Juno News - Antisemitism is the new normal – the Liberals are making it worse

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:19.720 North. Hello and welcome to you all. This is Canada's most irreverent talk show, the Andrew

00:01:29.680 Lawton Show on True North, closing out the week on this March 21st. What is March 21st? It's the

00:01:38.120 fast of Esther, I know, for the Jewish people. I thought there was some other commemorative day

00:01:43.700 that I had remembered that I've now forgotten about. But Sean says it's the day after his

00:01:48.420 birthday. Yeah, that's what I meant there. Happy day after the birthday to all of you

00:01:54.920 Sean Thompsons out there. In any event, it is good to have you aboard the... It's the first

00:01:59.680 day of spring. That's what I was missing. Let me just check this. First day of spring,

00:02:04.660 because sometimes it's, I think, the 20th. No, that was the 19th, Sean. Will you get with the

00:02:08.620 program? All right, I rescind my belated birthday celebration. I actually didn't know that spring

00:02:14.380 started on March 19th. So anyway, do you feel edified by me just like desperately trying to

00:02:21.120 figure out in real time what's going on, where I am? I don't even know what my name is at this

00:02:25.240 point. Welcome everyone to the Rosemary Barton Show. This is CBC's The Nap... No, sorry, no,

00:02:30.400 Andrew Lawton. All right, well, moving along then. This is a fascinating, fascinating story. The RCMP

00:02:37.880 typically mired in politics. It's their favorite pastime to just focus on politics and wokeness

00:02:45.500 at the higher level. I'm not talking, of course, about frontline officers, but they inadvertently,

00:02:51.420 I think, stumbled on something that is very politically and socially salient here. Now,

00:02:56.940 whether that was their intention or not, I have no idea, but there was a secret report that was

00:03:01.560 intended for, oh, there we go, it was intended for police and senior members of the government

00:03:06.960 to kind of just figure out the threat assessments of the world.

00:03:10.680 But this report, as the National Post frames it,

00:03:13.220 was warning that Canadians may revolt when they realize how broke they are.

00:03:18.680 One of my colleagues, Quinn Patrick, over at True North Wire,

00:03:22.580 he had posted something, well, he had read the report himself

00:03:25.740 and drew some other aspects from it,

00:03:27.960 such as the fear that RCMP was putting to lawmakers of a paranoid,

00:03:33.440 I'm doing the lopsided air quotes because I don't want to keep punching the mic,

00:03:36.960 Paranoid populism sweeping the country.

00:03:40.260 That was the RCMP's concern also in the report.

00:03:44.280 So it's quite fascinating here.

00:03:45.580 What police are saying is that, hey, things are so bad for Canadians.

00:03:50.160 Things are so terrible for people in this country that you may find,

00:03:54.200 if you're a government official, that the peasants might start revolting.

00:03:57.940 That's revolting.

00:03:58.900 That's basically the police's warning here.

00:04:01.600 You think the Freedom Convoy was something,

00:04:03.080 you could see a full-on paranoid populist rebellion.

00:04:06.960 against the government. Now, some people might just look and say, all right, well, bring it on.

00:04:11.980 But I kind of take a bigger view of this, a bigger picture view, and say, how does this square with

00:04:17.580 Justin Trudeau's incessant claims that Canada is not broken, that it is, in fact, offensive or

00:04:24.400 insensitive to say that Canada is broken, which has become a common refrain from Pierre Polly

00:04:31.120 and the Conservatives that Canada is broken. Now, this does not mean Canada is beyond fixing. It

00:04:36.840 just means that things in the country are not working the way they're supposed to. And Justin

00:04:41.080 Trudeau, who always says, oh yes, I support law enforcement and I defend their investigative

00:04:46.300 autonomy and authority and all that jazz. He now will have to answer, okay, how do you square your

00:04:53.420 message that Canada is not broken? It's all hunky-dory. Everything's fine. A-okay. And the

00:04:59.840 police saying, okay, things are a little bit rocky. Actually, things are really rocky. Actually,

00:05:05.900 you may find that you're dealing with a full-on rebellion on your hands because Canadians are not 1.00

00:05:12.380 going to put up with how bad things are. So that is effectively what we're seeing unfolding here.

00:05:18.640 The police are warning that things are just so untenable that they are going to rise up. Now,

00:05:24.300 an uprising could look very different in different contexts. It could just be a big, large protest.

00:05:29.740 It could be general unrest. It could be a little isolated protest. Now, I mean, take the Freedom

00:05:34.940 Convoy is one example. This was a nightmare for law enforcement. They just completely had no idea

00:05:39.800 how to deal with it. It was, for the most part, one main protest in Ottawa. Yes, you had the Coutts 0.94

00:05:46.480 protest, which was its own thing. You had, for a time, Windsor, and you had little pop-up ones.

