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First, Do No Harm: How Dr. Newman’s Valedictorian Speech to U of M Graduates Got History So Wrong
Ed. note: This post was originally published in May, but given recent events in which the president of PARIM (the Professional Association of Residents and Interns of Manitoba) was forced to resign his position by the board of PARIM for criticizing remarks made by Dr. Gem Newman during his valedictory address to graduating medical students at the U of M, we thought it appropriate to repost this article to our home page.
By DOUGALD LAMONT I am compelled to respond to Dr. Gem Newman in his delivery of a valedictorian address to the medical graduates of the University of Manitoba medical school, which was shockingly ignorant of history.
Dr. Newman’s understanding is challenged by the facts of history, on every topic he touched on: Canada, Settler-Colonialism, the relationship with Indigenous people, and Israel’s founding.
It was a disservice to his peers, and to informed decision-making around the current crisis.
If we want a more just and peaceful world, we need to press for political solutions. I personally favour an immediate cessation of hostilities and release of Israeli hostages, and humanitarian aid to Gaza with oversight from the International Community. That is why we need a political process to peacefully negotiate a new political arrangement. If it is a two-state solution, I believe it must emerge from this process. It should be self-evident, just from the point of view of practical politics, that a single state that consists of two populations who are in the midst of a horrific war, will likely face insurmountable obstacles in trying to work and govern together.
Reasonable people should be able to agree that Israel should continue to exist, that the Palestinian people should be free, that the fighting should end, and those who have violated the rules of war should be held to account. To be blunt, neither side has a monopoly on virtue.
International Human Rights Law “prohibits attacks directed against civilians, as well as indiscriminate attacks, namely those that strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.”
I also believe it’s reasonable to assert that the current leadership of Israel and Gaza should have no place at that table, given that they are responsible for the current crisis. The intelligence failures alone around October 7 should disqualify the current senior Israeli leadership, just as the attack of October 7 should disqualify Hamas.
Declaring recognition of a Palestinian state, with no defined or agreed-upon leadership or borders, short-circuits any such political process.
That is because while some support a two-state solution, others quite clearly favour a “one-state” solution that would essentially spell the end of the State of Israel. I have never seen the term “Zionist” tossed around as such a slur, as a kind of shorthand for holding an unacceptable view.
A Zionist is basically someone who thinks the State of Israel should exist – and the state of Israel does exist. Before Israel’s founding, debating whether or not it should exist was hypothetical. Now that it does exist, debating whether it should or not can be credibly interpreted as an existential threat.
For Israelis, and for many Jews, that clearly amounts to the destruction of their nation, including by violence. This, too, is exactly what many states and state-supported terror groups have committed to.
That is why the lack of clarity around some slogans seems to be calling for more conflict, not for a peaceful resolution.
When asked about the slogan “From the River to the Sea,” some have shrugged and said that it was Israelis who first came up with the slogan. This is true, but that is because the State of Israel does stretch from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. Palestinian territories do not. It would require Israeli territory for Palestine to reach from the river to the sea, which again, can suggest that Israel will just become Palestine.
Dr Newman should know that for Israelis, and for many Jews, that clearly amounts to the destruction of their nation, including by violence. That is exactly what many states and state-supported terror groups have committed to, and have been promising for decades.
If we want a more peaceful and just world, we should strive to achieve those ends in ways that are peaceful and just, and that requires a political path.
It is not that the history is better than you might expect – it is worse.
The Nazi Holocaust was Modelled on the U.S. Killing of Indigenous People and Seizure of their Lands
There is an important link between the treatment of Indigenous North Americans and the Nazi Holocaust. Hitler believed that he could turn Germany into the a world dominating empire by emulating the way the United States had killed indigenous people and taken their property, except Hitler’s goal was to exterminate every Jew in the world.
“In the Nazi state, Lebensraum became not just a romantic yearning for a return to the East but a vital strategic component of its imperial and racist visions. For the Germans, eastern Europe represented their “Manifest Destiny.” Hitler and other Nazi thinkers drew direct comparisons to American expansion in the West. During one of his famous “table talks,” Hitler decreed that “there’s only one duty: to Germanize this country [Russia] by the immigration of Germans and to look upon the natives as Redskins.”
As Nazi troops moved across Europe and the Soviet Union, Jews were rounded up, their homes, properties and businesses stolen. Some were murdered on the spot, lined up and shot.
Some were stuffed into the backs of trucks with the exhaust piped in, and driven back and forth until everyone inside was dead. Others still were gathered up, put on trains and sent to death camps where they were killed in factories purpose-built for killing human beings. Their stolen belongings were used to finance their own deaths, and the gold was retrieved from their teeth.
Jews were targeted by the Germans for complete extermination wherever the lived in the world, based both on pseudoscientific race theory about the supposed supremacy of the imagined “Aryan” race, and antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish global influence.
