Jewish Independent Opinion: Canada's security weakened

MARK WEINTRAUB

After the 9/11 attacks, the Canadian government came to the start realization that Canada was wholly unprepared to respond effectively to the now undeniable threat of international terrorism and its domestic manifestations. By the end of that year, Canada's legislative response, the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), was on the books. Since then, Canadians have been passing judgemen ton how well it met the most fundamental challenge facing any democracy: how to provide for the safety and security of its citizens while minimally impairing the basic civil liberties that underpin their society.

The Parliament of the day "sunsetted" two of the most contentious measures, mandating their expiration in five years in the absence of votes to renew by both the House of Commons and the Senate. These two provisions - recognizance with conditions (placing express constraints on the activities of suspects or permitting their preventive arrest for up to 72 hours as sanctioned by a judge to prevent an imminent terror attack) and investigative hearings (compelling individuals to testify and provide documents about a terror attack that has occurred or will take place) - seemed to epitomize the difficult balance of protection of security versus protection of human rights. Five-and-a-half years later, after heated, acrimonious debates, the measures died on the floor of the House of Commons.

We believe that these two powers were critical elements to be used judiciously to head off future attacks, or successfully investigate ones that had already occurred.

The fact that neither provision had actually been implemented since the fall of 2001 proved grist for both mills: "They are totally irrelevant," said some. "See they have not led to widespread abuse," countered others. From the perspective of Canadian Jewish Congress, though, it is most unfortunate that a compromise could not be struck to extend the two measures with additional safeguards put in place.

We would argue that one need not approach the debate from the "either/or" perspective of security versus rights. If terrorism is rightly regarded as an assault on human rights, it stands to reason that the implementation of counter-terrorism measures necessarily protects the highest priority right of life, liberty and the security of the person, the foundation of all other rights and freedoms.

These actions themselves must always be rooted in the rule of law. A properly framed and implemented counter-terrorism policy enhances civil liberties and core Charter of Rights values and protects them as part of our way of life whose essence is threatened by terrorism.

As a package deal, the ATA met this challenge, but the failure to renew the two sunsetted provisions has eroded Canada's safety and security from both international and domestic attacks. As such, it is incumbent upon the government and all parties to work co-operatively toward crafting new legistlation to replace the two ATA measures on which the sun has now set.

These powers may be gone, but Canadians should not be lulled into a false sense of security - the threats that these provisions were intended to combat is most assuredly still with us. It would be the ultimate irony if, in striving to maintain civil liberties, we strip authorities of the necessary powers to stop terrorists from destroying our open and free society.

Mark Weintraub is chair of Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region.

http://www.jewishindependent.ca/Archives/Mar07/archives07Mar16-12.html

Jewish Independent: A hope for peace in Darfur

A hope for peace in Darfur

"We need to continue to put the pressure on," says CJC chair.

RON FRIEDMAN

Darfurian Peace negotiator Nouri Abdalla recently returned from peace talks in Abuja, Nigeria. Advocacy leader Mark Weintraub from Canadian Jewish Congress met with him in order to hear about the current situation in Darfur and strategize about future co-operation.

"The best-case scenario is to have a robust UN peacekeeping force, highly experienced, well funded and equipped," said Abdalla.In August, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1706, ordering the expansion of the current African Union (AU) mission in Western Sudan to a 22,000-strong hybrid UN and AU peacekeeping force. China, the main consumer of Sudanese oil, has not signed the resolution, even though it contributed to the peace talks. It claims that the resolution impinges on Sudanese sovereignty.

However, Darfurians like Abdalla view the implementation of the resolution as their only hope after the collapse of the Darfur Peace Accord (DPA), which was signed in May.

"We were hoping that after the signing of the DPA, peace, stability and tranquillity would come to Darfur," said Abdalla. "As a matter of fact, what has happened is exactly the opposite, the situation actually got worse."

Since 2003, more than two million people have been internally displaced, another 250,000 refugees have crossed the border into neighboring countries and 400,000 people have been killed as a result of the violence.

Units of the Janjaweed militia, who are responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the conflict, are constantly raiding the villages and terrorizing civilians and aid workers. While the Sudanese government, led by Omar al-Bashir, denies responsibility for the actions of the Janjaweed, reports indicate that the Khartoum government recruits, arms and pays the militias, often performing co-ordinated attacks with them.

"The Sudanese government is trying to resolve this conflict militarily; they are still using their helicopter gun ships, their Antonov airplanes, bombing villages and still mobilizing, arming and unleashing the Janjaweed militias," said Abdalla.

Sudan peace talks
The main sticking points in the DPA concern issues of wealth and power sharing. The Darfurians want economic autonomy, equitable representation and adequate compensation for victims and survivors.

"We calculated an amount of $800 million to be put in the compensation fund on account of resident population and villages destroyed. They [the Sudanese government] ended up putting $30 million in," said Abdalla, who was part of the power-sharing commission at the peace talks.

"Just as important as protecting innocent civilians and trying to reverse the humanitarian and security situation in Darfur, is addressing the key fundamental demands for the people of Darfur and trying to resolve the root causes of the conflict," he said.

Peace efforts are becoming more challenging due to the splintering of the rebel groups: two out of the three have refused to sign the treatise.

"We do not refuse negations, but how can we negotiate with someone who [is] committing genocide against our people," asked Abd-al-Wahid Muhammad Nur, a leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement in a recent interview with the BBC.

The Khartoum government is currently implementing a separate peace accord with its southern region, also under UN supervision.

World needs to act
In addition to supporting the peace talks and taking the issue to the UN, the international community provides billions of dollars for humanitarian aid to Sudan. Canada alone has provided assistance of approximately half a billion dollars.

Abdalla credits this achievement in part to the work done by advocacy groups and CJC in particular."

I take some measure of satisfaction in that the media in Sudan and the leadership of Sudan points the finger at the Jewish communities of Canada and the United States as being behind the advocacy efforts," said Weintraub, chairperson of CJC, Pacific Region, and of the national Darfur committee of the CJC. "That tells me that we have made some progress."

The North American Jewish community has made it a priority to advance awareness of the situation in Darfur and attempt to bring a peaceful end to what many refer to as a genocide.

"The reasons for that are obvious - we are a people living under the shadow of our own genocide. We are the people who have demanded from the world a commitment to the formula 'Never again,'" explained Weintraub. "All aspects and dimensions of the Jewish community have always been supportive because it was intuitively understood that if we remained silent here, we were really abdicating our principles as a people."

The main thrust of the advocacy effort surrounds the notion of individual responsibility to action, said Weintraub.