00:05:51.980 But imagine if the organic growth that the Freedom Convoy had in Ottawa was actually in every

00:05:59.600 province across the country. That would actually be incredibly difficult to rein in. That's actually

00:06:04.560 the kind of thing that would have caused the federal government, I suspect, to bring in the

00:06:08.720 military, which, again, we wouldn't put it past them. Marco Mendicino and David Lamedi were just

00:06:14.100 yucking it up in a signal chat about bringing in the tanks. And, oh, well, I think one might do

00:06:18.820 was, I can't remember if it was Mendicino or Lamedi, but both have been fired now, so it doesn't really

00:06:23.440 matter. But this is, I think, a really significant problem. Now, it doesn't take a genius and it

00:06:29.200 doesn't take even the most perceptive person to look around the country and say, hey, people are

00:06:33.420 struggling. Things are not working for people. And this warning from police, while it may be

00:06:38.800 a little bit on the nose, it's touching on something incredibly important that everyone

00:06:44.380 in the country except Justin Trudeau and the liberals seems to realize, which is how bad

00:06:49.920 things are for the average person. And to be honest, that ties in quite well, not that it's

00:06:56.120 a favorable segue or a nice segue by any stretch, with what the Jewish community in this country is

00:07:02.180 facing. Yesterday, I spoke about this cartoon that was published in La Press. It was a vampire

00:07:08.540 Nosferatu play on Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel. It was, I think it was Nosferin

00:07:15.300 who, or Nosferinyahu, or Nosferyahu, whatever they called him, but it was this trope, this trope of 0.57

00:07:21.680 the blood-sucking vampire Jew, an anti-Semitic trope that goes back to anti-Semitic Germany in

00:07:28.980 the early part of the 20th century, Nazi propaganda and the like. And it was a cartoon that passed by 0.96

00:07:35.840 several members of the editorial team of La Presse and was eventually pushed out. And then they get

00:07:41.300 caught and see the backlash and everyone's like, oh, I'm so sorry. I had no idea what we shouldn't

00:07:45.520 have done. But they did it. They did it. They chose to do it. And I don't see this as being an error

00:07:51.000 in the crafting of the cartoon. I see it as being an error in saying the quiet part out loud and

00:07:57.360 being revealing of what many people would argue, certainly with having seen what's unfolded since

00:08:03.300 October 7th, as being a tragically widespread sentiment among many people in this country,

00:08:09.500 and I guess editorial cartoonists are not immune from that. Now, what was interesting is how the

00:08:15.960 government chose to respond to this. Now, to be fair, Pascal Saint-Ange is the heritage minister.

00:08:22.520 It's not the job of the heritage minister under normal circumstances, I would say, to start

00:08:27.240 criticizing, oh, I didn't like this column. I didn't like that column. That's not the type

00:08:32.320 of thing that we want the minister or any government official to do generally. I will

00:08:36.680 concede that point. And I also want to make it abundantly clear, as disgusting as I found this

00:08:41.060 cartoon, I do not support censorship. I do not believe there was anything illegal about it.

00:08:46.660 and I would reject fully any attempt or any effort by someone to use the weight of the state

00:08:52.900 against La Presse or the cartoonist. I believe the way you condemn and criticize these things

00:08:57.800 is simply by criticizing them and condemning them. You don't need to censor it. In fact,

00:09:03.460 that only turns your foes and opponents into martyrs. But I also think when the minister

00:09:09.320 is going to weigh in, it's interesting to see how she did it. 0.81

00:09:13.180 Have you seen this cartoon? What do you make of it?

00:09:17.180 Well, as Heritage Minister, I'm going to be very prudent around the independence of the press.

00:09:23.180 But what I am going to say is that, of course, with everything happening right now in the Middle East

00:09:30.180 and the tension that it's bringing in Canada as well because communities are feeling this conflict very profoundly,

00:09:38.180 um that it's normal that there's critiques with such uh such a cartoon

00:09:43.700 okay so on one hand listen i'm the heritage minister i support independence the press i'm

00:09:50.880 not commenting on it had she stopped it there we might be having a different conversation but then

00:09:56.100 she went one step further and said oh it's normal it's it's normal now was this a translation issue

00:10:02.140 like when trudeau said he found his job boring i don't know i mean she seems to speak english very

00:10:06.780 capably. This was, of course, to the Conservatives seen as highly inadequate. This is MP Michelle

00:10:13.660 Rempel-Garner from the Tory benches speaking out with Pierre-Paul Housse at her side.

00:10:20.140 Earlier today in a scrum exiting the Liberal caucus, the Minister of Canadian Heritage

00:10:25.700 failed to condemn a blatantly anti-Semitic trope that was published this morning by La Presse.

00:10:32.520 In fact, she said that discussions around this topic, in response to a question on this, required compassion and respect.

00:10:41.780 There is nothing compassionate or respectful about what La Presse published this morning.

00:10:46.500 It was a Nazi-era anti-Semitic trope, and the Minister of Canadian Heritage had a duty to condemn it.

00:10:54.200 Canadian Jews are facing massive rising levels of anti-Semitism,

00:10:58.500 and for the Minister of Canadian Heritage to say this was about the freedom of the press

00:11:03.980 was an abject failure in her part to address anti-Semitism and to condemn it.

00:11:10.520 There's nothing about freedom of the press.

00:11:13.920 That was Michelle Rempel-Garner's response to it.

00:11:17.160 Now, to the government's credit, Justin Trudeau did have firmer language when he was asked about it.

00:11:22.900 It's a short clip. If you blink, you'll miss it, but here it is.

00:11:26.360 First of all, on the La Presse caricature, it is unacceptable to bring back anti-Semitic tropes and allusions like that.

00:11:37.300 It is distasteful and exactly the wrong thing to do, particularly in these times.

