OTTAWA – The League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada released its 2005 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, an annual study on patterns of prejudice in this country, last week.
Ruth Klein, national director of the League for Human Rights (holding Audit), flanked by Michael Mostyn (left), recently appointed government relations and diplomatic affairs director, and Alain Goldschlager, University of Western Ontario professor and an expert on antisemitism on campus, introduced the 2005 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents in Ottawa last week.
In total, 829 incidents were reported in 2005, representing a marginal decrease of just 3.3 per cent compared to 2004 when an increase of 46.7 per cent was documented. The number of antisemitic incidents in 2005 marks the second highest total in the 23-year history of the audit. Since 2001, the total number of incidents has increased almost three-fold.
“The 2005 findings reveal none of the dramatic global trigger events that we have witnessed in past years that led to such upsurges in antisemitic incidents,” said Frank Dimant, B’nai Brith Canada’s executive vice president.
“Yet, the elevated levels of anti-Jewish activity, compared to just five years previously, indicates that antisemitism is indeed an unfortunate fact of Canadian life, targeting individuals of all ages in their work places, schools, places of worship, on the street, and even in their own homes,” he added. “At present, there is much that you can say and do in Canada to invoke prejudice against Jews, with little recourse in the criminal justice system.”
Ruth Klein, national director of the League for Human Rights, said, “In many of the incidents in the 2005 audit, we see prejudice and politics collide in mutually expedient ways, with neo-Nazi groups using anti-Zionist rhetoric as a cover for antisemitic messaging, while the propagandists of the Middle East co-opt age-old antisemitic stereotypes and Holocaust denial for anti-Israel campaigns. Many of the incidents we see here in Canada reflect the influence of this unholy alliance.
“The explosion of hate on the internet – what amounts to a global invasion – is a priority concern documented in this year’s audit. In all the years that the League has been monitoring web-based activity, we have never yet seen the levels of online hate that are being reported to our 24/7 Anti-Hate Hotline right now. The Internet is a quick, cheap, way of bringing racism into the homes of ordinary Canadians and recruiting young people to ideologies of hate and extremism. This is going to pose a huge challenge in terms of retaining values of tolerance and respect into the next generation and beyond.”
The audit this year incorporated in-depth discussion by five experts on central themes emerging from the findings.
The first expert submission is by Toronto-based lawyer Marvin Kurz who discusses legal developments during the year 2005. Kurz has represented the League as legal counsel in numerous anti-hate initiatives in the courts over more than two decades, including the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearings on Ernst Zundel, which ended in 2002. The successes and limitations of the Canadian legal system are highlighted in this analysis, with recommendations for legislative change along the lines of some other western democracies.
An analysis of hate on the Internet follows, with an overview by Ottawa-based lawyer Richard Warman of recent complaints brought before the Canadian Human Rights Commission. The commission has become the lead arena for fighting this type of hate activity, given the reluctance of other authorities to act in many of these cases. What may not be readily apparent from this chapter is that Warman has spearheaded the overwhelming majority of these cases entirely on his own initiative and at his own expense, making him a trailblazer in the field.
Our discussion of web-based hate continues with a look at key international developments by Professor Michael Geist of the University of Ottawa, a renowned expert on Internet law, who serves as co-chair of the League for Human Rights, Ontario Region. His assessment of measures taken in other jurisdictions will be useful in developing recommendations for progress in this area on the Canadian scene.
Holocaust denial is featured not just on the message boards of neo-Nazi groups, but also in campus settings, dressed up as pseudo-academic debate. This thesis is expanded in a chapter by Professor Alain Goldschläger, University of Western Ontario Holocaust Literature expert, who serves together with Geist as the League’s Ontario Region co-chair. Goldschläger examines how subtle and less than subtle anti-Jewish themes have crept into campus discourse both inside and outside the classroom, often under the guise of anti-Israel rhetoric, leaving Jewish students feeling isolated and intimidated. Goldschläger attended last week’s press conference, participating in French.
World-renowned expert David Matas, senior legal counsel for B’nai Brith Canada, examines the intersection between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, using his vast experience fighting a variety of human rights cases in Canada and abroad. Matas, author of many seminal publications on hate speech and legal remedies, suggests that we need to take into account the broader definition of antisemitism currently being used by the European Union Monitoring Centre on racism and Xenophopia, which recognizes the co-mingling of these two phenomena.
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