"We have tried to communicate throughout that, if grassroots movements [and] ordinary individuals can have an impact on one crisis, then that gives us optimism for working together as a world community for all of the other tremendous problems that face us," he added. "If we can get one success under our belt in terms of shifting world opinion and intervention, then that will give us confidence to go to deal with the next."

The Darfur crisis has already expanded to neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic, with the Janjaweed raiders attacking villages in these countries. According to Abdalla, if something is not done, the whole region may go into a situation that the international community will be unable to maintain.

"There is much more to be done, and what we have to do is communicate, not only to our Jewish community, which has been quite solid on this, but to other communities, that we need to continue to put the pressure on," said Weintraub. "The media and political leadership have a short attention span. Darfur is no longer on the radar screen because, in some sense, we have been successful in institutionalizing the pressure through the peace talks.

"We are hoping that, in this final stage, the media, political leaders and educators will pay attention again."

Ron Friedman is a reserve officer in the Israel Defence Forces and a student in the master's program in journalism at the University of British Columbia.

For more information on Darfur

darfurwall.org

www.csfdarfur.net/home/index.php

www.darfurassociation.ca

www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/sc8821.doc.htm

Jewish Independent: Darfur still needs aid

September 22, 2006

Darfur still needs aid

Global day of action highlights ongoing trauma.

CASSANDRA SAVAGE

As roughly 200 participants huddled for warmth in the rain outside the Vancouver Art Gallery last Sunday, a speaker at the Global Day of Action for Darfur noted that Darfuri refugees in Chad and displaced people across Sudan endure much worse conditions on a regular basis, without the possibility of heading home to get warm at the end of the day.

Framed most often as a humanitarian crisis, the situation in Darfur, Sudan, has warranted only an occasional blip on the media screen over the past three years. Since 2003, Janjaweed forces (armed fighters claiming Arab descent) supported by the Sudanese government, have exerted brutal control over the Darfuri people and tortured them at will.

Although statistics vary, a 2005 report by the Coalition for International Justice estimates that 400,000 people have died in the conflict. In addition, thousands more have died from starvation, disease and fighting within refugee camps and thousands of women and girls have been systematically raped. The numbers increase daily.

The Global Day for Darfur was a gathering of people around the world to show support for the Darfuri people and encourage governments to take action. In Vancouver, participants were encouraged to put pressure on the Canadian government by sending letters and postcards to Prime Minister Stephen Harper – calling for Canada to uphold its promise that human slaughter would never again be allowed to take place in today's world. At Toronto's gathering, which attracted thousands of people, Sen. Roméo Dallaire (force commander of the United Nations mission to Rwanda, made famous by the film Hotel Rwanda and the 2004 documentary Shake Hands with the Devil) said the crisis in Darfur is indeed shaping up to become a case of history repeating itself.

As Stephen Schachter of Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region, noted, "Today is not about remembering the horrors of Darfur. Today is about political leadership and the will to end this suffering."

"Canadian Jewish Congress has been lobbying for action in Darfur for close to three years," said CJCPR chair Mark Weintraub after the event. "The genocide is not over. The numbers are increasing. As a community, we have a responsibility to ensure that Canadians do not ignore this issue. On Sunday, organizations and individuals across the country gathered to call on the government of Canada to not only recognize what is happening in Darfur, but to lead the international community with a sense of urgency to stop the killing, rape and displacement."

Representatives from Canadian Students for Darfur, who played a key role in organizing Vancouver's rally, noted that we are witnessing just the kind of tragedy that never should have happened again after close to a million people were slaughtered during the 1994 ethnic conflict in Rwanda.

"Activists and social justice organizations have been calling for an end to this crisis for far too long now," said Shamus Reid of the Canadian Federation of Students, "and so it is somewhat frustrated and with a heavy heart that I stand before you again today, urging the Canadian government to heed the call of the global community and of victims of violence, rape and murder in Darfur."

Don Wright, regional development co-ordinator of Amnesty International Canada's B.C./Yukon chapter, reported on Sunday that the government of Sudan refuses the deployment of UN peacekeepers into the region, while eyewitnesses claim that Janjaweed militia continues to dominate the region. "The Sudanese government has persistently failed in its duty to protect civilians in Darfur from gross and systematic human rights violations," claimed Wright. "That responsibility has now devolved to the international community."

Vancouver rapper Babaluku, who performed at the event, asked people to also think of the many positive things happening in Africa. People tend to think of Africa as a place of poverty and suffering, he said, when there are also millions of bright, healthy, motivated and talented individuals working toward change on the continent.

Babaluku, who was born in Uganda and immigrated to Canada at the age of 12, performed "I'm from Africa," an upbeat piece that had everyone's head bobbing. The message was one of hope, pride and encouragement for other African immigrants to stay proud of their heritage, acknowledge the good in what's happening on the African continent and use whatever talents they have to make a difference back home.

Cassandra Savage is an MA candidate in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University.

Jewish Independent: Discrimination kills

Oct. 6, 2006

Discrimination kills

Editorial

Discrimination and prejudice harm in unintended and multitudinous ways. The intended objects of prejudice are rarely its only victims. The perpetrators are also victimized in complex and unique psychological manners and sometimes, completely unrelated people suffer, too.

Schoolkids, regardless of their sexual orientation, are routinely victims of homophobia, for example. A Surrey high school student, Hamed Nastoh, was driven to suicide in 2000 by incessant homophobic bullying. His parents insisted he wasn't gay – not that that should matter – but he was a victim of homophobia nonetheless. How many countless anonymous victims have suffered similarly – even if the outcome was less violent?

Prejudice, it is often noted, victimizes the perpetrator, too. The psychological impact of hate and discrimination is a complex affair, but carrying a burden of intolerance is not healthy.

On a global scale, discrimination manifests itself in perverse ways, such as in the aftermath of a massive earthquake in Bam, Iran, in 2003. More than 43,000 people were killed in the Richter 6.6 quake, an estimated 30,000 were injured and as many as 75,000 made homeless, according to official estimates. But when Israel, by necessity and experience a regional and world leader in the management of disaster and mass trauma, offered assistance, it was rejected. The fanatics who run Iran preferred to watch their own citizens die than accept assistance from the despised Zionist entity. Hate kills in unintended ways.

Now, in an allegation as disturbing as the Iranian rejection, Vancouver's Georgia Straight newspaper reports that the involvement of Canadian Jews in the movement to prevent a broader genocide in Darfur, Sudan, could be preventing more involvement in the issue by "progressive" and left-wing Canadians.