00:11:44.020 It is a good thing that it was pulled. It was a good thing that they've apologized.

00:11:49.360 But it never should have happened in the first place.

00:11:51.380 Now, if I were Justin Trudeau, I would be looking through my wardrobe collection to make sure I

00:12:00.300 didn't have the vampire outfit that they used in the cartoon that I was whipping out at parties

00:12:05.140 for the better part of my 20s and 30s. So Justin Trudeau, again, always has to be very circumspect

00:12:10.160 on anything to do with tropes and costumes and outfits and all that. But at this point,

00:12:15.020 let's assume he hasn't been doing Nosferatu face in his spare time. He came out and said

00:12:19.520 it was unacceptable, which again, I think is a reasonable condemnation of it. But I think we

00:12:26.380 need to talk about the government's conduct in all of this, because this is the same government

00:12:30.940 that the same week as this unfolds, votes against or votes in favor of an NDP motion that at first

00:12:37.680 was trying to immediately and unilaterally recognize the Palestinian nation or region as a

00:12:43.720 state that was also going to call for this ceasefire, which again only emboldens and empowers

00:12:50.180 Hamas. We saw the Liberals do a victory lap when they had managed to just soften the edges of the 0.99

00:12:56.820 motion a little bit, but they still ended up supporting it with only Anthony Howe's father,

00:13:02.420 Marco Mendicino, and Ben Carr having the, I'll say, courage and moral clarity and conviction to stand

00:13:08.140 up and vote against this resolution, against this motion from the NDP. But then you look at the NDP

00:13:15.900 revealing where its loyalties are here. Now, this is Brian Massey, who is an MP in, I believe it's

00:13:22.600 Windsor to come see your Windsor Essex. It was one of the Windsor ridings in southwestern Ontario,

00:13:26.840 not far from the US border. This is his take on antisemitism. We've seen a rise of antisemitism

00:13:35.760 in the past in this country as well.

00:13:37.600 And I want to note that, Mr. Speaker,

00:13:39.320 because I understand the pain and suffering

00:13:41.680 because I've seen it in my own community

00:13:42.880 long before even this where swastikas are painted

00:13:45.160 on sidewalks or in front of people's homes

00:13:47.140 and all that still exists in our society

00:13:49.740 and it's something we have to continue to fight against

00:13:52.160 every single day.

00:13:54.540 But we're not going to be able to fix anything right now

00:13:58.720 until there's a ceasefire.

00:14:00.360 and if we can help move other countries in that direction then we can save lives

00:14:07.360 and that's the most important thing that i'll continue to resort to with

00:14:12.720 anti-semitism will continue until israel stops its defensive strikes against tamas that's what

00:14:23.320 he's saying there that we cannot combat anti-semitism until there is a ceasefire as though

00:14:29.560 targeting Jews in Canada is conditional on Israel's military decisions. That is his belief.

00:14:36.620 Quite, quite insane that he was doing this. Now, he has apologized. He says, quote,

00:14:41.760 I am deeply sorry about my comment in the House of Commons linking the ceasefire with tackling

00:14:46.400 anti-Semitism. We must confront anti-Semitism at all times and without preconditions.

00:14:51.140 I want to apologize to all who have been impacted by this comment. I'm committed to repairing the

00:14:56.980 harm that was caused. The rise of anti-Semitism in Canada is not a new problem, but the crisis

00:15:02.220 in the Middle East has made it even worse. As a leader in my community, I have a responsibility 0.98

00:15:07.340 to do everything I can to address it. Sounds great. You know what would have been better in

00:15:11.560 the first place? Not saying what he said. I don't believe this was a misspeak or a gaffe. I believe

00:15:17.620 that this was fully an example of him saying what I referred to earlier, and I'll refer to again

00:15:25.080 as the quiet part out loud. This is him being just a little bit too honest about what he thinks,

00:15:31.800 that it is actually incumbent on the Jewish people of Canada to bear the responsibility for

00:15:38.360 what people may take issue with as far as Israel's decisions as a nation, as a state. Now again,

00:15:44.420 I've said time and time again, it is completely fair game to criticize Israel as a country. It's 1.00

00:15:49.900 a fair game to debate a two-state solution, whether that's effective or viable and what it

00:15:54.360 would look like. It's certainly fair to criticize Benjamin Netanyahu. He is a prime minister. He's

00:15:59.620 a politician. He is no more immune to criticism than a politician in Canada or any other Western

00:16:07.220 country should be. But what's basically at stake here is that Jewish people are seen by this

00:16:18.520 increasingly, I'll say increasing in size and increasing in, what's the best word to put it,

00:16:25.620 increasing in brazenness group in Canada that believes they are fair game, that believes

00:16:30.920 a Jewish person in downtown Windsor is a fair target for your issues with the Zionist project 1.00

00:16:39.340 in the Middle East. That is what these people are saying. And when I have said to people in

00:16:45.180 private conversation, and I've said on the show in the past that anti-Semitism is the new normal 1.00

00:16:48.980 in Canada, there are a lot of people, certainly Jews in this country, who take issue with that

00:16:53.360 because they say, well, this isn't new. This isn't a new problem. You're seeing it for the first time,

00:16:58.340 and I think that's an entirely fair criticism. There are a lot of people. I've generally paid

00:17:03.300 attention to Israel and Jewish issues. It's always been an interest of mine, but there are a lot of

