Ottawa threatening hate charges against those who boycott Israel

[Jets4Life]

The Harper government is signalling its intention to use hate crime laws against Canadian advocacy groups that encourage boycotts of Israel. Such a move could target a range of civil society organizations, from the United Church of Canada and the Canadian If carried out, it would be a remarkably aggressive tactic, and another measure of the Conservative government's lockstep support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While the federal government certainly has the authority to assign priorities, such as pursuing certain types of hate speech, to the RCMP, any resulting prosecution would require an assent from a provincial attorney general. And it would almost certainly be challenged under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, civil liberties groups say. The government's intention was made clear in a response to inquiries from CBC News about statements by federal ministers of a "zero tolerance" approach to groups participating in a loose coalition called Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS), which was begun in 2006 at the request of Palestinian non-governmental organizations.

Asked to explain what zero tolerance means, and what is being done to enforce it, a spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney replied, four days later, with a detailed list of Canada's updated hate laws, noting that Canada has one of the most comprehensive sets of such laws "anywhere in the world."

The BDS tactic has been far more successful for the Palestinians than armed struggle. And it has caught on internationally, angering Israel, which reckons boycotts could cost its economy hundreds of millions of dollars. Just last month, 16 European foreign ministers denounced the "expansion of Israeli illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories," demanding that any imported goods originating in the settlements be distinctly labeled.

But Canada, a country where the federal Liberal and NDP leaders also oppose BDS, appears to have lined up more strongly behind Israel than any other nation. In January, Canada's then foreign affairs minister, John Baird, signed a "memorandum of agreement" with Israeli authorities in Jerusalem, pledging to combat BDS. It described the movement as "the new face of anti-Semitism."

A few days later, at the UN, Canadian Public Security Minister Steven Blaney went much further. He conflated boycotts of Israel with anti-Semitic hate speech and violence, including the deadly attacks that had just taken place in Paris on the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket. Blaney then said the government is taking a "zero tolerance" approach to BDS.

continued: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/otta...067497?cmp=rss

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Why does it feel like the Conservative Government is slowly turning Canada into a Police state?

[polak]

I'm not familiar with this BDS movement specifically but I'm not a fan of the government telling me who I can and can't support.

Cause Isreal has no deplorable traits about their policies right Harper? If I don't support them I'm automatically an Anti-Semite?

Paging Undercover Brother.

[Bill Bumface]

Lets all take a moment to enjoy this thread before Nage Waza and Q get at each other's throats.

[flames_fan_down_under]

Nice. I was thinking the weekend was rather quiet with news of completely crazy things that the Harper Government is trying to do, then Monday comes and all is back to normal.

[nik-]

Disagreeing with the actions of a state does not make you anti-semitic.

It's the coward route to hide behind the "anti-semite" wall instead of accepting or responding to criticism.

This government is becoming more and more of an embarrassment.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by nik-

Disagreeing with the actions of a state does not make you anti-semitic.

It's the coward route to hide behind the "anti-semite" wall instead of accepting or responding to criticism.

This government is becoming more and more of an embarrassment.

In fairness, a lot of work went into creating the myth that criticizing Israel = anti-semite long before Harper ever took power. Our government simply bought into that narrative a little too easily.

Any attempt to exercise the law in this fashion should result in a smack down by the courts. It is a bad move that won't end positively for the government.

[Kelekin]

And then once C-51 passes, the government can specifically watch and target anyone who has an unfavourable view the government dislikes. Hooray!

As someone born into Jewish faith, I am appalled at the notion that it is anti-Semitic to disagree with Israel, just as much as it is not Islamophobic to disagree with Muslim countries. Everyone deserves the right to question a government, no matter who they are.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by polak

I'm not familiar with this BDS movement specifically but I'm not a fan of the government telling me who I can and can't support.

Cause Isreal has no deplorable traits about their policies right Harper? If I don't support them I'm automatically an Anti-Semite?

Paging Undercover Brother.

Eh?

