B'NAI B'RITH CANADA ~ HARDWIRING HATRED INTO THE CANADIAN PSYCHE

Is Your Government Breeding Bolsheviks?

B’nai Brith’s brazen attempt

to hardwire Hatred and Censorship

into the Canadian Psyche

By Arthur Topham

August 7, 2009

In his 2006 book, The Synagogue of Satan, the British writer Andrew C. Hitchcock has a lot to say about the house of Rothschild. In fact his book is a revelation of our times; the chronology of a crime syndicate that began in 1760 when Mayer Amschel Bauer took over his father’s money lending business in Frankfurt, Germany and changed his name from Bauer to Rothschild, a German word meaning “Red Shield” and hung the symbolic hexagram that now adorns the Israeli flag above his door.

The last 250 years is basically a record of the Rothschild’s devastating effects upon the people and the planet; one that has now brought our 20th Century civilization to the brink of either global disaster, or, should we awake in time to this imminent end and act accordingly, the final dismantling and dissolution of this infamous house of hell that’s been the root cause of humanity’s discontent for the past two and a half centuries.

Andrew Hitchcock’s book[1] in some respects parallel’s the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in that it too is a road map like the Protocols only one that can lead us out of the wasteland of the present times rather than further into a gloomy and foreboding Big Brother future such as the Protocols reveal.

While Hitchcock’s first and foremost purpose is to document the accomplished deeds of this Rothschild house of horror as they pertain to global finance, politics and media, his particular expose of the secret masonic society of B’nai Brith, one of the many Rothschild enterprises designed to assist in its agenda for world domination, should be of special interest to Canadians; especially those Canadians who have managed to break free to some degree from the mind-numbing influence of the Rothschild~controlled mainstream media and are relatively able to view, somewhat objectively, the ongoing machinations of this organization; one initially set up and funded in order to present to the world a viewpoint fundamentally Talmudic, cabalistic and atheistic in scope, nature and purpose.

Prime Minister attends the B’nai Brith Canada 2006 Award of Merit Dinner

In the USA when Americans think of B’nai Brith they automatically think of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) the now powerful, aggressive arm of B’nai Brith International originally formed in 1913 by the Rothschild Jews in reaction to a Jewish business man who was convicted of raping and murdering one of his young employees and actually put in jail for his crime.*

This was considered an outrage by the then nascent Zionists and so they conspired to come up with an organization that would eventually become the Goliath of gutter journalism, spewing forth volumes of vituperative slander and malignant lies upon any individual, group or organization that ever dared to challenge the tendentious tenets of the Rothschild empire.

Noam Chomsky,"The ADL is one of the ugliest, most powerful pressure groups in the U.S."

I believe Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, put it rather succinctly when he once described the ADL as “…one of the ugliest, most powerful pressure groups in the U.S…. Its primary commitment is to use any technique, however dishonest and disgraceful, in order to defame and silence and destroy anybody who dares to criticize the Holy State (’Israel’).”

But of course here in Canada, we being the more genteel, tea drinking members of the British colonies, were presented with yet another apparently benign version of this same organization operating under the simple title of B’nai Brith Canada. Projecting the face of an honorable, distinguished, responsible and worthy service-oriented organization their website discreetly states:

B’nai Brith Canada is the independent voice of the Jewish community, representing its interests nationwide to government, NGO’s and the wider Canadian public.

Since 1875, it has been respected for its groundbreaking work on matters relating to antisemitism, racism and human rights, its strong advocacy on the pressing issues of the day, and the important social services it provides.

The organization is maintained through the generosity of grassroots Canadians who value its independence and integrity, as well as its non-partisan, inclusive approach. [all bold is mine. A.T.]

A sampling of B’nai Brith’s agencies and programs “designed to assist the community and foster goodwill and understanding amongst all Canadians” consists of the following:

* League for Human Rights [the agency which filed the current section 13 “hate crime” complaint against RadicalPress.com. A.T.]

