February 4, 2019: Antisemitic Toronto ‘newspaper’ convicted of spreading hate

By Michael Regenstreif

January 24 was a good day in the fight against hatred in Canada.

That day, James Sears, the editor and principal writer of a free-distribution “newspaper” in Toronto called Your Ward News (YWN), and LeRoy St. Germane, its publisher, were convicted in the Ontario Court of Justice of relentlessly and criminally promoting hatred against women and Jews in the pages of YWN.

I put the word newspaper within quotation marks in the preceding paragraph because YWN – which has published for more than a decade and claims to distribute more than 305,000 copies of each issue – is not a real newspaper. The editions of YWN that I’ve ever looked at are simply and purely hate literature. In rendering his judgement, Justice Richard Blouin, who examined 22 issues of YWN published between 2015 and 2018, said, “YWN repeatedly and consistently dehumanized Jews and women. Both men were fully aware of the unrelenting promotion of hate.”

Jews and women, as per the conviction, are the most frequent targets of YWN’s hatred but others include virtually all peoples of colour, the LGBTQ community, non-white immigrants, anti-racism activists, and mainstream politicians. Politicians like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, YWN says, are under the domination and control of rich Zionists and Jewish groups. Holocaust denial, Hitler-glorification and the promotion of raping women are also hallmarks of YWN.

Since 2016, Canada Post has not permitted our mail system to deliver YWN.

So, too, are not-so-veiled threats of violence. After anti-racism activists Warren and Lisa Kinsella helped raise awareness about YWN, Sears wrote, “there was the chance that some hothead who cares deeply about me and my family would lose it and do something illegal, like bludgeon the Kinsella’s to death (sic).” In a separate court case, Justice Dan Moore found Sears not guilty of threatening the Kinsellas.

Sears refers to himself in the pages of YWN as “Dr. James Sears.” However, the College of Physicians and Surgeons stripped Sears of his licence to practice medicine in 1992 after he was convicted of sexually assaulting three of his patients. In the years since, Sears has adopted a persona of “Dimitri the Lover” under which he claims he can teach men how to seduce any woman.

Sears has also been a perennial fringe candidate for political office. In the 2018 mayoralty election in Toronto, he received 680 votes – about 479,000 less than John Tory, who won re-election). Also last year, he ran to be the MPP here in Ottawa Centre – a riding he apparently chose because incumbent Yasir Naqvi was then the attorney general of Ontario – receiving just 92 of the 64,403 votes cast.

On being found guilty, Sears likened his conviction to that of Jesus in the New Testament and said he expected to be crucified for his principles. In reality, though, the conviction of Sears and St. Germane reinforces the concept that free speech does not extend to hate speech.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) released a statement from Noah Shack, CIJA’s Toronto vice-president, applauding the conviction “which sends a clear message that those who promote hate will be held accountable. For years, YWN has been peddling antisemitic conspiracy theories, misogyny, homophobia, and racism. We … hope that this ruling will mark the end of YWN.”

CIJA further pointed out that YWN is also published online and called on the federal government to launch a national strategy to combat online hate. “We can preserve free speech while protecting Canadians from those who demonize and slander entire communities.”

While some free-speech absolutists have decried the conviction, we have too often seen the resulting actions of individuals and groups who buy into the kind of extreme hatred preached by YWN. Hate speech should never be seen as free speech.

January 21, 2019: Irwin Cotler nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

By Michael Regenstreif

Irwin Cotler has been nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.

A legendary professor of law at McGill University in Montreal, Cotler is a familiar figure in Ottawa from his 16-year stint from 1999 until 2015 as a Liberal MP and for his cabinet tenure as minister of justice and attorney general.

Cotler, who served as president of the Canadian Jewish Congress from 1980 to 1983, founded the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights after leaving Parliament and has been nominated for the Nobel for his life’s work as one of the world’s leading human rights activists – particularly as an international human rights lawyer acting on behalf of political prisoners.

Among the most notable “prisoners of conscience” that Cotler has fought for is Nelson Mandela, one of the world’s most inspirational figures, who went on to serve as South Africa’s first post-apartheid president. Another is Natan Sharansky, a Jewish leader in the Soviet Union who went on to serve as a member of Israel’s Knesset and cabinet minister – and who just recently retired after a long tenure as chair of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

Sharansky is a vocal supporter of Cotler’s nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. In a letter of support to the Nobel committee, Sharansky refers to Cotler’s “tireless efforts on my behalf when I was a political prisoner in the former Soviet Union (1977-1986). By bringing my case, like that of many other such victims of injustice whose cases he championed, to the attention of the international community, Professor Cotler played a direct and central role in my release.”

Another supporter of Cotler’s nomination is Saad Eddin Ibrahim, the Egyptian founder of the Arab Human Rights Organization, who was arrested for treason and jailed in 2000 by the Mubarak regime, and who credits Cotler’s intervention in his case for helping to secure his acquittal in 2003.