Jews were being rounded up and slaughtered in the millions, and as refugees, had no place to go. They were refused entry to country after country, including Canada.
That is one of the very major reasons the creation of the State of Israel cannot be compared to settler colonialism by European or Asian empires colonizing Africa, Oceania, the Americas. The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 occurred with the support of the United Nations, as well as the global left. The historical reason for that is relevant.
Clearly, after the Second World War, it created pressure for Jews to have their homeland, so that they would not always face being a minority in a country when, because of their stateless existence, they had faced pogroms, slaughter and discrimination for millennia.
The Palestinian Cause was Undermined Because its Leader was a Nazi Collaborator
There is no question that the at the time of the creation of Israel, the credibility of the Palestinian cause was undermined because Mufti Amin al-Husseini, the leader of Palestine, was a Nazi Collaborator. Al-Husseini received personal financial aid from the Nazi government, participated in Nazi propaganda broadcasts, and worked to find recruits for the Nazi SS.
In 1941, Al-Husseini travelled to Berlin and on November 28, met with Hitler.
“Al-Husseini began the conversation by declaring that the Germans and the Arabs had the same enemies: “the English, the Jews, and the Communists.” He proposed an Arab revolt all across the Middle East to fight the Jews; the English, who still ruled Palestine and controlled Iraq and Egypt; and even the French, who controlled Syria and Lebanon.
(The British had secured a mandate for Palestine at the Paris peace conference in 1919, and made halting attempts to create a “Jewish national home” there without prejudicing the rights of the Arab population.) He also wanted to form an Arab legion, using Arab prisoners from the French Empire who were then POWs inside Germany.
He also asked Hitler to declare publicly, as the German government had privately, that it favored “the elimination of the Jewish national home” in Palestine.
The Fuhrer then made the following statement to the Mufti, enjoining him to “lock it in the uttermost depths of his heart”:
- He (the Fuhrer) would carry on the battle to the total destruction of the Judeo-Communist empire in Europe.
- At some moment which was impossible to set exactly today but which in any event was not distant, the German armies would in the course of this struggle reach the southern exit from Caucasia.
- As soon as this had happened, the Fuhrer would on his own give the Arab world the assurance that its hour of liberation had arrived. Germany’s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power.
In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. It would then be his task to set off the Arab operations, which he had secretly prepared. When that time had come, Germany could also be indifferent to French reaction to such a declaration.”
Al Husseini’s work was actively financed by the Nazi government.
“From spring 1943 to spring 1944, Husseini personally received 50,000 marks monthly and Gailani 65,000 for operational expenses.” [Rashid Ali al-Gaylani was the Prime Minister of Iraq]. ”In addition, they each received living expenses averaging 80,000 marks per month, an absolute fortune. A German field marshal received a base salary of 26,500 marks per year.”
Along with other Arab broadcasters, al-Husayni disseminated pro-Axis, anti-British, and anti-Jewish propaganda from Berlin to the Middle East. In radio broadcasts, he called for an Arab revolt against Great Britain and the destruction of the Jewish settlements in Palestine.
Al-Husayni spoke often of a “worldwide Jewish conspiracy” that controlled the British and US governments and sponsored Soviet Communism. He argued that “world Jewry” aimed to infiltrate and subjugate Palestine, a sacred religious and cultural center of the Arab and Muslim world, as a staging ground for the seizure of all Arab lands. In his vision of the world, the Jews intended to enslave and exploit Arabs, to seize their land, to expropriate their wealth, undermine their Muslim faith and corrupt the moral fabric of their society. He labeled the Jews as the enemy of Islam, and used crude racist terminology to depict Jews and Jewish behavior, particularly as he forged a closer relationship with the SS in 1943 and 1944. He described Jews as having immutable characteristics and behaviors. On occasion, he would compare Jewishness to infectious disease and Jews to microbes or bacilli. In at least one speech attributed to him, he advocated killing Jews wherever Arabs found them. He consistently advocated “removing” the Jewish homeland from Palestine and, on occasion, driving every Jew out of Palestine and other Arab lands.
Al Husseini was directly involved in recruiting for the SS.
“When the SS decided in February 1943 to recruit among Bosnian Muslims for a new division of the Waffen-SS, SS Main Office Chief Berger enlisted al-Husayni in a recruiting drive in Bosnia from March 30 and April 11. On April 29, Berger reported that 24,000–27,000 recruits had signed up and noted that the “visit of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had had an extraordinarily successful impact.” Both al-Husayni and the SS repeatedly referred to the success of the 13th Waffen-SS Mountain Division (also known as “Handschar”).”
After the Second World War, the 13th Waffen-SS Mountain Division was charged with war crimes and the killing of over 5,000 Jewish and Serbian civilians. In the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war, hundreds of its members fought against Israel.
