Juno News - March 24, 2024


Why Canada shouldn’t turn its back on Israel

Mentioned
Shimon Koffler-Fogel Yara Sachs Andrew Lawton Show Lester Pearson Mahmoud Abbas
Trudeau’s censorship crackdown could get a lot worse Election date change might make dozens more MPs eligible for pensions

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

147.0

Word count

1,443

Sentence count

86

Harmful content

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

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

The Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs President and CEO, Shana Koffler-Fogel, joins me to discuss the recent anti-Israel resolution introduced by the New Democratic Party of Canada in the House of Commons.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 I want to welcome into the program Shiman Koffler-Fogel, who is the president and CEO
00:00:13.780 of the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs. Shiman, I know this has been such a tremendously
00:00:19.100 difficult time for your community over the last several months now, but I wanted to ask you about
00:00:24.840 this resolution, because a lot of the language that the NDP used in this, that the liberals ended up
00:00:31.300 using, on the surface, if you don't know what you're looking for, it could look like it's a
00:00:38.040 reasonable motion. Yeah, I think that was the intent, to make it sound like motherhood and apple
00:00:47.060 pie. But, you know, words have meanings and they're code for lots of different things. And this was not
00:00:56.360 a motion that was advanced with a righteous spirit. There's an agenda. It includes trying to
00:01:05.420 marginalize and isolate Israel within the international community. Israel isn't just a
00:01:12.260 place. And Zionism isn't just a movement to find safe haven for Jews. It's about repatriation to 0.69
00:01:19.500 their ancestral homeland after forced exile for 2,000 years. Canada saw fit to endorse the idea of
00:01:27.480 a Jewish state. They did it in 1947. Lester Pearson was actively involved in advancing it. And all of a
00:01:35.920 sudden, we get to a place I couldn't help but you describing some of the MPs in the House, many of
00:01:43.720 them are detractors, are also wearing these new necklaces that have a map of Palestine on it, which
00:01:54.340 would be fine, except that the map that's represented in the piece of jewelry is the entirety of that real
00:02:02.420 state. So it doesn't really leave any place for a Jewish state. And I think that that's really the most 0.92
00:02:10.700 telling interpretation or understanding of this chant that has become their mantra from the river to the
00:02:18.020 sea. It means not having a Jewish state. It means destroying the Jewish state. And I think that Canada is a 0.95
00:02:26.820 country that should be standing up unequivocally, along with its democratic ally in the region. And unfortunately,
00:02:34.460 we haven't seen that much.
00:02:37.460 Well, you raise an important point. And you know, oftentimes, people in the Canadian government will
00:02:43.060 restate the Canadian government's position of a two state solution. And you know, not delving into the weeds on the very, very
00:02:49.820 complex history of negotiations and talks over the last few years. A lot of these activists are going very much
00:02:56.300 further than that. They want a one state solution. And that is one singular Palestinian state. 0.90
00:03:01.460 So I think that's exactly right. A two state solution was attainable, not once or twice or three times. Five very
00:03:10.980 specific and precise plans had been put forward with the endorsement of the Americans, of other segments of the
00:03:19.140 international community. They were rejected each and every time by the Palestinian leadership. So there
00:03:25.900 has to be some agency, there has to be accountability for the decisions that they make. Their situation is of
00:03:33.180 their own making. They're the authors of it, just as Hamas is the author of the misery that is now being 0.99
00:03:39.460 experienced in Gaza. And I think that there has to be a consistency in countries like Canada, demanding
00:03:48.780 accountability and recognition of at whose feet does the situation lay.
00:03:57.540 Your organization has done for years a lot of legwork on engaging with politicians. I know you've
00:04:06.120 always prided yourselves on doing it in a very respectful way. You don't like being, you don't
00:04:10.820 like immediately going to these public confrontations and condemnations of these people. You like to
00:04:15.580 educate and inform. And I know you've brought members of parliament from, I don't know about all
00:04:20.320 parties, but certainly from multiple parties to Israel. In your conversations, when you square those
00:04:26.480 up that you've had with people to what you see from them publicly, I'm curious if you have a read
00:04:32.100 on whether these are people that are just simply against Israel or whether there are people that,
