Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Feb. 26th, 2015

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Wayne Marston]

I call the committee to order. This is the 58th meeting of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. We're doing a study on the human rights situation in Iran.

We have three guests with us today.

Just before we start to accept your testimony, gentlemen, we have two motions to deal with. We'll get a little of our other work done, as well.

I understand that Mr. Hsu has a motion.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just wanted to move the motion by Mr. Cotler from Monday, February 23, regarding Burmese women who work for community-based organizations.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Wayne Marston]

All the members have a copy of this, and we discussed it earlier.

(Motion agreed to)

Mr. Benskin.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Everybody has a copy of this motion as well. In short, it is a motion to move forward a brief study on the human rights situation in Vietnam, given some of the changes that are happening there currently.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Wayne Marston]

Everybody has a copy of this. Do we have consensus on this?

[An hon. member]

Do you mean consensus with the edit on the second—

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Wayne Marston]

Yes, the edit has been taken out in each copy.

[An hon. member]

Great.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Wayne Marston]

Thank you very much.

(Motion agreed to)

Now we're able to move to the testimony of our guests.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Are we moving the budget?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Wayne Marston]

Do we have a budget matter? No, we don't.

Thank you, Mr. Sweet.

We have guests with us today.

I would ask, as I discussed a moment ago with Mr. Matas, that you keep your remarks reasonably brief, which will leave a little more time for the members to ask those pertinent questions. Perhaps you'd like to introduce yourselves. Who is going first?

Mr. Mostyn, I'll turn it over to you.

[Michael Mostyn, Chief Executive Officer, B'nai Brith Canada]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee.

My name is Michael Mostyn, and I am the CEO of B'nai Brith Canada, a human rights organization that has been serving this country in both the Jewish and broader Canadian communities for 140 years.

As the holiday of Purim approaches, we are reminded of the Book of Esther and its recounting of a Persian king named Ahasuerus whose newly appointed chief minister, Haman, plots to kill not just Mordecai, a Jew who had found his disfavour, but the entire Jewish population. Haman surreptitiously obtains Ahasuerus' permission and state funds, and executes his plan. It is only thanks to the bravery of a Jewish heroine named Esther and her Uncle Mordecai that Haman's evil plot to destroy the Jewish people is stopped.

Just as in the times of Mordecai and Esther, a Persian leader has arisen, who has repeatedly called for the annihilation of the Jewish state and has activated the terrorist proxies of Iran to murder innocent Jews all around the globe in premeditated acts of terror.

The ayatollah, Iran's ultimate decision-maker and modern-day equivalent of Haman, is at the helm of the world's premier state sponsor of terror and a regime that has continuously violated even the most basic of human rights.

My colleagues David Matas and Yehuda Azoulay will now elaborate further on the historical and current anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism central to the regime of the mullahs of Iran.

[Yehuda Azoulay, Chair, Sephardic Affairs Council, B'nai Brith Canada]

Thank you very much.

My name is Yehuda Azoulay, founder of the Sephardic Legacy Institute.

Thank you very much, honourable members of this subcommittee. I am privileged to appear before you today to discuss and share my expertise with you pertaining to the history of the Jews in Iran and the regional experience of Jewish refugees.

Iranian Jews are amongst the oldest inhabitants of the country. The beginnings of Jewish history in Iran date back to the late biblical times. The biblical books of Isaiah, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah contain references to the life and experiences of Jews in Persia. Persian Jews have lived in these territories for over 2,700 years.

Martin Gilbert, the famous historian, mentioned in his book, In Ishmael’s House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands, the following:

When the King of Persia, Cyrus the Great, defeated the Babylonians in 539 BCE, he liberated the Jews of Jerusalem. Some of the ‘freed slaves’ – who were no longer forced to worship idols – began to rebuild their Temple, which had been destroyed forty-two years after the Prophet Jeremiah’s prediction. Others went eastward to settle in Persia. Among their descendants a hundred years later were Esther and her cousin Mordecai, who forestalled an attempt by the Grand Vizier, Haman, to exterminate the entire Persian Jewish community.

The story and the holiday of Purim, which is celebrated next week by Jews around the world, is a continuous narrative throughout the course of Jewish history. Later in history, Persian Jews were among those who wrote the Babylonian Talmud, a crucial repository of Jewish theology and law to this very day. The periods of Iranian Jewry include: Assyrian exile of the Northern Kingdom, Persian Jewry under Cyrus the Great, the Second Temple period, the Parthian period, Sassanid period, early Islamic period, Mongol rule, and Safavid and Qajar dynasties.