All of this is critical historical context for Zionism of the time, and for the creation of the State of Israel. There can be no question that Al Husseini’s collaboration with the Nazis meant that his cause was treated with considerably less sympathy.
None of this negates the present-day mistreatment and injustice towards present-day Palestinians, but it does mean that their experience does not mirror that of Indigenous people, nor is the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 comparable to other “settler colonial” states, like South Africa, or Canada.
- As soon as this had happened, the Fuhrer would on his own give the Arab world the assurance that its hour of liberation had arrived. Germany’s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power.
In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. It would then be his task to set off the Arab operations, which he had secretly prepared. When that time had come, Germany could also be indifferent to French reaction to such a declaration.”
- At some moment which was impossible to set exactly today but which in any event was not distant, the German armies would in the course of this struggle reach the southern exit from Caucasia.
Tommy Douglas, Eugenics and Provinces’ Role in the Canadian Colonial State
This brings me to my second point about Dr. Newman’s valedictorian speech, which was his citing Tommy Douglas as a moral beacon in a speech where he also mentioned Indigenous health outcomes.
While Douglas enjoys a reputation as a paragon of political virtue, he and his party are responsible for one of the most horrifically damaging colonial systems for Indigenous people in Canada in the last 70 years: provincial child welfare systems. This is in addition to his promotion of eugenics-based sterilization, another aspect of his political career that is minimized and ignored
For all of the claims that the left in Canada is “woke,” the role of progressive politicians and parties in our country’s profoundest tragedies is not just forgotten and unknown, it is buried.
The New Democratic Party was created as a successor to the CCF party. While the NDP is today seen as a party of labour, and the “working man,” the CCF, as social gospelers, were evangelical Christians, often British, who promoted eugenics and forced sterilization as a low-cost solution to poverty, mental illness, and disability, and they did so for years.
In 1933, Tommy Douglas published his Master’s thesis from McMaster University, “The Problems of the Subnormal Family,” based on his time working at the Weyburn Mental Hospital. Weyburn Mental Hospital was not a small-town facility – at the time of its construction, it was the largest building ever built in the British Empire.
In the Making of a Socialist, Douglas passed off his thesis in a later interview as being on the subject of “Christian sociology,” when it endorsed the segregation and forced sterilization of people he deemed to be inferior.
Douglas’s thesis topic, in his own words was that:
“The subnormal family is an ever-increasing menace physically, mentally and morally, to say nothing of a constantly rising expense. Surely the continued policy of allowing the subnormal family to bring in to the world large numbers of individuals to fill our jails and mental institutions and to live upon charity is one of consummate folly.”
Douglas starts his thesis this way:
“The problem of the subnormal family is chiefly one for the State. Since the state has the problem of legislating in the best interests of Society, and since we have seen that the subnormal family is an ever-increasing menace physically, mentally and morally, to say nothing of a constantly rising expense, it is, surely the duty of the State to meet this problem.
The suggested remedies which the state might effect are three in number:
1) The Improvement of Existing Marriage Laws;
2) Segregation;
3) Sterilization of Unfit, and Increased Knowledge of Birth Control.
He elaborates:
“Sterilization of the mentally and physically defective has long been advocated, but only recently has it seeped into the public consciousness. From the day when Plato wrote his Republic to the present, eugenicists have advanced various solutions to the problem of the defective, but sterilization seems to meet the requirements of the situation most aptly.
For while it gives protection to society, yet it deprives the defective of nothing except the privilege of bringing into the world children who would only be a care to themselves and a charge to society.
4.) Another effect of the abnormal family is the cost of maintenance: It may be a mercenary view to take of the problem, yet in view of mounting taxation, it is of importance to the average citizen to know the effect of the subnormal family on his tax bill.”
Douglas did not drop the subject. In 1934, Douglas proposed it with the youth wing of the CCF, and the next year, 1935, Douglas was elected MP for the first time.
The power of Douglas’ carefully cultivated political reputation is so great that for many, it creates a cognitive dissonance so profound that it is dismissed. They puzzle as to how a person they so greatly admire could have advocated for forced sterilization.
The question as to how Douglas and other eugenicists could express such concern and apparent love while also calling for sterilization is because they see people who are poor, mentally ill or who break the law as defective, and subhuman, because of their particular brand of radical Christian ideology. Treating people as subhuman means treating them as animals, where the usual rules of human morality no longer apply. It is a kind of cruel pity – and instead of alleviating suffering, they opt for ending it.
Douglas was not a young man – He was an adult, in his 30s, calling for forced sterilization and segregation, just as his political mentor and family pastor, J. S. Woodsworth had done.
J. S. Woodsworth, Sterilization and the Bureau of Social Research
In 1909, Woodsworth published “Strangers Within Our Gates,” which was blatantly racist, ranking various groups according to their capacity to integrate into Canadian society.
