Gerry Weinstein President	Frank Dimant Chief Executive Officer	Allan Adel National Chair	Ruth Klein National Director of Advocacy

2005 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents

II. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

II.1. LEGAL DEVELOPMENTS
II.2.HATE ON THE INTERNET

i. The Canadian Scene
ii. International Response

II.3. THE CAMPUS SCENE
II.4. ANTI-ZIONISM AND ANTISEMITISM

II.1. LEGAL DEVELOPMENTS

By Marvin Kurz

What a difference fifteen years makes. Back in 1990, before the trilogy of Supreme Court decisions involving the criminal cases of James Keegstra, Donald Andrews and Leigh Smith, and the human rights case of John Ross Taylor, those fighting hate propaganda did not know whether Canadian laws controlling the promotion of hatred would be upheld by our courts. Until those decisions were released, hate propaganda laws were considered by many as the illegitimate step-children of Canadian law. Many provincial Attorneys General refused to use those laws for fear they would be struck down. Holocaust Denier Ernst Zundel was never charged under those laws, necessitating the use of other remedies.

As a number of cases from the year 2005 show, hate propaganda laws have reached a level of mainstream - though not universal - acceptance in the Canadian legal community as a necessary response to the ills that hate-related activity causes in our society. Canada’s highest court dealt with two cases that involved hate propaganda in 2005. Although neither of them dealt with antisemitism per se, each represented an important step in the use of the law to combat racism of all kinds. The League for Human Rights intervened in each case.

In Mugesera v. Canada,¹ the Supreme Court of Canada heard the appeal of the former Rwandan leader Leon Mugesera. He was accused of inciting genocide in his native country through a 1992 speech that referred to Tutsis as “cockroaches” that should be “exterminated”. In June 2005, the Supreme Court found that Mugesera’s speech, which would have violated Canada’s hate propaganda laws under the Criminal Code, were crimes against humanity. Thus the deportation order against Mugesera was upheld. This decision underlines the importance of hate speech laws to prevent genocide, wherever it may take place.

The Mugesera case took a bizarre turn. Before the hearing began, Mr. Mugesera’s prominent lawyer, Mr. Guy Bertrand, proposed a grotesque defence in the hope of staying the judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada. He argued that his Rwandan client, accused of participating in crimes against humanity against Tutsis, was the victim, of all things, of a Jewish conspiracy. Mr. Bertrand claimed that the former Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, who is Jewish, was involved in a plot to appoint Judge Rosalie Abella, another Jew, to the Supreme Court. The appointment, Mr. Bertrand alleged, was made solely to decide the Mugesera case and her presence had “contaminated” the Court. Minister Cotler’s alleged co-conspirators included B’nai Brith legal counsel, David Matas, and Justice Abella’s husband, former Canadian Jewish Congress President and Chair of its War Crimes Committee, Professor Irving Abella. According to arguments advanced by Bertrand before the court, his client had no chance of success because of “what a
ppeared . . .to be a conspiracy hatched to organize a powerful network of influences . . . a form of parallel justice.”

It should come as no shock that an accused war criminal might advance such a classically antisemitic conspiracy libel, a tissue of lies reminiscent of the infamous czarist forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. A person who would attempt to inspire genocide as alleged is capable of saying anything. Mr. Cotler was not even in Cabinet when this case winded its way to our highest court. For her part, Justice Abella, had already displayed her scrupulous integrity before the spurious allegations were made. One of her first acts as a Supreme Court judge was to voluntarily recuse herself from this case because of a potential conflict of interest, since her husband had lobbied in favour of the proceedings against Mr. Mugesera. What is startling is the fact that a sophisticated lawyer and former politician like Mr. Bertrand could advocate such a canard, and to our highest court no less.

Happily, in its June 2005 decision,² our Supreme Court recognized the offensive nature of the claim and summarily rejected it. Recognizing the gravity of Mr. Bertrand’s offence, the unanimous Supreme Court ruling went a step further. Contrary to its ordinary practice, the Court personally condemned a counsel appearing before it for the abuse of its process through his antisemitic arguments. Bertrand was brought to task by the court for expressing “anti-Semitic sentiment and views that most might have thought had disappeared from Canadian society, and even more so from legal debate in Canada”. The Court emphatically pointed out that such conduct has no place in our courts and justice system. Mr. Bertrand was later disciplined by the Quebec Bar Association.

The year 2005 saw what appears to be the end of the Canadian legal odyssey of the godfather of the Canadian hate movement, Ernst Zundel, an issue that has been dealt in the previous chapter. It is interesting to note that this case shared some characteristics with developments in the Mugasera trial. Zundel attempted to subpoena B’nai Brith Executive Vice President, Frank Dimant, and CJC President Keith Landy as witnesses, with the intent to examine them about the alleged inordinate influence that Jews wield over our government. Zundel wished to argue that this alleged influence was used to unfairly foment the security charges against him. However, Judge Blais rejected this argument finding that “lobbying ministers is a legitimate exercise in an open and democratic society such as Canada. Anyone has the opportunity to lobby any minister at any time and make his or her views known. In this case, the only evidence that was provided concerned the public lobbying by both Mr. Landy’s organization and Mr. Dimant’s
organization. They met with the Ministers, they issued press releases”. ³ In the Zundel case, as in the Mugesera trial, the courts did not allow the platform of a trial for the collateral purpose of spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories.

R. v. Krymowski⁴ was another Supreme Court of Canada case heard in 2005 that, like the Mugesera file, did not deal directly with antisemitism, but which raised legal issues central to combating all forms of racism. A group of skinheads was charged in 1997 with wilfully promoting hatred under s. 319(2) of the Criminal Code of Canada. They had marched in front of a motel housing Roma refugee claimants, holding up signs with statements such as “Honk if you hate Gypsies”, “Canada is not a trash can”, and “You’re a cancer to Canada”. Remarkably, these individuals were acquitted because the trial judge refused to take judicial notice of the fact that the “Gypsies” labelled in the placards were the Roma people at whom they were aimed. The trial decision, if upheld, would have placed the prosecution of slur-filled hate propaganda onto a surreal lexicographic plane where judges would have been required to ignore the fact that racist terms refer to real ethnic groups. Racists could obtain acquittals simply by failing to use the Queen’s English.

In its February 2005 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada took a reasoned look at the law, one that allowed its use in the real world. ⁵ The Court looked to the totality of the evidence, including dictionary definitions, to find that the terms “Gypsy” and “Roma” refer to the same people. Once again, Canada’s highest court demonstrated that it takes the hate propaganda provisions of our Criminal Code seriously. It will find a method of interpreting those provisions that will allow the law to accomplish its purpose. With these directions, the matter was returned to the lower courts for a second trial. Concerns surrounding the sentencing in the second trial are discussed below.

The case of Saskatchewan native leader David Ahenakew also suggests that the seriousness of hate crimes has received mainstream acceptance. In a 2002 discussion with a reporter, Mr. Ahenakew called Jews, amongst other things, a “disease” and said that Hitler was right to “fry” six million Jews.⁶ His defence at his hate crime trial, which commenced, after a number of postponements in 2004, affirmed and amplified upon his previous antisemitic statements and amply demonstrated that he felt no contrition whatsoever. Delays arose in part when he retained as his defence counsel, Douglas Christie, who cut his teeth representing characters such as hate propagandists Ernst Zundel, James Keegstra and defrocked teacher, Malcolm Ross.

After a number of days of testimony, Saskatchewan Provincial Court Judge Irwin found that the discussion with the reporter qualified as a public statement and thereby met the elements required under hate provisions of the Criminal Code of Canada.⁷ In his view, Ahenakew’s comments “clearly dehumanize the Jewish people” and that “To suggest that any human being or group of human beings is a disease is to invite extremists to take action against them”. He went on to convict Ahenekew of willfully promoting hatred against Jews and imposed a $1,000 fine.¹ In his July 2005 decision, which is now under appeal, Judge Irwin offered one of the most succinct descriptions of the line between freedom of speech and illegal promotion of hate yet written:

In the case of R. v. Elms, the accused was caught selling hate filled music CDs to a group of fellow skinheads at a Toronto bar. Mr. Elms was originally acquitted at trial in June 2004. On appeal by the Crown in 2005, Ontario Superior Court Justice B.C. Hawkins reversed the acquittal and ordered a new trial, which will take place in 2006.¹⁰ The court found that the trial judge imposed too high a burden on the Crown to prove every aspect of the charge, and in doing so the trial judge misdirected himself. This case’s significance extends beyond the fact that an individual charged with a dangerous criminal offence is not allowed to avoid justice because of a court’s errors. The case once again signals that the hate propaganda provisions are no longer novel to our courts. They will be interpreted in a manner that makes them work.

In 2005, a jury of the Alberta Court of Queens Bench convicted Mr. Reinhard Gusav Mueller (aka Reni Sentana-Reis) of wilfully promoting hatred. Mr. Santana-Reis described Jews as sub-humans and demons, alleged on his website that the Holocaust was exaggerated, and advanced anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.¹¹ Hopefully, such convictions will encourage officials in other jurisdictions to lay similar charges, where warranted. As described in the previous chapter, Glenn Bahr, who allegedly headed a group called Western Canada for Us was also charged by Edmonton police with hate-related offences. It was reported that police had earlier seized items bearing Nazi symbols from his home, as well as computers allegedly used to host a hate-filled website .¹²

It must be said that much of the legal work in combating antisemitism in Canada has taken place through the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT). Post 9/11 amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Act ¹³expressly adopted the finding of the Tribunal in Citron v. Zundel,¹⁴ that the Tribunal has civil jurisdiction over the discriminatory practice of hate propaganda on the Internet. The previous chapter provides an excellent summary of developments in that area.

However, there are still a number of key concerns as noted in past Audits.¹⁵ First, the courts are not responding to convictions in terms of sentencing in a manner that provides a deterrent either to offender recidivism or to future offenders. Furthermore, Provincial Attorneys General continue to be overly cautious about giving consent for prosecution as required under the Criminal Code of Canada,¹⁶ even in cases where there is due cause.

The Roma case described above highlights the apparent reluctance of the courts to place serious sentences on the perpetrators of hate. In the Roma case, only six of the original 24 or more protestors faced any charges at all. At the second trial, charges against four of the accused were dropped, while the two defendants who were deemed to be the most involved pled guilty and received only suspended sentences. Both were merely required to send letters of apology to the Roma community. Despite the clear ruling at the Supreme Court of Canada level, the final outcome failed to send a strong message of deterrence. Similarly, in the Ahenakew case discussed above, the fine of $1,000 imposed by the trial judge seems inadequate.

Sentencing in the 2004 firebombing of a Montreal Jewish elementary school also highlights this point. Sleiman Elmerhebi will have served just 16 months of a two-year sentence for torching the school and will be released into the community by May 2006, despite the many outstanding questions surrounding the incident, including the possibility of an accomplice.

