Justice Institute Speech

Speech addressed to Justice Institute, November 2005

Ladies and Gentlemen. I am honoured to have the opportunity to present my thoughts on issues related to hate crime to a group so dedicated to it’s eradication. I wish to first acknowledge our presence here on the traditional lands of the Musqueam people and express our thanks and gratitude.

This symposium is being held two days after the passing of the famed Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal. It is therefore incumbent upon me that I preface my remarks by recognizing the enormous contributions he made to the post-holocaust world in which we live. Simon Wiesenthal was one of those individuals who helped us as a war torn world restore at least a modicum of faith in ourselves after the demonic years of the second world war. After surviving five Nazi death camps he insisted that war criminals be tracked down, apprehended and brought to justice and otherwise dedicated his long life to combating anti-semitism and other forms of prejudice in all of it’s ugly manifestations.

Wiesenthal demanded that the world not sink into denial and let the guilty ones slip away into the night; he fought against clandestine revenge killings, he demanded that these most vicious architects of mass hate face justice with all of the safeguards of an honest judicial system. He often said that his actuating passion was a personal responsibility to those who perished to bring the murderers to account, so that if he met them in “ the next world” he could say he had done everything within his power to ensure that the guilty would not go free; but he also wanted to teach the world that through the rule of just law, that the destructive impulse of human beings may in some small measure be checked. He was born a Jew and suffered only because he was a Jew but his message of the pursuit of justice was for the benefit of all of humanity.

All of us at this Conference have committed to this path that Simon Wiesenthal embarked upon some 60 years ago. I was one of those young university students who upon discovering the great courage of this man was inspired to try in at least some small measure to make a contribution to confronting genocide and I know there were thousands of others who were similarly humbled and motivated by his heroism.

I want now to discuss the eradication of hate in the largest context because I think it critical that we try and always appreciate that we are part of an ongoing historical process which demands continual reflection.

Our century brings into focus, perhaps more harshly than at any time in the past, the elastic quality of human nature; our capacity for great acts of creativity and compassion and our capacity for seemingly limitless destruction. For while extreme and massive acts of barbarism have characterized much of human history, never before has technology reached such a sophisticated level that we can now talk of the mass extermination of human beings. Technology, mass communication, mass ideologies and a revolutionary rate of change has all too frequently been a fatal combination in the modern era..
Hitler’s remark “Who today remembers the destruction of the Armenians?” was made in the context of the anticipated destruction by the Nazis of the European Jewish community. It demonstrates with full clarity that the lack of response by the world community to one set of crimes against humanity only encourages the killers into believing quite correctly that they can get away with other such crimes.

In the conflict in Europe only a few short years ago, two thirds of Europe’s Jewish population was destroyed; over two million babies and children perished along with a two thousand year culture, this in the heart of modern Europe. The Allied forces were ultimately victorious but the war against the European Jewish community was won by those who so skillfully exploited a time-honoured tradition of the teaching of contempt towards the resident Jewish populations. And of course the Nazi’s murder machine did not stop with the torture of the Jewish people. It included amongst other incomprehensible tragedies the Nazi brutalization of the Polish nation, the genocide of the Roma, the persecution of gays, those with mental and physical disabilities and ultimately the self-destruction of Germany itself.
But despite the sadistic Nazi cruelty and the complicity of nations, institutions and millions of “ordinary” citizens, we also witnessed an altruistic response in the heart of this darkness which compels us to reject pessimism as the final answer. We know that against all odds there were some high officials and a different type of “ordinary” citizen who were prepared to sacrifice their lives to save Jews. There were countless awe-inspiring acts of heroism and decency and we must continue to highlight this nobility of the human spirit. The haters amongst us would rather let us believe that we are all guilty as human beings; they would prefer us to believe that to be either passive or maniacal is innate to the human condition, for if all are guilty, then no one is truly guilty.
The record of Denmark and Bulgaria in protecting all of their Jews is part of the Holocaust narrative which must be trumpeted as an alternative path, not utopian, but very much attainable. Few know, but it is now indisputable, that tens of thousands of Bulgarian Jews were saved the fate of their European brothers and sisters because various church, political, business and labour leaders insisted that “their” Jews would not be transported. The historical and other reasons for this success are fascinating and bear much attention, for in Bulgaria and Denmark we see the triumph of national courage over fear, greed and hate. These countries were incubators of decency and if we study what occurred we can perhaps identify the necessary factors to create hate-free societies.
Notwithstanding the mind numbing, heart stopping catalogue of infamy of the Nazi era we are also heirs today of some of the post–war attempts to extract meaning from that evil- there have been affirmative responses to the Nazi horror including the establishment of the United Nations, the development of International Human Rights Codes, anti-genocide declarations and in our own country, the establishment of human rights tribunals, the criminalization of hate and the dismantlement of some, but still not all of the existing racist infrastructure which characterized pre- World War II Canada.
Our collective sanity requires that we relentlessly search to extract meaning from chaos and to always to live in the crucible of hope. In religious terms this is sometimes cast as the concept of redemption- to redeem means to rescue, to make whole and holy, to vest worthiness in that which might otherwise have been discarded.

