Jews and censorship

Jews and censorship
By Ezra Levant on June 15, 2008 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (40) | Trackback


You would think that a religion also known as The People of the Book wouldn't be much into book burning. Oh, I know that in 2008 our human rights commissions, and the Official Jews who support them -- the Canadian Jewish Congress, the B'nai Brith, the Simon Wiesenthal Center -- don't actually burn books. That's too 20th century. Now we order political deviants to to shut down their websites. And if the deviant is a Christian pastor, we order him never to send an e-mail or give a sermon.

I'm giving a talk today to the Canadian Jewish Civil Rights Association on the subject of free speech. I'm glad to learn from the organizer that the event is standing room only. To me that is a sign that grassroots Jews, normal Jews, Jews who aren't Official Jews, are increasingly offended by the pro-censorship line taken by our self-appointed betters. But, as I've said before, pretending that Bernie Farber of the CJC represents Canadian Jews is like pretending that Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress represents Canadian Muslims. More and more Jews look upon the likes of profesional race-hustlers like Farber the same way Clarence Thomas looks at Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton: Get a real job and stop embarrassing the rest of us. Or as we Jews would say, Stop being a shanda for the goyim.

Just tonight, a friend gave me a report about a major Simon Wiesenthal fundraiser, held in Toronto a few weeks ago -- their "Spirit of Hope" event, featuring former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former U.S. House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt, and CNN's Glenn Beck. Those are pretty big names, and other than Beck (on whose show I've appeared a couple of times) I wouldn't think they'd be following Canada's human rights commissions and their censorship laws.

My correspondent writes:

Glenn Beck said sarcastically "maybe I'll move up here to Canada" and Gingrich retorted "watch out, Glenn, if you do that the human rights commission up here will probably shut down your program and throw you in jail." (Paraphrase).

About half the audience exploded in spontaneous cheering, laughing and applause. No one looked angry or booed - I got the impression that the other half of the audience didn't understand the reference.

That confirms another report of the event, here.

What does it mean? It means that many Jews, even fancy society Jews, understand that freedom of speech is an essential Jewish value, and that censorship is an essentially violent and barbaric substitute. Censorship says: "I can't convince you, or I'm too lazy or worried to try, so I'll silence you by force." How un-Jewish.

As I've written before, disagreement and debate are woven into Judaism itself. The entire Jewish Talmud is an argument between two "houses" of thought. As Israel's first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, said, "the test of democracy is freedom of criticism." I can think of a half-dozen Jewish cliches and jokes that go to the Jewish love for disagreement and noisiness, and even offensiveness. "Two Jews, three opinions". Or, as the rabbi who introduced Mark Steyn at the Vancouver Hillel fundraiser two weeks ago said, "after Mark's speech, we'll have an answer and answer session".

The second thing to learn from that Wiesenthal dinner incident is that very serious people in other countries -- on both the left and the right -- are watching what is going on in Canada, and they are deeply unimpressed.

The third thing -- and this is my point, actually -- is that the Simon Wiesenthal Center, whose high-powered guest speakers trashed Canada's human rights commissions and whose well-heeled dinner guests applauded that trashing, is one of the most vicious interveners in Canadian Human Rights Commission censorship trials.

In other words, the SWC's boss, Leo Adler, is utterly disconnected from his own membership on the essential matter of free speech. Adler raises money from opponents of censorship to spend in the pursuit of censorship.

Surely, of all the Jewish groups intervening for censorship, Adler, with his focus on the Holocaust, should be the most sensitive to book burnings. But he's not. Perhaps it's some weird vengeance, some psychological therapy, some turn-around, where the Jews get to burn the Nazi books now. That's precisely the kind of immoral, unprincipled vengeance that some self-appointed gay activists are now indulging in, too, when they persecute Christians using the HRCs.


Book burning is funny stuff to Richard Warman, the chief complainaint under the thought crimes provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act. It is in support of Warman that the Official Jews intervene again and again in human rights hearings, the same Warman who, in a recent Maclean's article (excerpt at left) joked about seizing and incinerating books. Hilarious.

But Warman is not the executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress. Bernie Farber is. And, though Farber never ceases to disappoint, his comments in today's Toronto Star have got to be his most disgusting yet.

Farber was interviewed by Haroon Siddiqui, perhaps Canada's most anti-Jewish, anti-Israel writer outside of the Arab press. Again, this isn't about Siddiqui; he doesn't say he's the King of the Jews like Farber does.

So let's focus on what Farber said in the Star: "our anti-hate laws are probably the most underused". That sounds like Ian Fine, senior counsel for the CHRC, who declared that "there can't be enough laws against hate." So while the rest of the country is realizing that our government censorship has gone too far, Farber says it goes nowhere far enough; it's underused. He wants more censorship, more government intervention into thoughts and ideas -- and the emotion called "hate".


Siddiqui wrote that the only reason people are now complaining about government censorship is because Muslims -- e.g. Elmasry, and the Calgary bigot Syed Soharwardy -- are the ones implementing the gags now. Farber couldn't agree more:

That's really what it's about... When non-Muslims were using it, nobody really cared. People need scapegoats. It used to be Jews. Now it's Muslims, to a great extent. Tomorrow, it may be Bahais or somebody else ...

People should focus on the law, not on those using it. If the complaint is frivolous, the system will deal with it.

So the backlash in response to Elmasry's complaints against Mark Steyn and Maclean's isn't legitimate. That backlash is merely anti-Muslim bigotry, says Farber. And it's the same sort of bigotry as anti-Semitism.

There is no other way to read Farber's comments: he's legitimizing Elmasry's complaint, and delegitimizing criticism of Elmasry, calling such criticism scapegoating.

Farber is defending the complaint against Maclean's.

And he goes further: he says that if -- by some minuscule chance -- Maclean's isn't guilty, we can trust the HRCs to acquit them. (This, in the face of a 100% conviction rate at the CHRC.) So the complaints against Maclean's and Mark Steyn (and, surely, against me for publishing the cartoons) are not illegitimate. Criticizing those complaints is illegitimate, racist even. And it is impossible for the infallible HRCs to be wrong, or corrupt -- if Maclean's weren't guilty, they'd be found not guilty. If they're found guilty, they're guilty. QED.

Farber supports the Canadian Islamic Congress in their complaint against Maclean's. There is no other way to interpret his comments. Farber is shilling for a fascist organization that routinely indulges in anti-Semitic propaganda, whose president-for-life went on TV to declare that any adult Jew in Israel is a legitimate target for a terrorist attack. I suppose it shouldn't be too surprising; Farber's newest recruit to the CJC, Warren Kinsella, has provided political and media advice to the CIC's young bigots-in-training, the "sock puppets". Farber just verbally supports Elmasry. Kinsella -- on the CJC's legal affairs committee -- actually rolls up his sleeve and helps the anti-Semites out a bit.

This is the Canadian Jewish Congress in 2008. How repulsive.

No wonder my speech today is sold out.