This concern is further highlighted in the July 2005 trial decision relating to three individuals who, in 2004, overturned tombstones, broke synagogue windows and vandalized Jewish communal property in a drunken rampage through the main corridor of a predominantly Jewish area in Toronto (R. v. Vandermay et al). In sentences that the League described as no more than a slap on the wrist when one takes into account that the incident terrorized an entire community, the three were convicted of simple mischief.¹⁷ The adult offender was given a conditional sentence of six months, while the two under-age offenders were sentenced to two years’ probation. All three were released back into the very community they victimized. They were required to pay back only a portion of the damage they had caused. The concern is that such sentences do nothing to deter further antisemitic activity, and demonstrate core weaknesses in the justice system when it comes to hate-related activity.

The Toronto Vandermay case also reflects the additional concern of a reluctance to impose hate crime charges even in seemingly clear-cut cases. Early pronouncements by officials in this matter indicated an intention to lay hate crime charges, but in the end only simple mischief counts were imposed.

Nor is this reluctance to lay hate crimes charges an isolated circumstance. In Ottawa, the Ontario Attorney General refused to lay charges, despite police recommendations, against a Vietnamese man who mounted a public display near Parliament Hill of highly derogatory signs belittling Jews. His signs read “Jewish Torah incites Jews to Murder”, and “Eliminate this criminal bloodthirsty vile sadistic Jewish mafia”.

Despite protests by a number of organizations, no criminal charges have been forthcoming against Mr. Tomacsz Winnicki concerning alleged postings, some threatening, on a number of websites. The messages, allegedly posted by Winnicki, attack Jews, blacks and Muslims and call on whites to rid Canada of these groups. A May 2005 posting states, for example, “F***ying Jew-bitch F*** you kikes”, and even included a death threat against a named B’nai Brith employee. It has been left up to the human rights system to step in and fill the gap, as outlined in the previous chapter, thereby highlighting that it is the dedication and willingness of Commission officials to maximize their jurisdiction, and the commitment and persistence of individuals such as Richard Warman, which has led to tangible results.

A further example of this reluctance to press charges comes from western Canada. The Edmonton police force has been particularly active in pursuing alleged hate mongers in their midst over the past year. In one case, the provincial Attorney General has refused to lay charges, again despite police recommendations, against an individual who is alleged to have made continuing hate-filled comments. The refusal was apparently based on the individual’s mental state. In contrast, a mentally unstable man was convicted of hate crime after attacking a synagogue in the Maritime region of Canada in 2004, with his mental condition being taken into consideration at sentencing.

Clearly, while current legal protections against hate-related activity should be sufficient to meet the challenges of the time, there is all too often an unwillingness to act that stymies the process. The police investigation into the statements of Imam Younus Kathadra of the Dar-Almadinah Islamic Society in Vancouver, which first became public in October 2004, still remains unresolved. A website recorded sermons in which he stated that Jews are “descendants of pigs and monkeys” and “the brothers of pigs and swine”, and told mosque members that the Koran regards Jews as a treacherous people, whom Muslims will meet in an apocalyptic battle. “Allah has warned us against their evil and their arrogance. Prayer and blessing to the Imam of the Jihad fighters…” No action has been taken despite community protests and allegations that link the Imam to at least one young man suspected of participating in terrorist activities abroad. The British Columbia Hate Crime Police will only confirm that the investigation is ongoing.¹⁸

Another incident that points to a reluctance to use hate crime provisions is the case of Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, a Waterloo engineering professor and president of the Canadian Islamic Congress. Participating as a panel member on the Michael Coren Show on October ¹⁹, 2004 in a discussion about terrorism, Dr. Elmasry stated that all Israeli civilians over the age of 18 are legitimate targets for terrorist attacks because they are potential members of the Israeli Defence Force. In a subsequent interview with the Globe and Mail newspaper, Dr. Elmasry confirmed his remarks and was quoted as saying, “Israel has a people’s army and a draft and therefore they [all civilians - men and women] should be considered legitimate targets.” 19 After investigating the matter, police announced that no charges would be laid. There was some confusion in this case as to whether or not the provincial Attorney General was consulted but, according to a press release from Halton police, police investigators had concluded that the comments “did not meet the legal definition. . . Although the comments would be considered distasteful to many, in this context they do not constitute a criminal offence . . .The comments were made during a free-flowing discussion between subject-matter experts who were encouraged to express their opinions openly on a topic of significant public interest.”²⁰ We have yet to find another example of an individual who holds leadership positions in both community and academia, publicly justifying terrorism against civilians with impunity. The fact that Dr. Elmasry is often portrayed as a part of mainstream Canadian society, in spite of these views, only compounds the problem.

The interconnection between hate and terrorism clearly demands new approaches. Great Britain has shown leadership in this area by passing new anti-terrorism legislation which includes protections against the glorification of terrorism. Such recommendations were made by B’nai Brith Canada to House of Commons and Senate Committees reviewing Canada’s anti-terrorism legislation.²¹ Such provisions, if introduced in Canada, could well provide some protection against those that choose to rationalize and/or glorify terrorism.

It is becoming more and more recognized in Canada that verbal statements of hate can prompt even more deadly forms of violence. Such is the lesson of the firebombing of the Montreal Jewish elementary school, in which a note left at the scene illustrated a hatred based on Middle East politics being played out in violent acts against a Jewish elementary school. Certainly, Judge Blais of the Federal Court of Canada, in upholding a security certificate issued against Ernst Zundel that led to his deportation, recognized the link between hatred and more extreme behaviour.

In his February 2005 decision, Mr. Justice Blais of the Federal Court of Canada Trial Division characterized Zundel as the “guru of the right”, a “racist hypocrite” who maintained a pacifist image to conceal his support of right-wing extremism and his global propagation of antisemitic material. Zundel was a “leader of international significance” among white supremacists and his activities “are not only a threat to Canada’s national security, but also a threat to the international community of nations.”

According to Mr. Justice Blais, Zundel “always tries to distance himself from the violence and extremist views proliferated by [white supremacist] people and organizations, but he does not want to severe these ties; he wants to maintain his influence on them”. ²²

Despite some advances in 2005, several key concerns remain. Funding law enforcement is a constant struggle. As just one example, funding for a group designed to bring police experts together to track extremist activities in Ontario was put in jeopardy during 2005. In the end, short term funding was secured, leaving the long-term future of the program in doubt. Police units across Canada surveyed in preparation for this Audit confirmed that funding limitations restrict their activities, in particular when it comes to interaction with the community. Dedicated hate crime units remain the exception rather than the rule in most jurisdictions. East of Quebec, for example, few police units have such units, which is especially problematic when a major incident hits, as was the case in Fredericton, New Brunswick in 2005.

Inconsistencies are apparent from one police unit to another as to what incidents are recorded as hate crimes. Without a clear picture about hate related activities in Canada, it is of course more difficult to lobby for the necessary resources. For example, York Regional Police will record all graffiti incidents with swastikas as antisemitic or multi-biased. Other police units, such as Hamilton, do not include such incidents in their records, and might subsequently underestimate the activity of far-right wing groups in their jurisdictions. The Federal Government has announced that it will begin to collect Canada-wide hate crime statistics in 2006 as part of its anti-hate strategy. Given that many police forces, even those with dedicated hate crime units, are currently not producing annual reports, and are using different criteria in terms of categorizing the bias of comparable incidents, this will be a difficult task.

The apparent rebirth of neo-Nazi groups, emerging from a background presence on the Internet to renewed activities on the streets is seen in a number of incidents in 2005 recorded in this Audit, underscoring the need for a review of existing Canadian legislation. The League has, in the past called for legislation banning the open display of hate symbols, as well as membership in hate groups. Racist organizations are not presently prohibited in Canada, which puts Canada in violation of the UN’s International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Article 4(b) provides that member states:

Such laws are in place and are enforced in countries such as Germany, ²⁴ as well as in France and Italy to some extent. In fact, Germany’s parliament tightened restrictions on neo-Nazi marches in 2005 to keep them away from sensitive memorials such as former concentration camps, and to make it easier for local authorities to ban such gatherings. ²⁵ The Supreme Court of Canada, in the case of Suresh, held that the provision in the Immigration Act, which allows for deportation based on membership in a terrorist organization, is constitutional. The implication of the judgment is that a prohibition against racist groups would also be constitutional.²⁶

France bans public display of the Nazi flag, as occurred in Kitchener, Ontario in 2005, while Italy presently forbids the use of Nazi or fascist symbols. The appearance of Britain’s Prince Harry in a Nazi-era uniform early in 2005 prompted German officials to lead a campaign to expand the ban against Nazi symbols across Europe. As stated by Silvana Koch-Merin, head of Germany’s liberal Free Democrats in the European Parliament:

Another related area in which the law could be strengthened to avoid racist discourse is an amendment to the wilful promotion of hate provisions of the Criminal Code of Canada 28 to clarify that Holocaust denial is, itself, a form of promotion of hatred. That would put Canada in line with many European states, including Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Portugal and France.

While there have been significant advances in the battle against hate-related activity in Canada, and a clear willingness by the courts to use existing legislation in a number of cases, additional measures, and the political will to implement them, are going to be increasingly necessary to meet the challenges of the years to come.

II.2.HATE ON THE INTERNET

i. The Canadian Scene

by Richard Warman

In March of 2005, the federal government launched A Canada for All: Canada’s Action Plan Against Racism. This much heralded initiative was depicted as a call to action and partnership with representatives of civil society, unions and employers in order to eliminate racism. In addition to the government’s commitment to continue working with community groups in this regard, the government also undertook to work with police to better address hate-motivated crime. This co-operation was to include the collection of consistent data for such offences, the pursuit of hate-crimes research to address the needs of victims and prevent offender recidivism, and collaboration with Internet service providers and stakeholders to counter the distribution of hate propaganda.

On July 8, 2005, Canada became the first non-European signatory to the Council of Europe’s Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime, concerning the criminalisation of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems.¹

If adopted without reservation, the cybercrime Protocol would require Canada to undertake to criminalize racist and xenophobic threats where such material advocates, promotes, or incites hatred, discrimination or violence. Article 6 of this agreement necessitates criminalization as well of the denial, gross minimization, approval or justification of genocide or crimes against humanity, while Article 7 makes it clear that the aiding or abetting of such offences should also be included.

In Canada, sections 318 and 319 of the Criminal Code already criminalize advocating genocide and the willful promotion of hatred against identifiable groups on the basis of colour, race, religion, ethnic origin, and sexual orientation. The explanatory report for Article 3 of the cybercrime Protocol, however, makes clear that the ‘making available’ of racist and xenophobic material through computer systems is also intended to extend to the creation of publicly-posted hyperlinks to such material elsewhere on the Internet. Interpretations consistent with this would ensure that individuals would not be able to, in effect, sub-contract their hate to jurisdictions where such material may not be illegal.²

As well as these encouraging developments at the national level, there were numerous strides forward in individual cases across the country in the struggle to eliminate hate on the Internet. [Editor’s note – except where otherwise mentioned, federal human rights cases discussed in this chapter were filed by the author.]

