Western Jewish Bulletin: Fry vocal on hate front

October 8, 2004

Fry vocal on hate front

Van-Centre MP urges UN reform, Mideast peace.
PAT JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN

As part of an occasional series of interviews with members of Parliament from British Columbia, the Bulletin spoke with Vancouver-Centre Liberal MP Hedy Fry.

The recent spate of anti-Semitic incidents in Canada reflects a tendency for hate-motivated groups to exploit world events, says Liberal MP Hedy Fry.

"There is a lot of hate going on around the world now," said the Vancouver-Centre MP, who was elected in June to her fourth term. "I spoke to that at one time and got in trouble for it."Fry was mocked when, as secretary of state for multiculturalism, she declared in the house that crosses were burning "as we speak" in parts of British Columbia. Despite the tempest over her choice of words, she said, the fact remains that hate groups are able to exploit events and the vulnerability of economic or socially isolated individuals to spread their agenda."Wherever it happens, people crawl out of the woodwork with their hate groups and begin to take advantage of perception of world activity, so these hate groups sort of jump on the bandwagon," Fry said in an interview the day Parliament opened Oct. 4. "In countries where there's economic turmoil ... hate groups seem to be able to sniff it out and to go in and aggravate and especially to try to stir up trouble among disenfranchised youth."Fry noted that hate-motivated incidents spiked during discussion of the Nisga'a treaty in British Columbia and suggested anti-Semitic incidents may be a result of groups exploiting the Middle East conflict for their own ends. "I think they're always there, a common evil waiting to create rifts," she said.

On the international front, Fry said Prime Minister Paul Martin's approach to multilateralism, which he outlined in a recent speech before the United Nations, centres on that international body's ability to maintain and enhance it legitimacy.

"If the United Nations is going to remain a multilateral organization [and] it's going to watchdog human rights and be an institution whose obligation is to our collective humanity, then it is going to have to get some different ways of working," said Fry.

"[The prime minister] is talking about looking at areas prior to some of the crises that have been happening in Sudan, in Rwanda, that there should be some way of watchdogging, intervening, reporting on [looming catastrophes], so we can prevent some of those things from occurring.... If we had had a functioning League of Nations, let's say, before the Second World War, there might have been a way for countries of the world, seeing what was happening, to step in and prevent what went on.

"Good God, we have to have learned from World War Two, we have to have learned from Bosnia, we have to have learned from Rwanda," she said.

The current conflict in Sudan, where a report this week warned that 300,000 people could die by year's end, is a priority for Fry and dominated a meeting she held recently with representatives of Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region (CJC). Congress has taken a lead role in raising Canadian awareness and activism against the potential humanitarian catastrophe in the African country.

"They were very concerned about the Sudan and I am as concerned as they are," Fry said of Congress. She said the federal government has dedicated $42 million since 2003 into humanitarian relief and $20 million to supporting African Union troops planning to intervene in the conflict.

The meeting with CJC was amicable, according to both sides.

"I have worked very closely with them nationally as secretary of state for multiculturalism," Fry said. "I believe that it's an organization that's on the right track."

No foreign policy shift

On Canadian foreign policy toward Israel, Fry does not foresee a policy change even though Canada has a new foreign affairs minister.

"We would like to believe that our foreign policy is one that comes out of strong principle and not one that is made on the fly," Fry said. "I think that the Canadian principle on what is going on in the Middle East, and especially on what is going on between Israel and Palestine, has always been clearly one that states that Israel has a right to a nation-state and to have a peaceful existence within that state and to provide for the security of its people. That is an absolute right. But at the same time, that Palestine has a right to be able to live in peace and to find a space for their people to live in of their own. How to get there? We believe it should be done through very strong negotiations, working out agreements to do so. That's how Canada has always resolved things."

She added that she expects Canada to support a United Nations stand-alone resolution against anti-Semitism.

"I don't think that the government would go against it," said Fry. "I don't see why the government would not support such a resolution.

