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Canada Has Appointed an Israel Basher to a Major Job; But There Is Still Time to Act
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau holds a press conference on the sidelines of the UNGA in New York, US, Sept. 21, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar
My kids have a game called, “Who Said That?” The rules are simple: one player picks a card that has a quote on it, and offers three choices for the speaker or writer.
Let’s play our own version, with this quote:
Contrary to conventional wisdom (which is far more convention than it is wisdom), terror is not an irrational strategy pursued solely by fundamentalists with politically and psychologically warped visions of a new political, religious or ideological order. It is in fact, a rational and well-calculated strategy that is pursued with surprisingly high success rates.
Was that said by:
Osama Bin Laden;
Timothy McVeigh; or
Canada’s newly appointed Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, Birju Dattani?
The correct answer is 3.
The quote above is taken from a 2015 presentation Dattani made to showcase his research as a postgraduate student in England at the London School of Economics, and the School of Oriental and African Studies.
During this time, Dattani also tweeted that “Palestinians are Warsaw Ghetto Prisoners of Today” — which linked to an article with the same title. Another tweet linked to an article suggesting a connection between Israeli actions and summary executions by the Nazis and others.
On another occasion, Dattani shared a stage with a member of an Islamic fundamentalist group that’s banned in Britain, wants to impose Sharia law worldwide, and, of course, opposes the existence of Israel.
A reasonable observer might infer a pattern, and wonder how Dattani passed the vetting that surely must have preceded his appointment to his new post, which he’s set to assume on August 8.
So how did this happen?
To begin with, Dattani had previously served as executive director of the Yukon Territory’s Human Rights Commission, and most recently, at a Toronto community college — roles that did not involve a great deal of public scrutiny. Moreover, he went by a different name, Mujahid Dattani, during his student days.
Mistakes happen. But this is the third time in the past 18 months that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has stumbled into a major scandal that rocks the trust of the Jewish community.
Last year, it emerged that the Canadian government had awarded a six-figure anti racism consulting contract to Laith Marouf, the son of a Syrian diplomat who opined that “Zionism is Nazism, and Apartheid Canada was a model for both of them,” and had posted this July 2021 tweet about former Justice Minister Irwin Cotler and the National Summit to Combat Antisemitism Cotler was hosting on behalf of the Canadian government:
In a nation of more than 40 million people, surely there was a better candidate to lecture Canada’s broadcasting industry on the alleged scourge of racism than some antisemite who was spewing hate within plain sight of the nearest Google search.
The Canadian Ministry of Heritage has tried to recover the money it paid to Marouf, but since he’s currently living in Lebanon and busy running “Free Palestine Television,” a venture he launched after the October 7 Hamas massacre, the prospect for getting anything back from him is beyond remote.
The third low point was the government’s feting of a Waffen SS veteran in Parliament last September, which cost the Speaker of the House his job.
To call the relationship between Canada’s Jewish community and Trudeau’s governing Liberals “troubled” would be a polite understatement at this point.
And the government has only itself to blame.
The Trudeau Liberals aren’t a collection of raging antisemites, but their fealty to an intersectional ideology that’s hostile to the Jewish State and that sometimes bumbles into open antisemitism has given them a blind spot. Which is why, where the Jews are concerned, Trudeau and his party can’t stop stepping on these metaphorical rakes.
According to intersectional dogma, Jews — and Zionists especially — are “white,” and, as such, are members of an oppressor class that can be offended with little concern.
If someone seeking to be the nation’s top human rights adjudicator had demonstrated bias against any other group — Black, Indigenous, trans, or Muslim, for example — that bias would have been disqualifying at the outset.
If it was missed after an appointment was announced, the outrage would have been widespread, Trudeau’s apology swift, and the job offer immediately rescinded.
Dattani is still set to assume his new role.
His appointment has been made more untenable by virtue of the fact that the job has become more important than it was a few months ago.
An unapologetic progressive activist, Trudeau recently passed an Online Harms Act with broad reaching powers. Some of the measures, such as new obligations imposed on social media platforms to monitor child pornography and so-called revenge porn, are unambiguously good ideas.
But the legislation also gives the Canadian Human Rights Commission new powers to regulate “communication of hate speech” with fines of up to C$50,000 (US$36,500).
