If I had $10 for every time a public figure caught criticizing Israel, was denigrated, disciplined, dismissed or had their career ruined because they stood up to the pro-Israel lobby, I’d have enough money for my purchases at the pot shop this month.
The campaign of “civil terror” against free expression continues.
ITEM: Amy Blanding, the BC Northern Health Authority’s (NHA) former Director of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA), filed a lawsuit against the NHA. She claimed wrongful dismissal, violation of her human and Charter rights, injury, damages, and defamation. Last April, she composed and sang a song for peace and against the genocide in Gaza. A singer/song writer by avocation, she sang in a closed rehearsal space while wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a watermelon. Was this a crime?
She performed in her spare time; it had nothing to do with her job. Several people in Prince George, including Eli Klasner, who never saw the rehearsal or attended her performance – opposed the song they did not hear. They complained that her singing was “antisemitic.” In many online images, Glasner dresses as an Orthodox Jew and claims to be “dedicating a lot of my time and resources … to combatting the rampant anti-semitism that is currently tearing through our country, including in the arts and culture sector.”
Blanding’s boss, David Williams, called Amy in, and told her she had to apologize for her statements on Israel’s genocide. The health authority wanted her to agree to a prepared statement written by the employer. They offered her a monetary settlement to go away. And they insisted she sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) forbidding her to talk about, write about or be interviewed about why she lost her job.
She refused
Her job ended – after seven years of blemish-free employment.
Her immediate supervisor, Vash Ebbadi-Cook, objected to her firing and resigned from his own job in protest.
ITEM: Then there is what happened recently to Tammy Jakeman, an NDP candidate in the Nova Scotia provincial election.
Tammy Jakeman, was the NDP candidate in Eastern Passage in NS’s upcoming provincial election. A school education assistant, a social and community activist, and an ardent trade unionist, she had made several public remarks about Israel-Palestine a year ago.
“One of Jakeman’s comments noted the irony of a World Children’s Day post from “Auschwitz Memorial” about Jewish children in the Holocaust at the same time that Gazan children were being killed in great numbers. The post contains pictures of child inmates of Auschwitz. In another, Jakeman re-posted messages from others about the irony of Israel being one of the “happiest nations” in the world at the same time as that country is “terrorizing Palestinians.” Larry Haiven in Canadian Dimension here
Two NDP apparatchiks went to Tammy’s house and put on the pressure. According to Haiven, the two from the NDP
“visited Jakeman, told her that the situation would only get worse and presented no viable option other than resigning. In tears, Jakeman withdrew her candidacy. Party stalwarts subsequently picked up the refrain, wasting no time in telling everyone who would listen that Jakeman’s resignation was not the party’s doing, but entirely voluntary.” Haiven in Canadian Dimension
Jakeman didn’t want to be insensitive, or antisemitic or get into “trouble” with the Official Jews. So she apologized to the Jews. It didn’t do her any good, because the Atlantic Jewish Council and CIJA had already pushed the NDP to disallow her as a candidate because her criticism of Israel’s genocide was considered “antisemitic.” In truth, Tammy opposed Israel’s genocide, the murder of tens of thousands of children, and Israel’s role in starvation in Gaza. Framing the issue to say that Tammy Jakeman’s remarks “did harm” to Jews, the NDP is succumbing to a horrible moral blackmail. Whenever ANYONE criticizes Israel, whether robustly or mildly, some Jews are going to feel hurt. As Haiven notes,
“It’s necessary. When the ICJ called Israel’s actions a plausible genocide, no doubt many supporters of Israel felt pain. The end result of focusing on hurt feelings versus dead bodies is to shut everyone up as the genocide happens before our eyes.”
