Mr. Chair, I am thankful for the honour of taking part in tonight's debate. I would like to thank members of all parties who have made it possible. Above all, I would like to thank my colleagues on this side, many of whom are here tonight, who give so much of their best to the cause that is so fundamental to the foundations on which we stand.
My colleague, the Minister of National Defence, has said tonight, as we all say to ourselves on the many occasions around the calendar when it needs to be said, that anti-Semitism is the most ancient of hatreds and the most ancient of irrational tragedies in human behaviour. It represents the very epitome of those challenges to the values we hold dear: freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.
Our determination tonight to set our faces against this scourge, wherever it manifests itself, is a recommitment to our Canadian values and the values that have made our country, and the broader society and humanity to which we belong, great. It is truly humbling to speak after the hon. member who calls himself the son of Abram Adler of Lodz. There can be no story more moving for any of us in a debate like tonight's than that of a Holocaust survivor.
Let us remember that, despite those tragedies and the institutionalized efforts of the international community to never forget and to never let that tragedy be repeated, we live in a world where anti-Semitism is all too pervasive a fact. Whether it is recent attacks across Europe or an aggressive, belligerent, rapacious regime in Moscow that is prepared to make donations to far-right anti-Semitic groups across Europe, it harkens back to the alliance between Stalin and Hitler that made the Second World War a much greater tragedy than it would otherwise have been.
Whether it is jihadist groups around the world but centred in North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia who bring forth unspeakable tragedies and kill civilians in untold numbers and at every step of the way pepper their obscene language with the poison of anti-Semitism, it is not just ISIL. It is al Qaeda, which is still with us. It is 1,000 branch plants of those offices. It is the Muslim Brotherhood, which just apparently rededicated itself to jihad in late January.
In Nazi Germany, the Jews were stripped of their citizenship, denied their natural rights and their very right to exist. In contemporary times, there are those in these jihadist groups and in dozens of nation states who are trying to strip the State of Israel of its citizenship in the international community, circumscribe its right to exist, and attack its natural rights as a nation. All of them have in common the sin and the violation of fundamental rights that anti-Semitism represents.
We are proud on this side to be part of a government that stands up, stands behind the principles of the Ottawa protocol, and wants to monitor and end this kind of hatred on the Internet and elsewhere. We are part of a government that was the first in the world to withdraw from the United Nations Durban Review Conference, or Durban II. We refused to allow Canada's good name to be tarnished by an event where examples of anti-Semitism under the UN flag and auspices were flourishing openly, including the circulation of copies of Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and explicitly anti-Semitic symbolism.
Our stand was vindicated when Durban II was used by former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to purvey his particular brand of horrific high-octane anti-Semitism. We will continue down this path to ensure that Canada's name is at the forefront of those combatting this hatred, at the forefront of those reinforcing our values, and at the forefront of those calling together all around the world, who recognize anti-Semitism for the plague on our values that it has been for centuries.