00:17:07.940 people in this country that are completely blindsided by what we've seen in the last

00:17:12.340 several months. And I would go and say that I'm not at all by any stretch perfect. I would say

00:17:18.160 that I have been astonished by the scale of it and by the breadth of this. And, you know, I probably

00:17:25.420 wouldn't have seen if you had asked me before October 7th, that individual businesses would

00:17:32.760 be fair game. I mean, I would have never predicted Cafe Landwehr being targeted in Toronto. I would

00:17:37.580 never have predicted Mount Sinai being protested. Again, just a couple of years ago, we had people

00:17:42.760 saying it's outrageous to protest a hospital when people were protesting over vaccine mandates. But

00:17:47.420 when you're protesting it because it has Sinai in the name, and that's just a little bit too

00:17:51.500 Jewish for our sensibilities, people are saying that is fine. So this is, to be honest, disgraceful.

00:17:58.420 And the Canadian government has a role to play in this. The Canadian government has a role to play.

00:18:03.680 They have made their decisions on Israel, but they have been equivocal at virtually every step.

00:18:11.020 They have been equivocal in terms of their calls for a ceasefire.

00:18:14.980 They've been equivocal in terms of whether they even condemn this, whether they call them terrorists.

00:18:20.460 They were equivocal and ultimately took the wrong position when there was misinformation circulating that Israel had purportedly bombed a hospital,

00:18:28.400 but it was actually an errant Hamas rocket, an errant Hamas rocket that had landed in the parking

00:18:34.340 lot adjacent to a hospital. But this was used to justify anti-Israel propaganda. And the part of

00:18:44.260 this that all people in this country need to realize is that this is going to continue. And

00:18:50.320 again, it was very difficult to be an anti-Semite on October 7th, October 8th, October 9th, because

00:18:56.840 there was so much public support for Israel and the Jewish people in the imminent aftermath of it.

00:19:02.960 But the longer it's gone on, the more people have been able to drop that pretend support and let

00:19:08.660 their true colors shine through. And many of those true colors are actually just wrapped in keffias

00:19:15.740 like the NDP members of parliament were who decided to stand up and vote for something that so few

00:19:21.380 people had the courage to say and call out for what it was, which was an anti-Israel motion,

00:19:27.980 an anti-Israel resolution. And I know that there are people that in the audience that don't love

00:19:34.300 it. I get accused of being a Zionist shill from time to time. And I say, you know, whether I'm

00:19:39.080 shilling or not, you can decide for yourselves. But Zionism, it should not be the dirty word

00:19:43.340 that so many people have tried to make it out to be. And I played that clip yesterday with

00:19:47.860 Anthony Howe's father, and he was saying that very thing, that he is a Zionist because Zionism was 0.56

00:19:53.180 the way to give the Jewish people a safe haven in the world that they didn't have anywhere else.

00:19:58.400 And I think there are far too many Canadians that probably wanted to rest on our laurels as a

00:20:02.700 country and say, oh, well, we're a safe place. You can be Jewish here. What's the big deal? 0.51

00:20:06.540 And well, how's that working out for people? It's been a tragic display, and so few people are even

00:20:12.880 now opening their eyes to this. I want to welcome into the program Shimon Koffler Fogel, who is

00:20:17.840 is the president and CEO of the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs. Shimon, I know this has been

00:20:23.660 such a tremendously difficult time for your community over the last several months now,

00:20:28.420 but I wanted to ask you about this resolution, because a lot of the language that the NDP

00:20:34.340 used in this, that the liberals ended up using, on the surface lacks the, if you don't know what

00:20:41.500 you're looking for, it could look like it's a reasonable motion. Yeah, I think that was the

00:20:48.760 intent to make it sound like motherhood and apple pie. But, you know, words have meanings and they're

00:20:56.660 code for lots of different things. And this was not a motion that was advanced with a righteous

00:21:05.860 spirit. There's an agenda. It includes trying to marginalize and isolate Israel within the 0.96

00:21:14.020 international community. Israel isn't just a place and Zionism isn't just a movement to find safe

00:21:21.560 haven for Jews. It's about repatriation to their ancestral homeland after forced exile for 2,000

00:21:28.380 years. Canada saw fit to endorse the idea of the Jewish state. They did it in 1947. Lester Pearson

00:21:36.940 was actively involved in advancing it. And all of a sudden, we get to a place I couldn't help

00:21:44.460 but you describing some of the MPs in the House. Many of them, our detractors, are also wearing

00:21:52.780 these new necklaces that have a map of Palestine on it, which would be fine, except that the

00:22:01.660 map that's represented in the piece of jewelry is the entirety of that real estate.

00:22:09.180 So it doesn't really leave any place for a Jewish state.

00:22:13.500 And I think that that's really the most telling interpretation or understanding of this chant

00:22:21.160 that has become their mantra from the river to the sea.

00:22:24.460 It means not having a Jewish state. 0.99

00:22:27.000 It means destroying the Jewish state. 0.99

00:22:30.140 And I think that Canada is a country

00:22:33.100 that should be standing up unequivocally

00:22:35.640 along with its democratic ally in the region.

00:22:38.400 And unfortunately, we haven't seen that much.

00:22:42.940 Well, you raise an important point.