Other than the weekly Sabbath, the most sacred day of the Jewish calendar is approaching: Yom Kippur, a 24 hour period for personal and collective redemption and the culmination of the celebration of the Jewish New Year.

It is a day wherein each Jew annually takes stock of his or her actions and misdeeds as a necessary pre-condition for a reconciliation with one’s fellow human beings and ultimately God. But the reconciliation must firstly be with our fellow human beings and we are mandated to seek forgiveness from those individuals we have harmed- only then do our traditional teachings tell us we are entitled to seek a restorative relationship with God. Yom Kippur is also a day, when the police are on special alert for attacks against our synagogues; for the haters exist amongst us still and on the days when the Jewish community gathers together in the greatest numbers, we need extra protection.

I refer to these oncoming days of Jewish reflection not to focus on the security needs of our community, but to provide an analogy for what I urge us to do collectively as a society. Our own secular New Year’s process of making resolutions emanates from the Jewish tradition of soul –seeking and affirming a new path but unfortunately the transformative power of the ancient tradition has been diluted. But on Yom Kippur we still strain to seek authentic redemption; we are exhorted to take account of the past; confront it honestly and then commit to change with powerful action; for our present moment in time and space cannot be disconnected from the past or the future. Analogizing to our current Canadian condition, if we are to learn from the past, if we are to embrace hope instead of pessimism in the struggle to dissolve hate, we must be bone deep honest in our evaluation of why there is hate in our society.

There is much that has changed in the larger social and political Canadian climate which now accepts on a certain level that hate crimes are an assault on the very dignity of the victim in ways that are even more searing than other crimes. The individual feels singled out and vulnerable for his or her identity which creates a bewilderment and shock; such attacks also must be seen as deeply anti-social because they fray the fragility of our multi-cultural, democratic fabric. We recognize this now and have implemented hate crime teams; statistics gathering and special provisions for sentencing. All of these steps are far from comprehensive and there is significant question as to how effectively the tools available to our judicial system are actually being used but nonetheless we have achieved substantial progress in creating a legal and ideological underpinning of respect for diversity and this should be properly acknowledged and the work of previous generations in breaking new ground be recognized with gratitude.

However, I do think that sometimes we tend to be too self-congratulatory and slide into denial. So, if the reference to Yom Kippur’s demand for penetrating self-reflection is apt for a larger societal introspection, then how can we talk about how “evolved” we are in terms of diversity, respect for others and progress in combating hate-motivated crime when we fail to recognize that in our own U.N. best ranked city we have had multiple disappearances and murders of females, economically disadvantaged and disproportionately Aboriginal with too little expressions of individual and institutional concern from most of us. We have lacked respect for our most marginalized fellow citizens- where was our love, our respect as a nation when we collectively insisted that First Peoples be dispossessed of all they held dear and then discarded to be barely tolerated on the margins of this fabulously wealthy country. And the contempt continues; now the focus is on the aboriginal inability to assimilate; the failure of aboriginal leadership- there seems to be always something deficient from the dominant perspective in the Aboriginal ways- from Europe’s first contact, the colonizing powers always had the first and last word in pronouncing judgment. I think we must face up to this, be truthful about it and in our own spheres of influence and power redouble our efforts to communicate this tragic reality.