"Sadly, after two years, I don't see a lot of movement," Clement Apaak, head of Canadian Students for Darfur, told Straight writer Terry Glavin. "I consider myself centre-left and I have been very active and vocal on a lot of issues, but I have to admit I have been very disappointed about the blatant silence of the left on this issue."

Already, as many as 400,000 Darfurians have died and millions more live a precarious existence at the whim of the Sudanese government-backed Janjaweed militias.

It has not gone unnoticed that the regular suspects who appear at many or most rallies for social justice issues and other good causes around the Vancouver area have been largely absent from the various events in support of the people of Darfur. While a rally against Israel's "apartheid wall" or against the various "imperialist" wars and American foreign policy can instantly mobilize passionate crowds of young and old activists, the Darfur issue has failed to catch fire among many in this segment.

Why? There are several possibilities Glavin elucidates in last week's article. Mohamed Haroun, the president of the Darfur Association of Canada, has said that too many Muslims "do not consider us African Muslims as equals."

But there is another possibility, carefully alluded to by Apaak and Glavin: Jewish Canadians have been central to the Darfurian cause here in Canada.

While Glavin characterizes this as an "irrational suspicion," the fact is that Jewish leaders, beginning with Canadian Jewish Congress's Pacific Region chair, Mark Weintraub, and expanding out into a national mobilization, have been motivated by the lessons of Jewish history to refuse to stand silent while a people is threatened with genocidal aggression. In fact, the tiny Darfurian community in Canada has been aided greatly in their efforts to bring attention to the crisis by Canadian Jews, including Holocaust survivors like Vancouver's Robbie Waisman and by members of the second and third generation.

In large part because of this Jewish activism, Darfur became a Canadian issue and, in turn, Canada became a leading voice in a world still far too unconcerned about the fate of Darfurians. Little thanks to the "social justice" activists who set the agenda of the Canadian left.

http://www.jewishindependent.ca/Archives/Oct06/archives06Oct06-17.html

Jewish Independent: Sacred memories are shared

May 5, 2006

Sacred memories are shared
About 90 survivors honored by B.C. as Yom Hashoah is marked.

PAT JOHNSON

In a moving and momentous ceremony of remembrance, Premier Gordon Campbell greeted almost 100 survivors of the Holocaust on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, last week.

The annual ceremony at the legislature April 25 saw two busloads of survivors from Vancouver joining survivors from Vancouver Island in a ceremony of remembrance and a commitment to never forget.

"It's a very important day for British Columbia and it is an important day for Canadians," said Campbell in welcoming the guests. "We remember the most unbearable losses that millions faced. Six million lives stolen from the world. Six million lights extinguished by the darkest of shadows. Six million hearts and minds and souls filled with light, laughter and love. So filled with ideas, passions and dreams and then denied the most basic of human rights and, ultimately, the fundamental right to live. So many faces, so many children, so many families who now only live in faded black and white photographs ... and in the memories of the survivors we are so honored to welcome here today."

The premier promised the survivors that Canada would not forget.

"It is critical for them to know that those memories will carry on," Campbell said. "Their stories will not be forgotten.... We cannot escape its legacy and, indeed, we must not try. It is our shared duty, our shared responsibility and our shared desire to remember."

Wally Oppal, the attorney general and minister responsible for multiculturalism, emceed the noon-hour event."

It's a day to remember the six million Jewish men, women and children killed by the Nazis," Oppal said. "Holocaust Memorial Day is also a day to remember the more than five million people who died during the same time because of their physical or mental disabilities, race, religion or sexual orientation."

Survivors were called forward to light six candles representing the six million.

Rita Akselrod, president of the Vancouver Holocaust Centre Society, spoke on behalf of survivors.

"The Holocaust deprived me of my childhood," she said. "The world was indifferent and uncaring."

She said she was heartened by the show of solidarity made by legislators.

"As a survivor, I can tell you that one of our greatest concerns is that the Holocaust may be forgotten," she said. "This event offers an important opportunity to ensure remembrance and help us to reflect on the moral responsibility of individuals as well as communities and governments."

Mark Weintraub, chair of Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region, which helped organize the event, said the lessons of the Holocaust remain profoundly relevant.

"How is it possible for so many to refuse to see the humanity of their neighbors?" asked Weintraub, whose organization had distributed green ribbons to remind people of the current humanitarian disaster in Darfur, Sudan. "A 2,000-year teaching of contempt laid the fertile soil for the Nazi pathology, which began with the most vile hate speech. As our own Supreme Court of Canada opined, 'the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers. It began with words.' "

The "Final Solution," Weintraub said, was the culmination of a longer process of dehumanization that "incubated in one of the best educated, the most modern and the most technically competent of all nations. Every aspect of German and other societies were complicit, including the legal and medical professions, business and academia, the military and civil service."

Richard Kool, president of the Victoria Holocaust Remembrance and Education Society, raised the profound question of life after the Holocaust.

"Our parents were not meant to live," he said. "We were not meant to exist. How did those of the second generation, children of Holocaust survivors, how do we live with the grief in our past? The question, of course, is what do we do in the post-Shoah world? How do we live in the post-Shoah world?"

Isa Millman, another member of the second generation, told the hushed audience that she has always dreaded the inevitable day when the actual survivors and witnesses are so few that those who came just after the scene must maintain the memory.

"But this is how history continues and, for Jews, it is how we have handed down our history, from parent to child throughout all the generations of our being a people," she said.

Millman spoke of growing up in the shadow of the Shoah.

"Here's what I knew: we were alive by the skin of our teeth," she said. "We lived in a foreign land. We spoke a dying language. We were very much alone. I asked my parents, what was a bubbe, a zayde, a grandmother, a grandfather, because I had none. Now, I am a grandmother, a grandmother who has no choice but to want to speak about my lost family, those who were forbidden to leave a trace. For this fleeting moment, I restore them to life by speaking their names. Who else will remember them? And they are in the minutest fraction of the sum of everyone murdered and they are my Holocaust."

Peter Gary, a survivor who lives on Vancouver Island, was the keynote speaker at the first Yom Hashoah held at the legislature. He was moved by this year's ceremony.

"It was very, very beautifully done," he said. "Everyone was speaking from the heart. It doesn't get any easier when you're 82 years old. But it has to be done, because that lousy four-letter word 'hate' is still ruling our little shaky planet."