00:04:37.820 you know, that privately they've been on side, but now it's not trendy to support Israel or to support
00:04:42.460 the Jewish community. Yeah. So I think unpacking that is a little complicated because there are a few 1.00
00:04:48.900 things going on. First, there are those that are simply hostile. They bought into the anti-Israel
00:04:57.140 narrative that has been promoted by our cousins, but it has also been picked up by the radical left,
00:05:06.520 those who have been promoting this woke ideology, which divides the world into two. You're either
00:05:14.740 part of the oppressed segment or you're the oppressor. And Israel and the Jewish people,
00:05:21.700 for that matter, are the poster children for that white privilege that, if you can imagine,
00:05:28.740 attaches importance to things like meritocracy and accountability. So you have this movement
00:05:36.820 movement that has been just unrelenting in its attacks on the Jewish community, the Jewish state.
00:05:46.300 That's one piece. The second piece, and I think that it was insightful for you to flag that,
00:05:52.000 is that group of individuals who are inclined to be supportive, but who have been intimidated and
00:06:00.780 chilled and are afraid of being targeted themselves and canceled for fear of coming out and expressing
00:06:07.660 their views. So essentially, they've been silenced. What they do isn't entirely what they say.
00:06:16.440 And, you know, it's something that we, the Jewish community, may be the canary in the coal mine for,
00:06:23.620 but we had better wake up because this is a challenge fundamentally to Western civilization,
00:06:31.980 to the values that have informed our society here for hundreds of years. And they're under
00:06:39.060 challenge by those who espouse this Marxist Leninist view. They got it wrong every iteration so far.
00:06:47.160 They've now stumbled over a new configuration that they think is going to get them some purchase.
00:06:55.820 One question I have to ask you about, Shimon, is how oftentimes Jewish people are used as a bit of
00:07:02.980 a shield in this debate. There have always been some Jewish organizations that have been very
00:07:07.600 anti-Zionist, even though they're certainly a minority of the Jewish community. And then you have,
00:07:12.780 even in Parliament, Yara Sachs, who last week was holding hands with Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank,
00:07:19.000 and this week voting in favor of this motion, a Jewish woman representing a riding with a large
00:07:24.040 Jewish community. And I've seen online that being used as, again, I'll say the word again,
00:07:29.160 a shield by people that say, oh, well, even Yara Sachs is supporting it. So no, it's not anti-Jewish.
00:07:33.900 Yeah, so I would make a distinction between Yara Sachs and some of those groups.
00:07:41.420 And that's fair. That's fair. Yes.
00:07:43.960 Because they're Jewish by accident of birth, and they're doing exactly what you just described. 0.96
00:07:49.120 They are being used to insulate the haters and say, well, I can't be an anti-Semite because I have
00:07:55.940 Jewish groups that are joining with me. But nobody is really giving a sense that they represent
00:08:01.060 not even a fraction, but a fraction of a fraction of malcontents who don't identify as Jewish in any
00:08:09.040 other way except to give cover to those that want to dump on Israel. In the case of Yara Sachs,
00:08:15.200 and I don't hold the brief for Yara, but, you know, from her perspective, she comes by this honestly.
00:08:22.280 She is absolutely committed to a safe and secure Jewish state. But she positions herself
00:08:29.620 on the far left. She has a particular orientation. She's not alone. There are others like that too.
00:08:36.820 The challenge with a Yara Sachs is that because there are so few Jews in parliament, there's the
00:08:42.920 expectation that she would reflect the views of the vast majority of the Jewish community. I'm not sure
00:08:51.120 she always does that or that she's successful in doing that. But certainly you have to make a
00:08:57.080 distinction between her and folks at Independent Jewish Voices who are anything but independent
00:09:04.560 because they get all of their direction from the haters. Jewish only by accident of birth.
00:09:11.740 And their voice is really just a platform to broadcast the hate and toxicity that's coming
00:09:18.480 out from our adversaries.
00:09:19.840 Yeah, it's very, very well said. And again, my condolences to all that your community is
00:09:24.980 enduring. But the one thing I've learned in my study of the history of the Jewish people
00:09:28.920 and of Israel has been the story of resilience. So I know that you will get through this and you
00:09:34.380 do have allies, even though it doesn't always feel like it. So Shimon Koffler-Fogel, thank you
00:09:38.440 for coming on today.
00:09:40.080 My pleasure.
00:09:41.120 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show. Support the program by donating to True
00:09:45.280 North at www.tnc.news.