Ignore It, It'll Go Away : There the Civil Liberties Groups Always Have the Right Solution

"We are opposed to this, but that's not because we don't think Holocaust denial is egregious and terrible and it's not because we don't think it's harmful. It's because we don't think that the criminal law is the way to approach it."

"We are talking about putting people in prison for things that they said."

"We're singling out a particular historical genocide and tragedy and protecting it with the criminal law in a way that we're not doing for others."

"If you look at other countries that have Holocaust denial laws, including Germany, big shocker, they still have antisemites. They still have problems with racism and antisemitism, so this is not an effective way to tackle the problem."

Cara Zwibel, director, fundamental freedoms program, Canadian Civil Liberties Association

Yad Vashem    Israel

"As Canada and the world continue to witness a rise in antisemitism and Holocaust ignorance and trivialization, now more than ever we expect our government leaders to support efforts to combat Jew-hatred, particularly through Holocaust education."

"Once passed, this funding and amended Criminal Code will have a lasting positive impact in the Jewish community and the fight against antisemitism."

Michael Levitt, President and CEO, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center

 

"Our government takes the fight against antisemitism and all hate crimes very seriously. No Jewish Canadian should be subjected to racism and hateful rhetoric that has no place in our country."

"Freedom of expression is a fundamental freedom protected under the Charter. Like all rights and freedoms, it is not absolute and may be subject to reasonable limits under the Charter."

David Taylor, spokesperson, Canadian Ministry of Justice

Thousands of people demonstrated in downtown Montreal as participants chanted pro-Palestinian slogans. (Louis de Belleval/Radio-Canada)

Civil liberties groups much prefer unfettered-by-law freedoms for the general public to voice their opinion on topics that run the gamut from benign to violently incendiary. History has proven time and again that these freedoms to ignore hateful rhetoric have a way to begin creeping into the general consciousness. Repeat a slander often enough with firm conviction and recruits to such an ideology emerge from the shadows. If the legal system takes no notice, then injurious falsehoods have a habit of becoming popularly accepted and eventually a social more of the day.

The ravening beast that was the propaganda arm of the Third Reich didn't have to work too hard to convince the German public that the Jewish population living among them as proud German-Jews were in actual fact, scum of the earth, shielding their true character under the guise of reputable, trusted citizens of the country. When any discerning German of intelligence knew that Jews did their best to live up to the tenets of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

There is a well established undercurrent of Jew-hatred alive and well everywhere in the world, a renaissance of antisemitism whose viral infectability keeps spreading and gaining enthusiastic adherents. In the multicultural melting pot of Canadian citizenry which has undergone an alteration of immense proportions in the last few decades where immigrants bring with them the social culture of the countries they have left; among them a strong current of hatred of Jews.

Although now citizens of Canada, enjoined to adapt to Canadian values where people of all backgrounds, ethnicities and religious convictions are presumably equally accepted and esteemed, this aspect of Canadian culture is swept aside by the virulence of resentment against a self-imposed victimhood ascribed to Palestinians who resolutely refuse to recognize the State of Israel, infected with hatred for Jews 'occupying' their ancestral homeland, legally and under the auspices of general UN agreement.

Continued and continual marches, protests, public denunciations, mount the streets of the cities of Canada, spreading a lethal hatred against Jews; Holocaust denial is one of the weapons in this war of demonization of Jews and of Israel. A country like the Islamic Republic of Iran which the former Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper severed diplomatic ties with, expends an enormous amount of energy promoting Holocaust denial and violent repudiation of Israel.

Iran has its tentacles firmly in place through the activities of its proxy militias, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, hard at work infiltrating civil society worldwide through its supporters. Protests against the 'occupation' of Palestine (an ancient Roman-inspired designation of Judaean lands, co-opted by Arabs originally from Jordan, Syria and Egypt presenting themselves as the original inhabitants and current representatives of 'Palestine') take place in Canadian cities with the flags of the PLO and Hamas, considered terrorist groups in Canada, in plain sight.

So, the truth of the matter is, the Civil Liberty groups balk at the very idea of limiting the opportunity for Jew-haters to continue expressing their virulent hatred, disliking the penalty to be instituted under Canadian law for denying the fact that a fascist, war-mongering country institutionalized a genocidal program of annihilation of Europe's Jews with meticulous attention to detail and complete impunity. 

Their spokeswoman speaks from a pulpit of sanctimonious righteousness, preferring to look past the reality that Jews view a resurgence of the methods that made the Holocaust possible, occurring before their very eyes.

Bodies lie piled against the walls of a crematory room in a German concentration camp in Dachau, Germany. The bodies were found by U.S. Seventh Army troops who took the camp on May 14, 1945