The potential chilling effect of that cudgel has always been problematic, which is why ensuring the Commission’s leadership is both unbiased and seen to have unimpeachable judgment is critical.
One might be inclined to attribute the views publicly expressed by Dattani during his student days as the strident immoderation of youth.
In most other jobs, that might be a good enough explanation.
But how would a Chief Commissioner Dattani respond to a Laith Marouf? Would his willingness to sanction Marouf be tempered by fellowship over their shared opposition to Israeli policies? Would his views be any different if instead of being an antisemite, Marouf was a white supremacist, a homophobe, or a cheerleader of militant West Bank settlers?
How would Dattani view the excesses in his own rear view mirror, many of which no doubt have him cringing for reasons beyond the high-status job (which pays between C$335,100 and C$394,200, plus a generous pension) he stands to lose as a result of them.
Very few people are the sum of the worst online posts they send out into the sea of cognitive effluent that is social media.
But the person who is expected to deter and — if necessary, punish — that kind of behavior ought not to be someone who has online excesses of his own, which were made under a different name, and not candidly disclosed to those who vetted him for the job.
At last count, antisemitic outrages represented 56% of reported hate crimes in Toronto, Canada’s largest city. In such a climate, having questions of anti-Jewish bias hang over the nation’s newly empowered hate crimes czar would profoundly undermine the legitimacy of the role and the prospects of success for Trudeau’s new Online Harms bill.
The Canadian Justice Department is currently investigating Dattani’s past conduct. One can only hope that at the end of the process, the government finds itself with a Chief Commissioner who comes to the role with less baggage.
Ian Cooper is a Toronto-based lawyer.
The post Canada Has Appointed an Israel Basher to a Major Job; But There Is Still Time to Act first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai
Around 200 people gathered for a pro-Israel demonstration at University of Toronto’s downtown campus at King’s College Circle—which was the site of one of Canada’s largest pro-Palestinian encampments during May […]
The post A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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‘Not Welcome’: New Pro-Hamas Campaign Aims to Abolish Hillel Campus Chapters
A statue of George Washington tied with a Palestinian flag and a keffiyeh inside a pro-Hamas encampment is pictured at George Washington University in Washington, DC, US, May 2, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Craig Hudson
The campus group National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) is waging a campaign to gut Jewish life in academia, calling for the abolition of Hillel International campus chapters, the largest collegiate organization for Jewish students in the world.
“Over the past several decades, Hillel has monopolized for Jewish campus life into a pipeline for pro-Israel indoctrination, genocide-apologia, and material support to the Zionist project and its crimes,” a social media account operating the campaign, titled #DropHillel, said in a manifesto published last week. “Across the country, Hillel chapters have invited Israeli soldiers to their campuses; promoted propaganda trips such as birthright; and organized charity drives for the Israeli military.”
It continued, “Such actions reveal Hillel’s ideological and material investment in Zionism, despite the organization’s facade as being simply a ‘Jewish cultural space.’”
DropHillel claims to be “Jewish-led,” although only a small minority of Jews oppose Zionism, and the group has been linked to and promoted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters.
Hillel International has provided Jewish students a home away from home during the academic year. However, NSJP says it wants to “weaken” it and “dismantle oppression.”
The idea has already been picked up by pro-Hamas student groups at one college, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to The Daily Tar Heel, the school’s official student newspaper. On Oct. 9, it reported, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) unveiled the idea for “no more Hillel” during a rally which, among other things, demanded removing Israel from UNC’s study abroad program and adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Addressing the comments to the paper days later, SJP, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, proclaimed that shuttering Hillel is a coveted goal of the anti-Zionist movement.
“Zionism is a racist supremacist ideology advocating for the creation and sustenance of an ethnostate through the expulsion and annihilation of native people,” the group told the paper. “Therefore, any group that advocates for a supremacist ideology — be it the KKK, the Proud Boys, Hillel, or Heels for Israel — should not be welcome on campus.”
The #DropHillel campaign came amid an unprecedented surge in anti-Israel incidents on college campuses, which, according to a report published last month by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), have reached crisis levels.