Woodsworth’s treatment of Blacks is subhuman. He favorably cited U.S. progressive John R Common, who Woodsworth quotes saying, “The very qualities of intelligence and manliness which are essential for citizenship in a democracy were systematically expunged from the negro race through two hundred years of slavery.”
Woodsworth also endorsed Residential Schools as the solution for dealing with First Nations, favourably citing the Methodist Principal of the Brandon Residential School, where dozens of children had died, who said that “Both Church and State should have, as a final goal, the destruction and end of treaty and reservation life.”
Throughout the 1910s, Woodsworth ran the “Bureau of Social Research,” which publicly promoted eugenics and forced sterilization across Canada’s Western Provinces. Woodsworth’s editorials calling for eugenic sterilization were printed on the front page of the Winnipeg Free Press, and were considered as official recommendations to provincial governments.
According to a 2004 article in the Journal of Historical Sociology, Sterilizing the ‘Feeble-Minded’: Eugenics in Alberta, Canada 1929-1972, Woodsworth’s work directly informed the adoption of sterilization policies in Alberta.
“The eugenics platform was championed in western Canada by a number of influential social reformers including J. S. Woodsworth, a Winnipeg-based proponent of the “social gospel.” Woodsworth was concerned with the declining quality of immigrants arriving in the west. He translated his personal fear into a public crisis, spreading the idea that no segment of Canadian society would be left untouched by the influx of thousands of immigrants of inferior stock from central and eastern Europe. In time, his policy recommendations turned to eugenics and sterilization programs” (Chapman 1977: 13).
In 1928, Alberta and BC both passed forced sterilization laws. Researchers have directly attributed Alberta’s decision to adopt forced sterilization to Woodsworth’s advocacy. One of the Alberta MNA’s at the time who supported the bill, William Irvine, was a close friend and colleague of Woodsworth’s. When Irvine was later elected as an MP, it was in his office that the CCF was founded.
From 1929 to 1972, when the Alberta eugenics board was finally disbanded, the Board saw 4,800 cases of proposed sterilization and approved virtually all (4,739) of these; 2,834 sterilization procedures were eventually performed, the majority on females.
That was not the only questionable judgment that Douglas made in his political career. In 1935, when Douglas won a seat as a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons for the first time, he did so with an endorsement from the radical right Social Credit Premier of Alberta, which was considered by some to be fascist. The creator of the “Social Credit” economic philosophy, Major Douglas, was explicitly anti-semitic.
The endorsement was arranged for Douglas’ by a key member of his campaign team, Daniel C. Grant, who had been the chief organizer for all of Western Canada for the Canadian Ku Klux Klan.
Grant had been a driver for J J Maloney, the head of the Ku Klux Klan, and had worked in Manitoba as a recruiter and organizer. In 1928 in Winnipeg, Grant had delivered a speech saying that
“The Klan strove for ‘racial purity. We fight against intermarrying of Negroes and whites, Japs and White, Chinese and Whites. This intermarriage is a menace to the world. If I am walking down the street and a Negro doesn’t give me half the sidewalk, I know what to do.” He then lashed out at the Jews and said that “The Jews are too powerful … they are the slave masters who are throttling the throats of white persons to enrich themselves.”
A 1974 biography by Doris Shackleton, a former CBC reporter and NDP staffer, entitled “Tommy Douglas” openly acknowledged Grant’s work organizing for the KKK.
In 1929, Grant and the KKK had helped elect the Conservative-Progressive coalition government in Saskatchewan, which had earned him a patronage post in charge of the labour office in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, where Douglas met him. Grant was fired when a new government was elected, because they didn’t want KKK organizers working in the labour office.
There have been various attempts to minimize Douglas’ promotion of eugenics, saying that his views were changed by a trip to Germany in 1936. In fact, Douglas went to Germany because he wanted to see one of Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies.
In a 1956 interview, published in the book “The Making of a Socialist,” Douglas explained – when asked about his 1936 trip to Germany the year after he was elected a Member of Parliament:
“[Interviewer] You were in Europe for how long?
[Douglas] About three months. We went from Switzerland to Nuremberg, because I wanted to see the great annual festivity Hitler put on each year there. It was frightful. I came back and warned my friends about the great German bombers roaring over the parade of self-propelled guns and tanks, Hitler standing there giving his salute, with Göring and the rest of the Nazi bigwigs by his side.
There was no doubt then that Hitler was simply using Spain as a dress rehearsal for an attack on other nations.
[Interviewer] It was with very great difficulty that people were able to appreciate the anti-Semitism that was going on in Germany. Did you yourself see any examples of it?
[Douglas] I didn’t see any. Most of it was over by the time I got there.”
To suggest that in 1936, most of the anti-semitism in Germany was over defies reason and evidence.
“The New Residential Schools” Tommy Douglas and the creation of provincial child welfare
These are just some of the reasons that holding up Tommy Douglas as exemplar of political purity, is “problematic”. It is far from the only example of Douglas’ historic association with damaging policies that has been whitewashed.