British Columbia

On January 10, 2005, the Edmonton Police hate crimes unit, with the cooperation of the British Columbia RCMP hate crimes unit, arrested Glenn Bahr at his parents’ home in Langley, BC. Bahr was transported back to Edmonton to face a charge of willfully promoting hatred contrary to s. 319 of the Criminal Code.³

On February 18, 2005, the British Columbia RCMP hate crimes unit and others raided the Fort St. John home of Bill Noble who uses the pseudonym ‘Exterminance’ on the Internet. Noble’s computer hard drive and other personal effects related to the alleged offence were seized. The search warrant was obtained based on the allegation that Noble had engaged in the willful promotion of hatred contrary to s. 319 of the Criminal Code through material on his website www.exterminance.org and other Internet postings. As of January 2006, no charges had yet been laid, although the requirement for approval of the Attorney General’s office before any such charge is laid can sometimes lengthen the process considerably. Noble has since moved to Edmonton, Alberta.

During the fall of 2005 some slow progress was finally made in a federal human rights complaint filed by the Montreal human rights group Centre for Research and Action on Race Relations (CRARR). The complaint alleges that both the websites for BC White Pride and another operating under the pseudonym White Renegade are run by John Beck of Kelowna, and contain racist and antisemitic material likely to promote hatred and contempt in violation of s. 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

During 2005, Internet postings continued to be made to the Canadian section of the US neo-Nazi forum Stormfront by a number of individuals claiming to reside in British Columbia. A number of these individuals were remnants of the now defunct Western Canada For Us, ⁴ including Coquitlam residents Ciaran Paul Donnelly and his girlfriend Jessica Beaumont. Federal human rights complaints filed against Donnelly and Beaumont in December of 2004 and January of 2005 respectively, allege that both individuals posted material to the Stormfront website that was likely to promote hatred and contempt of individuals on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation, and disability. Both complaints were investigated by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) and have now been referred to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (CHRT) for a full hearing expected some time in 2006.

In November of 2003, Canadian Jewish Congress filed a formal federal human rights complaint against Vancouver-resident Lubomyr Prytulak, alleging that content on Prytulak’s ‘Ukrainian Archive’ website (www.ukar.org) was likely to expose Jews to hatred or contempt. The site engages in Holocaust denial and contains traditional antisemitic canards, for example, that Kosher certification is a Jewish conspiracy, and that Jews are cruel, disloyal, and dishonest. In September of 2005, the CHRC referred the complaint to the CHRT for a full hearing which, it is anticipated, will be held in 2006.

In November of 2005, formal complaints to the British Columbia RCMP hate crimes unit and Bell Sympatico resulted in the rapid shutdown of a BC neo-Nazi skinhead group’s free MSN website, which had been hosted by Bell Sympatico and MSN. The site was operated by a youth named Dan along with his girlfriend Brittany from Comox, BC. It provided photos of both of them, including one of Brittany holding their young son, while proudly displaying the swastika-treads on her boots. Under a heading called ‘diejewishscum’, the website featured an image depicting a Jew as a rat, with a swastika-shaped knife plunged into its back and blood spilling out onto the ground. In addition, there were pictures glorifying Adolf Hitler, grotesque caricature cartoons of blacks, and threats that white “race mixers” will be slaughtered on the ‘Day of Reckoning’.

Alberta

On January 10, 2005, Edmonton Police hate crimes unit officers traveled to Langley, BC to arrest Glenn Bahr. Together with Peter Kouba, Bahr had founded the neo-Nazi group Western Canada for Us (WCFU) one year previously.

WCFU was originally centred in Edmonton and Calgary, but rapidly expanded to include representatives in Winnipeg, Red Deer, and Vancouver. During its brief but active heyday, the group operated a website (www.wcfu.com) that featured extensive hate material, including downloadable electronic books such as The Turner Diaries, a work that advocates the genocide of Jews and blacks, and inspired Oklahoma-city bomber Timothy McVeigh. The group also held a number of demonstrations in Edmonton in support of imprisoned Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel before he was deported to his native Germany.

In addition to the material contained on the WCFU website, a federal human rights complaint filed against Bahr also identified Internet postings in which he refers to Aboriginals as “vermin” and states that he wants to get a swastika tattoo because “dead or alive Hitler is my fuhrer”. Even more troubling were Bahr’s assertions that gays and lesbians, as well as the mentally disabled, should be killed: “I believe no matter how or why you are a homosexual your life should be terminated… They should be terminated along with retards and any other degenerates that nature would do away with in the wild.”

Bahr, formerly of Red Deer and Edmonton, returned to his family home in Langley, BC after the local police hate crimes unit raided the residence where he was staying on May 7, 2004. Police seized the computers involved in running the web site and Bahr’s extensive collection of neo-Nazi paraphernalia. Although the group dissolved, many of its members, including Bahr, have continued with their activities. Bahr was released on strict bail conditions, including a ban on computer use, and has remained in the Edmonton area.

Bahr’s preliminary hearing for the criminal charge began on January 23, 2006 and adjourned on January 27, 2006. It is scheduled to continue the week of October 2, 2006. The hearing before the CHRT is scheduled to begin May 23, 2006 in Edmonton.

In August of 2005, the CHRC referred to the CHRT for full hearing a federal human rights complaint filed in June of 2004 against Peter Kouba, co-founder of Western Canada For Us. The complaint alleged that Kouba’s myriad of postings to several neo-Nazi website forums were likely to expose Muslims, Hindus, Jews, homosexuals, blacks, First Nations persons, East Asians, non-whites, Pakistanis, and Roma (aka Gypsies) to hatred and/or contempt, contrary to section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Although a Tribunal hearing date has not yet been set, it is likely to be in the summer of 2006.

A permanent cease and desist order was issued by the CHRT in April of 2005, in a case against Calgary anti-government activist Eldon Warman.⁵ The original complaint had been filed on 1 June 2003 and dealt with hundreds of Warman’s profanity-strewn, antisemitic rantings made to Google taxation forums. In rendering the initial cease and desist order last April, the Tribunal urged Google to cooperate in enforcing this order.

Following the initial order, correspondence was sent in May 2005 by Valerie Phillips, CHRC legal counsel, to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, outlining the nature of the order and requesting Google’s assistance. To its credit, Google acted like a responsible corporate citizen by removing all of the material covered by the Tribunal order within a week. The Tribunal’s final decision noted an affidavit filed by a process server who was chased by a rock-carrying Eldon Warman, who threatened to kill him when he served Warman with materials related to the case.⁶

On December 14, 2005, in the first criminal prosecution related to Internet hate propaganda to go to trial in Canada, former Edmonton resident Reinhard Mueller was convicted by a jury of the willful promotion of hatred under s. 319 of the Criminal Code. The charge arose as a result of antisemitic material on his website that described Jews as sub-humans, and Judaism as demonic. Among other things, Mueller’s ‘Federation of Free Planets’ website put forward his theories as a self-declared ‘prophet’, using extra-terrestrial gibberish. He engaged in repeated Holocaust denial, supported Saddam Hussein, and argued that the notorious forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was true and that, pursuant to the Protocols, Jews were controlling the West politically and economically. Mueller also warned Jews that in the coming New Era, “[w]here the blood of the jews may flow, it is only because they shed the blood of the righteous and of the innocent!” [sic]

Media reports indicate that the jury took only three hours to find Mueller guilty and Crown Prosecutor Steve Bilodeau indicated he would be seeking a jail term at a sentencing hearing to be held in early 2006. A conviction under s. 319 of the Criminal Code carries with it a maximum jail sentence of two years.

The wealth of action and success by the Edmonton Police hate crimes unit in addressing the problem of hate, both on the Internet and elsewhere within Edmonton, stands as a model for best practices in effective community policing.

Saskatchewan

April 2005 saw the unmasking of a closet racist in Saskatoon, who was engaged as a lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan

As early as February of 2004, an individual using the name “Mathdoktor” began posting extremist antisemitic and anti-black material to the Canadian section of the forum on the US neo-Nazi website Stormfront. His hate propaganda against blacks, said Mathdoktor, was motivated by his experiences after having taught in the Caribbean for a few years.

As an example of his antisemitism, on February 14, 2004 Mathdoktor wrote:

He gave out enough personal details in his profile and postings that it was possible to determine that he was, in fact, Terry Tremaine of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan who had a Masters degree in Math. It was discovered that, in addition to computer contracting, he held a position as a lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Saskatchewan.

Mr. Tremaine’s position with the University of Saskatchewan was terminated in April of 2005 following a complaint, accompanied by evidence of his activities, to the President of the University and the Head of the Department of Mathematics.

A federal human rights complaint had been filed against Mr. Tremaine in October of 2004. In response to a decision by the CHRC to forward this complaint to the CHRT for formal hearing, Mr. Tremaine wrote a letter expressing regret for his postings, indicating that he was deeply ashamed of them, and apologizing to the Jewish community. He also stated that he was the father of three mixed-race children, who were the offspring of his relationship with an Aboriginal woman. Despite giving assurances in his letter that he would not be engaging in such conduct in the future, Mr. Tremaine has recommenced posting hate propaganda to the Internet. As a result, the Tribunal is in the process of scheduling a hearing date in the matter.

In May of 2005, Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal member Anil Pandila handed down his decision in a complaint filed by four Saskatchewan residents against William (Bill) Whatcott. The complaints alleged that flyers that were published and distributed in Regina in 2001 and 2002 by Mr. Whatcott and his group, Christian Truth Activists, promoted hatred of gays and lesbians on the basis of their sexual orientation, in violation of section 14 of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code (Code). Section 14 prohibits the display of material exposing or intending to expose persons to hatred, or that ridicules, belittles, or otherwise affronts the dignity of a person or persons on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.

Among other slurs, the material contained in the flyers associated gays and lesbians with filth and pedophilia, and described homosexuality as an abomination and perversion whose promotion would lead children to an early death. In his decision, Tribunal member Pandila stated that he had “…no hesitation in concluding that the material contained in the flyers can objectively be viewed as exposing homosexuals to hatred and ridicule.” In upholding the complaints against Mr. Whatcott, Pandila ordered him to pay a total of $17,500 in damages to the four complainants and issued a cease and desist order. The order prohibits Mr. Whatcott from distributing in the future the same or similar flyers that would promote hatred of individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation.

Manitoba

Scattered reports of white supremacist and neo-Nazi activity continued to surface in 2005 relating to the cities of Winnipeg and Brandon, including online postings to the US neo-Nazi website Stormfront by a number of individuals claiming to live in various parts of Manitoba.

This activity included occasional reappearances on the Internet by Jamie Murphy, the erstwhile founder of the Manitoba chapter of the neo-Nazi Western Canada For Us, which formed and quickly splintered in 2004 following the arrest and charging of co-founder Glenn Bahr.⁷ In a posting to Stormfront, Murphy said that he had to quit the group because his wife was “embarrassed” in front of her non-white friends by the media attention surrounding him, and thought WCFU was “just a bunch of racists”.

There was also brief Internet-based discussion in June of 2005 of an attempt to form a Winnipeg chapter of US neo-Nazi group National Socialist Movement, but nothing further seemed to come of it.

Ontario

Perhaps the most momentous event related to Internet hate over the past year in Canada was the February 24, 2005 decision by Justice Blais of the Federal Court, which upheld the reasonableness of the government decision to designate Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel as a threat to national security.