* Anti-Hate Desk

* Annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents

* Institute for International Affairs

* Canadian Israel Public Affairs Committee (CIPAC)

* Government Relations Office

* Communications Department

* Legal Desk

* Campus Outreach Program

* Young Leadership Development Groups

* Network of B’nai Brith Lodges

* Jewish Canada Information Service

Meanwhile, back at the ranch though, this well-concealed Rothschild front organization is mainly focused, as one can see from its list of agencies and objectives, on fulfilling the very same mandate as its American cousin, the ADL; that is, stifling and smothering any and all criticism of the Rothschild agenda for silence and slavery of the masses under its profound and poignant program for global hegemony in all matters related to the human experience.

In the case of Canada, we’re now witnessing both the long term machinations and the desired effects of this organization in the current battle building between the forces for Internet repression and anti-free speech and the counter forces slowly beginning to realize the ultimate aim of Canada’s mendacious desire to sustain the shocking, repulsive piece of human rights legislation known as Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

It is becoming abundantly clear to more and more Canadians who spend time online and in the blogosphere, B’nai Brith Canada’s open agenda as a Rothschild sentinel and watchdog is to heavily influence our federal government’s position with respect to the racist state policies of Israel and it’s program for genocide of the Palestinian people of the Middle East which also includes stealing more and more Arab territory for its own people and purpose.

As such, B’nai Brith Canada has been instrumental in forcing into the lives of all free Canadians what those of us in the fight for free speech now recognize as the one primary tool being used to silence critical debate of either the actions of the state of Israel or any other relevant discussions concerning the nature of the Rothschild cabal and its political ideology known as Zionism.

This current repressive law de jour is known amongst those in the free speech movement as section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act and in typical Zionist style, i.e. using deception of the general public as its Mossadic modus operandi.

B’nai Brith Canada has been instrumental in working the crowds of politicians and law makers and using their influential power of the purse combined with their sycophantic lackeys and supporters in the Zionist media to slowly and surely entrench into Canadian culture the stereotypical, fundamental precepts that eventually lead to a nation of mind-controlled morons who ultimately cannot distinguish truth from deception or freedom from slavery.

As the former writer, journalist and founder of Greenpeace International Robert Hunter once remarked in his profound and prophetic book, The Storming of the Mind, we’ve been conditioned to live in “comfortable concentration camps” and think of ourselves as free, independent human beings.

Of course B’nai Brith Canada with all the candour of a condor will automatically begin to shriek and hiss and bear its fangs accusing this writer of being “anti-Semitic” and a “hater of Jews and citizens of Israel” and whatever other epithet that they can dredge out from their mindless, memorized plethora of programmed slander they’re so adept at adopting whenever someone calls them on their ongoing commission of crimes against the majority of the gentile population of Canada.

But before listening and falling prey to their endless anagrams of hex-like hatred I would caution Canadians to pause and consider what Mr. Hitchcock has to say about how B’nai Brith concocted their plan to instill these false beliefs into the minds of young and old Canadians alike.

Referring to Andrew Hitchcock’s chronology for the year 1988 he tells us:

“The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), initiate a nationwide competition for law students to draft anti-hate legislation designed to protect minority groups. [read Zionist Jews. A.T.]

That competition is won by a man named, Joseph Ribakoff, whose proposals stipulate that not only must hate motivated violence be banned, but any words which stimulate: suspicion; friction; hate; and possible violence, must also be criminalized.

This ADL prize-winning paper suggests that not only should state-agencies [ read Canada’s Human Rights Commissions and Tribunals. A.T.] monitor and restrict free speech in general, but they should also censor all films that criticize identifiable groups [unless of course they happen to be the popular ones the Jews hate the most like the Germans (Nazis) and the Muslims and the Christians. A.T.]

Furthermore, even if the person making the statement can justify it, for example Christians criticizing homosexuality because the Bible expressly forbids it, Ribakoff asserts that the truth is to be no defense in court.

The only proof a court will need in order to secure a conviction of hate speech is that something has been said, and a minority group or member of such group has felt emotionally damaged as a result of such criticism.

[This is practically verbatim the text contained in the Canadian Human Rights Act, section 13. and currently being used by Harry Abrams and the BBC to charge me and RadicalPress.com with “hate” crimes. A.T.]

Therefore, under these proposals which the ADL will have forced into law all over the world less than 15 years later, through their bought and paid for politicians and media, Jesus Christ would have been arrested as a hate criminal.

This law is designed to protect the Rothschild conspiracy from being revealed in that if you criticize the Rothschild’s criminal cabal, you will be targeted as anti-Semitic, and thus risk imprisonment [and/or steep fines and a loss of your website and a reputation as a hatemonger. A.T.].

