By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Canada, in an affront to free speech, government committee declares that criticism of Israel should be considered anti-Semitic.
It seems that in both North American countries, Canada and the USA, nowadays one may not say anything at all against the Zionist entity that occupies Palestine if one does not wish to be hauled before a judge.
Nearly two years after the first hearings were held in Ottawa, the Canadian Parliamentary Committee to Combat Anti-Semitism (CPCCA) released a detailed report on July 7, 2011 that found that anti-Semitism is on the rise in Canada, especially on university campuses.
While the CPCCA's final report does contain some cases of real anti-Semitism, the committee has provided little evidence that anti-Semitism has actually increased in Canada in recent years. Instead, it has focused a disproportionate amount of effort and resources on what it calls a so-called "new anti-Semitism": criticism of Israel.
It would appear, indeed, to all intents and purposes, that the real purpose of the CPCCA committee is to be to stifle critiques of Israeli policy and disrupt pro-Palestinian solidarity organizing in Canada, including, most notably, Israeli Apartheid Week events. Many of the CPCCA's findings, therefore, must be rejected as both an attack on freedom of speech and freedom of protest, and as recklessly undermining the fight against real instances of anti-Semitism.
Simple being critical of Israel and it actions in the country and the occupied territories already is being considered as anti-Semitic by especially the B'nai Brith, the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies and similar entities.
Being anti-Semitic once meant being against the Jewish Religion and ethnic group called Jews – Jews are NOT a Race to be precise – it now seems to be translated to mean that someone is anti-Semitic if he or she does not agree with the that Zionist entity – called Israel – in Palestine. I have problems with Israel for sure but none with individual Jews or Jews per se. But I do have problems with them when they make claims on their ethnicity and claims to rights as Jews to simply steel the land of another People.
It is entirely stupid and against all traditions of freedom of speech – and it is not just thus in Canada and the USA – to make criticism of the Zionist entity in occupied Palestine, called Israel, into Anti-Semitism.
Criticism on Israel has nothing to do with Anti-Semitism in the same way as criticism on, say , an African country, has nothing to do with racism. It is criticism on the action of a country, a state, and in the case of Israel one that was born out of terrorism and the dispossession of other people.
So, let's get real and not drift into the realm of absolute stupidity.
© 2011