ITEM: We’ve seen the NDP play this card before. Almost exactly five years ago, the federal NDP disallowed volunteer charity worker Rana Zaman from running in the Dartmouth-Cole Harbour riding. Though Zaman (who is Muslim) had won the riding’s nomination handily, her tweets about Israel’s murders of more than 223 Palestinians who were shot dead in cold blood by Israeli snipers during the Great March of Return in 2018, nudged the NDP to remove her as their candidate. Zaman also noted that, “not every Jewish person agrees with the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and many realize it’s a way to muzzle criticism of Apartheid Israel and supporters of Palestine.” True enough.
Zaman, an immigrant from Pakistan and a community activist, was not good enough for the NDP, though she had won the nomination “fair and square”. The NDP’s slander about her being an “unacceptable” candidate and suggesting her tweets were antisemitic were initiated and then amplified by the Jewish establishment, notably the Atlantic Jewish Council.
No one knew it then, but now we know the apology was not considered good enough. Zaman said,
My intention was to raise awareness, engage others in a conversation and dialogue that would be productive. Instead I have inadvertently caused pain using such language and I humbly apologize for that. My emotions at the sight of so many innocent Palestinians being shot, maimed or killed overwhelmed me. I have learned an important lesson, the need to be mindful and not to use this analogy in the future!”
It wasn’t craven enough, it wasn’t pleading enough and it did not recant criticism of Israel’s sniper attacks on innocent Gazans during the 2018 Great March of Return.
Six months later, Zaman was awarded the individual Human Rights Award by the NS Human Rights Commission. Within ten days, the NSHRC rescinded her award, after the publication of letters by the Atlantic Jewish Council and two Halifax rabbis denouncing her.
The practised take-down of candidate Zaman, and the revocation of her human rights award meant the Atlantic Jewish Congress (AJC), an arm of CIJA (Centre for Israel-Jewish Affairs)demanded an all-out apology. There was the publication of a nasty letter by two local rabbis, and then an open letter penned by the AJC which further demeaned Zaman.
The Atlantic Jewish Council refused to accept her apology. Demanding an apology is a ploy. In fact, apologies seem only to encourage the Official Jews to double down in their efforts to stamp out criticism of Israel. No apology would have been good enough. People she worked with for years on interfaith councils refused to work with her. Jewish ‘friends’ eschewed her.
ITEM: The leader of the Ontario NDP is also not immune to forced apologies. Again, in Canadian Dimension:
“Just last July, Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles visited a “Taste of the Middle East” event and tweeted with some photos: “From beautiful Palestinian embroidery, to young entrepreneurs, to savoury kebabs and sweet baklava, the Taste of the Middle East is an unforgettable experience. Can’t wait to go back next year!” (Larry Haiven)
To Stiles’ innocuous comment, one of the troika, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center (FSWC) angrily tweeted, “The ‘beautiful Palestinian embroidery’ that you speak of represents the erasure of Israel and its Jewish people, Marit Stiles. It is unbecoming of a political leader to celebrate such a display, which causes harm to Jews in Canada and Israel. An apology is owed to the community.”
In response, Stiles deleted the tweet, and then apologized. Apparently, this is what the NDP has come to. What’s next? A boilerplate apology on every NDP website or piece of literature handed out on doorsteps? Or better, perhaps, would be keeping absolutely quiet on the issue of Israel and Palestine, since the mere mention gets the NDP in trouble. This is nothing less than a campaign of “civil terror” spreading across Canada, and among many countries.
I could give a dozen more example in which the Official Jews have demanded apologies, and even receiving them has not made the Official Jews ignore or “go easy” on anyone who dares to criticize Israel, draws attention to the genocide, or demands a ceasefire. All this is taboo among establishment Jews who try to silence the rest of us.
It’s here folks – we are seeing more and more Canadians persecuted and prosecuted for telling the truth about Israel’s genocide.
Image at the top: Smoke rises after an Israeli air strike on Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon [credit: Bilal Hussein/AP]. Published in Aljazeera: Israeli airstrikes killed 47 and injured 22 in Lebanon’s Baalbek province, 21 Nov. 2024.