It is also interesting to note say, for example, a Rabbi torches his synagogue to collect insurance money because it is in need of repair, as opposed to someone else perpetrating the crime who was found to have an interest in anti-establishment media, the later would receive a stiffer sentence for the same act.”

To conclude I will only say that as one can easily see the ADL’s plans have taken firm root in the collective mind of Canadians thanks to decades of collaborating between the mainstream Rothschild media and the politicians who, due to their own brainwashing, have lent their ignorant albeit earnest support to the Zionist effort to instill in us all these false concepts of “hatred” and “contempt”.

The final result of all of this shady, unscrupulous sabotage of Canada’s civic and federal laws is, of course, a burgeoning bureaucracy of Zionist created Bolsheviks who’ve been placidly and surreptitiously placed in these ‘quasi-judicial” entities known to us as “human rights” commissions and tribunals.

Their primary purpose is to enforce the agenda of the Rothschild’s synogogue of satan upon an unwary and uniformed public; one misinformed for so long that they are for all intents of purpose unable now to grasp the full import of what is happening to their former legal right to the fundamental freedoms all Canadians once trusted in and enjoyed.

****************************************

* He was originally sentenced to be hung but that was reduced to life in prison thanks to the efforts of influential Jews of the time. The outrage of the non-Jewish community was so great that one of the gentle Gentiles managed to infiltrate the prison and perform the dastardly deed thus satisfying justice.

[1] Andrew Carrington Hitchcock invites you to contact him at: andrewcarringtonhitchcock@hotmail.com or go to his website: http://www.thesynagogueofsatan.com

**********************************

Arthur Topham is the Publisher and Editor of RadicalPress.com. He is currently involved in a free speech battle with the League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada.

He is also in extremely dire need of financial support to sustain this battle with the forces of repression and censorship as he is not able to work during this period of intense litigation with the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the CHR Tribunal. Any donations therefore would be most welcome.

Please see the following url on the Home Page (upper right hand corner) http://www.radicalpress.com/?page_id=657 regarding donations. Also there is a “DONATE” button there for Paypal or here at https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=4466120 . Feel free to use any of them if you can help out. Thanks.

Arthur welcomes all feedback to his articles and can be reached at radical@radicalpress.com .

For the Full Monty on the complaint case involving RadicalPress.com and B’nai Brith Canada please see: http://www.radicalpress.com/?page_id=995

Thanks to Snippits and Snappits where I first read this post. Check her out!
Source: Snippits and Snappits

CRIMINALIZING CRITISCIM OF ISRAEL IN CANADA

OK CANADIANS, LISTEN UP AND READ THIS PLEASE. THIS EFFECTS NOT ONLY US BUT OUR CHILDREN, GRANDCHILDREN, AND SO ON AND SO FORTH.

Here is a copy of the Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) submission to the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism. It is well worth reading and should be distributed widely. See note below also regarding how to make a submission to the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism. See: Objections to criminalizing the CPCCA definition of anti-Semitism

Independent Jewish Voices (Canada)
submission to the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition
to Combat Anti-Semitism

Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) represents Canadian Jews who share a strong commitment to social justice and universal human rights. We especially promote justice, ethics, and humanity in Israel and Palestine, as well as in Canada.

IJV offers a range of Jewish perspectives which differ from those of the Canadian Jewish Congress, B’nai Brith, the Canada-Israel Committee, and the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy, all of which encourage the view that Judaism and uncritical support for Israeli policies and practices are synonymous.

IJV has chapters in seven cities across Canada (Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton, Winnipeg, and Vancouver) and members in many other Canadian cities.

As Jews, we take true anti-Semitism ~ that is, discrimination and attacks on Jews and Judaism ~ very seriously. However, we reject the false assumptions on which the CPCCA and its efforts are based:

Despite protestations to the contrary, the CPCCA conflates legitimate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism: The CPCCA claims that its purpose is not "really about limiting legitimate criticism of the State of Israel." However its web site says that "calls for the destruction of the State of Israel are inherently antisemitic."

IJV believes that this statement is part of an organized attempt on the part of partisans of Israel to conflate the call for the dismantling of repressive Israeli institutions and ending repressive Israeli practices regarding Palestinians with the physical destruction of the Jewish population of Israel.