Pat Johnson is editor of MVOX Multicultural Digest, www.mvox.ca.

http://www.jewishindependent.ca/archives/May06/archives06May05-05.html

Jewish Independent: Community housing needed

May 5, 2006

VERONIKA STEWART

For low-income families looking for affordable housing in the internationally dubbed "best city in the world to live," the wait is a long one. On the bright side, however, there are those looking to help.

The Jewish Family Service Agency (JFSA) has recently started the Community Affordable Rental Program (CARP). The program asks "community-minded" property owners with residential rental units to offer one or more units below the regular market price.

Andrea Gillman, housing co-ordinator at the JFSA, said property owners are contacted on an individual basis.

"It's slow to start," Gillman said. She said some of the property owners she's spoken to have wanted to help. Others already contribute to the organization in other ways.

So far, the program has located affordable housing for one family, a single father and his son. Gillman said single-parent families make up the majority of people seeking affordable housing. She described the average family seeking help from the JFSA as, "A single, female parent paying $750 in rent, making her living expenses around $820, including utilities." This makes her cost of living higher than the amount she gets from income assistance, according to Gillman.

Gillman's statements are an echo of the 2001 Report on Jewish Poverty, which cited a 34 per cent rate of poverty among single mothers and a 14 per cent rate among single fathers, compared to a 9.2 per cent rate of poverty among two-parent families.

Gillman said single-parent families are a group that has been largely overlooked in the community when it comes to housing.

"What's out there is almost solely for seniors," Gillman said. "There is no community family housing at the moment."

Gillman attributed the trouble families have finding affordable housing partially to rising housing costs, as well as a variety of other factors.

"Rents aren't getting any cheaper," Gillman said. "Technically, you should pay no more than 30 per cent of your income towards housing." Gillman added that most clients pay well over that, some as much as 50 per cent.

Mark Weintraub, chair of Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region, agreed about the importance of funding housing for the community.

"We think it's a very significant problem for the city as a whole and specifically for the Jewish community," Weintraub said. "There are a significant number of Jewish families waiting for affordable housing and, as a human rights organization, Congress is of the view that the dignity of each citizen must be enhanced and that has to start with proper accommodation."

Weintraub said that although it may seem as if the lack of affordable housing is worsening, there is no way to tell for sure because the plight of those with lower incomes has always been largely ignored.

"It would appear that in light of the attractiveness of Vancouver and the escalating real estate costs that the problem is intensifying, but the concerns of people in the lower socioeconomic levels have never really been of paramount concern," Weintraub said. "So it's hard to know how grave the problem is, compared to past years."

Weintraub said in order to keep a thriving Jewish population in Vancouver, there needs to be housing to accommodate them.

"One of the reasons that the Jewish community was advocating for the housing policy in Southeast False Creek was that it would permit the Jewish community to continue to see Vancouver as a central focus," Weintraub said, "and we consider that while there's a vibrant Jewish community in the Lower Mainland, we must continue to support a powerful Jewish presence in Vancouver proper."

Weintraub praised the JFSA's work in remedying the problem, despite a lack of resources.

"Anything that assists in this problem is of great utility," Weintraub said. "If it even assists one or two families, this is a mitzvah of the highest order."

One in seven people within the Jewish community lives in poverty, according to the JFSA. And more than 1,000 individuals and families are known to the JFSA to be without affordable housing.

Vancouver's CARP is based on a pilot project out of Toronto that's been up and running for a year now, with a total of 32 units provided to the Jewish community. According to Gillman, who worked on that project, residents of the units have reportedly felt less stress due to better housing conditions and reduced housing costs. Gillman said many have also become more involved in their communities, due to the fact that they were given an opportunity to live closer to synagogues, Jewish day schools and community centres.

In Vancouver, there are more than 10,000 households on the waiting list for the 47,000 social housing spots in the Lower Mainland, most of which are provided by the provincial government's housing program. More than half of them are families with children, according to Verna Semoltuk, senior regional planner at the Greater Vancouver Regional District policy and planning department. Additionally, there are close to 1,300 homeless people in the city of Vancouver alone, with another 55,000 families at risk of homelessness, according to 2001 data.

"There are actually a lot of consequences to paying that much, if you're a renter or a homeowner," Semoltuk said. "If you're paying more than 50 per cent of your income for rent, we know that you're taking away from your food and transportation money in order to pay for your rent, which obviously has social consequences."

Veronika Stewart is a Vancouver freelance writer.

http://www.jewishindependent.ca/Archives/May06/archives06May05-06.html

Jewish Independent: Jews active for Darfur

May 5, 2006

PAT JOHNSON

Several dozen people, including many from the Jewish community, participated in a rally for action to save the people of Darfur Sunday.

The event, which took place at the Vancouver Art Gallery, was intended to raise awareness of the precarious state of the people of Darfur, a region in western Sudan where Sudanese-backed janjaweed militias are murdering, raping and threatening genocide. The event took place in conjunction with numerous such rallies around North America.

Mark Weintraub, chair of Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Reigon, and chair of the national Darfur committee of Congress, said Darfur is the worst humanitarian disaster confronting the world."

For a period of time, we were cautiously optimistic that perhaps the worst excesses would cease. But any basis for optimism has now been crushed," said Weintraub. "The deaths appear to have doubled in the last year and the Sudanese regime seems intent on carrying the conflict over to Chad and neighboring regimes.

"We are here today because we have all failed to do that which is necessary to give meaning to the post-Holocaust anti-genocidal cry for 'Never again,' " he said. "But at least we are here."

Rabbi Shmuel Birnham of West Vancouver's Har-El Synagogue spoke of the Jewish obligation to build a better world. Vancouver city councillor Tim Stevenson and Vancouver-Centre Liberal MP Hedy Fry also addressed the small crowd.

Pat Johnson is editor of MVOX Multicultural Digest, www.mvox.ca.

http://www.jewishindependent.ca/archives/May06/archives06May05-04.html

Jewish Independent: A change of scenery

Advocacy groups move down to highrise haven.
VERONIKA STEWART

The recent move of two prominent Jewish advocacy groups in the Lower Mainland to the downtown core will bring aid to the community's burgeoning downtown population, according to Mira Oreck, regional director of Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC).

The offices of the CJC and the local Canada-Israel Committee (CIC) now have a combined workspace at the corner of Alberni and Thurlow streets downtown.

After having their office at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver (JCC) for at least 15 years, Oreck said the move is a reaction to where people now work and live in the community.

"I think [the move is] a great thing for the Vancouver Jewish community that has a growing population of Jews living downtown. And it provides a new centre for downtown meetings," Oreck said.

She said the office will be open for use by organizations not based in the area of 41st and Oak.