00:22:45.060 And oftentimes people in the Canadian government

00:22:48.380 will restate the Canadian government's position

00:22:50.220 of a two-state solution and, you know, not delving into the weeds on the very, very complex history

00:22:56.220 of negotiations and talks over the last few years. A lot of these activists are going very much

00:23:01.720 further than that. They want a one-state solution, and that is one singular Palestinian state. 0.83

00:23:06.920 So I think that's exactly right. A two-state solution was attainable not once or twice or

00:23:13.860 three times. Five very specific and precise plans had been put forward with the endorsement

00:23:21.960 of the Americans, of other segments of the international community. They were rejected

00:23:26.900 each and every time by the Palestinian leadership. So there has to be some agency. There has to be

00:23:33.280 accountability for the decisions that they make. Their situation is of their own making. They're

00:23:39.820 the authors of it, just as Hamas is the author of the misery that is now being experienced 0.99

00:23:45.620 in Gaza. And I think that there has to be a consistency in countries like Canada demanding

00:23:54.040 accountability and recognition of at whose feet does the situation lay.

00:24:03.340 your organization has has done for years a lot of legwork on engaging with politicians I know

00:24:11.360 you've always prided yourselves on doing it in a very respectful way you don't like being you

00:24:16.100 don't like immediately going to these public confrontations and condemnations of these people

00:24:20.420 you like to educate and inform and I know you've brought members of parliament from I don't know

00:24:25.420 about all parties but certainly from multiple parties to Israel in your conversations when you

00:24:31.140 square those up that you've had with people to what you see from them publicly. I'm curious if

00:24:36.560 you have a read on whether these are people that are just simply against Israel or whether there

00:24:42.500 are people that, you know, that privately they've been on side, but now it's not trendy to support

00:24:46.980 Israel or to support the Jewish community. Yeah. So I think unpacking that is a little 1.00

00:24:52.780 complicated because there are a few things going on. First, there are those that are simply hostile.

00:24:58.940 They bought into the anti-Israel narrative that has been promoted by our cousins, but it has also been picked up by the radical left, those who have been promoting this woke ideology, which divides the world into two.

00:25:19.480 You're either part of the oppressed segment or you're the oppressor.

00:25:24.700 And Israel and the Jewish people, for that matter, are the poster children for that white privilege that, if you can imagine, attaches importance to things like meritocracy and accountability.

00:25:40.000 So you have this movement that has been just unrelenting in its attacks on the Jewish community, the Jewish state.

00:25:51.520 That's one piece.

00:25:52.840 The second piece, and I think that it was insightful for you to flag that, is that group of individuals who are inclined to be supportive, but who have been intimidated and chilled and are afraid of being targeted themselves and canceled for fear of coming out and expressing their views.

00:26:14.120 So essentially, they've been silenced. What they do isn't entirely what they say. And, you know, it's something that we, the Jewish community, may be the canary in the coal mine for, but we had better wake up because this is a challenge fundamentally to Western civilization, to the values that have informed our society here for hundreds of years. 0.72

00:26:43.300 and they're under challenge by those who espouse this Marxist Leninist view. They got it wrong

00:26:50.720 every iteration so far. They've now stumbled over a new configuration that they think is going to

00:26:59.060 get them some purchase. One question I have to ask you about Shimon is how oftentimes Jewish 1.00

00:27:06.360 people are used as a bit of a shield in this debate. There have always been some Jewish

00:27:10.840 organizations that have been very anti-Zionist, even though they're certainly a minority of the

00:27:16.180 Jewish community. And then you have, even in Parliament, Yara Sachs, who last week was holding 0.98

00:27:21.480 hands with Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, and this week voting in favor of this motion, a Jewish

00:27:27.620 woman representing a riding with a large Jewish community. And I've seen online that being used 0.95

00:27:32.740 as, again, I'll say the word again, a shield by people that say, oh, well, even Yara Sachs is

00:27:37.340 supporting it. So no, it's not anti-Jewish. Yeah. So I would make a distinction between

00:27:42.660 Yarra Sachs and some of those groups. And that's fair. That's fair. Yes.

00:27:49.360 Because they're Jewish by accident of birth and they're doing exactly what you just described. 0.97

00:27:54.540 They are being used to insulate the haters and say, well, I can't be an anti-Semite because I

00:28:01.160 have Jewish groups that are joining with me. But nobody is really giving a sense that they represent

00:28:06.480 not even a fraction, but a fraction of a fraction of malcontents who don't identify as Jewish in

00:28:14.160 any other way except to give cover to those that want to dump on Israel. In the case of Yara Sachs,

00:28:20.620 and I don't hold the brief for Yara, but, you know, from her perspective, she comes by this

00:28:26.720 honestly. She is absolutely committed to a safe and secure Jewish state, but she positions herself

00:28:35.040 on the far left. She has a particular orientation. She's not alone. There are others like that, too.

00:28:42.180 The challenge with Ayara Sachs is that because there are so few Jews in Parliament, there's the

00:28:48.340 expectation that she would reflect the views of the vast majority of the Jewish community.