The London Declaration states "We are alarmed at the resurrection of the old language of prejudice and its modern manifestations ~ in rhetoric and political action ~ against Jews, Jewish belief and practice and the State of Israel." This is another conflation of criticism of Israel with prejudice against Jews. Our organization is actively involved in the former, while we are adamantly opposed to the latter. There is a fundamental difference between the two.

Independent Jewish Voices includes a broad spectrum of opinion on this issue, ranging from strongly Zionist to strongly anti-Zionist. This diversity of views enriches and deepens our understanding.

As Jews, we hold that free speech includes the right of all people to openly discuss their views on all matters related to the political reality in Israel, including whether or not they should support an ethnocratic state which privileges Jews by imposing brutal discrimination and deploys indiscriminate violence against its indigenous population as well as against its neighbours.

The CPCCA asserts without foundation that "the extent and severity of antisemitism is widely regarded as at its worst level since the end of the Second World War

." There is no evidence of any significant rise in anti-Semitism in Canada or elsewhere. In fact, as Globe and Mail columnist Michael Valpy reported in March 2004, an extensive survey on anti-Semitic attitudes by the Canadian Jewish Congress and the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy found very low levels of anti-Semitism.

We find it very revealing that the CJC chose not to publish this survey and put off our requests for copies of the results. Similarly, the Anti-Defamation League’s 2002 survey of U.S. anti-Semitic attitudes found an almost steady decline in the proportion of Americans who are anti-Semitic from 29% in 1964, to 20% in 1992, to 12% in 1998, with a slight rise to 17% in 2002 ~ just after the massacre that Israeli forces carried out at the Palestinian city of Jenin.

The 2002 ADL survey found that the majority of Americans hold highly positive attitudes toward Jews, and that it was concerns over Israeli war crimes that were generating anti-Semitic attitudes.1

Even these studies are flawed, however, because they confuse individual prejudice with institutionally oppressive anti-Semitism. As Jason Kunin points out, "it's important to distinguish between prejudice and oppression. Prejudice is simply an opinion based on limited information or stereotypes. Everyone has prejudices.

We all have some opinions based on incomplete information….Prejudice can exist at both an ideological level (e.g. "white people are ignorant and mean") and at an individual level (e.g. "I won't vote for that white politician"), but unless that prejudice can also translate into institutional practices that marginalize or exclude, then that prejudice is not oppression but merely a prejudice.

Given the current reality of global white supremacy, neither of the examples I have given above have the potential to oppress." On that basis, he concludes, "Anti-Semitism, pervasive and deadly only a couple generations ago, is no longer a form of oppression."2

What is unprecedented is not the level of anti-Semitism in the world, but rather the rising level of international outrage over Israel’s actions. To reiterate, this is not anti-Semitism, but rather a legitimate, growing expression of concern and moral outrage.

According to the drafters of this initiative, there is a pressing need to respond to what they characterize as the "new anti-Semitism," in which "anti-Zionism is being used as a cover for anti-Semitism." IJV believes that it is legitimate for critics of Israel’s behaviour to describe it as a system of apartheid and to deny the legitimacy of any state that engages in such practices. This is not anti-Semitism of any kind, new or old.

The CPCCA alleges that Canadian Jewish students are particularly ridiculed and intimidated for being Jewish

. For example, its press release claims "Jewish students are being threatened and intimidated to the point that they are not able to express themselves, or are even fearful to wear a Jewish skull cap or star around their necks."

IJV has co-sponsored and participated in a broad range of activities critical of Israeli abuses of Palestinian rights, including Israel Apartheid Week events, tours conducted by the Palestinian Human Rights organization Al Haq, locally-based tours of the Palestinian town of Bi’lin, and demonstrations against the horrific Israeli assault on the people of Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009.

In all those events, pro-Israeli Jewish students as well as Jews generally were welcomed and their comments treated respectfully. By contrast, YouTube has captured a number of incidents in which pro-Israel students barged into demonstrations critical of Israel or mounted provocative counter demonstrations, using the heated arguments with Palestinians and their supporters that their interventions generated as evidence that they were being "intimidated and threatened."3

These were not cases of Jews being attacked for their Judaism, but Palestinians and their supporters arguing back forcefully against belligerent Zionist students trying to suppress their freedom of speech.