"I think our office will be used by the Downtown Jewish Community Association, by the Jewish war veterans ... and other Jewish organizations that need to hold meetings downtown are certainly welcome to use our space," Oreck said. "It's sort of a new landmark of Jewish advocacy in Vancouver."

Mark Weintraub, chair of CJC Pacific Region, agreed.

"I see the effect to be a very positive one for the future of the Jewish community," Weintraub said. "The move to downtown Vancouver really positions ourselves in the heart of what is one of the most creative and dynamic urban centres in North America."

He also said because CJC is mostly involved in advocating for Jewish rights in the non-Jewish community, the downtown office will be better able to facilitate CJC's meetings with organizations outside the community.

Previously housed in the offices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, CIC director Michael Elterman said, as a new organization, the CIC didn't really have a home until moving downtown.

"At the point that the CJC decided that they needed to move out, it was an opportunity for CIC to consolidate the community's advocacy branches into one space," Elterman explained. "There was going to be a certain savings and economy of scale by having just one office that was essentially divided into CJC and the Canada-Israel Committee."

Elterman said there is a "certain symmetry" in having an organization responsible within the Jewish community for providing information on Israel and an organization responsible for the quality of Jewish life in Canada share the same space.

Elterman said another advantage of sharing space with the CJC downtown is that while the CIC was located in the JCC, it was assumed their work was geared solely towards a Jewish audience, which is not the case.

"In reality, the work of the CIC is actually addressed to the work of the non-Jewish community: telling the story of what is happening in Israel and doing advocacy on behalf of Israel to the non-Jewish community," Elterman said. "So by having an office that eventually puts us on a professional basis downtown, where we are close to businesses and to professional associations, was really putting advocacy on a much more professional level."

Like Oreck, Elterman said he thinks the new locale will cater to those who base themselves downtown.

"I think it opens up opportunities for us to have more meetings over lunch hour and during the day for people whose work and business is in downtown Vancouver," Elterman said.

Established in 1919, CJC is a national organization advocating Jewish human rights issues. It has been among many groups at the forefront of advocating a comprehensive approach to human rights, not only for Jewish Canadians, but other minority groups as well.

Its cohabitant, the Vancouver branch of the CIC, was established in 2004 and is a representative of Canada's Jewish community on issues pertaining mainly to Canada-Israel relations. Despite being a fairly new organization in the area, the CIC has created programs to keep the community in touch with Israel and its relations with Canada, including missions to Israel and teaching classes on socioeconomic issues pertaining to Israel.

Veronika Stewart is a student intern at the Independent.

http://www.jewishindependent.ca/Archives/April06/archives06Apr07-03.html

Jewish Independent Editorial

December 2, 2005
Editorial

With a federal election now underway and a Grey Cup under our belts, last week’s first ministers’ meeting on Aboriginal affairs may seem a long time ago already. But the Kelowna conference – and the announcement of compensation for victims of residential schools that came just before the meeting opened – will go down in history as a turning point in this country’s relations with our First Peoples.

The announcement of plans to compensate victims of residential schools and to commemorate their experiences reflects a first step in addressing the problems. Many of the social ills affecting Aboriginal Canadians were bred in the residential schools system. The values that the schools inculcated were intentionally antithetical to those of native Canadians’ traditions. The schools had, among other explicit purposes, the goal of eliminating aboriginal culture and assimilating the students into the dominant European-Canadian culture.

This failed for a range of reasons. The imperialist objective of assimilation was not sustained by any inculcation of alternative values. Having their traditions beaten out of them on a daily basis in the estranged and isolating environment of church-run residential schools, the curriculum that young First Nations people learned from our dominant culture were lessons of violence, coercion, verbal and physical abuse, sexual exploitation and torture.

Like victims of any social catastrophe, the survivors are forever affected by their experiences. The social crises in many First Nations communities – poverty, educational outcomes, addiction, abuse and unemployment among them – can be traced back in varying degrees to the experiences of past abuse of Aboriginal Canadians at the hands of religious, educational and governmental authority figures.

The announcement of an agreement-in-principle for compensation and commemoration of the residential schools experience last week was a prerequisite to the first ministers’ summit that followed. Until we recognize the significance of the residential school system on the trajectory of First Nations’ well being since European contact, we will not be able to sufficiently or fairly address the contemporary challenges. Canada, it seems, has finally recognized this fact.

As this historic process has unfolded, the Canadian Jewish community’s leaders have been vocal in support of the First Nations cause. National and local leaders of Canadian Jewish Congress have gone on record marking this issue as a priority.

“We are pleased that Canada has finally understood its responsibility for a shameful part of our country’s history, and is seeking to rectify its actions,” Canadian Jewish Congress national president Ed Morgan said in a news release on the residential schools agreement.

“Canada has made a crucial and substantive step toward recognizing our national culpability for this grievous historic wrong,” added CJC Pacific Region chair Mark Weintraub.

But why, of all issues, has the treatment of aboriginal Canadians become a core Jewish issue?

The reasons are numerous and can be interpreted in ways both simple and complex.

In a purely self-interested sense, it is in the interest of Jewish Canadians to nurture an environment where historic wrongs are recognized and ameliorated. Sensitivity to the historic wrongs of one people will presumably engender sensitivity to the historical experiences of all.

There are also a variety of complex theological and cultural parallels, which are best left to experts in their respective fields to elucidate. But, in its simplest sense, First Nations welfare is a concern to the Jewish community because at the core of the Jewish tradition is the interdiction to seek justice. As peoples who have both seen their cultures, histories and identities subjected to attempted eradication, Jews and aboriginal Canadians share a unique and dark perspective on human capability.

Canadian Jews support the struggle of First Nations for a variety of reasons, but primarily because it is the just thing to do. This, we believe, is all the reason we need.

http://www.cjc.ca/template.php?action=itn&Story=1602

Jewish Independent: Honoring a long-ago promise

May 20, 2005

Honoring a long-ago promise
Local groups and government take action to tackle Sudanese crisis.

DANA BOOKMAN

Two generations ago, when the Holocaust ended, Jews around the world made the promise, "Never again." It was supposed to be a guarantee that such an indescribable, inhumane tragedy would be prevented in the future. But it has happened again. And it is still happening today in western Sudan – in what the United Nations has described as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.It began more than two years ago, following an insurgency by two rebel groups. The government dispatched an Arab militia group – the Janjaweed – in retaliation, with members recruited from local tribes attacking African civilians. Now, "People are being raped, attacked, killed and driven from [their] homes into neighboring countries," said Mira Robin, part of a group of young Jews trying to raise awareness about the issue.

