Jewish York U Prof Defends Harpoon Siddiqui Against "False Accusation" of Jew-Hate

This letter to the editor appeared in yesterday's Toronto Star:

Re: Jewish people more than a voting bloc, June 30

During the 2011 federal election our Jewish family lived in Thornhill, a highly contested riding between the Liberals and the Conservatives, where, according to Statistics Canada, 32.8 per cent of the population is Jewish. We received several robocalls and campaign literature from Peter Kent, then minister of the environment. The content had no bearing on anything barely related to Canada; it was 100 per cent about Harper’s total and unqualified support for the Netanyahu government.  

Who is the one who thinks Canadian Jews are a voting bloc wholly fixated on Israel and with no attachment to Canada? Is it the federal Conservatives who demonstrate that through their actions, or Haroon Siddiqui who simply referred to the Harper government’s use of foreign policy as a tool to get ethnic votes as a well-documented, and also ugly, fact about this government? 

Rosie DiManno’s suggestion that Siddiqui (without mentioning his name) is engaging in anti-Semitic language because he supposedly portrays “Just Jews who . . . put Israel’s interests over Canada’s interests” is unacceptable. After publishing an article that defames one of its best columnists, the least one should expect now from the Toronto Star is to publish an apology from DiManno for making false accusations of hate.

Ricardo Grinspun, Toronto

Ricardo may be Jewish, but he's also an academic with a hate-on for Israel. Earlier this year, the Globe and Mail printed this Grinspun diatribe:

Lest the public get the idea that all Canadian Jews are joining in the euphoria of Stephen Harper and Benjamin Netanyahu’s mutual adulation: Many are not. 

We stand outraged that the Canadian government is ignoring its own professed policies of condemnation of illegal settlements and support for Palestinian rights. We understand that the well-being of both Israelis and Palestinians depends on stopping Israeli policies of occupation, expropriation, displacement and incarceration, as well as ending the hatred, rights abuses, terror and violence from all sides. 

Both peoples’ aspirations will only be achieved with dramatically different approaches and, sadly, Canada stands in the way. 

I am full of hope that Canadians will think better the next time they head for federal elections. 

Ricardo Grinspun, Toronto

Sadly, Zion-loather Grinspun's "hope" for change  may be realized come election time. And, tragically, once that ninny Justin Trudeau is in charge, nothing will stand in Canada's way of standing with useful idiots like Ricardo.

Update: Re the "illegal settlements" trope purveyed by Chomsky, Grinspun and other Zion-loathers:

Another charge is that settlements are “illegal.” The United States has never adopted this position and legal scholars have noted that a country acting in self-defense may seize and occupy territory when necessary to protect itself. Moreover, the occupying power may require, as a condition for its withdrawal, security measures designed to ensure its citizens are not menaced again from that territory.  

According to Eugene Rostow, a former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in the Johnson Administration, Resolution 242 gives Israel a legal right to be in the West Bank. The resolution “allows Israel to administer the territories” it won in 1967 “until 'a just and lasting peace in the Middle East' is achieved,” Rostow wrote in The New Republic (10/21/91). During the debate on the resolution, he added, “speaker after speaker made it clear that Israel was not to be forced back to the 'fragile' and 'vulnerable' [1949] Armistice Demarcation Lines.”