Unlike those organizations which seek to stifle open debate about this and related subjects by labelling those who oppose their views as anti-Semitic and seek to punish them for expressing them, IJV actively promotes the rights of all individuals to express themselves freely and without threat of sanction.

By launching such an inquiry, the CPCCA implies that existing human rights mechanisms are not sufficient to address actual incidents of anti-Semitism in Canada.

The Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai Brith have been trying for years to broaden the definition of "hate crimes" to include criticism of Israel. So far, thankfully, they have been unsuccessful.

The CPCCA is just the latest in this attempt to attack free speech and silence criticism of the Israeli government’s oppressive and illegal policies. It is our view that Canada’s existing human rights commissions and criminal code are more than sufficient to deal with actual incidents of anti-Semitism.

The CPCCA implies that those critical of Israeli policies are calling for "the destruction of the State of Israel and its inhabitants."

This tendentious position holds that because of the Holocaust, Jews must have a Jewish state in order to be secure, and that anyone who is critical of the Jewish state and its behaviour must therefore support the destruction of the Jewish people. This is nothing more than classic fear-mongering, designed to divert attention from illegal and unethical policies carried out by the Israeli government. Thankfully, it is carrying less and less weight over time, thanks to its overuse by apologists for Israel.

To be critical of Israeli policies or even to challenge the legitimacy of the existence of a Jewish state is not equivalent to calling for the physical destruction of the State, or advocating genocide against Israeli citizens.

By far the strongest military power in the region, Israel is in no danger of physical destruction. All of its neighbours, with the exception of Iraq, have recognized the state of Israel, and the two main Palestinian political factions, Fatah and Hamas have also recognized the state of Israel Fatah explicitly and Hamas implicitly.

Contrary to the Coalition’s contention that there is a new, virulent form of anti-Semitism spreading across the world, what is new is the unprecedented level of organizing, particularly on campuses, in response to Israel and its actions.

Of particular importance with respect to this issue has been the rise of the organization known as the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, which engages in the kinds of activities that the members of the CPCCA appear determined to stamp out. CAIA’s purpose is to focus attention on the plight of Palestinians living in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories and to generate action to combat what it characterizes as the system of apartheid that exists there.

Discussion about and disagreement over the appropriateness of the term "apartheid" as a descriptor for Israel and the regime that it has created in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is completely legitimate. Our organization has endorsed CAIA and has members who have actively participated in it.

We categorically reject any attempt to describe the activities of CAIA as anti-Semitic and draw the Coalition’s attention to CAIA’s basis of unity, which contains the explicit statement that "We oppose all forms of racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism."

The CPCCA ignores the far greater incidence of hate crimes and discrimination imposed on racialized people in Canada and particularly the racial profiling policies, as well as discrimination against and stereotyping of Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians that is being actively promoted by the governments of Canada, Israel and other western countries in the name of national security.

In Canada, Muslims and Arabs have been subjected to official no fly lists, intrusive surveillance, extraordinary rendition and torture when they travel abroad, and imprisoned without charges under Security Certificates at home.

As the case of Suaad Hagi Mohamud demonstrates, the Canadian government treats our Muslim citizens in a clearly discriminatory manner, often failing to provide them with the same kinds of protections that other Canadians expect as a matter of course when they are abroad.

Largely as a result of the grotesquely ill-conceived "war on terror," racist abuse of and discrimination against Canadian Muslims and Arabs is increasing dramatically. An extensive inquiry into the experiences of Muslim students conducted by the Canadian Federation of Students in 2007 found that many had experienced serious and frequent harassment and abuse both on and off campus.4 There is no similar evidence for the CPCCA’s claim that anti-Semitism is on the rise in Canada.

In summary, it is our view that what is really involved here despite repeated disavowals is an attempt to label criticism of Israel and its behaviour as well as organized efforts to change them as anti-Semitism and to criminalize both.

This Coalition is an illegitimate endeavour. We condemn it for what it is: an effort to whitewash Israeli behaviour and to protect it from both scrutiny and organized opposition.

Signed:

Diana Ralph

Sid Shniad

Co-chairs

Please consider sending a submission to the committee to help ensure that it will not be used to try to silence support for the Palestinians. The deadline is the end of August. Coalition members emails are below.