00:28:55.640 I'm not sure she always does that or that she's successful in doing that, but certainly you have

00:29:02.080 to make a distinction between her and folks at Independent Jewish Voices who are anything but

00:29:09.460 independent because they get all of their direction from the haters. Jewish only by accident of birth

00:29:16.400 and their voice is really just a platform to broadcast the hate and toxicity that's coming

00:29:23.880 out from our adversaries. Yeah, it's very, very well said. And again, my condolences to all that

00:29:29.740 your community is enduring. But the one thing I've learned in my study of the history of the

00:29:33.800 Jewish people and of Israel has been the story of resilience. So I know that you will get through

00:29:39.320 this and you do have allies, even though it doesn't always feel like it. So Shimon Koffler-Fogel,

00:29:43.540 thank you for coming on today. My pleasure. All right. Thank you. And I should just say,

00:29:48.820 just by way of disclosure, I had the great privilege in 2015 of going on a Center for

00:29:54.480 Israel and Jewish Affairs hosted visit of Israel. And it was my second trip to Israel. And I'm very

00:30:00.280 grateful for the opportunity. And it wasn't tied to, you know, it wasn't tied to you have to say

00:30:05.720 this or believe this or even write about it. It was just an opportunity to expose it. And

00:30:09.400 I actually went with Candace Malcolm, who was also on the trip. We went into Bethlehem

00:30:14.280 just on our own. We took a taxi and went across into the West Bank and saw the other side of this.

00:30:19.640 And it was a fascinating experience. And I think a lot of people who weigh in on this and other

00:30:23.620 issue should try to see it for themselves before they do. I want to bring things back home a bit

00:30:29.960 more though not that what we were talking about doesn't have a very significant Canadian context

00:30:34.320 but you've heard me for weeks now talking about Bill C-63 which is the Liberal government's so

00:30:40.380 called Online Harms Act a bill that among other things will introduce a new category of so-called

00:30:45.900 hate speech and crack down on anyone who dares to utter it online which effectively means the

00:30:51.960 government is going to be the arbiter of what you can and can't say. And as we've seen, they are

00:30:57.320 wildly inconsistent in when and how they flex this power. Now, I've often said that to understand

00:31:03.520 how bad things are here, we need to take a look around the world and see where things are worse.

00:31:08.840 And the UK has been one of the worst examples of this. You have police knocking on people's doors

00:31:14.360 if they misgender someone on Twitter. They have this pervasive non-crime hate incident reporting

00:31:21.500 system where you can do nothing illegal, but you still have a police record because you've

00:31:25.920 perpetrated a non-crime hate incident. And I thought things were pretty bad in the UK,

00:31:30.820 but I believe Ireland has come out with the Trump card. I'm not sure if you followed this or not,

00:31:36.360 but Ireland has a new law purporting to rein in hate speech online. You have a couple of

00:31:42.020 politicians that say Ireland's approach should actually be a model for all of Europe. And if

00:31:46.880 that happens, I actually don't think it's going to be all that long before we see that brought

00:31:52.520 to Canada. So I wanted to actually delve into what's happening in Ireland in a little bit of

00:31:58.180 detail here, because this bill is called the Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offenses

00:32:05.520 Bill. And it is one of the most Orwellian and draconian attempts at this so-called hate speech

00:32:11.880 discussion i've ever seen uh ben scallon has been on top of this he is a senior or the senior

00:32:17.880 political correspondent at gripped which is a fantastic independent media organization in ireland

00:32:22.680 and he joins me now ben it's good to talk to you thanks for coming on today very good to talk to

00:32:27.000 you today andrew how are things good very well thank you although in both of our countries not

00:32:31.960 exactly great on the free speech front so for canadians who have not paid attention to this

00:32:37.160 at all what's like the the basic primer on what this bill is and why it's been erasing so many

00:32:42.800 alarms so in essence if i had to describe why the irish hate speech bill is so controversial

00:32:50.000 is it's the incredible vagueness of the text of the legislation to the point where the very serious

00:32:58.500 crime of uh you know convicting somebody of a hate offense can be defined as almost anything

00:33:04.560 So I'll give you an example. For example, the text doesn't refer to hatred with any kind of specific definition.

00:33:13.220 It says that hatred means hatred on the basis of X, Y and Z characteristics, which is obviously a circular definition.

00:33:20.880 So how is that to be defined? I guess it's up to the courts or the police or whoever happens to be offended by your remarks at the time.

00:33:30.340 so people have been saying this is so open-ended it could potentially catch anyone and everyone in

00:33:36.660 its dragnet if we're making a very benign statement another example would be the fact that

00:33:42.080 according to the legislation it's seeking to protect genders other than that of male or female

00:33:47.740 but it doesn't enumerate what those are and when I asked our Taoiseach which is like the Irish

00:33:52.800 Prime Minister how many genders are there in your view because previously the leader of our Senate 0.97

00:33:57.980 said that there were about nine genders so that could be about nine they don't even have the

00:34:03.060 definitive list exactly it's it's a ballpark figure you know thereabouts and so i asked how

00:34:08.480 many genders are there and what is covered by this legislation and he said well we don't have

00:34:13.480 an official position on that and i'm sure that'll all be figured out during the debates and they

00:34:17.080 haven't been still that was months ago so that that should kind of give you just a sense of

00:34:22.100 why people are so concerned about this kind of thing they're trying to protect genders they can't 1.00

00:34:26.420 even define against hatred that they can't define. And it seems like the entire implementation of

00:34:33.420 this legislation would just be totally up in the air. And how do you stay on the right side of a

00:34:37.720 law that is so vague and nebulous? That's effectively the main concern that people have

00:34:41.960 with it. There are a lot of people that are not familiar with the evolution of Irish politics over

00:34:48.240 the last, I don't know, half a century that are probably perplexed by Ireland's descent into

00:34:52.880 wokeness when this used to be this you know traditional catholic uh society and country

00:34:57.760 i mean where did things all go so wrong because i mean even like you look at refugee policy in

00:35:02.160 ireland for example and i this has been a very very strange uh decline in a lovely country

00:35:10.000 i think there's a few factors going on i mean of course as you say ireland has always been a very

00:35:14.720 historically deeply catholic conservative country there's the kind of old trope of catholic families

00:35:20.640 with, you know, 50 kids running around and an icon of the Virgin Mary on the wall.