The reality of Canada as a colonial state is that provincial governments have played a direct role in the mistreatment of Indigenous people, in areas of jurisdiction that the provinces themselves asked for, and Tommy Douglas is one of the people responsible.
Again, in Shackleton’s biography, Douglas describes how, in 1951, the Federal Government began to shut down residential schools, “after a series of negative reports,” that at the urging of the CCF and Premier Tommy Douglas, the federal government transferred responsibility for First Nations child welfare to provinces.
The result has been 70 years of provincial governments seizing Indigenous children from their families and never returning them, in numbers greater than the total yearly attendance of Residential Schools.
The “60s scoop” meant thousands of children across Canada were taken from their homes and adopted out across North America and around the world.
“The department of Indigenous Affairs indicates that the number of Indigenous children adopted between 1960 and 1990 was 11,132,” though some research suggests it was over 20,000.”
CFS has been described by Cindy Blackstock as “the New Residential Schools” and the scale of it across Canada is colossal.
In the last decade, the number of Indigenous children apprehended and in custody of CFS in Manitoba alone exceeded the total population of every single residential school across Canada. By 2013, the province of Manitoba had 11,000 children in the custody of CFS.
According to the Lancet, it was the highest apprehension rate in the world. That is more, in a single province, than the entire “60s scoop” across Canada over 30 years. If that weren’t bad enough, governments in Manitoba and British Columbia also seized federal child allowances intended for those children.
This horrific policy is the direct cause of Indigenous misery, and shorter life expectancy. Over half of the homeless population in Winnipeg were at one point wards of CFS. Canadian provinces took Indigenous children from their families, took their money, and left them on the street at the age of 18 with no supports. Our jails, our runaways, our gangs, and tragedy after tragedy have the common thread of CFS involvement. Because CFS is not just about looking after the safety children, it has always also been about controlling and threatening parents.
That’s why the top five of 94 recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are all concerned with children in provincial child welfare systems.
This absolute catastrophe of a social policy was conceived of, created and sustained, by provincial governments for decades, and directly contributed to the relentless trauma that provincial governments have inflicted on Indigenous people, and about which there is a deafening silence.
Why are children being seized? Largely because of First Nations and Indigenous poverty and neglect. Why is there Indigenous poverty? Because, for decades, provincial governments across Western Canada have approved megaprojects – dams, mines, oil and gas – much of it on First Nations land.
In Manitoba, there are dams that have destroyed Indigenous communities’ self-sufficiency by destroying the environment. Entire communities flooded out of existence, dammed rivers destroying lakes that were the source of successful commercial fisheries, wiped out by Hydro and the Government of Manitoba, without compensation.
What’s more, provincial governments are funded on a per capita basis – for every person who lives within their borders, including on reserve, yet provincial governments like Manitoba exclude First Nations from receiving that funding.
Indigenous people in Canada consistently face the most discrimination in provincial systems, and when a catastrophe or a tragedy inevitably happens, the response has always been to defend the system. Indigenous deaths in ERs, in jail, in CFS or as victims of crime are blamed on the victims.
Together, provincial governments’ combined budgets are larger than the federal government, and Indigenous Canadians face terrible discrimination from provincial governments in economic supports, education, health, justice, child and family services and natural development.
Because the federal policies are the same everywhere: it’s the provincial policies that are different, which is why child and family poverty, and Indigenous incarceration in Manitoba are so much worse than any other province.
So, when Dr. Gem Newman lectures his fellow classmates on the injustices of Canada’s treatment of First Nations, he should know that one of the direct causes of homelessness, mental health, and forced poverty in Manitoba and across Canada is the direct result of decades of seizures of Indigenous children, which are a direct consequence of a policy brought in by Tommy Douglas to replace Residential Schools.
Tommy Douglas and provincial governments created some of the most damaging modern policies Indigenous people in Canada have experienced – and are still experiencing, every day.
As a valedictorian and as a doctor, Dr Newman is an authority, and he says a doctor’s advocacy is in a doctor’s job description. Advocates and authorities have a responsibility to work from evidence. That is why it is paramount for an authority, whether they are practicing medicine or politics, to ensure they know what they are talking about. Slogans are not solutions, and Dr. Newman’s facile understanding of history is a disservice to his audience.
It has to be said Dr. Newman’s ignorance about this should not be a surprise, because there is an effective conspiracy of silence which makes it a forbidden topic in Canada, because it is politically inconvenient.
Notably, it highlights the hypocrisy and moral double standards at work among high-profile Canadian progressives, Naomi Klein being the most prominent.
On Freedom of Speech, Civil Disobedience on Campus on Beyond
I write all of this as a strong supporter of freedom of expression, on and off campus including protest, investigative journalism, whistleblowing, satire, parody, speaking truth to power, and calling out corruption. I have personally done all of them. Rights have never been about doing and saying whatever you want, wherever and whenever.
