Table Of Contents:
With Annexation Looming, Canada’s UNSC Upset is Bad News for Israel, US: Tovah Lazaroff, Jerusalem Post, June 20, 2020
Goldstein: Trudeau’s Ershwhile Left-wing Allies Scuttled His UN Bid: Lorrie Goldstein, Toronto Sun, June 20, 2020
On Designating the IRGC, Trudeau is Two Years Too Late: Jacob Glogauer, JNS, June 16, 2020
‘A Disturbing New Normal’: How Jewish Canadians are Reacting to Spate of Anti-Semitic Violence: Douglas Quan, National Post, Jan. 3, 2020
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With Annexation Looming, Canada’s UNSC Upset is Bad News for Israel, US
Tovah Lazaroff
Jerusalem Post, June 20, 2020
Canada’s lost bid for a United Nations Security Council seat is bad news for Israel, particularly in light of pending plans to annex portions of the West Bank and the expected renewed Palestinian drive for UN membership.
Outside of the United States, Canada has been one of Israel’s staunchest friends at the UN. Like the US, it holds that the UN’s treatment of Israel is biased. Canada has risen unequivocally to its defense, casting “no” votes almost as dependably and frequently as the US. It’s reputation as a friend of Israel is so strong that there is much speculation that it failed to obtain a UNSC seat, its second loss in 10 years, specifically due to its pro-Israel stances.
In the run-up to this past week’s elections, pro-Palestinian groups campaigned against Canada, specifically highlighting its strong ties to Israel. The Canadian Foreign Policy Institute ran an online petition against Ottawa’s acquisition of the seat. It stated, “since coming to power, the Trudeau government has voted against more than fifty UN resolutions upholding Palestinian rights backed by the overwhelming majority of member states… Should it win a seat on the UNSC, Ottawa has stated that it will act as an ‘asset for Israel’ on the Council.”
The campaign against its UNSC membership so concerned Canada that its UN Mission in New York circulated a letter to UN member states published by the NGO Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), in which Ottawa defended its rejection of “one-sided” UN resolutions against Israel. The Canadian Mission clarified that it supports a two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and opposes any Israeli annexation efforts.
It was an argument that fell on deaf ears at the UN General Assembly (UNGA), where the Palestinians have an automatic majority of support among the 193 member states.
The UNGA rejected Canada’s bid and approved instead UNSC membership for five new countries: India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico and Norway. It was a sharp reminder of the type of diplomatic price tag Israel’s allies can suffer on the international stage.
One could argue that the UNGA vote has little significance for Israel when it comes to the 15-member UNSC, which is composed of 10 rotating seats every two years and five permanent members. Those five members – US, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China – have the ability to veto any Security Council resolution. It is a structural setup that leaves the UN’s most powerful body in the hands of these five post World War II powers. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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GOLDSTEIN: Trudeau’s Erstwhile Left-wing Allies Scuttled his UN Bid
Lorrie Goldstein
Toronto Sun, June 20, 2020
Bitter Liberals are whining about the Conservatives gloating over Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s failure to win a temporary seat on the UN Security Council last week. By so doing, they’re missing what actually happened, which is that it was Trudeau’s erstwhile allies on the political left who worked overtime to undermine his bid.
Typical of the Liberal response to Trudeau’s defeat was a tweet by his parliamentary secretary for public service renewal, Liberal MP Omar Alghabra: “It’s quite distasteful how the Conservatives and @AndrewScheer are gloating that Canada didn’t win a Security Council seat. It used to be that Canadian partisanship stopped at the border. Bring back decency, please.”
Right. Alghabra appears to have forgotten that in 2010, then Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff openly trashed Canada’s bid for a temporary Security Council seat leading up to the vote, questioning whether prime minister Stephen Harper’s government was even worthy of one.
But surely he remembers that in the 2015 federal election, Trudeau during that campaign smugly gloated about Harper’s 2010 failure to win a temporary Security Council seat. Trudeau said Canada was no longer “a country of respect at the UN” under the Harper government, and that he (Trudeau) would be the agent of change to restore that respect.
Five years later, what the Trudeau Liberals are forgetting, or don’t want to admit, is that the people who were trashing Trudeau’s bid for a seat on the Security Council leading up to the vote were luminaries of the Canadian and global left. At least three petitions submitted to the United Nations General Assembly prior to the vote, signed by hundreds of so-called “progressive” individuals and organizations, either said Canada under Trudeau didn’t deserve a seat on the Security Council, or were highly critical of his record on everything from climate change to what they called his support of Israel.
Among the signatories were such global and Canadian luminaries of the left as David Suzuki, Greta Thunberg, Noam Chomsky and Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters, along with academics, climate scientists, environmental and labour activists, artists and more. Their petitions portrayed Trudeau’s government as everything from a major arms exporter, to a lackey of Israel, to a war monger, to an environmental laggard, to a promoter of pipelines and fossil fuel subsidies, to a persecutor of Indigenous Canadians… [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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On Designating the IRGC, Trudeau is Two Years Too Late
Jacob Glogauer
JNS, June 16, 2020
Canadians are still waiting for answers on whether or not their government truly takes the threat of the Islamic Republic of Iran seriously.
A little more than two years ago, the House of Commons passed a private member’s motion to condemn the brutal Iranian regime, which ended any potential chance of restoring diplomatic relations between
Canada and Iran, as well as the immediate request to list the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in its entirety, as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code. While the motion received bipartisan support from both the opposition and the government, the only act carried out was the list of condemnations in the text.
There is one crucial item that has not been fulfilled yet, and that is listing the IRGC—a motion item that should have been carried out from the moment it passed in 2018. The ministry responsible for designating terrorist entities, Public Safety Canada, has had ample time to review, analyze and decide on whether or not to go forward with a part of the motion that the government agrees with based on their voting record, yet there is still no update on this matter to the Canadian public.