The flurry of media attention around Zundel at the time frequently glossed over his previous record in this country, as well as the events that led to his deportation from the United States and his subsequent detention in Canada. We see this as well in media coverage of his deportation to his native country, Germany, and his current imprisonment there on hate crimes charges.

It is necessary to recall the complaint form of three simple paragraphs that would ultimately be the undoing of Zundel, who had plagued Canada with his presence for so many decades. To sum them up, the paragraphs alleged that Ernst Zundel, through material on his website, had exposed Jews to hatred and contempt contrary to s. 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. The complaint form, dated September 25, 1996, was signed by Holocaust survivor Sabina Citron.

Without the complaints by Sabina Citron and the Toronto Mayor’s Committee on Community and Race Relations, a case in which the League and others intervened, there would never have been hearings before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. Without the continuous struggle of those involved in the case over the subsequent five years, Zundel would never have fled the country just before the close of hearings in an attempt to evade responsibility for his actions.

This united action set in motion a continuing chain of events, with Ernst Zundel finally being held accountable for his Holocaust denial, an activity that a judge in another German case has described as “moral arson”.

Having reviewed all of the evidence, Justice Blais concluded:

Justice Blais also found that Zundel had intended, “to destabilize the legal and legitimate democratic government of Germany…” and of “…using Canadian soil to advance his goal of undermining the German government.” Based on this, Justice Blais stated, “Mr. Zundel’s activities are not only a threat to Canada’s national security but also a threat to the international community of nations.”

Justice Blais described the sea change that the advent of the Internet has had on the organization of neo-Nazi groups:

The permanent departure of Zundel from Canada was a most welcome event that left the Canadian neo-Nazi movement with a gaping hole where he had once stood as patriarch.

February of 2005 also saw the end of a hearing before Athanasios Hadjis, Canadian Human Rights Tribunal Vice-Chairperson, into a complaint against Alexan Kulbashian of Toronto and James Scott Richardson of Hamilton. The complaint also cited Kulbashian’s website hosting company Affordable Space, and groups the two were associated with, called the Tri-City Skinheads (TCS) and the Canadian Ethnic Cleansing Team (CECT). Originally filed in 2003, the complaint deals with extreme racist and antisemitic materials that had appeared on the now-defunct TCS and CECT websites.

Affordable Space was named as a corporate respondent on the basis that it was the hosting company for both websites and that Kulbashian, as the controlling mind, knew of the presence of the illegal discriminatory material and failed to take action to remove it. The complaint also alleged that Kulbashian retaliated against the Complainant in violation of the Canadian Human Rights Act by mistakenly referring to him as Jewish, making pointed comments about the gassing of Jews during the Holocaust, and then publishing the Complainant’s home address at the time.

As the Audit went to press, the Tribunal issued its decision upholding the complaint, and imposing fines totaling $13,000. The ruling, which held Kulbashian and Richardson liable for hate messaging on the sites they were associated with, has been touted as a landmark decision to the extent that for the first time a web service provider was also held responsible for such messaging. Among the entries identified as hate by the Tribunal was one urging all Canadians to take action against “B’nai Brith and all other Jew organizations” and which ended with the epitaph “Death to ZOG” [a term meaning Zionist Occupied Government, used as an anti-Jewish slur by neo-Nazi/white supremacist supporters]. Attempts by Kulbashian to explain this away as political discourse was rejected out of hand by the Tribunal’s Vice Chair.⁸

On April 13, 2005, the white supremacist movement in Canada lost another of its leading lights with the shooting murder in Toronto of Wolfgang Droege, allegedly as a result of a love triangle. Although Droege had declined in prominence in recent years, he was infamous during the 1980s and early 1990s first for his involvement with other neo-Nazis in the attempted mercenary invasion of the small Caribbean island of Dominican Republic in 1981, and later as the leader of the Heritage Front, what was then the largest neo-Nazi group in Canada. However, Droege’s credibility as a leader had been consistently called into question as a result of his perpetual involvement in petty criminality (occasionally in co-operation with the very non-whites he despised) and drugs. Worse still, it is generally accepted that Droege’s authority was dealt a deathblow in 1994 when the Toronto Sun revealed that Grant Bristow, who for years had been Droege’s right-hand man and the Heritage Front’s ‘security chief’, was in fact a CSIS mole.

In May of 2005, Toronto-based ISP Canaca.com agreed to close a Polish-language neo-Nazi website that had previously been forced off ISPs in Poland, Slovakia, and Germany, along with an English-language website titled ‘nukeisrael.com’. The Polish-language website carried a section headed ‘Our Enemies’, which purported to list the names and home addresses of Polish human rights, along with advice on how to break anti-hate laws and avoid detection by security forces. It also promoted arson as a means of destroying public facilities that host ‘anti-national’ events. The successful removal of the websites was the result of cooperation between the Canadian and foreign members of the International Network Against Cyber Hate.⁹

Marc Lemire, long-time associate of Ernst Zundel, found himself in hot water on August 19, 2005 when the CHRC referred a complaint against him to the CHRT. The complaint to the Commission, originally filed in November of 2003, focused on material posted by Lemire and Craig Harrison of Georgetown to Lemire’s now largely moribund website www.freedomsite.org and its forum. It was alleged that this material was likely to expose Italians, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, francophones, blacks, First Nations persons, East Asians, non-whites, Jews, and homosexuals to hatred or contempt in violation of s. 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Mr. Lemire, represented by former Zundel counsel Barbara Kulaszka, has indicated that part of his defence will be to challenge the constitutionality of s. 13. At present, B’nai Brith Canada’s League for Human Rights, Canadian Jewish Congress, and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre (Canada) have co-operatively applied for and received intervenor status in support of the legislation. The Attorney-General of Canada has also indicated it will be intervening to uphold the law’s constitutionality. Preliminary matters are currently being addressed, with the separate complaints against Marc Lemire and Craig Harrison likely to be held later in 2006.

At some point in the fall of 2005, the website of the London, Ontario white supremacist group Northern Alliance (www.northernalliance.ca) went down for reasons that remain unclear. Although still too early to herald the group’s demise, there are suspicions that the financial woes of leader Jason Ouwendyk, who sought bankruptcy protection in December of 2004, may be the cause. At the time of his bankruptcy protection, Ouwendyk owed approximately $50,000 to creditors, including $12,500 owed to the author of this article. This was after his bankruptcy trustee accepted the full claim for damages and costs in a small claims libel suit against Ouwendyk as a result of comments made on the Northern Alliance website.¹⁰

Also in 2005, the CHRC was successful in identifying a John Doe who had been named in a federal human rights complaint against Canadian representatives of the neo-Nazi group World Church of the Creator (WCOTC). The individual had at one point been listed as the WCOTC’s Toronto contact and was traced by the Commission using a search warrant to access the records of his rented P.O. Box. When finally notified of the complaint against him the individual indicated he had contacted the group only twice by email out of curiosity, and had quickly determined that the group’s leaders “had a few loose screws”. He said the group listed him as their contact without ever asking him, and refused his repeated demands to have his email and P.O.Box addresses removed from the website. The respondent also stated that this address was largely used to redirect his pornography magazines from his parents’ house, that he has a wide variety of friends from different races and religions, and that he considers his gay friends as “the best people to party with”.

In September of 2005, the CHRC referred to the CHRT a complaint originally filed in August of 2004 against the Canadian Heritage Alliance and its leader, Melissa Guille of London/Cambridge, Ontario. The complaint alleges that material on the website would likely expose homosexuals, Muslims, Jews, First Nations, blacks, Arabs, other non-whites, and Roma to hatred or contempt in violation of s. 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Website content engaged in Holocaust denial, and argued that whites who have relationships with black men deserve to die, and that non-white immigration into Europe is worse than the Black Plague that struck during the Middle Ages. Preliminary matters are currently being dealt with, and the full Tribunal hearing is anticipated later in 2006.

On October 4, 2005, for the first time in Canadianegal history, the Federal Court of Canada issued an injunction to stop a London, Ontario man from posting hate propaganda to the Internet.

The order by Justice de Montigny prohibits Tomasz Winnicki from posting “messages that are likely to expose persons to hatred or contempt by reason of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, or religion” until the CHRT finishes its hearings into a complaint against him and issues a final decision.¹¹

The original complaint against Winnicki was filed in September of 2003 under s. 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA), which prohibits the posting of hate messages to the Internet. The complaint alleged Winnicki’s postings (mostly to a US neo-Nazi forum) were likely to expose Jews, as well as blacks, to hatred or contempt.

The postings engaged in profanity-laced attacks alleging Jews were murderers bent on destroying Western civilization, and that blacks were animals, subhumans and criminals, and should be segregated. The postings displayed an extreme level of rage and anger and included specific targeting of a named B’nai Brith Canada employee.

Hearings before CHRT member Karen Jensen were held in August and October of 2005 in Toronto, with final arguments on December 12, 2005. Just before the CHRT hearings started, the CHRC, represented by legal counsel Monette Maillet, took the extraordinary step of applying for the injunction to stop Winnicki, pending a ruling from the Tribunal. Over the past three years, Maillet has been involved in all of the Commission’s hate cases and deserves special recognition for her tireless efforts in this regard.

In his reasons issued November 7, 2005, Justice de Montigny said that the test for issuing injunctions in Internet hate cases should be “where the words complained of are so manifestly contrary to s. 13 of the CHRA that any finding to the contrary [by the CHRT] would be considered highly suspect by a reviewing court.”

Finding that the material in this case met that test, Justice de Montigny stated “[h]aving looked at these messages in their entirety and in context, I have no doubt that they are likely to expose persons of the Jewish faith to hatred or contempt… [a]nd the same can be said of the messages which target persons of the black race. They are undoubtedly as vile as one can imagine and are not only discriminatory but threatening to the victims they target.”

A federal complaint against Bobby Wilkinson of Ottawa and his fledgling group the “Canadian Nazi Party” was referred to the CHRT for hearing on 4 November 2005. The complaint had originally been filed against the respondents in December of 2003. It alleged that Wilkinson was the operator of a freeboard located at http://pub68.ezboard.com/bcanadiannaziparty, and was responsible for comments by himself and others that would likely expose the mentally disabled, Jews, Hispanics, blacks, homosexuals, Roma, Pakistanis, Arabs, Chinese, and Japanese to hatred or contempt contrary to s. 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Wilkinson ‘the younger’ made bitter posts to neo-Nazi website Stormfront bemoaning the fact that the complaint was initially served on his grandfather, who bears the same name and lived at the same address. Preparations for the Tribunal hearing are continuing.

Quebec

The glory of internecine warfare within the neo-Nazi movement continued to reign supreme within Quebec in 2005, with sovereignty and language issues the dominating divisions. Efforts by anglophone Montrealer Tara Dribnenki to better organize the movement were hampered by a caustic level of vitriol between her and a number of francophones in general and extreme-right supporters of Quebec sovereignty specifically. Ms. Dribnenki managed just one meeting in April 2005, which was addressed by Paul Fromm, following a few meetings and protests in support of Holocaust-denier Ernst Zundel during 2004. One such attempted pro-Zundel protest ended in disaster, however, when it was broken up by an aggressive counter-protest assembled by Montreal’s Anti-Racist Action and other young human rights activists.