There is nothing new in these statements; they have been said countless times in the past and they are beginning to make impact; but it is only in the last decade or so that the courts have begun to redress this horrific reality of attempted genocide and only most recently that our Premier has publicly acknowledged the need for a new relationship- reversing a hundred years of greedy, self-serving, dishonest and exploitive dealings by too many of those in power. Previous generations permitted the most vicious and rapacious dishonour to reign to such an extent that there are few if any aboriginal people today who do not bear the scars of the attempted decimation of the foundations of their way of life. It should not be a shocking statement to say Canada has and in too many respects continues, to manifest hatred to the land’s indigenous peoples.

Hate against First Nations must always be discussed as a unique and urgent matter separate and distinct from other challenging race and ethnicity issues because it still looms as our greatest unresolved shame. In my view, whether as Jew, Sikh , Christian, Muslim Buddhist, Hindu, newly arrived or 5th generation Canadian we must be stopped frozen in our tracks by our individual and collective neglect, our recklessness, our arrogance and for some of us, the fact that we have let our hearts turn to the hardest of stone.

During the Yom Kippur day of redemption, Jews in each of their own congregations publicly recite a list of errors and mistakes, not because we each necessarily committed the entire catalogue of misdeeds, but we say them publicly so as not to isolate individuals from the community and to communicate that we are all bound together in our actions; one of the “sins” we publicly seek redemption for is being “xenophobic” -fearful of strangers-, and another, (from a list of hundreds) is the sin of “betrayal”.

Juxtaposing these two I think it not a very controversial conclusion to note that too many of us have been fearful of the “stranger”-of the Other -and we have betrayed our own “Western” and Canadian oft stated ethical principles to treat well the stranger in our midst- indeed to begin to see the stranger as not strange at all but part of us – the one great human family. And need I make the point any more clearer to underscore that the stranger in our midst- the indigenous peoples of the Americas were actually very much home here; they were neither strangers to the Land nor did they treat the first colonizers with fear or contempt; for the most part they were greeted well and many an explorer and colonizer was saved through the generosity of an Indian- that is not a romantic version of what occurred; the historical records are unambiguous in their gratitude for First Nations knowledge and help- and therefore the sin of betrayal plays out on even more levels; not only the betrayal of our own stated principles; but betrayal of peoples who trusted our forefather’s words only to see treaty after treaty; promise after promise breached or modified. For the sin of xenophobia, for the sin of greed, for the sin of arrogance, for the many layered sins of betrayal, should we not be seeking redemption and thank ourselves fortunate that generosity within Aboriginal communities is still available to meet any sincere attempt at reconciliation with open, albeit with understandably guarded arms? In any discussion of hate and racism and discrimination, I am increasingly of the view that our relationship with Aboriginal peoples be examined first.

If we are to vest real meaning in our claim to Canadian values of decency, courtesy, social concern; if we are to take seriously our own religious or philosophic or country of origin traditions as having any kind of wise or compassionate wellsprings, we must demand from our leadership that we be directed to a place of redemption; a place of searing honesty; a place of such intense discomfort that we vow not to be complacent until we have addressed this malevolent dimension to our history and contemporary reality and we must demand with the most powerful voices we can muster that our political, educational and religious leadership take us to this new place with the greatest urgency, indeed with an almost panicked sense of urgency. aboriginal children aboriginal women, aboriginal men; aboriginal elders… each one bears what should be heart rendering witness to a dominant culture of superiority, of high regard for our own and low regard for the other.

