CJC-Quebec submission to HUAC North

It gets still worse.

While the CJC submission noted in my last post was relatively guarded in its language, its Quebec counterpart has thrown all caution to the winds in its submission of August 31.

Some quotations from the brief, with my comments:

Anti-Zionism is thus used as a means to mask antisemitism, without assuming its stigma. Automatic, onesided condemnation of Israel’s unsubstantiated “illegal” actions in Gaza and Lebanon has become the mantra of numerous Quebec institutions, especially and most ironically, those that describe themselves as favoring the left i.e. trade unions, academic associations, the Quebec Federation of Women.

Hence, to refer to the completely one-sided body count in both places, including hundreds of civilians; to note the wholesale destruction of Lebanese infrastructure; to cite the war crimes documented in the Goldstone Report--are all instances of masked "anti-Semitism." You can't make things much clearer than that.

Anti-Semites attempt to refute this assertion by pointing to members of the Jewish community that similarly condemn Israel. The criticism of Israel is not in itself antisemitic. However, when it is voluntarily blind to the human rights violations throughout the world and falsely accuses Israel of these same violations; one singles out the Jewish state for differential and discriminatory treatment. Furthermore, studies reveal that, “those who endorse anti-Israel statements tend to endorse anti-Semitic statements,” as well.

Only "anti-Semites," then, refer to the fact that some Jews are also critical of Israel. Even to refer to an organization such as Independent Jewish Voices is proof, therefore, of anti-Semitism. To criticize Israel without mentioning other countries whose violations of human rights aren't even in dispute is anti-Semitic. And anyway, all such accusations against Israel are false.

Please note the last, particularly smelly piece of slanderous, self-serving dreck: "studies reveal that, 'those who endorse anti-Israel statements tend to endorse anti-Semitic statements,' as well." (Only one study is cited, which looked at an anything-but-randomly-selected sample of 197 people.) In other words--well, other words aren't really necessary, are they?

[T]o promote a boycott on Israel is to promote the notion that Jews, or the Jewish state are to be excluded from the international community on the premise that they are dangerous and unworthy of international participation.

Or could it be that such boycotts are a means of bringing pressure upon a nation to behave according to the norms of international law and human rights? But calling for such pressure is "anti-Semitic" too.

In 2004, anti-Israel forces on school campuses began to promote Israeli Apartheid Week, unjustly associating Israel with the apartheid regime that existed in South Africa. Apartheid is a crime against humanity. Labeling Israel as an apartheid state is a deliberate attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish state itself. The anti-Apartheid campaign has garnered the support of mainstream labor unions (CSQ) and the Quebec Women’s Federation, to name just a few.

This, like much of the submission, is jaw-droppingly dishonest. South Africa persists as a state, long after the apparatus of apartheid was dismantled. No one called for the eradication of the South African state, but for some fundamental changes in it. Rational arguments, in my opinion, can indeed be mustered to defend the notion of "Israeli Apartheid." But CJC-Quebec wants to stifle any such discussion, heading it off at the pass with cries of "anti-Semitism."

CJC-Quebec goes on to cherry-pick a handful of genuinely anti-Semitic comments from the Bouchard-Taylor Commission hearings on "reasonable accommodation," but noted itself that the Commission received over 900 briefs, and heard from 241 persons at the hearings. The regional forums that it conducted included 3,423 participants, and the province-wide forums, 800. From such a large pool of participants, no doubt a few would have admitted to having been abducted by aliens if the subject had come up.

But all that was to make the point that anti-Semitism is a real and pulsating presence in Quebec, with the implicit suggestion that government intervention, including the regulation of discussion about the Middle East, is necessary. This, even though CJC-Quebec, to its undoubted discomfiture, had to admit that hate crimes against Jews in Quebec have actually been diminishing of late.

CJC-Quebec concludes by endorsing all of the CJC recommendations, plus recommending "greater education of immigrants on matters of human rights, cultural diversity and multiculturalism."

There you have it. More forthright than the CJC proper, CJC-Quebec virtually defines criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic and false. Even to note that some Jews themselves are critical of Israel (the "vibrancy of debate" within Israel, referred to by the CJC in its brief, no doubt includes such voices) is yet more proof of "anti-Semitism." Only silence on the part of Israel's critics, it seems, will do.

And HUAC North has just begun its work.