Cotler has also been at forefront of the fight for justice for Jews who were expelled or forced to flee from Arab and Muslim countries in the years following the establishment of the State of Israel. In a 2007 interview, Cotler told me that Jewish refugees were expunged from the human rights agenda over the decades as well as from the agendas of any peace talks that have taken place.

He has also been a major figure in helping us understand what he refers to as a “new kind of antisemitism”: antisemitism that masquerades as anti-Zionism and targets “the collective Jew among the nations.”

Paul Martin, prime minister of Canada while Cotler was justice minister and attorney general, is another supporter of the Nobel nomination.

“I can personally attest to the fact that Professor Irwin Cotler is relentless in his campaign for human rights for all individuals. His efforts deserve to be encouraged and granting him the Nobel Peace Prize will have enormous benefit in the continuing fight for freedom and universal human rights,” wrote Martin in his letter to the Nobel Committee.

This was not the first time Cotler has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Searching the web, I found references to previous nominations in 2008, 2010 and 2016 and surely the Nobel jury has a difficult time in making its choice each year – last year there were 331 candidates – but Irwin Cotler would be a most worthy recipient.

December 10, 2018: We can’t be complacent as hate crimes increase

By Michael Regenstreif

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rose in the House of Commons on November 7 to offer Canada’s apology for turning away Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany on board the MS St. Louis in 1939 – 254 of whom were ultimately murdered in the Holocaust after the ship returned to Europe – he offered a chilling statistic about antisemitism in today’s Canada:

“According to the most recent figures, 17 per cent of all hate crimes in Canada target Jewish people. Far higher per capita than any other group,” he said.

Trudeau noted manifestations of antisemitism including Holocaust denial, graffiti attacks on Jewish institutions, BDS-related intimidation on college and university campuses, and said, “Discrimination and violence against Jewish people in Canada and around the world continues at an alarming rate.”

While Trudeau’s apology was scheduled well in advance to take place just before the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the anti-Jewish pogrom in Nazi Germany and Austria that signalled the start of the Holocaust, it also took place while Jewish communities around the world were in shock from the antisemitic Shabbat morning massacre at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in which 11 worshippers were murdered – the single worst case of antisemitic violence in American history.

Trudeau pledged to bolster the Security Infrastructure Program so that synagogues and other places at risk for hate crimes are better protected.

“We must guard our communities and institutions against the kinds of evils that took hold in the hearts of so many more than 70 years ago, for they did not end with the war,” he said.

On November 29, three weeks after Trudeau spoke in Parliament, Statistics Canada released its report on police-reported hate crimes for 2017 and the figure for antsemitic hate crimes had actually worsened from the earlier statistic the prime minister quoted.

Hate crimes against Jews accounted for 18 per cent of all hate crimes reported to police in Canada in 2017 (while Jews represent only about one per cent of Canada’s population). Ontario and British Columbia were the provinces with the largest increases of hate crimes against Jews.

By contrast, hate crimes against Muslims accounted for 17 per cent of all hate crimes reported to police in Canada in 2017, while there are about three times as many Muslims than Jews in Canada. It must be noted that the single worst hate crime in Canada in 2017 was the massacre at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City when six worshippers mere murdered and 19 others were wounded.

Other groups that suffered from significant numbers of police-reported hate crimes in 2017 included Black Canadians (16 per cent) and the LGBTQ community (10 per cent).

While Canada is one of the world’s most enlightened and highly educated countries, it is clear that antisemitism and other forms of irrational hatred have not disappeared in the decades since the Holocaust and civil rights movement – that the situation continues to worsen.

In response to the latest figures from Statistics Canada, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) CEO Shimon Koffler Fogel released a statement expressing alarm about the “spike in hate crimes against the Jewish community and other groups in Canada. It is disturbing to think an antisemitic hate crime takes place every 24 hours in our country. History demonstrates that those who target Jews and other minorities pose a threat to society as a whole. All Canadians should be vigilant in standing against hate.”

The CIJA statement went on to call on the federal government to expand the Security Infrastructure Program to cover training costs; to develop a national strategy to combat online hate; and to increase the capacity of law enforcement agencies to combat hate crimes – including enhancing measures against hate speech.

CIJA began a campaign on the first night of Chanukah urging members of the Jewish community to contact the federal government in support of those proposals. It is important that we must not be complacent.

Update to previous column

My November 26 column (written on November 16) discussed the fragility of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition after former defence minister Avigdor Liberman took his Yisrael Beiteinu party out of the coalition with several other ministers and parties threatening to follow suit. The other parties – most notably Education Minister Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home – backed down, thus preserving the coalition’s slim majority, now at 61 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, for the time being.