A sympathetic portrait of Ms. Dribnenki’s trials and tribulations in attempting to organize such activities appeared in the English-language weekly magazine the Montreal Mirror in July of 2005. The fact that the article downplayed the extent of her beliefs was surprising given her expressed approval of vigilante violence, and self-postings onto the Internet of pictures of herself sieg heiling.

An openly neo-Nazi website created in October of 2005, which purported to represent a new group called the Wolf Division of Montreal, had a short lifespan after formal complaints were filed with Yahoo Canada and the Quebec provincial police hate crimes unit. The free website was operated on Yahoo’s Geocities, and although it contained predominately English-language materials, it appeared to be run by one or more francophones. In addition to antisemitic and anti-black materials, the site called on readers to send in the home addresses and other personal information of human rights activists involved with Montreal’s Anti-Racist Action, using inflammatory language implying that such information would be used for violent attacks.

In December of 2005, Montreal saw the first-ever successful mediation of a federal human rights complaint dealing with Internet hate propaganda. The respondent, Alexandro Di Civita, had become involved in the neo-Nazi group formerly known as the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC) in 2002 at the age of 16. In August of 2003, a federal human rights complaint was filed against Mr. Di Civita and others involved in the group, alleging that material the group had put onto the Internet was likely to promote hatred or contempt against Christians and Jews, as well as blacks and other non-whites, contrary to s. 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. One of the few benefits of the slowness of the processing of such complaints is that by the time the matter was finally referred to the CHRT for hearing in August of 2005, Di Civita indicated that he had long since left the group and repudiated its beliefs.

With the assistance of Tribunal member Karen Jensen acting as mediator, and Monette Maillet, a lawyer for the CHRC, the parties were successful in crafting an agreement. The terms of the agreement include Mr. Di Civita willingly writing an open letter of apology to the Christian, Jewish, and black communities, and agreeing to perform substantial volunteer service in order to make amends for the harm caused to the community as a whole.

The remaining human rights complaint against the WCOTC group itself will likely proceed to Tribunal hearing sometime in 2006. This is largely a move to prevent any future efforts to resurrect the group in Canada. The WCOTC has largely self-destructed internationally, following the forty-year prison sentence handed to overall leader Matthew Hale in the US, for attempting to solicit the murder of a federal judge.

Looking forward, a trial for Jean-Sébastien Presseault (aka Hatecore 88) is expected to take place in June of 2006 in Montreal. Presseault is charged with the willful promotion of hatred under s. 319 of the Criminal Code as a result of operating two separate hate websites. Presseault used the sites to offer downloadable literature and music promoting the murder and genocide of blacks and Jews. No doubt of great assistance to the police was Presseault’s decision to post photos of himself, his neo-Nazi flags, and his computer set-up to ‘desperate for a date’ website www.facethejury.com. In these postings he bragged about his hate music offerings and listed the various racial and religious groups that he dislikes, using bigotted language and slurs.

Maritimes

In 2004, PEI resident Ms. Danni Dalton had briefly established a now-inactive website called www.88wp.com. Participants used the forum to discuss topics related to the white supremacist and neo-Nazi movements. In 2005, she was joined in PEI by Canadian Dan Feltmate, who moved up from Florida in an attempt to create a Canadian version of US-based music labels dedicated to the promotion and sale of movement-related music and trinkets. The site was to be located at www.triskelionmusic.com and announced its intention to try to replicate the efforts of the now-defunct US label Panzerfaust. Its aim was to create a 5-song sampler CD filled with a variety of movement-related music, for free distribution to young people in an attempt to draw them in to the movement.

This budding relationship appears to have fallen on hard times, and the announced plans seem to have been stalled, since Feltmate indicated in November 2005 that he has returned to Florida, while the briefly operational Triskelion website is now devoid of content.

Apart from this, there were scattered postings to various Internet neo-Nazi forums during 2005 by individuals claiming to reside in Halifax, Moncton, and Fredericton, but no significant activity beyond this has been noticeable.

Territories

No Internet based hate-related activities were noted within the Yukon, Northwest, or Nunavut Territories in 2005.

CONCLUSION

While the importance of Canada’s new international commitment to fighting Internet bigotry should not be underestimated, a simple amendment to the Canadian Human Rights Act would go a long way towards such efforts. We recommend that successful complainants dealing with Internet hate be able to obtain their costs, as is currently the case with all other types of complaints under the Act.

Room for further federal action by Industry Canada and its partners also exists under the government’s official strategy for dealing with Illegal and Offensive Content on the Internet.¹² Although laudable steps have been taken to deal with child pornography on the Internet, including the establishment of a Canada-wide reporting centre, Industry Canada’s efforts with regard to web-based hate have sometimes seemed to lag behind.

The past year has seen some indication that the Canadian Human Rights Commission, as gatekeeper to the federal human rights process, is taking positive steps to lessen the amount of time it takes to render a decision about whether to refer a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal for hearing. In addition, the hosting by the Commission in December of 2005 of an international forum to address the issue of hate on the Internet demonstrates an invigorated resolve to treat the matter as a serious problem. In the future, the Commission will need to maintain its recent efforts to ensure consistent enforcement of Tribunal and Federal Court orders. This will maximize the value of an ounce of prevention in early cases being worth a pound of cure in terms of deterrent to later misconduct by others.

Lastly, the dialogue begun between the Commission, law enforcement agencies, NGOs, and Canadian ISPs needs to continue, in order to ensure the most coordinated and cooperative approach possible to addressing the scourge of hate on the Internet.

ii. International Response

by Professor Michael Geist

While Canadians have unsurprisingly focused on the application of national laws, particularly the Criminal Code and the Human Rights Act, to Internet hate, the issue has garnered attention in countries around the world. As hate online has proliferated, authorities in many jurisdictions, for example, in Europe, France, Germany and the Netherlands, have sought to use local laws to target the purveyors of such content or to enlist the assistance of Internet service providers in removing the content from the Internet.

Below is a summary of key anti-hate initiatives at the international and national levels.

Cybercrime Convention and Hate Protocol

The leading international instrument to address hate online is the Council of Europe’s Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime, concerning the criminalization of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems. Concluded in 2003, the Protocol extends the application of the Convention on Cybercrime to racist offences committed through a computer system.

To date, 28 European states and Canada have signed the Protocol. It requires five ratifications to come into force. Canada became the fourth country to ratify the Protocol in July 2005.

The Protocol defines “racist and xenophobic material” as any written material, any image or any other representation of ideas or theories, which advocates, promotes or incites hatred, discrimination or violence, against any individual or group of individuals, based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin, as well as religion if used as a pretext for any of these factors.

It sets out a series of measures to be established at the national level. These include the adoption of legislative and other measures as may be necessary to establish as criminal offences under its domestic law, when committed intentionally and without right, the distribution or otherwise making available of racist and xenophobic material to the public through a computer system. Similarly, states are also required to adopt legislation that covers racist threats and public insults.

National Legal Initiatives

Not content to wait for the COE’s Protocol to take effect, many countries have undertaken national initiatives targeting various forms of online hate. For example, France was embroiled in race-related tensions in 2005, which led to riots in several major cities. The violence also appeared online, particularly on individual blogs. Reports indicate that French prosecutors shut down several blogs, including one that included “racially tainted hate speech” that urged readers to “destroy France.”

For example, on June 13, 2005, a Paris court ordered French Internet service providers to block the website of the French revisionist organization Association of Former Connoisseurs of War and Holocaust Stories (AAARGH) to French viewers. Two of three American ISPs have also agreed to stop hosting AAARGH’s website.  Indeed, U.S. sources have attributed such measures in part for the drop in antisemitic incidents in France from 2003 to 2004.¹

Similar actions were brought in both Asia and South America. The Pakistan Supreme Court ordered the government to block access to websites displaying the now-infamous Danish cartoons in 2005. While that content is protected speech in many jurisdictions that would not rise to the level of hate speech, many Muslim countries regarded it as hate speech and took legal action.

In Brazil, a prosecutor launched an investigation into hate-based groups using social networking site owned run by Orkut, which is owned by Google. Given its importance to Internet users, Google was regularly targeted with takedown requests of various content, some of it allegedly hate-based. The search giant posts such requests on the chillingeffects.org website.

Self-Regulation

The European Union (which is not the same organization as the Council of Europe) has focused on encouraging national self-regulation. The European Commission released Recommendation on the protection of minors and human dignity in audiovisual and and information services in 1998, updated in April 2004. In the report, which is a law under Article 249 of the Treaty, “on-line Internet service providers are asked to develop codes of good conduct so as to better apply and clarify current legislation. The Recommendation fits in with current national and European regulations.” Similarly, the European E-commerce Directive 2000/31/EC requires ISPs to stop providing access to illegal attention upon receipt of a complaint.

Some European nations have adopted a system where ISPs are required upon receipt of a complaint. Sweden has passed legislation, Act (1998:112) on Responsibility for Electronic Bulletin Boards, that requires Internet service to police their content for obviously infringing material. France passed The Law on the Digital Economy in 2004, which requires ISPs to block access to illegal content once it is brought to their attention. Belgium and Italy, however, require a ruling from a a third party before an ISP can block access.

New challenges will demand new solutions.  The explosion of hate on the Internet in Canada as the numbers in this Audit indicate, as well as around the world, demands that existing measures must be reviewed.  Other jurisdictions have shown a willingness to confront this issue, as explained above. Indeed, it is part of Canada’s international obligations to ensure that the Internet is not used to disseminate hatred. This issue has been the focus of a number of conferences through the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Member states, including Canada, have made commitments to examine their existing legislation for its effectiveness in regulating Internet content.2 

Past recommendations by B’nai Brith Canada stemming from its 1997 and 1999 International Symposiums on Hate on the Internet, included imposing obligations on Internet service providers to monitor sites for hate content and block them where appropriate.3 Such recommendations must be re-examined in light of new realities.

Indeed, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has issued a noteworthy Internet hate decision that focuses on the applicability of the Human Rights Act to Internet hate materials. The Tribunal ordered fines against several individuals for their role in maintaining several hate websites and newsletters. The lengthy decision is worth reading for at least three reasons.4

First, it provides a good illustration of the difficulty in bringing actions under the Human Rights Act against alleged hate purveyors. The challenge is not in finding the hate online (it is readily available) but rather in linking specific content to specific people. In at least one case, that necessitated a policy raid and forensic examination of computers seized during the investigation.

Second, the Tribunal found against a provider of Web hosting services despite the presence of Section 13(3) which provides that “an owner or operator of a telecommunication undertaking through which hate messages are communicated, is not in breach of the Act by reason only that its facilities were used by other persons for the transmission of the material.” The Tribunal concluded that by playing a role in soliciting and actively promoting hate content (a significant percentage of hosted sites focused on race issues), the owner of the hosting service did more than just provide the service. That interpretation is noteworthy as it obviously reads limits into the telecommunications exemption section by not treating it as a blanket immunity provision for Internet providers.