So vested with the responsibility of speaking on behalf of the Jewish community’s central advocacy organization, I, with the support of the organized community insist that by reason of our own history and by reason of who we claim to be as Canadians, that aboriginal justice not be simply an add-on to the list of concerns when advocating on issues related to racism and hate crime; aboriginal justice must be at the heart and center of all of our work. That is not to say that the concerns of the Jewish community are not palpable; they are- we continue to be a targeted community and must vigorously seek all necessary protections; this does not mean that racism directed to Indo-Canadians and those of other Asian origins is not a critical issue for our organization – of course it is; neither does this mean that gay bashing and other forms of denigration based upon sexual orientation is not of grave concern- for it is and continues to be a much uglier problem than our media and schools and leaders would admit- gay men still continue to be the victims of the most violent attacks simply because of who they are. What I am saying is that we need to reverse the tendency to add racism against aboriginal peoples at the end of the list of concerns and congratulate ourselves for even thinking about these issues, but rather think about how relations were first structured with Aboriginal people as perhaps the template, or forerunner of how subsequent minorities were treated. To what extent there is a causal, or other link, reasonable people can disagree, but I am certain that since the contempt goes so deep, that at a minimum, we must put aboriginal justice at the core of our concerns as part of our critique and simultaneously acknowledge that the issues are also so fundamentally different that they deserve special and separate treatment apartment from our discussion of other types of racism.

Personally, I do believe that there is a deep nexus linking historical anti-semitism, the near genocide of indigenous peoples and intolerance, prejudice, and ultimately hateful violence against other vulnerable and essentially powerless minority groups-but whether or not one agrees with this type of analysis, few could cogently disagree that it is incumbent upon us to continually raise the question- why are Jewish places of worship desecrated, a Jewish school firebombed and Jewish individuals cowardly attacked for just being Jews? why are members of the Filipino community targeted by others? why are women still beat up and murdered in the sex trade; why does being gay mean you must risk bodily harm if you disclose who you are? why do we continue to force aboriginal people to fight alone for their dignity and turn our backs to the ravages of racism wreaked on First Peoples of Canada? Why must elderly Indo-Canadians now wonder whether they are safe on our streets, in our parks or even in their homes with hooligans wandering around looking for someone to torment? And why is that so many Canadians of Chinese ancestry still feel, after over a hundred years of meaningful contribution to our society that many of European descent still treat them with disrespect, and contempt. Why do Muslims register one of the largest number of reported hate crimes?

The questions could be posed on many more different levels and the answers multiple and not always unambiguous. These are extraordinarily complex issues and no one should dare to suggest that there is one correct or true or accurate analysis or approach. But the reality is there and begs for comment and discussion and one partial answer I would like to focus on is the structural societal foundations of our society as well as the all too human emotions and states of being like fear, greed and arrogance.I subscribe to the view that hate crime is only the most overt expression of a society still structured around the superiority of some over others, whether it be ethnicity, race, religion gender, sexuality or economics; there are many explanations for these hierarchies; we know certainly that the entire complex of hatred defies simple explanations and we will be discussing some of it’s dimensions later today- but I think as part of the discussion we must ask the fundamental question not only from a cultural or political or economic perspective but also from a, spiritual or philosophical perspective ; however you wish to frame it – why are we are not a culture of love or at least respect? Why are we are not a world defined by actualized love; why is it that we have these hierarchies of race and ethnicity that promulgate hatred?

And by referring to love I am not referring to transient emotional states but love in her greatest profundity – love that flowers in the pursuit of justice, love as understood and explained by the greatest spiritual teachers, by the greatest philosophers and by our greatest of leaders such as Gandhi or Martin Luther king, or Rabbi Abraham Heschel; or some of the Bahai, Islamic, Jewish and Christian and aboriginal leaders. There are thousands of others from myriad traditions and my omission is only by reason of time and the need to identify several who are most familiar to us. We do not truly embrace the dignity of each individual and so the question must be asked ..why not? generationally transmitted ideologies of superiority of one religion or people over another? Greed?

Why in the year 2005 do we still have too much public indifference; public indifference to the Hindu temple daubed with a swastika; public indifference to the killers of Aaron Webster; public indifference to the vulnerable position of those from the Filipino community; this relative indifference does not evince a commitment to the upholding of the dignity of each individual.

Where is the outrage, where is our passion; where is our sense that our neighbour is our extended family. These are questions that are rhetorical in nature but I pose them to permit me to stand back for a minute and say – this is absurd; this is irrational this is bizarre that human beings too often have permitted leadership to institutionalize in a myriad of ways the enshrinement of a culture of hate instead of a culture of love or at a minimum a culture of respect.