Revealing a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena, the report — titled “Anti-Israel Activism on US Campuses, 2023-2024” — painted a bleak picture of America’s higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate.
“As the year progressed, Jewish students and Jewish groups on campus came under unrelenting scrutiny for any association, actual or perceived, with Israel or Zionism,” the report said. “This often led to the harassment of Jewish members of campus communities and vandalism of Jewish institutions. In some cases, it led to assault. These developments were underpinned by a steady stream of rhetoric from anti-Israel activists expressing explicit support for US-designated terrorists organizations, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and others.”
The report added that 10 campuses accounted for 16 percent of all incidents tracked by ADL researchers, with Columbia University and the University of Michigan combining for 90 anti-Israel incidents — 52 and 38, respectively. Harvard University, the University of California – Los Angeles, Rutgers University New Brunswick, Stanford University, Cornell University, and others filled out the rest of the top 10. Violence, it continued, was most common at universities in the state of California, where anti-Zionist activists punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza
Former US President Donald Trump is seen at a campaign event in South Carolina. Photo: Reuters/Sam Wolfe
The “Muslims for Trump” organization has officially launched initiatives to help elect Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to the White House, arguing that he would be more likely to end the war in Gaza than Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
In a statement released on Monday, the group said it will focus on recruiting Muslim voters in key battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina. The organization both praised Trump for his supposed “peace-focused” approach to ending the war in Gaza and condemned Harris for helping facilitate a so-called “genocide.”
“After meeting with President Trump, it was clear to me he is the right leader for Muslims to get behind,” Rabiul Chowdhury, co-founder of Muslims for Trump and former co-chair of the “Abandon Harris Movement,” said in a statement.
Chowdhury added that during his discussions with Trump, the former president vowed to “ending the escalation of wars and bringing peace to war-torn regions.” In contrast to Trump’s promise to stop the “bloodshed” in Gaza, he claimed, Harris has “recklessly pushed us toward World War III.”
Chowdhury, a self-described “peace advocate,” urged the Muslim community not to fall victim to supposed “misinformation” campaigns by the media and Democrats that paint the former president as hostile to immigrants. He claimed that the former president’s focus is on “ending war, not dividing families through false immigration claims.”
Samra Luqman, chair of the Michigan chapter of Muslims for Trump, underscored the need to punish the Biden administration for what he described as supporting a “genocide” in Gaza.
“The goal of this election is to hold the Biden administration accountable for a genocide. No amount of fear mongering or scare tactics will persuade my community into forgiving the mutilation, live-burning, and genocide of over 200,000 people,” he said.
According to data produced by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, roughly 40,000 people have died in Gaza since the war began last October. Israel has said that its forces have killed about 20,000 Hamas terrorists during its military campaign.
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication.
On the organization Muslims for Trump’s official website, it claims that the Abraham Accords, a series of historic, Trump administration-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several countries in the Arab world, helped stabilize the Middle East. It also says that had Trump not lost the 2020 presidential race, the so-called “genocide” could have been prevented.
“Under Trump’s leadership, the Abraham Accords were brokered, fostering peaceful relations between Israel and several Arab countries. Supporters might argue that Trump’s diplomacy prioritized peace and stability in the Middle East, reducing the likelihood of large-scale conflicts like genocide,” the group wrote.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump has repeatedly touted his support for the Jewish state during his singular term in office. Trump has boasted about his administration’s work in fostering the Abraham Accords, promising to resume efforts to strengthen them if he were to win November’s US presidential election.
Harsh US sanctions levied on Iran under Trump crippled the Iranian economy and led its foreign exchange reserves to plummet. Trump and his Republican supporters in the US Congress have criticized the Biden administration for renewing billions of dollars in US sanctions waivers, which had the effect of unlocking frozen funds and allowing the country to access previously inaccessible hard currency.
Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, and also moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital.
Despite Harris’s repeated efforts to woo Muslim voters, polling data indicates that the demographic has made a dramatic swing away from the Democratic Party. Polling data from the Arab American Institute reveals that Trump slightly edges Harris among Muslim voters by a margin of 42 to 41 percent. A report from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) shows that Green Party candidate Jill Stein leads Harris and Trump with Muslim voters in the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.
The post ‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.