Third, I found it interesting that the Web hosting services established the servers in the U.S. which the owner admitted was designed to avoid Canadian law. That did not work and serves as yet another example of why the location of the server is of limited importance in an Internet jurisdictional analysis.

Since this is one of several Internet hate cases currently before the Tribunal or the Human Rights Commission, it suggests that the Act may emerge as the leading tool to combat Internet hate in Canada.

II.3. THE CAMPUS SCENE

by Professor Alain Goldschläger

The vitriolic words of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denouncing the Holocaust as a “myth” and announcing a conference to expose, according to him, the lack of “scientific proof” of this major crime, is a clear reminder that pseudo-academic discussion on this topic is far from innocent. Indeed, the denial of the destruction of European Jewry continues to be at the centre of the political debate bearing on the life and existence of the State of Israel, which the President says should be “wiped off the map”. Like the Nazis who used pseudo-scientific literature based on racial theories to justify their methods and goals, modern political antisemites tend to use and manipulate history to dissimulate their true feelings and intentions, and look to the university setting to provide a seal of legitimacy for their activities.

North American and European universities have been far from innocent bystanders in this politically motivated, disingenuous debate denying the authenticity of the Holocaust. Their positions have often been ambiguous. While openly rejecting Holocaust denial theories when put forward by notorious persons like David Irving or Ernst Zundel, they seldom have protested loudly when hints of such arguments pepper pro-Palestinian discourse. Indeed, they are reluctant to intervene when Arab/Muslim groups or broader anti-Israel coalitions use Holocaust denial in their propaganda.

This hesitation to act is also evident when openly antisemitic material is disseminated on campus grounds, or flyers are posted describing the Middle East conflict in the ugliest anti-Israel terms. Universities do not object when the very legitimacy of the existence of the Jewish State is rejected, as has been the case during “Israel Apartheid Week” events held on Canadian campuses. Certainly, no university has protested when speakers have connected the creation of Israel and the “false news of the Shoah”. Bowing to internal and social pressure, the higher educational system generally stays silent when campus-based campaigns brand Israel as the international scapegoat, in much the same way as the medieval imagery of “traditional” antisemitism used the Jew as the scapegoat for all evil. As a consequence, we are regularly confronted by the action of zealots who dissimulate their deep antisemitism under the banner of anti-Zionism and pro-Palestinian sympathies.

The responsibility for this role of complicit – but passive - bystander has been compounded by the continuing efforts of some academics to effect hugely publicized condemnations of the Jewish State through sanctions against Israeli academics. In England and Denmark, for instance, there have been calls for the complete severance of academic links with Israeli institutions of higher learning. On April 22, 2005 at the annual Council of the Association of University Teachers (AUT) in Eastbourne, England, a proposition to boycott two of Israel’s leading universities was passed (Haifa University and Bar-Ilan). Sometimes, anti-Israel activity manifests itself in calls for universities to divest from Israel, but at times it becomes even more specific and targeted than the general divestment campaign, such as the removal of Israeli scholars from the editorial board of a UK scientific journal.

As early as September 20, 2002, Lawrence H. Summers, the former Harvard University President, expressed his concern that antisemitism was on the rise in campus life and, more specifically, protested that “at Harvard and ...universities across the country” faculty-initiated petitions were calling “for the University to single out Israel among all nations as the lone country where it is inappropriate for any part of the university’s endowment to be invested.” He noted with concern that ‘where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities.” Summers has since paid for his courage in speaking out, even though his forced resignation was purportedly based on his stance on other issues.

Canada has been the stage for disgraceful events on campus, such as when Benjamin Netanyahu, a former Prime Ministers of Israel, was prevented by violent rioters from speaking on the campus of Concordia University in Montreal. Ehud Barak, also a former Israeli Prime Minister, was subsequently prevented from speaking, based on the university’s assessment that threats of further violence by anti-Israel protesters would be actualized. Attempts were subsequently made, with the complicity of the Concordia Student Union, to shut down Hillel, the only officially-recognized Jewish presence on campus.

Such efforts to silence and isolate Jewish students have been successful to the extent that these students have been conditioned to accept an atmosphere in which they are not free to express or explore their religious and national pride openly, and yet they must daily be exposed to the active and open hostility of anti-Zionist groups. They have responded by lying low, limiting their programming to social and cultural events rather than political discussion and, in some cases, ceasing to wear any distinguishing marks of their religion such as kippas or Star of David jewellery. This may have led to a decrease in the number of overt antisemitic incidents reported on campus, but this is more a reflection of a Jewish student body intimidated into silence than an indication of a more open and less discriminatory atmosphere towards Jewish students.

Other actions are less publicly visible, but no less effective. Groups on Canadian campus are currently promoting the idea that it is inappropriate for “Israeli soldiers” to lecture to Canadian students. Since almost all visiting professors are still in the reserves, the inference is that no Israeli academics should be allowed to speak on campus. The argument is always made that universities have to remain the an open forum for the discussion of the most diverse and provocative ideas when the issue is anti-Zionist discourse, but in today’s climate on Canadian campuses, the rule of free speech is being applied differently when it comes to allowing Jewish students to host speakers that defend Israel.

The message of the relentless Arab propaganda machine on campus changes very little, regardless of developments in the Middle East. All events and circumstances are described from the sole perspective of condemning Israel. There is little promotion of dialogue, except with Jewish groups that are avowedly anti-Israel. There is no requirement to balance the analysis of key issues, as seen in the single focus of the Israeli Apartheid Week lectures. Ultimately, the viable “ final solution” offered, whether openly or by implication, is the destruction of Israel as a Jewish State. Those attitudes, contravening as they do the spirit and purpose of university education which should require analysis of all aspects of an issue, have become an impediment to any clear understanding of the politics of the region. Most administrations have elected to try to minimize any possible confrontation, and prefer to quietly accept the situation rather than take a stand to defend a minority.

Jewish students feel more and more under siege, distressed not only by the constant anti-Israel images plastering the corridors, but by the prevailing tone of campus discourse. As one student put it: “An increasing number of students in universities and colleges say that they fear reprisals if they challenge prevailing pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel views. If they argue that Israel has the right to exist, they are often greeted with threats, even physical assault.”

A recent report by the Ombudsman of a Canadian University that looked into a harassment complaint by a Jewish student against her professor, illustrates that it is in the classroom setting that Jewish students often face the most pervasive intimidation, whether subtle or more obvious. This complaint was based firstly on an exam question worded in such a way that students had no option in order to respond but to accept a pre-determined premise that automatically demonized Israel. The student also complained that when she raised her concerns directly with her professor, the latter dismissed her using swear words and antisemitic remarks. The report found that the procedure was so unclear and ineffective that the rights of the student had been prejudiced. In addition, there are indications that the process was obstructed by the teachers union.

The Ombudsman’s report in fact acknowledged that very few students are persistent enough to press their complaints given the obstacles of the system.  Cases on campuses elsewhere confirm that this is unfortunately not a unique experience. It is therefore evident that there is currently no adequate, protective framework in which complaints of this nature can be dealt with fairly, without the student being subjected to intimidation and the stress of repeated delays and obstacles.

A related problem in the process is that anti-Zionism is not recognized for its inherent racism and, consequently, it is not treated as legitimate grounds for complaint. In the case cited above, the only reason that there was any investigation was the issue of whether the professor expressed overt antisemitism in her response to the student.

The fact is that few campuses are immune from a barrage of anti-Israel propaganda, which inevitably seeps into the classroom. While Montreal’s Concordia University has attracted the lion’s share of media attention following the riots there in 2002, it is only the tip of the iceberg. York University and the University of Toronto, institutions in Ontario with fairly large and organized Jewish student groups, are regularly arenas of confrontation and intimidation, while other campuses across the country indicate that, in one way or another, the writing on the wall is very clear: any defence of the Jewish State is unwelcome.

In a way, many Jewish students are experiencing today the exclusionary situation of their ancestors and having to make the same choice: remain silent in exchange for relative peace and the assurance of academic standing, or experience social disapproval, harassment in and outside the classroom, and in some cases sanctions by the student union or campus authorities. Both nationally and on an institutional basis, many Jewish professors share the same feelings of isolation and powerlessness that the Jewish students experience. They may be few in number in certain universities, separated by departmental barriers, and concerned over such issues as tenure and avoiding confrontation in the work environment.

We recall the case of an academic in a British Columbia university whose contract was not renewed following complaints by Arab students that he had been too “pro-Israel”. We are not aware of any cases of anti-Zionist professors who have been in any way sanctioned, let alone dismissed, for proclaiming or allowing the unimpeded expression of virulently anti-Israel positions, sometimes in classes which bear no relationship to politics, history, or any other subject that could be said to have a connection to Mideast politics.

In reaction to these pressures on Jewish faculty members, there have recently been renewed attempts to create a support group for academics along the lines of the Canadian Professors for Peace in the Middle East (CPPME) and/or the Canada-Israel Foundation for Academic Exchange (CIFAE). These organizations enjoyed considerable success in the past, and reviving them has become even more relevant in today’s campus environment that can often be inhospitable for Jewish academics who do not follow what is considered to be the politically correct standpoint on Israel.

We think that the present situation on campus is largely the result of the attitude of the majority of faculty members. As in all situations of conflict, there are three parties: the perpetrators, the victims and the bystanders. In the present academic environment, most faculty members tend to stay safely on the sidelines, allowing room for the extremists to take centre stage, and often looking for ways of appeasing them. Due to the numerical imbalance between the Jewish groups on one hand and multiple pro-Palestinian and Arab/Muslim groups on the other, this actually means that the latter have almost a totally free-hand. In all courses dealing with the Middle East or with social, cultural or religious subjects, the strictest application of “political correctness”, that is, not offending Arab/Muslim sensibilities, is apparently required.

As an example, a professor at the University of Western Ontario accepted a map of the Middle East without Israel presented by a student “since [he] was willing to accept a map not describing disputed lands so as not to offend any party.” This comment was reported to the author of this article by a Jewish student in the class who spoke on the condition of anonymity, for fear of reprisals affecting his academic standing. In the case of a professor at St. Mary’s University in Halifax who wanted to display the Danish cartoons to initiate a debate on free speech from an academic point of view, the university demanded the removal of the cartoons since “there are concerns that people may see them and might be offended by them and may be terribly upset by them, and given that we thought that was a good enough reason to ask him to take them down,” ¹This type of reaction was repeated on other campuses.

While B’nai Brith Canada’s position is that it is not appropriate to publish cartoons that will hurt the sensibilities of any religious or other minority group, we note that universities have often been lax in requiring the removal of material that offends their Jewish students. Just last year, the University of Ottawa deemed acceptable the “extra-curricula” website activities of one its professors, which incorporated Holocaust denial, even though this website allowed the posting of offensive material upsetting to Jewish students. Although some of the most gratuitously offensive material was subsequently removed after a complaint by the League for Human Rights, the university was clearly uncomfortable with the idea of intervening to limit the professor’s dubious choice of web content.

