Juno News - March 12, 2021


Furor erupts over accusations of anti-Semitism surrounding NDP MP’s event

A Tale of Two Pandemics Leave the kids alone

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

201.96

Word count

1,129

Sentence count

—

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I discuss the controversy surrounding a former leader of the Labour Party in the UK who was accused of promoting anti-semitism and silence pro-Palestinian voices. I also discuss the opposition to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism and why it should not be adopted in Canada.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 so it seems that there are a number of people that are still really mad about the criticism
00:00:09.680 surrounding the nikki ashton jeremy corbyn event which apparently is still happening on march 20th
00:00:14.520 now i wanted to unpack what that issue was because there's been a lot of conflation online
00:00:19.540 surrounding criticism of that event surrounding criticism of using the term anti-semitism to
00:00:24.100 silence pro-palestinian voices the issues regarding jeremy corbyn and what that really
00:00:28.940 all has to do with canadian politics and canada now to start let's just recap on what happened to
00:00:34.920 jeremy corbyn he was the former leader of the labor party in the uk and he was accused of at the very
00:00:40.580 least turning a blind eye to anti-semitism in that party it really took up a lot of oxygen from that
00:00:46.440 party's messaging and it really resulted in the worst defeat that they had electorally since 1935
00:00:52.080 so they really really got trashed in the election and a lot of people said it was because they had
00:00:56.140 to deal with this issue for such a long time now again that obviously splashed onto nikki ashton
00:01:01.980 because she's now having an event with jeremy corbyn who was accused of again either you know
00:01:05.880 promoting anti-semitism or again at the very least turning a blind eye to anti-semitism and so a lot
00:01:10.840 of people were critical saying that you know why are you bringing this person to canada what do you
00:01:14.980 have to talk about they're a disgraced former leader and really should not be partaking in this event
00:01:19.540 but the entire thing really boils down to and again the issue of jeremy corbyn boils down to
00:01:25.440 opposition to what is called the ihra definition of anti-semitism now this is one of the things that
00:01:31.720 started that train for the labor party and so i think that people really need to understand what
00:01:37.120 that is and why it could have an effect on canada now the ihra is an organization called the
00:01:43.280 international holocaust remembrance alliance and they came up with a working definition of anti-semitism
00:01:48.940 because they felt it was better to have at the very least some agreed upon definition so that
00:01:52.860 you could quantify or tackle the problem in a productive manner now the confusion here and it
00:01:58.640 even comes from people who support the adoption of this definition which canada has adopted now the
00:02:04.300 confusion is that this has somehow something to do with israel that it will silence pro-palestinian
00:02:07.860 voices and that's been a lot of the criticism of why it should not be adopted but i want to read you
00:02:12.640 the definition and we'll see where israel is mentioned and it says here and i quote anti-semitism is a
00:02:18.220 certain perception of jews which may be expressed as hatred towards jews rhetorical and physical
00:02:23.140 manifestations of anti-semitism are directed towards jewish or non-jewish individuals and or
00:02:27.940 their property towards jewish community institutions and religious facilities so as you can see there's
00:02:33.540 not a single mention of israel is not at all mentioned in this definition it's nowhere to be seen
00:02:38.160 it really is talking about anti-semitism against jews it is that swastika that's painted on the synagogue
00:02:44.520 or the vandalism of a jewish person's car or even a non-jewish person's car because that is what
00:02:49.740 anti-semitism is about it is about jews now they also put in this definition they put together a
00:02:56.220 guide now again the countries that have adopted this definition as canada has are not using the
00:03:00.780 guide that is attached which does mention israel they're simply using the definition and this is a
00:03:04.920 non-legally binding definition definition in canada now the guide for example has some examples of
00:03:11.920 what anti-semitism might look like that do reference israel now they say for example accusing
00:03:17.140 the jews as a people or israel as as a state of inventing or exaggerating the holocaust this is a 0.68
00:03:22.680 guide that could help you to say that you know that's probably anti-semitic again but you know
00:03:26.780 depends on what you say but that one is probably anti-semitic um it could be for example drawing
00:03:31.660 comparisons of contemporary israeli policy to the nazis or it could be holding jews collectively as
00:03:37.320 responsible for the accusations or alleged crimes of the state of israel so these type of
00:03:41.900 things again this is a guide to help you determine whether or not this is anti-semitism and this is
00:03:47.820 the issue the guide is not the definition and that is where people i think are getting confused again
00:03:53.420 even supporters of the definition i think fail to understand that this guide is just illustrative
00:03:58.460 examples it is not the actual definition so okay what does this matter we went through this whole
00:04:03.100 definition of anti-semitism what does this matter what does it have to do with canada with canadians
00:04:06.400 with the ndp with nikki ashton well again the labor party suffered their worst electoral defeat since
00:04:12.040 1935 because the issue took up so much oxygen and i think the concern and people who are either
00:04:18.240 ndp supporters or again nikki ashton herself or jagmeet singh or really anyone involved in or with
00:04:24.340 the ndp in any way should really take to heart the fact that this affected the laborers ability to
00:04:30.080 message because they constantly had to deal with this accusation they were again at the very least if not
00:04:34.540 outright promoting but turning a blind eye to anti-semitism and this had nothing to do at heart
00:04:39.480 with israel because it started with anti-semitism against jews and i think that again is a concern
00:04:45.460 so if you are an ndp supporter i think you should really read the ihra definition for yourself don't
00:04:50.560 take my word for it you can look it up look at some of these examples try and figure out way where
00:04:55.320 they may or may not be anti-semitic try and think about maybe your own beliefs and unpack that and try
00:05:00.320 reconcile that with the definition and really take that to heart now again this is something that is
00:05:06.820 still going on it's still an unfolding story and i'll be happy to report or keep you guys updated
00:05:10.980 on what is happening but i think it was important to at the very least unpack that for a couple of
00:05:15.560 minutes what was the main criticism surrounding the nikki ashton german corbin event and why i think
00:05:21.480 that criticism ran a little off the rails and what exactly the main issue at the heart of it is now
00:05:27.220 again i hope you enjoyed this video thank you so so much for watching as usual my name is sam
00:05:31.880 ashkenazi for true north have yourselves a great day and a great evening thanks