To Mario Silva, Chair Committee of Inquiry

and to Scott Reid, M.P. and Chair

The Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism
440-C Centre Block, House of Commons Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6

Phone: 613-947-2277 Fax: 613-947-2278 Email: info@cpcca.ca

Reids@parl.gc.ca 613-947-2277

Chair: Mario Silva silvam@parl.gc.ca
Vice- Chair Scott Reid Reids@parl.gc.ca
Hon Carolyn Bennett BenneC@parl.gc.ca
Lois Brown Brown.L@parl.gc.ca
Hon Ken Dryden DrydeK@parl.gc.ca
Raymonde Folco FolcoR@parl.gc.ca
Hon Hedy Fry FryH@parl.gc.ca
Randy Hoback Hoback.R@parl.gc.ca
Hon Peter Kent Kent.P@parl.gc.ca
Pat Martin MartiPD@parl.gc.ca
Joyce Murray MurraJ@parl.gc.ca
Hon Anita Neville ThilaE@parl.gc.ca
Éve-Mary Thaï Thi Lac ThilaE@parl.gc.ca
Tim Uppal Uppal.T@parl.gc.ca
Judy Wasylycia-Leis WasylJ@parl.gc.ca
Jeff Watson WatsoJ@parl.gc.ca

Thanks to Snippits and Snappits where we first read this post. Check out her Blog below.

Source: Snippits and Snappits: CRIMINALIZING CRITISCIM OF ISRAEL IN CANADA

Israelis demand censorship of newspaper in Spain

Israel's Ambassador to Spain, Rafi Shotz, this week sent a letter to the editor of the Spanish-language daily "El Mundo" requesting that he drop the upcoming publication of an interview with British Holocaust-denier David Irving.

In return, the paper printed Shotz's letter, emitting a line where the ambassador referred to the interview as "cheap, sensational propaganda." The editor also wrote a response to the letter, in which he referred to Shotz's standing on the matter as "extreme and stubborn."

Shotz writes "the unfortunate decision to interview the criminal Irving cannot be justified in the name of freedom of expression; it only reflects the lack of ethics on your part, your disregard for your readers, to the other interviewees and, obviously, to the newspaper itself."

Shotz added that the decision to print the Irving interview "puts the words of accredited historians and intellectuals at the same level as those of a falsified criminal charlatan, who received a prison sentence in Austria."

El Mundo stated that they are printing the interview with Irving because it will contribute relevant information to the public and will not incite criminal acts. The letter will be part of a special collection of articles written to mark seventy years since the outbreak of World War II. The series will also include an article by the director of Yad Vashem, Avner Shilo.

Following public criticism of the decision to print the article, El Mundo has announced that alongside Irving's article, they will print an article saying they refute all Holocaust denial.

Irving served nearly a year in Austrian prison for denying the Holocaust, a crime under Austrian law. In the late nineties he lost a libel lawsuit against a U.S. professor who published a book referring to him as a Holocaust denier.

Next week, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Mortinos is scheduled to visit Israel, and the El Mundo article is expected to be a matter of debate.

The controversy over the El Mundo article comes in the wake of a diplomatic storm between Israel and Sweden over an article in the Swedish tabloid "Aftonbladet" that claimed that Israel Defense Forces troops kill Palestinians in order to steal their organs.

Source: On The Contrary

It's a great day for freedom of speech

Yesterday, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal did something its never done in its 32-year history. It acquitted somebody of "hate speech" charges. Until now, the tribunal had a 100% conviction rate.

In a 107-page ruling, tribunal member Athanasios Hadjis didn't just throw out the case against Marc Lemire, he threw out the law, too, calling it an infringement of the free speech guarantees of the Charter of Rights.

Hadjis is no wild-eyed civil libertarian. In the recent past, he himself has convicted people under this same law. And, before Jean Chretien appointed him to the tribunal, Hadjis was the boss of one of Montreal's largest multicultural lobby groups, which thrived on ethnic identity politics. But even Hadjis has had enough of the human rights industry and their fetish for political correctness. He ruled that allowing Canadian citizens to express offensive ideas is preferable to living under a government that prosecutes people for expressing those ideas.