To illustrate the point however, that when we talk of a culture of love we are not talking about being naïve or idealistic; all of us promoting greater awareness of hate crime would vigorously argue that being indulgent to the perpetrators of hate or other crimes is not upholding the dignity of each individual; a society which permits abusers of the most vulnerable to receive greater leniency than the perpetrators of certain property crimes does not uphold the dignity of the individual so a culture of love does not mean permissiveness- it does mean recognizing and acting to protect the inherent dignity of each of us.

Protecting the vulnerable by well funded and well trained law enforcement; well paid and trained prosecutors; fair but firm sentencing and no nonsense parole terms do enhance the dignity of the individual; listening to the First Nations of this country is an act recognizing the dignity of the individual and ought to have occurred hundreds of years ago- perhaps then the wholesale confiscation of lands, the intentional obliteration of spiritual traditions, the devastation of disease and the intergenerational physical and emotional damage inflicted by the residential schools would have been avoided- our forefathers and foremothers apparently did not have sufficient teachings to choose the love ethic wherein the dignity of fellow human beings is respected – indeed revered. We now bear the consequences and must have courage and resolve to change directions.

We are afraid to talk about love; men perhaps more than women are socialized to be squeamish about love; we fear love because we think it means being soft and exposed; we are taught that love is not something for the real hard world, but I say that our most transformative leaders have been those who have helped us understand that love of our fellow being is not to be feared - that to live in a culture of love instead of violence or fear or hate can be our human destiny and can be the propelling force for each one of us as individuals and ultimately for our larger societySo what might actualized love look like in a society; isn’t love in part the recognition that no individual can rest contented if our fellow citizen is in a markedly deprived, humiliated or otherwise marginalized or alienated state; and isn’t it a place of being that moves from the philosophical or intellectual so that one’s entire consciousness is infused with the dedication to making improvement in the lives of our family, community, nation and world and that it this recognition that ultimately makes live worth living? Isn’t it ultimately premised on the ethic?

And if that consciousness is attained we will not then recoil in shame by what we see has been done to our disenfranchised and marginalized and be motivated by righteous anger that indignities could be committed against the most vulnerable in our name in the country we call Canada by the most powerful.

I can think of no better to place than talk about the obverse of hate and prejudice than Vancouver- one of our most beautiful cities and the birthplace of many positive forces in our county- for if racism and homophobia and anti-Semitism and similar type descriptive words encapsulate fear, lies irrationality, envy and ignorance – what is on the other side? Acceptance of people who are different; understanding of people who are different and ultimately empathy; promotion of harmony amongst different peoples and a deep seated unshakeable conviction to uplift those who are most compromised through historical structural forces and ideologies.

This means more education, more contact with others, more funding for the institutions such as the police and courts who are on the front lines and more leadership to bring about greater sanctuaries of peace.

The Canadian Jewish community through vehicles such as Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai Brith envision a Canada as comprehensive mutual support system, a Canada united by a passion for the attainment of a just open and democratic society, free of threatening words and violent deeds and committed wholeheartedly to justice for First Nations; eradication and discrimination against our brothers and sisters whether they be Muslim, Indo Canadian, Filipiono Chinese, gay or disabled

This is the visioning but we in our own community and as part of the larger society must continually re-evaluate why discrimination is still too pervasive and why hate erupts against the vulnerable while the love ethic is so often absent. For once actuated by the love ethic we will be motivated as much to speak out on behalf of our fellow British Columbians who are subjected to indignities as we might for ourselves if experiencing a similar affront.

Our law enforcement officers are on the front lines and I know I speak for all of us here from minority communities that we are grateful for your commitment in combatting hate and we will continue to advocate for more funding so that you may have the adequate resources and the most trained resources to make your work even more effective.

I want to thank the organizers of this Conference who through setting the stage for today’s discussion are contributing to the creation of increasingly more expansive sanctuaries of personal dignity and harmony so that our magnificent commonalities and differences may flourish. It is of course a task that will not be finished in our generation but to paraphrase one of our time honoured teachings; we are not obligated to finish all of the work of the world, but we are certainly obliged to do our part.

Thank you for the opportunity to address this committed group of my fellow citizenry.