{"id":37612,"date":"2021-10-22T01:58:07","date_gmt":"2021-10-22T08:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=37612"},"modified":"2021-10-21T10:27:48","modified_gmt":"2021-10-21T17:27:48","slug":"government-to-target-hate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2021\/10\/22\/government-to-target-hate\/","title":{"rendered":"Government to target hate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Irwin Cotler spoke Sunday at a virtual event convened by National Council of Jewish Women of Canada. (photo from raoulwallenbergcentre.org<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

Canada is set to make a number of significant commitments to combat antisemitism, as are other countries that participated in a summit on the issue last week in the Swedish city of Malm\u00f6.<\/p>\n

Irwin Cotler, Canada\u2019s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and fighting antisemitism, spoke Oct. 17 at a virtual event convened by National Council of Jewish Women of Canada. The human rights lawyer and former federal justice minister, who is also international chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, said that, in the aftermath of the conference, the Canadian government would announce a number of pledges.<\/p>\n

These will include enhanced teaching and learning about the Holocaust across generational lines, combating the increasing Holocaust denial and distortion, and battling hatred on social media. Reducing an alarming rise in hate crimes will also be among the pledges Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is set to make, according to Cotler.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwenty-twenty was the year for the highest rise in hate crimes targeting Jews ever,\u201d he said. \u201cBut, by May 2021, we had reached the level then of all the hate crimes in all of 2020.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government will recommit itself to protecting the security of Jewish institutions, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere, the government recently made commitments in financial terms for this purpose,\u201d said Cotler.<\/p>\n

Zero tolerance for antisemitism in the political discourse is also an objective, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat means not just calling out antisemitism in the other\u2019s political party but calling out antisemitism in our own,\u201d Cotler said. \u201cIn other words, not weaponizing antisemitism or politicizing it, but holding each of us, respectively, our own political parties, accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to Trudeau, Israeli President Isaac Herzog, French President Emmanuel Macron and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken were among the leaders who addressed the conference. The Malm\u00f6 International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism was hosted by Sweden\u2019s Prime Minister Stefan L\u00f6fven. Trudeau announced at the conference that Cotler\u2019s role of special envoy would be made permanent.<\/p>\n

Cotler contextualized the Malm\u00f6 forum in a two-decade era of what he calls \u201cdemonological antisemitism,\u201d which began at the 2001 Durban conference against racism that devolved into an antisemitic carnival.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened at Durban was truly Orwellian,\u201d said Cotler. \u201cA world conference against racism and hate turned into a conference of racism and hate against Israel and the Jewish people. A conference that was to commemorate the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa turned into a conference calling for the dismantling of the \u2018apartheid state\u2019 Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose of us who personally witnessed this Durban festival of hate have been forever transformed by the pamphlets and posters of hatred and antisemitism, by the cartoons and the leaflets portraying not only the Jews as Nazis, but the classical antisemitic tropes of Jews with hooked noses, with fangs, with fingers dipped in blood from the killing of children. Where we were accosted with pamphlets of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Where we witnessed demonstrators with signs \u2013 incredibly for a human rights conference or for any conference \u2013 signs which said, \u2018Too bad Hitler didn\u2019t finish the job.\u2019 Where we witnessed Jewish students \u2013 and I witnessed this personally \u2013 being physically assaulted and being told, \u2018You don\u2019t belong to the human race,\u2019\u201d said Cotler.<\/p>\n

Durban was the first tipping point and the global surge of antisemitism during last spring\u2019s conflict between Hamas and Israel was a second, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cJews were targeted and threatened in their own neighbourhoods and on their own streets,\u201d said Cotler. During and after that conflict, Cotler said, Jewish memorials were defaced, synagogues were torched, cemeteries were vandalized, Jewish institutions found themselves under assault and incendiary hate speech \u2013 such as 17,000 tweets that \u201cHitler was right\u201d \u2013 exploded.<\/p>\n

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated antisemitism, or at least has been exploited by antisemites, who have \u201cinstrumentalized one of the more ancient tropes of the Jews as the poisoners of wells,\u201d said Cotler. The health crisis has also seen conspiracies of Jews profiting from vaccines and anti-vaxxers posing \u201cas if they were victims of Nazi persecution,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Cotler lamented what he calls \u201cthe mainstreaming, the normalization \u2013 in effect, the legitimization of antisemitism in the political culture.\u201d During the conflict last spring, convoys of vehicles in London, U.K., drove through Jewish neighbourhoods screaming, \u201cF\u2013k the Jews, rape their daughters!\u201d This was a convoy and a message that was replicated in Toronto days later and which resulted in, Cotler said, an \u201cutter absence of outrage.\u201d<\/p>\n

The legalist also spoke of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you can\u2019t define it, you can\u2019t combat it,\u201d he said. The IHRA definition was adopted after 15 years of discussion and debate by intergovernmental bodies, governments, parliaments, scholars and civil society leaders, he said.<\/p>\n

The task of fighting antisemitism must not fall only to Jews, Cotler\u00a0 stressed.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we\u2019ve learned only too painfully, and have repeated too often, that, while it begins with Jews, it doesn\u2019t end with Jews,\u201d he said. \u201cTherefore, we need this collective global constituency of conscience to combat it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Irwin Cotler spoke Sunday at a virtual event convened by National Council of Jewish Women of Canada. (photo from raoulwallenbergcentre.org) Canada is set to make a number of significant commitments to combat antisemitism, as are other countries that participated in a summit on the issue last week in the Swedish city of Malm\u00f6. Irwin Cotler, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37613,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1041,801,3157,20923,7833,53,689,20924,2866,3597],"class_list":["post-37612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","tag-academic-advisory-council","tag-antisemitism","tag-canada","tag-durban","tag-government","tag-holocaust","tag-irwin-cotler","tag-malmo-international-forum","tag-national-council-of-jewish-women-of-canada","tag-politics"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}