While not all professors directly take revisionist positions, some do not hesitate to entertain revisionist arguments in class, in effect flirting with the arguments of hardline rejectionists. The discussion often goes these lines: “the number of dead is grossly exaggerated”, “the rumour is that only few Jews died”, “sickness is the major reason for these deaths”, “let’s look at the responsibility of the Jews in their own demise”, “what are the reasons that the Nazis had to take action against the Jews”?. Without obviously dismissing history, and sometimes with as little as a dismissive shrug or sceptical facial expression, teachers can use their standing as educators and supposed guardians of truth and history, to instil doubts on the veracity of the event. It is one thing to research, review, criticize and deepen our knowledge of the past; it is another to falsify or deny its existence.

In other, more subtle ways, professors may propose a pernicious re-reading of the Holocaust by reversing the perspective, so that World War II events are viewed in a retrospective way flowing from the present Israeli-Arab conflict. Accepting more or less openly the view that the creation of the modern day State of Israel is “the consequence” of a European conflict, they reverse the roles, accepting the fiction of a parallel between mass atrocities against the Jews during the Holocaust and Israel’s actions in relation to the Palestinians. As a consequence, they suggest that our understanding of the Holocaust must be reviewed and that Palestinians must be recognized as the new “Auschwitz victims”. This inverted logic provokes a curious blindness amongst a number of professors. All violence coming from the Arab side is thus legitimate and excusable, so the argument goes, while all Israeli practices must, by definition, be mean-spirited, bent on inflicting maximum suffering and humiliation.

The new standard for demonstrating that tolerance for minorities reigns in Canadian society has been to accord legitimacy to all Arab claims and to promote unquestioning acceptance for all forms of Islam, while ignoring the most reactionary aspects. At the same time, the fashionable approach has been to condemn the Jewish State in all its facets, while ignoring even the most obviously positive aspects. Expediency, wilful blindness and self-righteousness are all too often the reality in today’s Canadian universities when it comes to Israel, Jewish issues and the treatment of Judaic traditions. These attitudes filter into the classroom as an insidious intellectual poison that colours and envenoms the environment in many subtle, as well less than subtle ways. They are particularly damaging because they tend to penetrate many different fields of study which are not even remotely connected to discussion of the Middle East. A profound islamophilia has taken root in the academic world; total acceptance becomes the path to redemption for the past errors of the West: colonialism, commercial exploitation, Canada’s part in the war against terrorism, and even the pain inflicted by the Crusaders.

Some professors betray the mission of their universities by, in effect, restricting any discussion in defence of Israel. They fail to enforce their own words about tolerance and acceptance and instead create a space of intolerance for Jewish students and professors.

We are concerned that these positions are being used by some to justify a form of judeophobia that has been well disguised as anti-Zionism. For instance, even the most extreme expressions of antisemitism emanating from the Arab world are not denounced for the racism they contain, but are generally accepted as the free expression of an oppressed people. As pointed out by Pierre-André Taguieff, the great French expert on racism: “Intolerance has learned a new language of tolerance and shows itself even more efficient when it is not recognized as such.”

In the name of tolerance, understanding and concern for the weak, many intellectuals therefore defend racist and antisemitic statements, and even actions of violence and terror, as legitimate and understandable. Often, scholars critical of Jewish and Christian religious texts are reluctant to question the content of some of the sacred texts of Islam, which are manipulated by extremists to justify appalling statements and actions. Criticism of the misapplication of these principles is invariably considered an expression of racism and xenophobia.

Some professors are uneasy in general about discussing matters pertaining to religion in the classroom. They tend to take defensive positions, that is, not questioning the accepted, politically dominant position and, paradoxically, accepting everything in the name of tolerance, including intolerance.

In conclusion, it remains of major concern that virulent anti-Israel discourse, incorporating a strong antisemitic thread, has infiltrated a far left-leaning intellectual base that begins to rival the persistent far right-wing fringe. As in Europe, denunciation of Israel becomes an acceptable expression of hate against Jews and a delayed justification for the silence of the bystanders - and even the perpetrators - during the Nazi regime. The cross pollination between anti-Zionism and antisemitism that drives this type of thinking will be further explored in the next chapter. As many scholars withdraw into an ivory tower of blindness, uncritical thinking, and easy condemnations, an understanding of the way this “oldest hatred” of antisemitism is mutating will be crucial to our understanding of the phenomenon, and its infiltration beyond the campus into every aspect of society.

II.4. ANTI-ZIONISM AND ANTISEMITISM

by David Matas

In order to gain a true picture of the level and nature of antisemitism in Canada, it is useful to consider a variety of tools that are being developed in response to a need for a broader definition of what constitutes antisemitism in the modern day context.

The League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada has traditionally used the same parameters and definitions to catalogue incidents of harassment, vandalism and violence for its annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents. This has allowed for a constancy of measurement over more than twenty years that has provided a fixed framework for year-by-year comparisons. In today’s rapidly changing social and political climate, the question must be raised of whether it necessary to adapt such hitherto fixed measures in order to be able to provide a more accurate picture of the changing face of antisemitism. This paper will argue, a corresponding scale of indicators of prejudice must be applied in addition to the traditional measures, to cover all aspects of this “oldest form of hatred”.

For more than twenty years, harassment has been defined in the Audit to refer to

• verbal or written actions that do not include the use of physical force against a person or property. It includes, but is not limited to:

• verbal slurs, statements of hate and bias, or harassment

• stereotyping of Jews, such as the airing on radio talk shows of comments on “Jewish characteristics”

• systemic discrimination in the workplace, schools or campuses

• hate propaganda and hate mail via the Internet, telephone, or printed material

• verbal threats of violence, where application of force does not appear imminent, or no weapon or bomb is involved.”

The reference to Jews and Jewish characteristics is the only indication in the definition section of the Audit of the focus of this study. There is no reference to the Jewish State in the definition section, even though this often provides the impetus for hatred and bias against Jews.

The definitions of vandalism and violence in the Audit define anti-Jewish acts in a similar way, excluding incidents which on the surface appear to be solely related to Israel, unless there is a very obvious and overt “Jewish” connection. The practical reality is that the Audit reports incidents where a person is attacked because he or she is or is perceived to be Jewish, or the attacker uses Jewish slurs or stereotypes or claims of Jewish characteristics. The Audit does not cover acts that represent a broader application of antisemitism, which may occur in the guise of antagonism towards the Jewish State and go well beyond the level and type of criticism that is usually employed when critiquing the actions of any other state. There is no formal ongoing study of the frequency of this new variant in Canada, a subject that is slowly eliciting more scrutiny by governments abroad, given the many indicators pointing to the broader scope of the problem.

Other entities tracking antisemitism have developed broader definitions, where the target of the attack, at least in outward form, is not Jews, but Israel. For instance, the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) has a working definition of antisemitism which encompasses, for example, “accusing Israel as a state of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust”. 1 The working definition states:

• “Examples of the ways in which antisemitism manifests itself with regard to the State of Israel taking into account the overall context could include:

• denying the Jewish people their right to self determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour,

• applying of double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation,

• using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g. claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis,

• drawing contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis

• holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.”

Zionism is the expression of the right to self determination of the Jewish people. Anti-Zionism, by definition, rejects this right to self determination, by denying the Jewish people the right to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland. Anti-Zionism is a form of racism. It is the specific denial to the Jewish people, as an entity, of a basic human right to which all the peoples of the world are entitled. It is a variant of the type of “traditional” antisemitism which denied to Jews as individuals the basic human rights accorded to all others.

After World War II, the horrors of the Holocaust discredited traditional antisemitism. Yet, antisemitism did not die. For many member states of the United Nations it turned into anti-Zionism. Israel became the Jew amongst nations, condemned for sins it did not commit, targeted for destruction, almost friendless and alone².

There is a tiny minority of ultra Orthodox Jews who believe that the return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel should await the coming of the Messiah. There are a few secularists who oppose the existence of any and all nation states, who propose for all peoples, in the words of Isaac Deutscher, “wider frameworks for their existence”. ³ Though these people, each in their own way, oppose the existence of the State of Israel, they are not true anti-Zionists.

The nation state and the right to self determination of peoples are post-Biblical concepts. The true anti-Zionists are neither ultra-Orthodox Jews, nor people opposed to any and all nation states. They are rather bigots, accepting and endorsing the right to self determination of all peoples except the Jewish people. They attempt to obfuscate their own bigotry by hiding behind the messianic beliefs of a minority of ultra-Orthodox Jews, or the heterodoxy and iconoclasm of those opposed to all nation states.

For the struggle against antisemitism, the larger definition of antisemitism makes practical sense. There are many who claim that attacks against Jews motivated by anti-Zionism are not antisemitism, but just an expression of Middle East politics. Yet, talking about anti-Zionism is not the same as talking about the Middle East. Antisemitism can focus on any location as an excuse for beating up on Jews, including outer space.

Arch conspiratist David Icke asserts there is a plot to control the world led by Jews who are shape-changing lizards from outer space.⁴ Discussing the antisemitism that manifests itself as anti-Zionism does not mean that all we are talking about is Middle East politics, any more than discussing the antisemitism which smears Jews as shape-changing lizards from outer space means that all we are talking about is zoology and astrophysics.

The failure to recognise the distinction between Middle East politics on the one hand and anti-Zionism as a form of racism on the other, has given respectability to antisemitism. The traditional antisemitism of the extreme right is marginalized and condemned as the purview of the fringe, adopted neither by mainstream media nor by established public figures. However, the antisemitism that is expressed through anti-Zionism has permeated respectable public discourse, incorporating the hoary antisemitic stereotypes of Jews as vindictive and bloodthirsty.

Sometimes anti-Zionism is opportunistic antisemitism, an attempt to bring new converts to an old hatred. We have seen this in attempts by neo-Nazi groups to network at the anti-Zionist demonstrations of the far Left. Sometimes it is the other way round, anti-Zionists seize on the traditional antisemitic vitriol of the far Right to express, expand and buttress their indoctrination. Whatever the configuration, the old antisemites and the new anti-Zionists share common cause, a hatred of Jews.

Do governments, human rights organizations and the general public simply not accept that anti-Zionism is antisemitism in principle, or do they just not recognize the antisemitic flavour in anti-Israel incidents? The answer is both. The main reason is that they a priori do not accept the premise that anti-Zionism can be antisemitic, but, in addition, the anti-Israel guises in which this type of antisemitism generally appears have been successful in obscuring the core racism.

There are those who resist denouncing even outright assaults on the Jewish community for fear of a backlash by those who try to frame everything in terms of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. A recent example on the Canadian scene was the unwillingness of a Member of Parliament to publicly condemn the firebombing of the city’s only synagogue in Quebec City in 2002 - clearly an anti-Jewish act - on the privately expressed grounds that such comment might be misconstrued by some as being somehow “pro-Israel”.

More responsible responses were forthcoming from former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, who did not hesitate to describe as antisemitism the Iranian President’s genocidal threats against the Jewish State, which some were only too eager to dismiss as merely “anti-Israel”.

The motivation behind many incidents is cumulative. For some, anti-Zionism is the sole source of their antisemitism. For others, anti-Zionism is irrelevant. In many antisemitic attacks today, anti-Zionism is a reinforcer, joining with traditional antisemitism to form a poisonous cocktail. Whatever the motivating factors, when we consciously take anti-Zionism out of the mix, we must be aware that we are underestimating both the number and severity of antisemitic incidents. This will have implications in terms of the lower priority level accorded to these abuses in the planning and programming to combat attacks on the Jewish community.