"Innocent civilians were living everyday lives and all of a sudden they've been uprooted, stricken by violence," said Robin, adding that this tragedy is reminiscent of the Holocaust. So far, 300,000 people in Darfur are thought to have been killed and more than two million others have been displaced. According to the UN, millions of people in Sudan could still face food shortages in the next 18 months.

Robin and a committee of concerned citizens, along with Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC), Pacific Region, and the Liu Institute for Global Issues, are hoping to raise the profile of the crisis in Darfur with Never Again: A Call for Action in Sudan.

Key speakers at the May 24 event will include Robbie Waisman, a survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp and co-founder of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.

"The Holocaust was supposed to teach the world compassion and understanding and that it should never happen again," said Waisman. "When I see things around the world, like what's happening in Darfur, I and other survivors get outraged, because the world hasn't learned its lesson yet."

Robert Sebufirira, another speaker at the event, hopes to encourage people to do something to help the survivors of the crisis – which the UN has stopped short of calling a genocide.

"After the Holocaust, people said the promise of 'Never again' was not brought into action, because of the Rwandan genocide," said Sebufirira. "As Africans, and as people, this is the time to be aware. We have to contribute to stop [the] killing in Sudan and this is the right opportunity to call on individuals to do something."

Sebufirira – once editor of Rwanda's only independent newspaper, Umuseso – survived the 1994 genocide in his home country. He says he feels obligated to help with anything related to awareness of genocide. "After what happened to me in Rwanda," he said, "I wouldn't want to see it happen to anyone else."

There have been some positive steps to help the victims in Sudan. Last week, Canada became the first western country to begin to promise to protect civilians there. The government committed $260 million to aid efforts in Darfur. That pledge also includes an initial 100 Canadian forces military experts. They will support the more than 2,000 African Union soldiers already in Sudan to protect refugees from the fighting. About 40 Canadian troops will also join a United Nations observer force in the southern part of the East African nation.

CJC Pacific Region chair Mark Weintraub said the Vancouver Jewish community has been instrumental in pushing for Canada's involvement in Sudan. He said the community "is playing on a stage much larger than we usually do. Without exaggeration, I can say that we have been a catalyst [for government action]."

Nouri Abdalla is a member of Vancouver's Darfurian community and has family members in refugee camps in Darfur. Abdalla said he's delighted about the government's contribution."

Canada is sending a strong message to [the] world by sending the first western troops into Darfur," he said. "It's a positive step in [the] right direction and I hope [the] rest of [the] world will follow."

Waisman also said Canada's pledge is a good start. "We're putting pressure on the government and it's working," he said. "But we have to keep up the pressure. We are our brothers' keepers."

Robin is hoping that this event will send a message to other international political leaders to take the action needed to spare the people of Darfur further suffering and misery.

"We want this event to empower individuals to put further pressure on the government and international community," she said.

Sen. Mobina Jaffer, who is being sent to Sudan as a special envoy by Prime Minister Paul Martin, will be the keynote speaker at the event, which will also feature a photo exhibit and a question and answer period.

Although there is reason to be cautiously optimistic about a resolution to the horror in Darfur, Waisman warned, "There is still evil in the world and we have to use lessons from the Holocaust to teach compassion. As long as I am healthy and can do this, and bring this to the attention of governments and people, I have no choice: I have to do it."

Never Again: A Call for Action in Sudan is a free event. It's being held at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 24, in the Wosk Auditorium at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver.

Dana Bookman is a Vancouver writer.

http://www.jewishindependent.ca/archives/May05/archives05May20-01.html

Jewish Independent: The next chapter of activism

March 25, 2005
By: Pat Johnson

The next chapter of activism
Canadian Jewish Congress re-examines what defines a "Jewish issue."

What is a "Jewish issue"? That is a question that has been facing Canada's Jewish communal agencies for decades, but with changes to the national infrastructure of Jewish communal life, the answer is about to get a lot broader.

Bernie Farber, the new chief executive officer of Canadian Jewish Congress, was in Vancouver recently, laying some of the groundwork for a major redirection of his organization's agenda.

The changes are partly a result of the massive adjustment made in recent years to the structure of Jewish life in Canada. The national organizations that make up much of the Jewish community's institutional presence are now united under the umbrella of the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA).

Though best know for fighting anti-Semitism, Canadian Jewish Congress has long been involved in a vast array of parallel and seemingly unrelated issues. In Ontario, where Farber was until January the executive director of the regional CJC office, the organization has already become one of the leading advocates for children living in poverty. That's an example Farber wants to emulate at the national level.

To do this, Farber aims to build better alliances with the various Jewish federations in Canada. Already, groups like the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver are deeply involved in issues of poverty and affordable housing. While federations do much of the "on the ground" work on issues like these, CJC, as the country's primary and oldest lobbying group, will now more actively take up the charge in pressing governments and other decision-makers to respond to issues of social justice that go beyond what would traditionally have been dubbed "Jewish issues."

"Congress is best situated to do the professional advocacy for the community because we've been doing it for almost 100 years," Farber told the Bulletin March 15. "What we haven't focused on are the kinds of issues that are vital to federations. In Ontario, we have. We have for the last number of years worked on issues like child welfare, elder care, social housing. What I want to do is transport that concept into other areas across the country so that Congress develops the kind of expertise that's needed."

Though CJC has long been involved in a range of issues, this is a rallying cry for a host of new initiatives, Farber said.

"I would say it's a new chapter of activism," said Farber.

Back to the question of what is a Jewish issue, Farber replied, any issue that you consider a Jewish issue is a Jewish issue.

"For example, when people say to me, how is child poverty a Jewish issue? Well, it's a Jewish issue because there are Jewish children who are poor. And even if there weren't, all these issues are human issues," he said. CJC's priorities are not just self-interest, but the larger Jewish imperative of tikkun olam, the repair of the world, he said.

"If there is a mission for Congress, that's what it is: to help repair the world," he said.

With a streamlined national umbrella, increased funding and the unification of national lobbying efforts, Farber believes CJC can do more than ever.

"We have a brand name, people expect good work of us and usually we don't let them down," he said. His goals include having a full-time lobbyist on Parliament Hill and, eventually, similar individuals in provincial capitals.

Farber cited the work of Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region, as a model for future national endeavors.