In the middle of the 19th century, J.J. Benjamin wrote about the life of Persian Jews:

…they are obliged to live in a separate part of town…; for they are considered as unclean creatures…

During the Pahlavi dynasty an important factor in the economic improvement of the Jews was close relations between the Shah and the state of Israel. Details of this connection, and how the condition of Iranian Jews improved dramatically in a few short years....

During the Islamic republic, since 1979.... At the time of the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, there were approximately 100,000 to 120,000 Jews living in Iran, this historical centre of Persian Jewry. This estimate is based on the Jewish Agency, which had an office Tehran in 1948. Approximately 95% have since migrated. The current Jewish population of Iran today is roughly 8,000 Jews.

The Islamic Republic uses factions within the Iranian Jewish community to win public relations points with the Western world, but privately many Jews complain to foreign reporters of discrimination.... The strong public anti-Israel position of the Iranian Jews...

is a reflection of the pressure on them from the authorities and “their desire for survival.”

Iranian leadership claims the Jewish minority is treated fairly, but experts, rabbis, offer contrasting views. “There's basic fear”, according to researchers.

The current Ayatollah Khomeini has been clear in declaring his goal, the annihilation of Israel. Essentially, annihilation of Israel is an annihilation of the Jewish people. Furthermore, the Iranian support for Hamas and Hezbollah is well documented, and how they both use the Palestinian narrative as the only refugees of status from the region is a complete misconception.

In the years leading up to the declaration of the state of Israel, and immediately following it, many Iranian Jews were forced to leave their homes. What follows is their largely untold story.

While the UN endorsed the establishment of the state of Israel, the majority of Israel’s neighbouring Arab countries never recognized its legitimacy. The story of the Middle East conflict seems to be an everlasting one. Certainly the history of Sephardic and Iranian Jewry and its traumatic experiences during the 1940s has been sorely neglected.

Following the UN resolution of 1947, which suggested dividing Palestine into two countries, Palestine and Israel, the situation continued to deteriorate. The Arabs refused to accept the UN recommendation, and when Israel declared the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 seven armies from Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, and Saudi Arabia attacked Israel. Moreover, in the native Muslim countries the persecution of Jews became rampant. Muslims around the world directed their hostility to the Jewish state against the Jewish communities living in their midst. In some places public executions became more and more frequent. As the Arab-Israeli conflict developed, Arab governments also turned on their Jewish populations. These governments often instituted drastically anti-Jewish measures, such as confiscation of passports, freezing of bank accounts, arbitrary arrests, and summary executions, making life unbearable for local Jews. Their homes and other properties were more often than not those that were confiscated. When they were not, they still had to be left behind since the Jews were rarely allowed to sell them, and when they did, it was at ridiculously low prices.

This necessary flight with very few of their possessions also led to the abandonment of ancient synagogues, community centres, schools, hospitals, and once-thriving businesses. Perhaps most painful for the Jews was leaving behind the cemeteries where their ancestors had been buried for thousands of years and in which the gravestones were vandalized and used for building homes, parks, hotels, and public transport.

Thus, while many Arabs left Palestine following the declaration of the Jewish state, many Jews left their homes in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bukhara, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Turkey, Tunisia, and Yemen. These refugees suffered a threefold loss: their identity, their way of life that simply ceased to exist, and their material possessions. Three-thousand-year-old communities were destroyed. Nearly one million Jews in Arab lands lost their homes. These Jews are refugees as surely as Palestinians.

Jewish refugees from Arab lands sustained incredible losses in a single generation. The financial losses were in the billions but, beyond that, irreparable damage was done to an entire civilization. Ancient Jewish communities that could trace their history back 3,000 years were no more. The destruction of their civilization is a story that has yet to properly be told. This testimony pertaining to the history of the Jews in Iran and the regional experience of Jewish refugees is a step towards that direction.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Wayne Marston]

Mr. Matas.

[David Matas, Senior Legal Counsel, B'nai Brith Canada]

Thank you.

When the subject matter is international human rights violations and Iran, we regrettably have a wide range of subjects that we can discuss. Today we are focusing on Iranian anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism not just because we represent B'nai Brith; we do so because anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are central to the regime of the mullahs of Iran. Though the regime bills itself as Islamic and Shiite, it is more accurate to describe it as anti-Zionistic and anti-Semitic.