In 2012, the Canadian government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper took a bold and courageous move to end relations with Iran, which included closing the Canadian embassy in Tehran and list one wing of the IRGC: the Quds Force. Canada has given no consequences in any way to the regime more than six months after the shooting down of Flight PS752—not even a simple condemnation of the gross human-rights violations the regime commits.
The horrific downing of the Ukrainian airliner is further proof that if the IRGC was listed, the families of the victims of this tragedy could file a lawsuit under the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act. Essentially, had the Quds Force committed this atrocity, they could be sued. However, since the IRGC is not listed in its entirety, it could not be part of any potential lawsuit. This very disappointing fact alone should be more than enough for Public Safety Canada to classify the IRGC in the category where it belongs as a recognized terrorist organization.
In an interview last year with the Canadian Jewish News, the maker of the motion, Garnett Genuis said that “(the opposition has) asked the question repeatedly over the last year and they always say it’s in process. At some point, these delay tactics look like something more than delay. They look like actual reluctance to take the step.” … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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A Disturbing ‘New Normal’: How Jewish Canadians are Reacting to Spate of Anti-Semitic Violence
Douglas Quan
National Post, Jan. 3, 2020
Reuven Bulka, rabbi emeritus of Congregation Machzikei Hadas in Ottawa, was driving to New York State last weekend to attend a family bar mitzvah and Hanukkah gathering when he got a text message from his daughter. A machete-wielding man had stabbed five people who were celebrating Hanukkah in a home next to a synagogue just around the corner from where she lives.
“We’re all OK,” she wrote. “Very scary, but didn’t want you to worry.”
The incident happened at the Monsey, N.Y., home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg, whose father, Rabbi Menachem Rottenberg, had been good friends with Bulka’s father when they served in the same area in the Bronx.
“It hits home,” Bulka said. “This was the topic of conversation everywhere I went when I was in New York. Obviously they’re agitated, they’re reeling. You figure that a holy place is some sort sanctuary. … It seems like there’s no more borders, that evil has encroached into areas where evil previously dared not tread.”
The alleged attacker, Grafton Thomas, who authorities say wrote journal entries referencing Jews and anti-Semitism and searched “Why did Hitler hate the Jews” on his computer, has pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of attempted murder and also faces related hate-crime charges. His family has said he suffered from a long history of mental illness.
The incident was the latest in a string of verbal and physical attacks on Orthodox Jews in the U.S., including a deadly shooting last month at a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, N.J. While physical violence against Jews in Canada are not as common, hate crimes against the community have become a growing concern in recent years. “While Canada remains one of the best places in the world to live as a minority, we are not immune from these alarming trends,” said Shimon Koffler Fogel, president and CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.
According to the most recent data from Statistics Canada, the number of police-reported hate crimes in 2018 (1,798) fell 13 per cent from the previous year but was still the second-highest since 2009. Hate crimes targeting Jews represented 19 per cent of all hate crimes, more than any other group. Those cases were closely followed by hate crimes targeting Blacks and Muslims.
Jewish advocacy organization B’nai Brith Canada releases its own set of data every year, which includes not only police-reported incidents but those reported to the organization’s “anti-hate hotline.” Its 2019 audit showed 2,041 incidents of anti-Semitism, an increase of 16 per cent from the previous year. “We are experiencing a disturbing new normal when it comes to anti-Semitism in this country, with expressions of anti-Jewish hatred surfacing in regions that are typically less prone to such prejudices,” Michael Mostyn, B’nai Brith’s CEO, said at the time. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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For Further Reference:
Israeli, Chinese Policies ‘Concern’ Canada, Undermine Freedom, says Trudeau: National Post, June 2, 2020 — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau waded Tuesday into the foreign policies of Israel and China, expressing concerns over separate but controversial positions that he says undermine peace in both places.
Media Ignore Canada’s Throwing Israel to the Wolves in Bid to get a United Nations Security Council Seat: Mike Fegelman, Honest Reporting Canada, June 17, 2020 — It went completely below the media’s radar – how Canada signaled that it was prepared to make Israel a sacrificial lamb and was willing to enter into a Faustian bargain with dictators, to secure a coveted seat on the United Nations Security Council. In the final days of its campaign against Norway and Ireland for two available seats, Canada pushed back at critics of its bid by promoting its pro-Palestinian credentials and hiding its pro-Israel legacy.
Jews Most Targeted Group in Toronto: Clarion Project, June 24, 2020 — Newly released police data shows that Jews were once again the most targeted group for hate crimes in both Toronto and York Region in 2019.
Islamic Groups With Suspicious Activity Receive Federal Grants: Jacob Glogauer, The J,CA, June 14, 2020 — The federal government has approved summer jobs grants for six Canadian Islamic organizations with concerning track records, TheJ..ca has learned in an exclusive report.
Trudeau Refuses to Commit to Repatriating Canadians in Syria amid Calls to Bring them Home: Michelle Carbert and Janice Dickson, Globe and Mail, June 29, 2020 — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is refusing to commit to repatriating dozens of Canadian citizens, including children, detained in dire conditions in Syria, as a leading human rights group calls on the government to bring them home.
Matt Gurney: Canada’s Back, and the United Nations Rightly Didn’t Notice: Matt Gurney, MSN, June 17, 2020 –– After four years of effort and huge sums of money and energy, Canada decisively lost its bid for a UN Security Council seat on Wednesday. It placed third, behind winners Ireland and Norway, and such a distant third that it was all over on the first ballot. In other words, if Canada’s back, the world hasn’t noticed, or cared.