"People look to the Jewish community to be a leader on those issues," said Farber. "For example, here in the Pacific region, Mark Weintraub [the regional chair] and a number of our leadership here in the Pacific region are really leading on the matter of Darfur. Not, by the way, just in Canada. They are being recognized literally around the world as a strong advocate [for] dealing with his terrible genocide that's going on three-quarters of the way around the world. That's not a Jewish issue per se, but it is a Jewish issue because, of all people, we understand what it is to be victimized like this and to be killed in such numbers. It is an example of the kinds of thing that I want to see."

Though CJC can be expected to speak out more forcefully on things that do not seem like traditional "Jewish issues," the old standbys are not going to disappear, Farber said. Anti-Semitism, to the surprise and dismay of the Jewish community, has proved enduring and adaptive.

"We understand that anti-Semitism is different today than it was 10, even 15 years ago," he said. "It is one of the most redoubtable of viruses that finds a host and can mutate in any kind of a way."

A surprising and disappointing development, he said, is the emergence of anti-Semitism in the anti-Zionist movement of the left.

"Much of what we're seeing today in relation to this anti-Zionism bleeding into anti-Semitism is happening as much on the extreme left as it is on the extreme right and sometimes even on the centre-left," said Farber.

"In the past, we knew who our enemies were," he said, citing white supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis. "We fought them arm-in-arm with the trade union movement, with people on the left. They were our soldiers on the road to dealing with these issues. Something happened along the road. We lost sight of each other. We went down separate paths."

One of the priorities of CJC is to rebuild bridges and co-operation with the left in Canada.

"We have to find a way to be back there, even if we passionately disagree with each other," he said. "Friends can passionately disagree with each other, but we have to be there to put Israel's best face forward, to help people understand that there are two sides to every issue."

Working with police, hate crimes units, Internet service providers (ISPs) and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, CJC has helped identify and shut down many web-based hate sites, often simply by appealing to the goodwill of the ISP.

CJC officials are also working on an anti-Semitism awareness program for school curricula, beginning in Ontario but intended to spread across Canada.

All of these efforts might give the impression that CJC is taking a more vigilant political orientation. Not so, said Farber.

"I don't see this as political," he said. "I really see this as human rights matters."

http://www.cjc.ca/template.php?action=itn&Story=1237

Jewish Independent: Shoah lesson for Sudan

February 4, 2005

Shoah lesson for Sudan
Now is the time to scream, says Holocaust survivor.
PAT JOHNSON

In the Buchenwald concentration camp, Robbie Waisman listened to his elders imagine a world without the sort of barbarism they were experiencing under the Nazis. They were sure that, once the world understood what people had done to other people during the Third Reich, such inhumanity would never be allowed to happen again.

"In the dark, in the bunks before falling asleep, I remember listening to some of the inmates who were important men before the war – learned, intelligent, politicians, writers and philosophers. They were there because they were against the Nazis," Waisman said last week on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the death camp Auschwitz. "Their conversations gave me hope. I was a teenager. They believed anyone lucky enough to survive would live in paradise – no more war, no more hunger. That resonated within me, I wanted to live in that kind of world. I wanted to survive."

Waisman did survive, but his dreams, as well as those of other inmates, of a world without human-made atrocities, did not. Next to him at a table in the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver Jan. 27 was Nouri Abdalla, a British Columbian who is a representative of the Darfurian community in Canada.

In Darfur, a region in the northeast African country of Sudan, armed militias and Sudanese government soldiers are perpetrating atrocities. The United Nations is debating whether the violence there should be called "genocide."

About 1.6 million people have been forced from their homes in Darfur, some escaping to neighboring Chad, but most displaced internally, without adequate food, water or shelter. About 70,000 have been killed, with hundreds of thousands more in immediate peril. As many as 12,000 villages have been burned in their entirety. Thousands of women have been raped, thousands of children have been abducted. International aid organizations say more than three million people in Darfur – half the population – are completely dependent on relief aid.

Waisman and Abdalla were speaking at a news conference convened by Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region, to mark the anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation but also to draw attention anew to the crisis in Darfur.Abdalla echoed Waisman's warning that the world must not avert its eyes again when it sees genocide looming.

"The world community has not learned at all from past experiences with regard to genocidal acts going back to World War Two, through Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and now we have a genocide standing tall in Darfur and it seems like nobody is doing anything about it, to stop it," said Abdalla. "The situation in Darfur today is worse than what it was six or seven months ago when the [United Nations] Security Council had actually started to intervene to stop the genocide, the mass killing, the mass raping and the mass abducting of children and the burning of villages in the Darfur region of Sudan."

In July 2004, the security council passed a resolution asking the Sudanese government to disarm the Janjaweed militias, which had been operating independently, but with the approval and active support of the Sudanese government. Although the Sudanese government maintains it is not directly involved in the conflict, evidence refutes this. Darfurian villages are being bombed from the air, said Abdalla, and the Sudanese government is the only entity in the conflict with air power.

"Unfortunately, what the Sudanese government has done since then is incorporated those Janjaweed militias, or members of the Janjaweed militias, into its paramilitary forces," said Abdalla. "It's incorporated them into their regular armed forces and now they're working with even more impunity in Darfur than ever."

Though the UN approved the intervention of 3,300 African Union troops in Darfur – a fraction of the number Darfurians and others say are needed – only 1,200 have been deployed and those are only observing. They are not empowered to intervene on behalf of endangered civilians.

"The intervention up to date is simply not working at all," said Abdalla. "What the security council is doing in Darfur is absolutely not working."

Reportedly, last week government troops raided civilian villages and government planes bombed three more Darfur villages.

"It has been such a great comfort for those of us who are Darfurians living here in Canada to see the Canadian government taking the lead. We have definitely been able to count on the prime minister to raise this issue to the highest level."

Abdalla commended Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin – one of the few world leaders to press the issue onto the international agenda – but urged the government and ordinary Canadians to do more.

"We are certainly looking for more from our government and from the prime minister," Abdalla said. He urges the international community to demand the immediate imposition of a no-fly zone over Darfur, an arms embargo against the Sudanese government and the complete disbanding of the Janjaweed.

"Without doing that, there is no end that I can see," said Abdalla.

Mark Weintraub, chair of Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region, said his organization has sent a second letter to the Canadian prime minister. It acknowledges the actions by Canada and calls on the government to "mobilize all resources – political, diplomatic and financial" to stop the suffering and prevent a genocide.

He urged Canadians to keep the issue at the top of the Canadian agenda by calling or writing politicians.

"Our message to the larger Canadian community is that we know Canadian leadership is deeply troubled by Darfur, but there are many issues with which our politicians are engaged and it is vital that Canadians speak out so our decision-makers know that many Canadians want and expect powerful leadership on this issue," said Weintraub.