There are many different ideological strands to the anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism of the regime, and here I will mention only five.

First of all is Holocaust denial. Under former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, there was vociferous Holocaust denial. There was one Holocaust denial conference in December 2006, and another one scheduled for December 2013. The new President Hassan Rouhani initially cancelled that 2013 conference, but then he reinstated it, and it took place last year, in October 2014.

Second, Iran rejects any possible peace agreement between the Palestinians and Israel. Their attitude is that Israel should not exist whether the Palestinians accept its existence or not. President Rouhani has said that Israel is an old wound that should be removed.

Third, there is the mistreatment and expulsion of its own Jewish population, which we heard about from Yehuda Azoulay. In 1948, the Jewish population of Iran, according to the Jewish Agency, was 100,000 to 120,000. In 2011, according to an Iranian census, it was less than 9,000, and presumably it has decreased since then. We have seen Jews in Iran, including Jewish community leaders, arbitrarily executed, accused and convicted of spying for Israel, and their property confiscated. They've been forced to condemn Israel publicly and take part in anti-Israel demonstrations.

Fourth, there's the installation or the foundation of Hezbollah, which began in Iran in 1982 as part of the Iranian revolutionary guard corps. The Iranian regime sent fighters from Iran to Lebanon at the end of 1983. These fighters constituted the initial core of Hezbollah. I'm pleased to see that Canada has listed both the Hezbollah and this Iranian revolutionary guard corps as terrorist organizations.

Finally, in this short list there's the attack by Iran against the Jewish communities worldwide, not just against Israel, but the diaspora. We saw, in 1992, an attack in the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, and in 1994 an attack against the Jewish community organization in Buenos Aires, killing 85 and wounding over 200. The Argentinian prosecutor in these murders, Alberto Nisman, was murdered in Buenos Aires just last month.

In July 2012, Hezbollah operatives killed five Israeli tourists and wounded 32 others. One of the two attackers was a Canadian citizen, Hassan El Hajj Hassan.

In response to those five points and a general anti-Semitic drift to the essence of the regime, I want to mention six possible recommendations.

One is to expand exceptions to the state immunity legislation to allow for Iran to be sued for international human rights violations. It's now designated under the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, so it can be sued for acts of terrorism, but its international violations go beyond terrorism and I would suggest that we need an expansion.

Second, I suggest we ask Lebanon for the extradition of the Bulgarian bomber, the Canadian citizen bomber, Hassan El Hajj Hassan.

Third, I suggest that we direct our concerns to the ongoing negotiations about the nuclear weapons in Iran. Any regime that is hell-bent on destruction of Israel and the Jews should be kept as far away from weapons of mass destruction as possible. I endorse the recommendation previously made to this committee, that if there is some sort of agreement between Iran and other states about nuclear weapons capability, it should include some human rights component, as there used to exist in the Helsinki accord.

Fourth, I'm pleased to see that the European Union belatedly, in July 2013, in response to the Bulgarian attack, listed the military wing of Hezbollah on its list of terrorist entities, but this division between military and civilian wings doesn't really make any practical sense since there's no division in funding or responsibility. I would ask Canada to ask the EU to list all of Hezbollah as terrorist.

Fifth, every year at the United Nations General Assembly there is a resolution on Iran of which Canada is the lead sponsor, and it has some language condemning harassment against Jews and persecution of Jews, but it doesn't mention either anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism. I suggest the language should be strengthened.

Sixth and finally, I'm pleased to see that the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs has recommended that the government encourage the negotiating parties to take into account all refugee populations as part of any just and comprehensive resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflicts. I like the recommendation but I must express some reservation about the government response to it, which says that it would relate only to later stage negotiations and not to negotiations with the Palestinians.

We suggest that this type of principle that there are two refugee populations is central to the first stage peace negotiations. We cannot see our way through to peace without breaking the chains of anti-Zionism holding Palestinian refugees down. We do that by confronting the myth of one refugee population with the reality of two refugee populations. We do that by confronting the myth that Israel is a western imperial colonial enterprise, a myth which holds particular sway with the mullahs of Iran, with the reality that Israel is in large measure composed of Jews from the Middle East, including Iran. Unless the Palestinians themselves accept the reality of dual victimization, a meaningful peace becomes impossible.