The Charter of Rights and Freedoms sets out the circumstances where you are guaranteed rights to free expression. The Charter generally only applies to Government, not universities, except in Alberta, where courts ruled otherwise.
The reason for this is university autonomy. Universities are workplace and a place of research and education, where the goal is to work to an ever greater understanding of the world, and that has always required discernment. It is not a public square or an unmoderated internet forum, and if you don’t abide by the rules, you do not have a right to stay.
A simple example of speech that can get you removed from campus is plagiarism. The university sets out rules around free inquiry and academic freedom, but you can’t plagiarize.
This is important in the context of campus protests and civil disobedience. Protestors are not being silenced because of the content of their speech, nor are they choosing to break unjust laws to show how unjust they are.
The distinction here is one that was drawn by Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King. He was in favour of direct action and civil disobedience by having people be willing to be arrested and jailed, and face the consequences and punishment, because the unjust law they broke was asking for service at a segregated coffee shop, or sitting at the front of the bus. They actively discouraged and called out anyone who broke other laws as undermining the cause.
The laws that are being broken in this instance are ones that apply to everyone. It is not about the cause or the message, at all. It is about trespassing, or blocking a highway, or ignoring a court order.
There is a basic mistake that many commentators and protestors are making. When protestors say they mean “peaceful,” they think that if it is non-violent, that it must ,by legal definition be peaceful, and legal. You do not have to be violent to be “disturbing the peace.” Blocking highways and spamming 911 lines are not violent, but both are against the law, for obvious reasons, because someone could die. Canadian Supreme Court Precedent makes it clear, there are limits to protest, because other people have the right to be free from disruption.
If protestors are arguing that the injustice is so great, that they must break the law for justice to be done, then this is exactly the motivation behind what is known as “noble cause corruption” in policing. It’s just as unacceptable.
Freedom of expression is protected because it is powerful, and it is powerful for good and for harm. That’s why accuracy – especially at a university – matters. It means weeding out the lies, manipulation, dishonesty and deception. It means recognizing that human beings are contradictory, and flawed. It means working hard not to deceive others, or yourself, while we live in a world where armies of people are paid to deceive us, and recognizing that there may be more than two sides to every story. Two bitter opponents on either side of an issue can both be wrong.
“Resistance” that takes the form of attacks on civilians is just as unacceptable as reckless military actions that result in civilian deaths. Neither are morally or strategically defensible: to the contrary, they only further radicalize and inflame the situation.
Dougald Lamont (B.A., M.A) is a graduate of the University of Manitoba and a former member of the Board of Governors. He is the past MLA for St. Boniface and the former Leader of the provincial Manitoba Liberal Party from 2017-2023.
Local News
New Israel Fund to hold event in Winnipeg December 11
The Road Ahead: Israelis Fighting for Peace and Democracy in a Trump-Netanyahu Era
with Ben Murane, Executive Director, and Michael Mitchell, Board Member
of the New Israel Fund of Canada
Wednesday, December 11th at 7:30-9:00 pm in the Grant Park area
Advance registration required — exact location provided upon registration. Registration link at the end of this post.
Co-sponsored by Canadian Supporters of Women Wage Peace
As President-elect Trump’s return to the spotlight stirs tensions globally, the Israel-Hamas war drags on, and the hostages are not any closer to coming home, NIFC’s work takes on new urgency in confronting a government that continues to undermine democracy and human rights.
Israeli progressives are determined not to let this extremist agenda win again — they’re modeling a powerful vision of a more peaceful, shared future for the region and pushing back against the forces of division, inequality, and authoritarianism. They’re fighting for both the release of hostages and aid to Gazans, as well as civil liberties, Jewish-Arab partnership, religious freedom, and for an end to this bloody conflict.
Join this private discussion with our Executive Director Ben Murane to hear how NIF-fueled civil society initiatives are fighting today and preparing for a better tomorrow.
About our Executive Director and Board Member
Ben Murane is the Executive Director of the New Israel Fund of Canada and a leading voice of millennial engagement with Israel. For over fifteen years, Ben has led at the intersection of Jewish life, social justice, and Israel. He previously worked for NIF’s U.S. branch, won Jewish innovation awards for his work in environmentalism and campus life, and founded both online and offline Jewish communities. In 2012, he received the prestigious Dorot Leadership Fellowship in Israel, where he studied comparative nationalism and consulted for social action groups. He lives in Toronto with his wife and two young children.