Reflecting on the echoes of history, Waisman compared the near-silence of the contemporary world on Darfur to the silence of the world as the Final Solution unfolded.

"My eyes have seen unimaginable horrors. I'm a witness to the ultimate evil. I'm a witness to man's inhumanity to other humans," Waisman said.

"I represent one and a half million Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust and no one protested. The world remained silent," said Waisman. "Today, we have instant communication. There's no excuse for silence. I cannot understand why so many people with good intentions, with all the evil around them, choose to look the other way. We must not let it happen again.

"What do we need to do to finally learn the lesson and look out for one another?" he asked. "Now is the time to speak out. Now is the time to scream."

Pat Johnson is a B.C. journalist and commentator.

http://www.jewishindependent.ca/Archives/Feb05/archives05Feb04-01.html

Western Jewish Bulletin: No charges for MIRACLE

January 28, 2005

No charges for Miracle
CJC is disappointed, but has faith in judicial process.
PAT JOHNSON

The publisher of a local Muslim newspaper that ran a viciously anti-Semitic article will not face charges. The Miracle, a Delta-based publication, had reprinted a litany of anti-Jewish accusations, blaming "the jews" (sic) for the attacks on the World Trade Centre, two world wars, the Depression, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and another 83 similar assertions.

The Crown announced last week, following a year of investigation, that the case would not be recommended for criminal charges for the wilful promotion of hatred.

Nusrat Hussain, the publisher of the Miracle, said he is relieved and he condemned the article that he ran Dec. 26, 2003. The article was a reprint of an anti-Semitic tract making the rounds via the Internet. It was written by Edgar J. Steele, a disbarred lawyer from Idaho."I had apologized and I was very clear about it, for the article was offensive," Hussain told the Bulletin last week. "I had never said that I was in favor of the article or I agreed. On the contrary, I was very clear. I condemned the article. But I was doing a different line. I was defending the freedom of speech."

Canadian laws regarding the promotion of hatred rest on the intent of the speaker or publisher of allegedly hateful comments. Hussain compares the standard of intent to the difference between murder and accidental death.

"There's a difference if you murder a person [or] if somebody is killed under your car by accident," he said. "Although in the end it is the death of a person, you have to prove the intentions.

"The intention was never to promote hate in this case," he said.

Though he is pleased with the outcome, Hussain said the experience has been wrenching. He was hospitalized with a heart ailment for five days last February, shortly after the investigation began.

"I have suffered in my business also," he said. "I lost advertisers. I lost reputation. Politically, there were senators, a member of Parliament, a member of the legislature, who were writing for my newspaper. All of them withdrew."

The publisher sees a silver lining in the incident, though, citing what he says is a growth in dialogue between the Jewish and Muslim communities as a result of the issue and its surrounding publicity.

"There were positive things," said Hussain. "The Jewish and Muslim communities – the interaction which has started now – it was unheard of [before]. The people in my community would not like to listen about the Jewish community, the same way, I'm sure it was, on the other side. But this is a very positive thing that is happening. People are talking to each other. They are sitting together and talking about each other's views and listening to each other and that is, I believe, required."

Canadian Jewish Congress, which brought the article to the attention of police, said the decision not to proceed to criminal charges does not diminish the harm done by the article.

"It has to be understood that, even though the Crown did not proceed with charges, the fact that something as anti-Semitic and as destructive as what was contained in that piece was published in our community created extreme distress for us," said Mark Weintraub, chair of Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region. "The Jewish community and the larger community should not have to be subjected to such vile propaganda. It has to be understood that simply expressing regret really doesn't go to the heart of the damage that is done when we have to continually deal with these terrible attacks on Jews."

Weintraub said that his organization sees no silver lining in hateful remarks, though he hopes the incident opened some eyes."We were heartened by many comments and expressions of empathy and sympathy and support from Muslim leaders," said Weintraub. "We have had excellent relations in the past with many segments of the Muslim community, so we did not need these kinds of expressions of anti-Semitism to bring our communities closer. What has occurred has perhaps made certain segments of the Muslim community aware that there are individuals in their community who hold views that are intolerant and really have no place in our community."

Because it was the complainant in the case, Canadian Jewish Congress was verbally briefed on the decision by Crown not to proceed with charges. CJC has requested a copy of the Crown's written report, but Weintraub said he does not know if they are entitled to it.

"The Crown has to make a determination as to whether there is a likelihood of conviction and that it's in the public interest," explained Weintraub, who is a Vancouver lawyer. "Not every action that appears to be a crime always results in prosecution. The Crown does have discretion."

A decision not to go to charges can be based simply on likelihood of conviction and does not necessarily imply that the article was not hateful.

"The verbal summary was to the effect that the statements that were published were anti-Semitic," said Weintraub. "They could be construed as hate-filled. However, the means of the publication of these statements, which were a republication of an American anti-Semite in this particular newspaper, meant that it was not necessarily likely that the incitement-to-hate provisions of the Criminal Code would have been breached, because there are certain technical and procedural requirements to prove intent to incite and because of the mode of republication. The Crown was not satisfied that they would be able to meet the test."

Weintraub said he is satisfied that the investigation was thorough and his organization did the right thing in bringing it to the attention of the police.

"To our minds, we were satisfied that we had acted appropriately by turning this over to the Crown, because it was deemed to be highly anti-Semitic," he said. "But, at that point, we have to let the justice system take its course. We have advocated over the years for a highly specialized hate crime team. We have been successful in that regard and we think that there are very competent people in that hate crime team who understand the technicalities of the law and, if they considered that a charge should not be proceeded with, while we are disappointed, we have confidence in the process and in the judicial system. As far as we're concerned, we saw a crime, we acted appropriately, we co-operated with the authorities and we continue to have confidence in our judicial system."

CJC is awaiting a decision on whether charges will come in another prominent British Columbia case under investigation by the Hate Crime Team. Last year, Sheik Younus Kathrada, a Vancouver imam, made international headlines when tapes of the Muslim religious leader's comments, in which he referred to Jews as "the brothers of monkeys and swine" and called on Muslims to kill Jews, were made public. The case is under investigation by RCMP.

CJC has used the two incidents to repeat requests that the province fully fund the Hate Crime Team, a specialized group of police, Crown counsel and support staff that saw its funding sharply cut under provincial cost-saving measures. Premier Gordon Campbell has promised to restore funding for the body, which has been reduced to one RCMP officer, but the money has not been forthcoming. Observers expect funding may be provided in the budget before this May's provincial election.

Pat Johnson is a B.C. journalist and commentator.