00:35:25.880 And that's sort of the image that most people have had of Ireland

00:35:29.480 for most of this country's existence.

00:35:32.000 But I think obviously things like the the abuse scandals

00:35:36.800 in the Catholic Church did enormous damage and hurt trust with a lot of people.

00:35:41.280 And so that that hurt religiosity and mass attendance.

00:35:45.440 And so I think in our our haste to escape

00:35:50.640 the church and and to try and bury that part of our past because of all the scandals and

00:35:56.160 controversies that came out of that i think people have overcompensated and gone too much the other

00:36:01.120 way i think also um ngos have played a big role in the liberalization of society i don't know how

00:36:08.400 many people know this but ireland is a country of only about five million people the republic

00:36:13.760 of ireland anyway and yet we have about 30 000 different ngo organizations not even employees but

00:36:21.680 different groups and these groups are heavily state funded most of them uh in fact some of them

00:36:27.440 they receive 96 of their funding from the government so it's a strange kind of non-governmental

00:36:33.680 organization that's almost entirely reliant on state funding but there you go so um these groups

00:36:39.680 are there mainly to promote uh lgbt rights or immigrant rights or women's rights or whatever it

00:36:48.100 might be but in many cases uh that leads to problems because if you're an organization

00:36:55.000 that's set up to fight the boogeyman of racism let's say for example the problem is ireland

00:37:00.820 isn't that racist of a country we're actually a very tolerant country and so you're out of the

00:37:05.300 job in this in the same way if you don't have leaky pipes and you don't need a plumber if you

00:37:09.500 have a racist society that you don't need professional anti-racist campaigners and so

00:37:14.220 these groups have had to try and manufacture the idea that ireland is this horrendous place where

00:37:21.500 women are treated as second-class citizens and gay people are seriously oppressed and everyone's a

00:37:26.700 racist when that's not the case but they have to do that in order to perpetuate their existence

00:37:32.460 and so we have this kind of multi-billion euro ngo board conglomerate that exercises a lot of

00:37:39.260 of power over our discourse and our politics. And I think that also has played a big role

00:37:43.260 in the liberalization of this country. Well, and to bring it back to the hate speech bill,

00:37:47.780 those groups you just mentioned are the ones that have skin in the game under these sorts

00:37:52.860 of regimes, because they're the ones that typically will systematize and weaponize these

00:37:57.420 complaints processes, where you're going to have one of these NGOs just trolling Twitter

00:38:01.140 for hours and hours every day, finding, oh, this person misgendered someone. And

00:38:05.620 from what i've read that could actually be a violation of this law well uh the justice

00:38:11.220 minister has said that it won't i asked her can she guarantee that nobody will be convicted for

00:38:16.300 misgendering and she says oh absolutely that'll never happen that's not what the bill is intending

00:38:20.380 to do whether she's correct or not whether people believe her is up to them i won't i won't weigh in

00:38:25.580 on that that's what she's claimed we've seen how these laws have been implemented in other

00:38:28.980 jurisdictions but she would probably say oh those are different pieces of legislation and we're

00:38:33.300 going to do it properly and yada yada but the defense is basically just trust us you just have

00:38:37.540 to trust that the government won't abuse this power effectively yeah and and i think as well

00:38:43.080 um you know one of the interesting things about it you said that it's in these ngos interest to 0.99

00:38:49.400 try and promote this the government did a public consultation i think in north america you guys

00:38:55.020 might call it a comment period where this was several years ago they floated the idea of hate

00:39:00.860 speech laws. And they said, hey, you know, Joe Public, we want to know what you think,

00:39:04.820 weigh in with your thoughts. And they received thousands of responses from individuals and from

00:39:10.100 groups. And then very shortly afterwards, they came out and they said, you know, we've received

00:39:15.080 the feedback and now we're going to be going ahead with this legislation. Well, I actually,

00:39:19.560 in a journalistic capacity, read through every single one of the responses, thousands of them,

00:39:25.640 It took me hours and hours to do. And at the end of this research, I found that 73 percent of individuals had said that they didn't want it.

00:39:34.840 It was they were negative responses saying, don't do this.

00:39:38.020 The overwhelming consensus was mostly, of course, if somebody is engaging in violent rhetoric where they're calling for the public to attack an individual or a group or race or something like that, of course, that should be illegal.

00:39:50.640 And that already is illegal. You know, in Simon, the violence has never been covered under free speech.

