Mr. Speaker, I will start by giving a little history of the way in which members of the House have dealt with issues relating to anti-Semitism which overflowed inevitably into the BDS movement, and to events such as the annual campus Israeli Apartheid Week which takes place in February.
Going back to the 40th Parliament, two Parliaments ago, a group of parliamentarians came together and formed a coalition called the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism, or CPCCA. For what it is worth, if one were to use cpcca.ca, one will go to our website, which is still up and contains a report.
This was a multi-party group. We had the co-operation of Conservatives, Liberals, New Democrats, but we did not have the co-operation of the Bloc Québécois, unfortunately. Nonetheless, it included the vast majority of parliamentarians. We operated under a co-chairmanship, with me and Mario Silva, a former Liberal member of Parliament. We were able to work together toward finding what we thought were some useful suggestions as to how Canada could deal with the issue of anti-Semitism.
In fact, Mario Silva and I went on to put together an edited book called Tackling Hate: Combating Antisemitism: The Ottawa Protocol, which contains the protocol and numerous essays by people who participated in that conference. There was then an international conference on anti-Semitism in Ottawa, again co-chaired by Mario Silva and me, which took place in 2010, and the report was issued in 2011.
All of this is by way of trotting out my bona fides on the issue of anti-Semitism. However, I say this because I want to focus on the boycott, divest, sanctions movement as, in practice, something which borders on anti-Semitism. In the hands of some people, sometimes it lapses over into anti-Semitism. For others, it is a cover for anti-Semitism. Then there are others whom I think are involved and do not intend to be anti-Semitic but tend to be anti-Zionist. At any rate, they want to sharply clip Israel's wings and are perhaps innocent of how they are providing unintentional aid and comfort to those who are anti-Semitic.
Let me be clear about the issues that deal with Zionism, the existence of Israel, and the Jewish people.
Israel came into existence following the Second World War as a lifeboat, a safe place for the Jews of the world who had discovered what could happen to them in the worst-case scenario when there was no safe haven. I am, of course, speaking of the European Nazi Holocaust, which wiped out 6.5 million Jews along with many other people. However, with 6.5 million Jews, it is the paradigmatic Holocaust of all time. It is the one that serves as a symbol for all other forms of mass race-based, ethnic-based, or religious-based hatred.
Israel was the place where people could go and know that if nowhere else in the world, they could be fully accepted and have a home. That is the fundamental basis for the existence of Israel. It is the basis for the citizenship law of Israel, which says that any person who is a Jew can go to Israel and make an Aliyah, which means to immigrate to Israel. The definition of Jew is the same one that was used in Hitler's 1938 Nuremberg law. The logic is that if this is how those who sought to destroy us define us, then we know that this is the group that must be protected. Therefore, anybody who has a parent who is a Jew, even if they are not a practising Jew, is able to immigrate to Israel under that law. That is the purpose of the existence of Israel.
However, Israel's existence has been opposed from the very beginning of the country, in 1948, by a number of neighbouring states. A review of what has happened in the decade since reveals that the neighbouring states have bit by bit come to accept that Israel has a right to exist. Therefore, Jordan and Egypt now recognize Israel's right to exist and have diplomatic relations. I will not suggest that they are friends, but they are willing to recognize each other's existence, which is not true for Lebanon. As for Syria, there really is no government of Syria at the moment, but it was traditionally a hardline anti-Israel state.
There are other states that are not merely anti-Israel. No one can say this about any other country in the world, but Israel is the state that was singled out as a target for potential nuclear attack by the Saddam regime in Iraq. It attempted to prepare a nuclear weapon and have the ability to deliver it. It based its legitimacy largely on its ability to destroy Israel and wipe out the Jewish people in Israel. The building of a nuclear weapon that could be used against Israel was also attempted by the Assad regime in Syria. Iran has also spoken very openly about using a nuclear program and a missile development program to wipe out Israel and commit genocide.
Therefore, when Professor Cotler, my former colleague and an esteemed parliamentarian and human rights advocate, spoke in the last few parliaments about Israel being the only country that is threatened with genocide, along with its Jewish people, this is what he was talking about, nuclear annihilation. That is something that is not respectable in any quarter ever, but it is amazing that it is actually treated in some quarters as being respectable when dealing with Israel. That does mean Israel is singled out from the rest of the world.
Turning now from Israel's existential threat, a threat that does not exist for any other country in the world, and then saying that Israel, as it attempts to defend itself, is a country that is somehow engaging in a kind of apartheid is not merely offensive; it is obviously, indeed comically, contrary to the facts of the situation.
I do not mean to imply when I say this that everything that Israel does is acceptable. There are lots of people, including lots of Jews and lots of Israelis, who are very critical of the way their government acts in this or that matter. Thank goodness Israel has a free press and a robust democratic political culture in which these things can be debated. That induces a remarkable degree of moderation.
Even if and when the State of Israel acts immoderately, I do not think it is reasonable to do what many of the people who are involved in the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement expect. They expect that Jews have a moral obligation to stand up and make the same kind of caveat statement that I just made. That is not a reasonable expectation.
Would it be reasonable vis-à-vis the People's Republic of China's policies in Tibet? It is effectively engaged in trying to destroy an ancient culture through mass immigration. It suppresses any expression of dissent. It destroys monasteries. Would it be reasonable for us to say that people in Canada of Chinese descent have a moral obligation to get involved and condemn that, to constantly put caveats on it? No, we recognize that it is legitimate to be Chinese, culturally, and not to be regarded as somehow morally responsible for the actions of the People's Republic of China.
I will add that I do not mean to compare the State of Israel and its actions to what the People's Republic of China does. I not think the People's Republic of China, although it is the home to arguably the greatest and most ancient of the surviving cultures in the world, is part of the family of respectable nations that conduct human rights to a standard that is acceptable to the world, whereas Israel does. I simply want to make the point that this expectation of collective responsibility is the very same argument that has been used to justify every form of anti-Semitism throughout the past 2,000 years.
I have only a minute to conclude, but I want to make the point that it is reasonable for us to be critical of every country in the world. I was the chair of the international human rights subcommittee for seven years. All parties worked together by consensus in that subcommittee, and we were willing to look at human rights abuses in any country. I can say that Israel does not stand out as being anywhere close to the front tier of human rights abusers in the world. It is nowhere near that, yet it gets singled out, unlike any other country, for this BDS movement on campuses in Canada and for the atrocious, outrageous Israel apartheid week that occurs every year. It is shameful. It is a blot. I think we should absolutely feel free to condemn this.
