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Gerry Weinstein |
Frank Dimant |
Allan Adel |
Ruth Klein |
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Gerry Weinstein |
Frank Dimant |
Allan Adel |
Ruth Klein |
For the past quarter century, B'nai Brith Canada¹s League for Human Rights has been monitoring antisemitism in this country and analyzing the precipitators of hatred against the Jewish community in an annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents. Within that time, crises abroad as well as tensions at home whether social, political and/or economic have invariably caused irrational and deep-seated prejudices against Jews to emerge from beneath the polite façade of multiculturalism.
While the psychology of scapegoating remains the same, there have been changes in its style of delivery. Contemporary variants of antisemitism have blended with the traditional forms of this age-old hatred to fit modern-day contexts and rhetoric. Perpetrators are becoming less reticent about expressing their anti-Jewish prejudice and this bigotry is, in some cases, even glorified under the banner of "free speech".
As we look back at the year 2006 in the context of preparing this Audit, we recall a troubled year overseas that began with the brutal murder of Ilan Halimi, a young French Jew, and ended with yet another call from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at the closing of his Holocaust denial ³conference², for the Jewish State to be wiped off the map.
It was a time when hopes for peace in the Middle East were once again shattered by the terrorist group Hezbollah, when vicious propaganda against the Jewish State and the Jewish People was disseminated across the globe, leading to increases in hate-motivated activity against Jewish communities worldwide. It was a year marked by violent world-wide riots following the publication of the now infamous Danish cartoons considered offensive by many Muslims, and by Ahmadinejad's bid for revenge by holding a cartoon contest of his own to denigrate the Holocaust.
On the home front, it was a time when strains and stresses linked to world events manifested themselves in increased hate-motivated activity against Jews, when antisemitism was even injected into the mainstream Canadian political process as a tool to manipulate electoral campaigning. It was a time when having a Jewish wife was portrayed as a liability that should bar a candidate from leadership positions, reminiscent of a bigoted philosophy one would have hoped had long been extinguished from Canadian society.
It was also a time when the issue of Œreasonable accommodation¹ of cultural and religious differences began, increasingly, to become a bone of contention between minority communities and the dominant culture in which they live.
The Audit has been described as a "unique historical record of a particular form of hate activity in Canada" (Statistics Canada, Hate Crime in Canada: An Overview of Issues and Data Sources Relating to Hate Crime, 2001). Yet the League's work in this area has been undertaken not simply as an academic study of the global and domestic trends that precipitate prejudice but rather as a much-needed community service that is responsive to the fall-out from a disturbing rise in antisemitism in this country.
Through the provision of a 24/7 Anti-Hate Hotline (1-800-892-2624), the League provides a central reporting mechanism where victims of discrimination can turn for culturally-sensitive assistance and, if necessary, referral to police, legal services or human rights fora.
The League, which liaises closely with hate crime officers across the country, is often the first point of contact for victims of antisemitism, whatever its provenance.
It is unfortunate that the demands on the Hotline, as on similar services in other countries of the world, have grown exponentially. Even more disturbing, perhaps, is that there is still a general resistance to acknowledging that antisemitism is a problem in Canada, that there are indeed cracks in the fabric of Canadian multiculturalism that have allowed underlying prejudice, whether caused by global or domestic resentments, to manifest itself in ways which are not only subtle and insidious but, increasingly, public and aggressive.
Consistent with the challenges of protecting and enhancing multiculturalism, the mandate of the League for Human Rights is not just to counter antisemitism, but to fight all forms of hatred and discrimination against minority communities in Canada and to encourage inter-group respect and tolerance. To this end, the League offers anti-racism education and advocacy training to other targeted groups and intervenes in landmark cases on their behalf when their rights or security are threatened. In this context, the annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents is more than just a snapshot of the intensity of incidents against the Jewish community. It serves as a barometer of the level of racism in Canada as a whole.