00:39:55.040 that's clearly not what we mean when we say free speech. And so that's already done. But other than

00:40:01.360 that, if somebody is just merely expressing an offensive opinion that hurt somebody's feelings,

00:40:05.680 tough luck, we all get offended. Sometimes that's not something that the government should be

00:40:08.880 legislating. And that was the general sentiment of the responses. And yet, the government went

00:40:13.920 ahead with it anyway, despite the fact that one of the groups they cited, they said, Oh,

00:40:18.560 we got some positive responses. It was from these state funded NGOs. So effectively,

00:40:23.520 the people that you pay who that's like me saying uh i'm the most handsome man in ireland because

00:40:28.640 that's what my granny says you know it's not really the most persuasive of sources you're

00:40:33.040 using there that uh you're appealing to people who you pay their salaries and fund them and keep

00:40:38.880 them in existence and lo and behold they just so happen to agree with you and your policy agenda

00:40:43.280 amazing how that works i i mentioned in in the intro uh sinead gibney who i i think is the she 1.00

00:40:49.600 she's running as the MEP, I think it's the Social Democrats. And she is saying that she

00:40:54.240 wants to basically export this to all of Europe. And I think it would probably be an easy sell to

00:40:59.720 do that. Yeah, I think, I think that's, she said when I was interviewing her earlier in the week

00:41:06.020 that she would be willing to support any legislation similar to the hate speech bill

00:41:11.500 at a European wide level. And we already have something like that, the Digital Services Act,

00:41:15.920 which many people will be familiar with well and that was the model of of what canadian government

00:41:20.300 officials were kind of using which when i heard them say they were going to look to europe for

00:41:24.060 best practices i was like oh please don't yeah that's uh that's not what you want to hear

00:41:28.820 definitely with uh the current state of european politics where um the the amount of people who

00:41:34.980 are willing to argue against some of these policies on principle are few and far between

00:41:40.460 that's a big thing that i think is missing from this debate as well is that even some of the

00:41:44.960 politicians who will speak out against the legislation will speak out against its uh

00:41:50.560 practicalities they'll say that you know it'll be very hard to implement and uh logistically

00:41:56.640 i don't think it'll work so on that basis i'm opposing it and i'm thinking how about it's bad

00:42:00.640 because it's wrong to censor people in general you know maybe maybe we should start talking about

00:42:05.280 even if you could get the wording exactly right and hammer out this beautiful piece of legislation

00:42:11.200 that covered all your bases maybe maybe we still shouldn't do it even under those circumstances

00:42:16.560 because it's actually wrong to put people in jail for their opinions even when their opinions are

00:42:21.840 not uh views that you or i would necessarily find palatable but that doesn't seem to come

00:42:26.880 up during any of this discussion so obviously irish people as you mentioned were against this

00:42:32.960 when it was floated to them but i haven't seen mass outrage in the more recent months

00:42:39.280 There have been there were some protests, but have people just generally gone along with it or do they just not care enough?

00:42:44.760 Why has there not been or has there been maybe I'm wrong?

00:42:47.520 Why has there not been a major pushback to this?

00:42:49.520 There has been a major pushback.

00:42:51.660 And the reason we know that is because several government politicians, some of them who are veterans who have been around for years,

00:42:58.320 have said in our Senate, basically, that they've received more correspondence about the hate speech bill than any other issue or piece of legislation in their political career.

00:43:07.660 so it's obviously something that people are really incensed and energized about and uh it

00:43:13.180 hasn't been mentioned so much in the last couple of months only because it's being supplanted by

00:43:17.500 other controversies like immigration and we have a huge immigration crisis at the minute in this

00:43:22.220 country and a massive influx of asylum seekers we have tent cities popping up in the capital

00:43:27.660 city because there's nowhere to put uh uh some of these individuals who are arriving and there's

00:43:32.300 more arriving every day. We had a couple of progressive referendums there a couple of weeks

00:43:37.400 ago, which were defeated. The government side of that debate was defeated comprehensively. So

00:43:42.720 there's been other chaotic things happening that may have taken attention away from the hate speech

00:43:49.080 bill, but the government have not pursued it, which I think is sort of an indication that they

00:43:55.140 know they're losing momentum on it. They meant to pass it last summer. They didn't do that. Then

00:44:00.340 they said oh we'll pass it after the summer they didn't do that and then they said oh we'll pass

00:44:03.600 it by the end of the year and we're now in march and still no sign of it so they keep kicking the

00:44:08.140 can down the road hoping the pressure will alleviate but i think if they tried to sneak

00:44:12.400 it through people might have something to say about that especially with upcoming elections

00:44:16.460 later in the year well let's hope they will keep kicking and kicking and kicking and eventually

00:44:21.420 it'll just be lost forever uh ben scallon with gripped great to have you on and demystifying

00:44:26.540 this for those of us across the Atlantic thank you so much thank you so much great to be here

00:44:30.980 all right that does it for us for today we'll be back with no we won't be back tomorrow but I will

00:44:36.260 be on off the record tomorrow with Candace Malcolm and Harrison Faulkner then back with another

00:44:40.440 edition of the Andrew Lawton show on Monday so thank you God bless and have a great weekend

00:44:45.140 thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton show

00:44:48.060 support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

00:44:56.540 We'll be right back.

00:45:26.540 We'll be right back.

00:45:56.540 We'll be right back.

Juno News - March 21, 2024

Antisemitism is the new normal – the Liberals are making it worse

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