However, as a Canadian delegate to the United Nations conference in Durban in 2001, Fry said she understands how issues can be twisted to anti-Semitic or biased ends. Diverting attention away from Jew-hatred by arguing over the meaning of the term "anti-Semitism" is a ploy previously employed in United Nations discussions. Though anti-Semitism has, since the 1880s, referred to a hatred of Jews, the term "Semite" refers to an ethnic identity that includes Arabs.

There's going to be debate over what the term anti-Semitism means," she said. "What I listened to is people saying, 'yes, yes, but anti-Semitism is not just about the Jews.' This was the argument. I was just saying to [CJC] that if a resolution like that comes to the United Nations, that hair-splitting is one of the big things that is going to take place and there is going to be that red herring.... That, I see, is where the big problem is going to come in. Not whether people support the principle. A splitting of the hairs is going to occur."

Meeting with Congress

On other issues, Fry, a medical doctor and former head of the British Columbia Medical Association, is optimistic that the recent health-care accord between federal and provincial governments will provide genuine solutions to health-care crises for the next 30 years.

Ensuring that equal marriage provisions are adopted is another priority, she said.

"It is the last area in which the equality of a minority group has not been fully realized," she said, adding that religious groups have no reason to fear their clergy will be forced to perform same-sex marriages. She said same-sex marriage involves the rights of children.

"Given that now nature has taken a back seat to technology, same-sex couples can have children, really biologically, and I believe that therefore if we don't allow same-sex couples an equal access to the major legal and social institution of marriage, then we will be having two sets of children with two sets of rights and I find that unacceptable," Fry said.

Fry also wants to help market Vancouver as an avant garde art, food and culture tourism destination.

"We can offer people from any country of the world anything that they want in a language and [with a] cultural sensitivity that no one else in the world can," she said, adding that she imagines Vancouver could become Canada's winter destination.

On her meeting with Canadian Jewish Congress officials, Fry credited the group for taking a lead on confronting the genocide in Darfur.

"I think it's an important commitment and what they were doing there was taking on a collective human and social responsibility for each other, which is where we should be going," she said.

Mark Weintraub, chair of CJC, Pacific Region, who led the delegation that met with Fry last month, commended the MP and urged the Jewish community to remember Fry's role three years ago at Durban.

"She was a very, very strong opponent to the anti-Semitism that we saw there," said Weintraub. When the conference devolved into a melee of anti-Semitic resolutions and rhetoric, the United States and Israel withdrew from the conference, but Canada remained.

"Dr. Fry was obviously in the position of implementing the overall Canadian policy that it was better to stay and try to change some of the very horrible resolutions that were being put forth and to fight what was going on rather than leaving. [CJC's] initial position was that Canada should have pulled out of the conference once we saw that it was turning into a real anti-Semitic event. But having said that, we worked with Dr. Fry, because we didn't pull out either, we stayed.

"The Canadian Jewish Congress representatives who were in Durban at the time felt that Dr. Fry showed a lot of determination and courage in taking on some of the more extreme elements in the various conferences and I think it's really important that we go beyond the headlines of the day and listen to people who were at the conference and saw the anti-Semitism first-hand and were very appreciative of Dr. Fry's support," Weintraub said.

The Congress leader also credited Fry for being informed and passionate about the situation in Darfur and for voicing support for the stand-alone resolution on anti-Semitism."We consider both of these issues to be linked," said Weintraub, "because they go to the integrity of the United Nations and of course our Jewish community has had profound disappointment with the politicization of the United Nations and how, too often, it has been used as a forum for anti-Semitism. We really see these issues as linked with respect to whether the world can see the United Nations as any kind of hope for people who are beleaguered."

Problems with UN functioning are particularly significant to Canadians, he said."So much of Canada's foreign policy is based on multilateralism and the importance of the United Nations," said Weintraub.

Congress also urged Fry to support a national hate crimes statistics registry and the meeting discussed the upcoming World Peace Forum, which is scheduled for 2006 in Vancouver."In the past, some of these forums, under the rubric of peace and social justice, end up being hijacked by very narrow special interests," said Weintraub.

Pat Johnson is a Vancouver journalist and commentator.

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