[Table 5]

I'm always amazed how such a puny little country like Israel has every western power under their control like little puppets. Kudos to them I suppose, but it makes us look like such weakling pushovers when the PC's grovel like this to their every need. Now we silence or our own citizens to protect the economic health of another country?

I didn't even think about boycotting Israel before, but maybe now I will. Screw you, Harper.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Cards on table: I support Israel for fairly non-nuanced reasons, but I find the implication that opposition to Israel's policies or actions is tantamount to anti-semitism utterly disgusting.

That said, here's how this goes (in a basic sense).

Any law of this sort is, at first glance, unconstitutional in so far as it violates section 2(b) of the Charter.

At that point, it needs to be saved under section 1, which permits limits on Charter rights as can be justified pursuant to the "Oakes test".

When it comes to section 2(b), certain forms of speech warrant greater protection than others. For example, if you have advertising language, that's subject to lower protection than politically-motivated speech. Political speech gets a lot of protection. Hence, I suspect that any attempt to muzzle this "Boycott Israel" movement (which I admit I know almost nothing about) is unlikely to succeed.

Proponents of silencing these people may point to Keegstra, who was prosecuted under these "hate laws" for being an anti-semite, specifically a holocaust denier. But that was coloured by the fact that he was teaching blatant anti-semitism to kids, not withholding support from a state actors.

[MarchHare]

1980s: Canada's conservative PM helps lead an international boycott against South Africa.

2010s: Canada's conservative PM proposes charging his own citizens with hate crimes if they boycott Israel.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Hold the phone, are you drawing some sort of moral equivalence between Israel and Apartheid South Africa?

[northcrunk]

The harper government has done a lot to embarass Canadians since gaining power. This is one of the worst incidents. Pathetic.

[flylock shox]

If anything is going to encourage boycotting of Israel, this would do it.

The very fact the government could think they're doing Israel a favor here is nuts.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Hold the phone, are you drawing some sort of moral equivalence between Israel and Apartheid South Africa?

Surely this is not the first time you've heard Palestinians being described as living in an apartheid state. Even former President Jimmy Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the Camp David Accords, has described it as such.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_...rtheid_analogy

Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States, Camp David Accords negotiator, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and author of the 2006 book titled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, maintained in that book that Israel's options included a "system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights. This is the policy now being followed, although many citizens of Israel deride the racist connotations of prescribing permanent second-class status for the Palestinians." Carter has also argued that the Israeli system in the Palestinian Territories, is in some cases more onerous than that of the apartheid government of South Africa, although it is not based on racism, rather on a desire by a minority of Israelis for Palestinian land.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Yeah, to the extent anyone is willing to make that comparison, I'm pretty much done with the discussion. This whole topic just sucks to talk about - no one seems able to deal with it objectively. I'll just stick with my above post.

FYI thanks for the links in the other thread.

[edslunch]

The OP asked if Canada was becoming a police state. I think we have a long way to go before that would be a good description but I do think it is becoming a harder place. We've adopted a foreign-policy of bombing and rhetoric. We are filling our prisons with more and more people for longer and longer. We have controversial new spy laws. We see the government attempting to muzzle various groups they disagree with in various ways.

Even little things like airport customs officers wearing body armor, park rangers carrying sidearms, city police going to old-school black-and-white cruisers with battering rams on the front.

One gets the impression that Canada is becoming very dangerous place when in fact it is if anything a tiny bit more dangerous than it has been.

[David Struch]

https://twitter.com/nambassa/status/545180606569529344

[nik-]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Yeah, to the extent anyone is willing to make that comparison, I'm pretty much done with the discussion. This whole topic just sucks to talk about - no one seems able to deal with it objectively. I'll just stick with my above post.

FYI thanks for the links in the other thread.

Actually, a lot of people can talk about it objectively. It's just that there's a handful of people on both sides of these threads that aren't objective, insist they are, and cause insane lines to be drawn in the sand and then the thread spirals into the #### abyss.

[peter12]

Boycotting Israel is idiotic, and probably a little bit anti-semitic.