil rights (particularly freedom of speech) and what one used to call “Canadian” values.

When protesters shout slogans like “long live Hamas”, Jews should be helping Canadians from other groups to understand that these chants are not merely offensive to Jews (whom the Hamas charter advocates murdering — an odd clause for a legal constitutional document of a proto-state). These actions are offensive to all those who support real democracy, respect for the rule of law, respect for life — all those things which Canadians take for granted in their own country.

The offensive of boycotts and other activities against Jews, not just in Canada, but worldwide has gained a following not just among the predictable cultural centers of the Palestinian and Muslim diaspora, but across a wide range of groups. To put it bluntly, when Operation Cast Lead protests came to Canadian cities, those demonstrating were white, brown, black and every shade in between, representing a similarly diverse background of professions and politics. Sure, they seemed to be organized with the help of the taxpayer-funded Canadian Arab Federation and other groups, but the point is that they got their troops out.

In contrast, the failure of both Canada’s “official Jews” and other Jewish organizations to organize an effective, cross-cultural, pro-democratic response to antisemitism, particularly in open and public gatherings — without calling the cops, lawyers or HRCs — just isn’t working. Don’t help the other side present the debate as an intractable ethnic conflict with ancient roots — Canadians will simply tune out. And if it does become a slug-fest between two diasporas, the Jewish community will eventually lose, probably sooner than later. Simple demographics will see to that.

But if the Jewish community makes their response to antisemisitm about politics, with concrete calls to action, about something that transcends ethnic groups and victim-hood, about siding with a group that supports the Canadian way of life, freedom from war and violence, civil rights and all the rest, I believe Canadians will respond positively.

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