We can see the impact of anti-Zionism on antisemitism by looking at some of the identified perpetrator populations. In recent years, a large increase in attacks against Jews by Arab and Muslims has been documented, notably in Europe, where antisemitism has put Jews at risk of loss of life and limb. The recent abduction, torture and murder in France of 23-year old Ilan Halimi by a gang that is suspected oh having Arab members has underscored this point.

This state of affairs did not happen in a vacuum. In fact, the first victims of hate propaganda are those so consumed by hatred that they lose their grip on reality and begin to act out on their hatred. The purveyors of anti-Zionist propaganda specifically set out to cultivate an Arab/Moslem constituency, while a lot of anti-Zionism is in the Arabic language, couched in Islamic religious terms and uses traditional anti-Jewish imagery. In fact, many of the leading fomenters of anti-Zionism are Arabic-speaking Muslim clerics. When we see Arab Muslims targeting Jews, the antisemitism inherent in the anti-Zionism should be clearly recognizable.

In the case of many incidents, the individual motivation is often not known, since by their very nature most hate crimes remain anonymous. However, we can see spikes of attacks against Jewish communities worldwide whenever anti-Zionist propaganda gets particularly hot and heavy, for instance, at the time of the fabrications of a massacre at Jenin in April 2002. Unless government, law enforcement agents and monitoring organizations keep firmly in mind the linkage between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the chance of their correctly identifying as antisemitic the incidents that involve Jewish victims is significantly reduced.

The problem the Jewish community faces regarding the connection between attacks against Israel and attacks against Jews is one of too much, as well as too little. All too often authorities and non-governmental organizations make the connection between attacks on Jewish victims and anti-Zionism too readily, perhaps to avoid involvement. It has become too easy to dismiss attacks on Jews and Jewish rights as simply anti-Israel “political” discourse. In a recent example, at a government-sponsored meeting in Ottawa, the allegation was made that individuals of African descent were being prevented from receiving their entitlements by “the pro-Israel lobby”. Although this was clearly an attack on the opinions of the Jewish delegates present, the true intent was camouflaged by use of the code word “pro-Israel lobby”. This was enough of a disguise for the inherent anti-Jewish nature of the comment to pass unchallenged by the Chair. Anti-Zionism thus becomes an excuse for inaction.

And yet the speaker, if she had but known it, was merely following a strategy suggested by far right wing activists, who recommend using the wording Israel or Zionists when one means “Jew”. A posting to the Canadian site of the neo-Nazi Stormfront website advised followers on the best way to express antisemitism in legally and socially accepted forms: “Remember to say ‘Zionists’, ‘bankers’ or ‘Israel Firsters’ instead of ‘Jews’ when making public speeches or writing arcticles”. [sic] It is indeed common to find anti-Jewish rhetoric framed in terms of the “pro-Israel lobby”, or even just “the Lobby”.

Analysis to determine the victim impact of discrimination and persecution is corrupted when the strategy of using such code words is ignored and, in consequence, anti-Zionism is differentiated from antisemitism. It is all too easy to dismiss Jewish victimization as anti-Zionism where the motivation is unclear, and to accept the implication that attacks on the Jewish community worldwide must be “merely” an extension and continuation of armed conflict in the Middle East. It needs to be recognized that the anti-Zionism that leads to attacks on innocent Jews and traditional antisemitism itself are one and the same.

Governmental authorities and non-governmental organizations generally accept that the targeting of innocents, even in the context of armed conflict, is always wrong. But to view attacks motivated by anti-Zionism against Jewish communities around the world as any different from antisemitism in general is to misunderstand the very nature of anti-Zionism. It is impossible to combat hate-motivated crimes effectively without understanding the nature of the hatred. As well, locating in the Middle East the cause of attacks against Jews worldwide suggests that the solution rests solely in the Middle East rather than here at home. Furthermore, this approach fragments antisemitism, minimizing the extent of the overall problem.

Jewish community organizations do not generally reach out to mainstream human rights organizations for assistance. Why is that so? Surely one big reason is the inability - or even refusal - of these organizations to recognize the linkage between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. This failure generates suspicion and downright distrust in the Jewish community, where the prevailing view is that these NGO’s are over quick to dismiss antisemitism as simply an understandable response to Israel’s alleged crimes, and thus - implicitly - to condone it. After the Durban fiasco, where the Jewish delegates were pretty much left to themselves to cope with overt intimidation and harassment while erstwhile colleagues in the human rights community stood by, this feeling has intensified. In this type of discourse, the Jews themselves are often considered to blame for “inviting” hatred against them based on their support for the State of Israel. When entities act out on that hostility, then the victim is commonly blamed for having provoked it. This bears an uncanny resemblance to comments made at the previously mentioned Department of Foreign Affairs human rights consultations in Ottawa in February 2006 where speakers blamed Israel - pre-emptively - for future holocausts that might occur anywhere in the world based on the Jewish State’s alleged failings.

The typical response of many to assertions of the connection between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is that criticism of the behaviour of the government of Israel should be legitimate, that no government should be immune from criticism. This is, of course, absolutely valid. The mantra that Israel should not be immune from criticism, like the statement “some of my best friends are Jewish”, when taken in isolation, may seem harmless. Yet, both statements are often excuses for latent antisemitism rather than defences against it. The charge that those who protest antisemitism are just trying to silence legitimate criticism of Israel is often heard. Typically, what follows is an antisemitic diatribe. When Jewish organizations draw attention to this issue, they are fighting against a form of antisemitism, not defending Israel against any and all criticism. Antisemitism that takes the form of anti-Zionism is no more legitimate than antisemitism in any other form.

Of course, not all criticism of Israel can be classed as antisemitism, but the mere fact that criticism incorporating antisemitism is directed against Israel does not negate its intrinsic racism. Israel is the expression of the right to self determination of the Jewish people and therefore Israel is the Jewish people acting collectively. Slurs against the Jewish State as an entity can be just as antisemitic as slurs against Jews as individuals.

Blindness to this unpleasant fact is displayed not just by campus administrations, as described in the previous chapter, but by church groups and unions as well. These entities allow and even welcome the activities of groups such as SABEEL, a vehemently anti-Zionist ecumenical organization, which held activities across Canada in September of 2005. Although the facilities involved often claimed to be merely renting out facilities for such events, the group was warmly welcomed, giving the impression that the hosts valued and validated its message. This group commonly delivers its message - demonising Israel, delegitimizing its existence and denying it the right to defend itself - using the images and rhetoric of “traditional antisemitism”, such as the Jew as a Christ-killer. However, because SABEEL’s purported purpose is to “pursue a just peace” in the Middle East, it appears to have secured a blanket immunity for the innate antisemitism of its methods.

There is as much divergence within the Jewish Diaspora as there is within Israel itself about the policies and practices of the Government of Israel. When it comes to real, legitimate criticism of the Israeli Government, rather than fantastical accusations designed solely for the purpose of demonizing the Jewish State, the Jewish community is as divided outside Israel as inside. This illustrates that anti-Israel criticism does not automatically fall into the category of antisemitism, as is often alleged by those trying to obfuscate the issue.

Charging any person or any group with a criminal offence is a libel unless it is grounded in reality. The same is true of the State of Israel. If you accuse Israel of crimes against humanity and Israel has committed crimes against humanity, then it is a legitimate criticism. If Israel has committed no such crimes, then it is antisemitism.

In my book Aftershock: Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism published by Dundurn Press, I have written chapter after chapter detailing criminal accusation after criminal accusation against Israel, and showing that all these accusations have no foundation either in fact or in law. The mere fact that the criticism would be legitimate if the accusations were warranted, does not save these accusations from the charge of antisemitism.

One can say the same of traditional antisemitism. If there really were a Jewish conspiracy for world domination, then it would be legitimate to criticise such a conspiracy. But to fantasize such a conspiracy in order to criticise Jews or Israel is antisemitism.

In Aftershock I explain this concept further:

The interconnectedness between antisemitism and anti-Zionism is perhaps nowhere as well demonstrated as in the United Nations, specifically in the discourse of the UN Commission on Human Rights. The allegations that are routinely made either at the UNCHR, or in the discourse driving it, utilize almost the exact type of phraseology of age-old stereotypical antisemitism. Thus, Israel is accused of poisoning the Palestinians’ water supply and polluting their environment, an absurd charge given both share the same water sources and breathe the same air. This evokes the medieval image of the Jew as the well poisoner. Similarly, Israel is accused of intentionally infecting Palestinians with the AIDS virus – a charge akin to the Nazi-type image of the Jew as the spreader of disease. Agents of the Israeli Government have been accused of giving poisoned candies to children, visiting youth hang-outs to get Arab youngsters hooked on drugs, and giving young Arab girls aphrodisiacs so as to lure them into prostitution in an attempt to break down family life. Again, in the past, Jews were accused of intentionally murdering children, and being a force for depravity and the destruction of morality. A more recent blood libel currently circulating on the Internet even blames the Jews for the Avian Flu virus. Clearly, this is not legitimate discourse on Israel, untainted by any antisemitism.

The larger European Union working definition of antisemitism cited earlier is not one the League for Human Rights has used for the purpose of compiling the statistics for the Audit. Yet, this larger definition more accurately captures the phenomenon of antisemitism. Jews today are targeted as actual or perceived supporters of the demonized Jewish State. Limiting the tabulating of incidents through use of the present definition gives a misleadingly low impression of the number of antisemitic incidents.

The parameters of League’s Audit were set before consciousness of a “new antisemitism” developed. Expanding the definition of antisemitism used for the Audit could thus create a problem. The year to year comparability of the statistics would be lost. If the broader definition were incorporated, the Audit would likely show a significant increase in numbers from one year to the next, which would reflect only the change in definition and not a change in the reality of antisemitism.

This places the publishers of the Audit in a quandary. Should it keep an old definition which understates antisemitism in order to maintain year to year comparability? Or should it switch to a more accurate definition of antisemitism on order to more accurately capture a true picture?

It would, of course, be possible to do both, publish two statistical series in each Audit, one with the old definition and the second with the broader definition. The trouble with that option is that it would maintain an artificial definition between the new and old antisemitism, giving credence to anti-Zionists who assert that the old antisemitism is the “real” antisemitism, and that the new antisemitism is just criticism of the State of Israel or an extension of Middle East politics.

When a crime is under reported for any reason, the solution is to report the true statistics for the crime, not to maintain the old under-reporting side by side with the true statistics. When new indicators of a disease are discovered, no-one would suggest omitting them in order to maintain the out-of date comparison measure. The same should be true of reporting antisemitic incidents.

While it remains for the publishers of the Audit to decide what to do, my recommendation would be that next year, statistics for incidents should be published using both the traditional definition and the broader definition encompassing anti-Zionism. In all subsequent years, it is the broader definition that should be used. In that way we can truly move towards a better understanding of the essence of antisemitism in today’s rapidly changing world.

 

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