Michael Mitchell is a board member of the New Israel Fund of Canada. He is Vice-Chair of the Ontario Labour Relations Board and an Arbitrator/Mediator in private practice. Michael was a senior partner at Sack Goldblatt Mitchell, a leading labour law firm in Toronto and Ottawa for almost forty years, where he also served as the managing partner. Michael was President of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, and the President of Darchei Noam, the Toronto Reconstructionist Congregation. He is a long time donor and supporter of the New Israel Fund and participated in the NIFC study tour of Israel in 2018. Michael is married to Lynne Mitchell, has three daughters, Rachel, Alisa and Sara, and has six grandchildren.
About the New Israel Fund of Canada
Since 1986, NIFC has contributed over $10 million to more than 100 organizations in Israel that fight for socio-economic equality, religious freedom, civil and human rights, shared society and anti-racism, Palestinian citizens, and democracy itself.
To register, click here: NIF event
Local News
The CJN (Canadian Jewish News) responds to accusations by Jewish National Fund Canada that it has been unfair in its reporting on JNF Canada’s problems with the CRA
Back in August we printed a story titled “A detailed look at the awful predicament in which JNF Canada now finds itself since the CRA revoked its charitable status.” A large part of that story was taken from reporting done by Ellin Bessner for the CJN (Canadian Jewish News). Since then we have been asked by Bessner to give the CJN’s side of the story.
At the time we printed that story, and even up until the CJN approached us on Nov. 22, jewishpostandnews.ca did not contact the CJN for comment on JNF Canada’s’ accusations about their reporting. We regret our own lack of journalistic standards and have since removed that story from our website.
On November 22, we received an email from The CJN’s Bessner. She had come across the article we had on our website and reached out to us.
Bessner insisted that JNF Canada’s claims about The CJN’s reporting on the CRA story are false. Bessner adds that JNF Canada’s claim that the CJN never asked them for their views is also not true..
Following is Ellin Besser’s view of what happened between JNF Canada and the CJN:
After their Aug. 10 revocation, The CJN contacted the JNF to ask for an interview. They agreed to talk to The CJN, but asked us to wait to do the interview until Aug. 16, a full six days after the CRA revoked their charitable status. We waited because we wanted to give JNF enough time to speak to us fully. Also, there was Tisha B’av on Monday Aug. 12 so JNF’s staff was not available.
As JNF well knows, and the public knows because we put it into our reporting, The CJN team of Bessner and Jonathan Rothman conducted an hour-long, videotaped interview with JNF CEO Lance Davis by ZOOM, on Aug. 16. We even made sure that Davis made his own audio recording of the interview on his personal phone.
While other news organizations were quick off the mark after Aug. 10 to publish a JNF revocation story, these other outlets did not conduct a full journalistic investigation, and published only JNF’s side.
While waiting for our interview, we continued our reporting. We knew that under the Income Tax Act’s privacy rules, the CRA never comments on cases while the audits and negotiations are underway. In fact, by law, the CRA cannot divulge anything about its audit process to the public, until after a charity is revoked. Then, the public can ask for the CRA’s internal documents concerning the reasons why a charity was revoked. So we asked.
On Aug. 15, the day before our scheduled JNF interview, the CRA released to us 358 pages of internal documents regarding its dealings with JNF, including some documents dating back to 1967, when JNF Canada was officially granted charitable status in Canada.
No other news outlet in the world received the documents at this time; The CJN was the first. Our team read all the 358 pages the night before our interview.
During our interview with Lance Davis the next day, we told him that we had the CRA’s documents. During the interview, we went through the issues which the CRA documents had raised.
It was obvious that Davis had prepared talking points for his interview, as we had sent him the questions in advance, which they had requested. He was reading off another computer screen. Davis answered all our questions, including a list of issues raised in the CRA documents.
These ranged from missing paperwork, lack of oversight and direction, why documents were not provided in English or French but in Hebrew, why they were not kept in Canada but in Israel, why in-house travel expenses were not receipted the way CRA needed, why the donations to JNF from Canada went not to buying trees at all, until 2017, but to paying labour costs for workers in Israel.
We went back and forth with the JNF team over the next ten days by email, as we fact-checked issues. They also acknowledged this. They answered our fact-checking questions. We told them when our stories would likely be coming out, and we told them there would be print stories and a podcast or two.
In the meantime, to get our story as complete as possible, we consulted with financial experts and charity experts, with JNF donors and with our lawyers.
It became apparent that JNF was extremely careful about who we spoke to, as we learned they had vetted what one of the donor interviewees told us: JNF’s p.r. person told me he had heard the raw tape of our interview shortly after we had hung up after we conducted it, but long before it was published.
Only after all CJN’s due diligence, which was a full sixteen days after JNF’s revocation, did we publish our series of stories.
On the evening of Aug. 26, we reported on the contents of the CRA allegations, linking to the CRA documents, and that same evening, we also released our podcast containing JNF’s Davis’ interview. We also ran a lengthy print story early the next morning, again quoting Davis extensively.
The following day we ran another podcast with some donors’ views, and more JNF arguments.
