Leon Mugesera is going home.
The Rwandan national, who incited genocide in his home country, but somehow obtained a permanent residency permit to live in Canada, will be deported after a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court of Canada. It took ten years, but better late than never. Good riddance.
The Court did not take kindly at all to the suggestion--hell, it was a full-blown accusation--by Mugesera's lawyer that it could not try the case fairly because it had been "infiltrated" by some kind of Jewish cabal. Details need not be recounted here--you can read all about it in the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Some things never change.
But there is an interesting wrinkle in this case. The Canadian Jewish Congress did, in fact, win intervenor status before the Court. And this is not the first time that we have heard from the CJC when the issue of racial or ethnic hatred is raised. When a Tamil is beaten into a coma in Toronto, or some skinheads mount a racist demonstration against Roma, or when the leader of the neo-Nazi Heritage Front bites the dust, the CJC is always first up in the media, as though the communities involved had no spokespeople of their own, as though Nazis and Jews are in some kind of binary opposition.
This sort of thing distorts recorded history--how many people know, for example, that twelve million, not six million, perished at the hands of Nazi death squads and extermination camps?--and it excludes and silences the authentic and legitimate voices of other victims of hate crimes, including genocide. Were there no Tutsis in Canada to make their case before the Supreme Court of Canada against Mugesera? Are there no Tamils or Roma to speak for themselves, no other victims of race hatred to celebrate the death of a neo-Nazi goon?
This is not to deprecate the voice of the Jewish community, with its own considerable history of suffering, persecution and mass murder. It is simply to make the case that other stories are there to be told as well, if the media would only create the space for them. As things remain, Jews appear to be expected to carry not only their own burden of history, but that of every other people in like circumstances. The CJC may embrace this burden willingly, but it is time for those other voices to be heard.
4 comments:
What cynical view to take! If anything, the involvement of the CJC is proof that this is about more than Holocaust. It is about minority rights in general. I would hope the CJC would do the same even if there were a group to speak for the Tutsis. I also hope that such a Tutsi group would intervene on behalf of Jews when necessary. As the poem goes:
First they came for the Jews, but I did nothing because I am not a Jew. Then they came for the socialists, but I did nothing because I am not a socialist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I did nothing because I am not a Catholic. Finally, they came for me, but by then there was no one left to help me.
I wouldn't say "cynical." I don't for a moment suggest that people shouldn't help each other. What I am saying is that the media assign to the Jewish community the right to comment on hate crime, seldom seeking out spokepeople in the communities concerned. And it must be said that the CJC isn't slow in taking them up on it.
If the media called me wanting a comment on a hate crime against Blacks, unless they specifically wanted a white person's point of view, I would suggest that they talk to leaders in the Black community (ies). But that's just me.
I think that's a very closed-minded view. You aren't an orgnization with an agenda of opposing hate speech. Of course the CJC is going to give their best quotes whenever they can. Again, I think it only shows that this is about MORE than the Holocaust.
I don't think"closed-minded" is any more accurate than "cynical."
I don't blame CJC for responding when the media come calling, if that's the direction of the traffic here. But for some reason the voices of the very communities affected very often get ignored. Is that a good thing?
Post a Comment