As someone who was born a Jew, I have strong feelings about any criticism of Israel, my assumed homeland. The problem is, I don't agree with the general tone of the Israeli gov't that non-Jews must be treated as 3rd class citizens because of the potential, perceived and real threats from those non-Jews.

By restricting certain types of criticisms of Israel, all Jews become targets for those that oppose Israeli policies, because it is assumed that all Jews support Israeli policies. This type of "you are either with us or against us" attitude, also forces one to take sides, despite the need to be conciliatory and understanding of both sides positions. Limiting criticism will only entrench both sides and increase, not decrease anti-Semitism in the world today.

This is just an attempt to label all criticism of Israel as racism. You can be as anti-Canadian as you want in Canada but don't you dare criticize Israel. I wonder where all those free speech advocates (hypocrites) are hiding now, I guess it's only free speech if you agree with them.

This article avoids dealing with the real purpose of this parliamentary committee, which is to attempt to discredit Palestine solidarity and "criminalize" it. Too bad the BCCLA decided not to deal with this in this article.

I would rather want anti-Semites to have free speech, just to see who the bastards are. Censorship, drives anti-Semites and racists underground, where they tend to grow and fester.

Formerly an anti-Semite was somebody who hated Jews because they were Jews and had a Jewish soul. But nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by Jews.

Kind of like how a “racist” is anyone winning an argument with a leftist.

Have comments been closed for this thread? What happened to the comment I submitted on Sunday? Has it been censored? If so, this is evidence of the extreme censorship of any comments that make reference to Israeli violations of international law that is already firmly established in Canadian society.

OK, then let's try again, one point at a time, to find out what is permissible discourse in this forum. This parliamentarian initiative to try to employ "hate speech laws" which conflate criticism of the war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity routinely commited by the Israeli government with racism, is part of a longstanding initiative by the US, Canadian and US governments to weaken the norms of international law which are enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, Geneva Conventions, Nuremburg Code, and numerous other international human rights conventions. By lauding the systematic, deliberate, consistent, and gross violations of virtually every law within these codes by the Israeli government as exemplary behavior which expresses the values of Canadian and American society, a lesson is being sent out to all the people of these nations that ruthless aggressive imperialism and colonial occupation are acceptable and admirable conduct for nations. This generates the credibility field which the US, Israeli and Canadian governments need to pursue their own war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity with support from their citizenry.

Instalment #2
The entire process is a carefully crafted exercise in the manipulation of mass belief to further grand chessboard machinations worthy of Machiavelli - machinations like the overthrow of the principled populist democrat government and kidnapping of Aristide in Haiti, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the planned unprovoked aggression against Iran, all blatant violations of international law, and acts of state terrorism.
If we go back in history the list of violations of international law by Canada, the USA, the UK and Israel are legion and highly egregious. By employing the racism canard and evoking the memory of the sacrosant official characterisation of the Jewish Holocaust, which whether rightly or wrongly, many sane and well educated people have reason to believe did not go down precisely as represented (like most official versions of history) the global military industrial financial elite who control the mass media are able to effectively silence those who strive to draw attention to the reality of Middle East history and events, suppress free thought and self expression, and maintain a monopoly on public discourse as dished out by the corporate and state propaganda apparatus through the compliant mass media.

Third installment
This monopoly on public discourse is essential, because if individual free thinkers were permitted access to all literature, websites and lectures without serious consequences, and to give free voice to their thoughts and concerns regarding Israeli, Canadian and US war crimes and crimes against humanity, then the entire constructed "deck of cards" which manufactures public consent and enthusiastic support for the governments agenda of continuing current and planned future violations of international law would come tumbling down. Note that many books are either effectively illegal or banned in Canada, many speakers that challenge orthodox dogma such as British Member of Parliament George Galloway are not permitted into Canada to give lecture tours, and any website that permits freedom of speech on Middle East topics is shut down by B'nai Brith through abuse of the court process.

Fourth installment
To browbeat and corral people into the strongly held persuasion that Israeli state conduct is justified, legal, and admirable, and that criticism of Israel is a repugnant crime worse than murder, the strong feelings of abhorrence that have been systematically cultivated for many decades around the Holocaust Story is employed as a cover for the twisted logic which rationalises Orwellian thought control legislation. Thought control legislation that makes any questioning of state orthodoxy concerning even the smallest detail of this "official history" a matter of utmost criminality - a virtual repetition of the Ultimate Crime itself. Thus a pattern, a morphogenic field if you like, for the archetype of "officially sanctioned history", and the questioning of it, even in the smallest detail, as the "ultimate crime" punishable by total silencing, ostracisation, demonisation, and a life term in solitary confinement is established.
The constantly repeated ritual of asserting that no crime can begin to compare with the questioning of the officially sanctioned version of events concerning the Jewish Holocaust, Israel, Palestine, 911, Canada's mission in Afghanistan, or the owners of the central governments of the world, carves this meme into the hive mind. Tying it directly into one of the most deeply emotional issues of our time - namely the attempted systematic extermination of a racially defined group of people, a historical event that has been reinforced countless times in movies, books, media, speeches, school curriculums, etc as the ultimate and defining act of historical evil, is a deliberate strategy to focus all the horror and revulsion that countless similar acts should evoke into this one contained event, and then to harness these emotions to rationalise an interminable sequence of similarly heinous deeds of escalating proportions. The diabolical logic and method is too dark and convoluted for the majority of simple, innocent, ill educated people to comprehend, or even accept when it is spelled out to them.