Here are all the stories and articles which The CJN has published on the CRA/JNF story.
JNF has been spinning things to attack our reporting, because they assume few people actually took the time to read The CJN’s work.
JNF is saying it was “blindsided” by the CRA’s revocation. But the truth is, and the documents which CRA released (and later JNF released and JNF told us) show JNF has been secretive about its own legal communications with the CRA dating back to 1967, and through four subsequent CRA audits. They received an amnesty from the new Revenue Minister in the 1990s.
The fifth audit, started in 2014 and has been the source of the agency’s latest problem over the last 10 years.
Unlike the CRA, JNF was always able to publicly release their legal communications and letters back and forth with CRA. They did not do this back in 1989, when they were told they were not in compliance. They did not do so in August 2019, when they received the official Notice of Intention to Revoke, from when the clock to revocation started ticking. And they did not do so in June 2023, even after JNF received a letter saying the NITR notice was confirmed.
Even during our interview, JNF did not disclose it had its own documents that could better show the context of its challenges dealing with the CRA. JNF chose to release these only in September on their website. But they selectively released a document here and there to a “friendly” columnist for the National Post. These documents would have shown the fact that JNF’s detractors in the anti-Zionist advocacy world of Independent Jewish Voices, had their letter writing campaigns and media statements and briefing reports taken into consideration by CRA communications staff.
JNF also did not disclose on its website their annual audit documents for the years between 2018 and 2023, where the auditors’ reports stated the CRA had informed JNF it was going to lose its charitable status.
This is a lack of transparency on JNF’s part, thus hiding this knowledge from their donors, supporters, and the wider public. They also did not file these with the CRA, as they were legally required to do.
Only after our stories came out, did JNF upload the missing paperwork to its own website and posted on the CRA’s.
Two things can be true at the same time: JNF was facing compliance problems with CRA rules for years and hid this from its donors and the Canadian public and JNF acknowledged to us and to the CRA that it wanted to keep this issue quiet.
It is also possible that JNF was treated unfairly by the CRA, who may have been influenced by anti-Israel groups, or anti-Israel staff. The CRA denies this, but only time and Access to Information requests for Cabinet documents and internal CRA communications will tell.
During the pandemic, JNF had requested and obtained some documents from the CRA through access to information requests, showing internal reports that outline the media campaigns/internal pressure on the department from anti-JNF groups including Independent Jewish Voices, who wanted to have the charity shut down.
JNF could have released these important documents to the CJN and to the wider public immediately, but chose not to do so. We only found them on the JNF website, in September. And we reported on this, too.
Likely this will all be decided by the Federal Court of Appeal.
Local News
‘Hateful remarks, gestures’: Canadian coffee chain boots franchisee at Jewish Montreal hospital
Second Cup Café said that the anti-Israel protester had violated the chain’s “values of inclusion and community.”
(Nov. 24, 2024 / JNS) The Canadian chain Second Cup Café announced on Saturday that it shut down a franchisee’s cafe at Jewish General Hospital in Montreal and terminated its relationship with that person after the latter “was filmed making hateful remarks and gestures.”
“Second Cup has zero tolerance for hate speech,” the chain stated. “In coordination with the hospital, we’ve shut down the franchisee’s cafe and are terminating their franchise agreement.”
The person’s actions, the chain said, breach the franchise agreement and “violate the values of inclusion and community we stand for at Second Cup.”
Idit Shamir, the consul general of Israel in Toronto and western Canada, named the former franchisee as Mai Abdulhadi, and said that the latter had chanted “the Final Solution is coming” and performed a Nazi salute at Concordia University, “while running a café at Jewish General Hospital, a place built by Holocaust survivors.”
“Thankfully, Second Cup acted swiftly: café shut down, franchise revoked,” Shamir wrote. “Mai Abdulhadi—Hate speech isn’t just vile, it’s a threat, and it will be met with consequences.”
The company earned accolades—and some promises of business—from Paul Hirschson, the Israeli consul general in Montreal, and leaders at the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center.
“This great Canadian, Montreal-owned company has taken this principled stand at risk to their own business. In so doing, they are showing the courage and leadership Canada needs right now but is so desperately lacking from those in the highest of public offices,” stated Leo Housakos, a senator from Quebec. “I hope everyone goes out and buys their coffee tomorrow.”
Michal Cotler-Wunsh, the Israeli special envoy for combating antisemitism, wrote that it “turns out moral clarity is not so difficult.”
“Thanks Second Cup for showcasing Canadian values standing up to lethal hate speech and incitement,” she wrote. “Antisemitism is not a problem of Jews. It’s a problem of antisemites and the people and places that allow it to spread.”
“How is it that a coffee chain was able to put out a statement condemning antisemitism and racial hatred, faster, clearer and unambiguously better, than the prime minister of Canada?” wrote Arsen Ostrovsky, CEO of the International Legal Forum.
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