I'll stop there, and we'll leave it for questions. Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Wayne Marston]

Thank you, Mr. Matas.

We've got time, I believe, for seven-minute rounds, which will leave a little time at the end. I understand Mr. Cotler may have a motion that he wants to move at the end.

So we'll start with Mr. Sweet.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair, and welcome to all our witnesses.

I just want to express our deep concern about what happened recently in Montreal. I think you're probably well aware that we had a take-note debate in the House two nights ago with regard to anti-Semitism and those concerns were expressed by many colleagues in the House. I just wanted to express them once more.

Also I hope that the message of Purim and the biblical story that your testimony here today is akin to Mordecai's words at such a time as this. I'd like to begin by asking if you think that the situation in Iran vis-à-vis human rights—and I would say human rights for anyone in Iran: average Iranians, Jews, Baha'is, Christians—has improved under Rouhani's rule.

[David Matas]

My perception is no. I think we've seen a change of vocabulary without a change in behaviour.

La Rochefoucauld said, “hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue”, and I think what we're seeing now is a different language, but we're seeing the same level of human rights violations without any real abatement. I think some of the instances that I mentioned illustrate that hypocrisy. Rouhani cancelled Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial conference, and then had another one, his own, a year later.

There's a whole pattern like that in the Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations. He said whatever the Palestinians would accept, we would accept, but then he said Israel is an old wound that has to be removed. So instead of speaking unequivocally, he's speaking out of both sides of his mouth. If you look at the number of people in jail, the number of people executed, the problems that Iran is posing to its opposition, including the Jewish community, I don't see any movement. We do have these Interpol arrest warrants from Argentina. I don't see Iran cooperating with those arrest warrants.

I think the problem remains what it was. Hypocrisy, I suppose, initially poses a problem because, is he telling the truth? We have to give him some time to evaluate, but I think the regime under Rouhani has gone on long enough that we can make that evaluation and call him to account for the regime's deeds rather than just for what he's been saying.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Yes, I think we've been strung along enough in this regard.

There was a study done, I believe by the foreign affairs committee, in regard to the entire population of Jews who were expelled from Arab countries. You were mentioning a number from just Iran, but I believe the total number is around 800,000. Is that correct?

[David Matas]

I think it's 800,000 from Arab countries. Iran, which is Muslim but not Arab, is in addition. If you add up the Arab numbers, it's another 100,000; we're getting close to a million. The numbers are huge.

In fact, there were more people displaced from the initial 1948 war, Jews from Arab countries and Iran, than there were Palestinian refugees. The manner in which the two refugee populations have been treated is something that has to be constantly kept in mind when we deal with these peace negotiations.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

What effect have the sanctions against Iran had so far in regard to specifically human rights concerns?

[David Matas]

If you look at the overall statistics, not good; some individual cases get some movement, and the sanctions....

Unfortunately, as I say, we have a wide menu of agenda items to pursue in dealing with human rights violations in Iran. What's taken the priority, perhaps understandably, is the development of the nuclear weapons capability of Iran.

My own view is that the sanctions have had an impact in bringing Iran to the negotiating table and perhaps slowing the development of the nuclear weapons capability. But to a certain extent there's been a trade-off in the international community between human rights and the nuclear weapons capability. The focus has been on the nuclear weapons capability, and as a result, they're not prepared to accelerate the sanctions or to pin them directly to human rights. They've been pinning them more directly to the development of the nuclear weapons capability.

The sanctions, I would say, have been useful. I note that Mr. Cotler has a private member's bill that deals specifically with reporting on sanctions, which I'd draw to your attention. The sanctions have been useful, but they're only one weapon in an armoury of combatting human rights violations. I don't think we can rely on them alone.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

In fact to a degree the Iranian regime has been able to hide behind the attention that has been drawn to the nuclear program and continued to actually have an increased number of executions in their prisons while all of this is going on. Unfortunately, one challenge we have is that the western media doesn't report on this very much.

[David Matas]

Well, of course this is a constant problem. I mean, we did have a Canadian reporter, Kazemi, who was killed there. It's much more difficult for reporters to access violations where the reporters are personally risking their lives to do so. It's a lot easier to report on situations in Israel, where there's a free media, than it is in Iran.

What we have to do in these sorts of situations is to rely on information however we get it, not just on the media.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Wayne Marston]

Thank you.

Mr. Benskin, please.