Tell Congress: Our money comes with strings attached!
Despite President Barack Obama's very clear position against Israel's blockade on Gaza and continued settlement expansion, Israel continues to forbid humanitarian assistance from entering Gaza and expand its West Bank settlements. We are asking Congress, why is Israel being rewarded with almost 3 billion dollars in aid when it ignores American policies and continues to use our money to build settlements and maintain the blockade of Gaza? Shouldn't our aid come with strings attached?

Source: Jewish Voice For Peace

Hate-speech law violates Charter rights, tribunal rules

A federal law governing hate speech violates Canadians' charter rights to freedom of expression, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has ruled.

The development could give more ammunition to those who complain that the Canadian Human Rights Commission, which refers cases to the tribunal, is engaging in censorship by attempting to restrict what people say on the Internet.

The decision, released in Ottawa Wednesday, also seems to call into question whether the tribunal should be involved at all in policing online content through Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

“This case raises questions about the substance of the law itself,” said Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor who holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law. “This will only build the momentum for another examination of how we approach this.”

At issue was a complaint lodged with the tribunal against Marc Lemire, webmaster of freedomsite.org. Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman alleged that the messages posted on the site were discriminatory and exposed minority groups to “hatred and contempt,” key language under Section 13 of the law.

Mr. Lemire responded by requesting that the law be “declared inoperative” because it is inconsistent with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Tribunal member Athanasios Hadjis agreed. He wrote in the ruling that the law was originally intended to be “remedial, preventative and conciliatory in nature,” rather than a means to hand out penalties.

Section 13 defines it as “discriminatory” for an individual or group “to communicate telephonically or to cause to be so communicated … any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt” based on characteristics such as race, religion, sexual orientation, and so on.

Advocates call the law a necessary control on hate speech in an age where the Internet makes the spread of messages easier and faster. Opponents say it's censorship and has no place in a free society.

The tribunal's decision, which will likely be appealed, is not binding beyond Mr. Lemire's case. However, it moves the debate forward, said University of Windsor law professor Richard Moon.

“It creates a new situation in which all the different legal and political actors have to think about what their response is,” Prof. Moon said.

In 2008, Prof. Moon wrote a report for the CHRC about the role of Section 13 in the Internet age that said the law should be repealed. He wrote that Internet use means that “any attempt to exclude all racial or other prejudice from the public discourse would require extraordinary intervention by the state.”

But Mr. Warman, who brought the case, disagrees.

“There is no unlimited right to speech,” he said. “The fact is, this was a hate website and it attracted hate.”

Mr. Warman cited postings by a visitor to freedomsite.org that, in a separate case, the tribunal called “as vile as one can imagine and not only discriminatory, but threatening to the victims.”

Mr. Lemire said webmasters are not responsible for content on message boards.

“It's not for the state to … decide what beliefs we can have,” he said. “People shouldn't be put through a six-year-long hearing even if they're Nazis, even if they're communists, even if they're racists.”

Bernie Farber, the CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, said all hate speech is a potential trigger.

“Racist war, from the ethnic cleansing in Cambodia, to the Balkans, to Darfur, to the Holocaust, did not start in a vacuum,” he said.

“Hateful words do have an effect. … The Internet cannot and should not be a wild frontier where anything goes.”

Source: The Globe and Mail

The Daily Suffering of Gaza Fishermen

Everyday in the news, I hear about the suffering of the Gaza fishermen: one was killed, others wounded, and the Israelis are firing on still others. And I wanted to shed a light on their pain.

I went to the main Gaza port. While I was there, I figured out how sad the sea and the fishermen are. Boats are stuck and fishermen are looking at the sea with no hope.

The Palestinian fishermen have been consistently harassed by the regular Israeli attacks on them, as they abuse the fishermen for pursuing their livelihood. Furthermore, they are prevented to work for far distances inside the sea. The allowed distance for them is just around 4.5 Km. Unfortunately, once they reach that distance, they find themselves under Israeli fire.

Around 3000 fishermen are now despondently jobless and in a real tragedy. The tragedy began with the complete blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip. The fishermen are prohibited from going to a deeper and richer area of fishing, and they have been dramatically affected with these restrictions from the Israeli navy forces. Indeed, they now have very low incomes with which to feed their families.

Ismael Kalilo is a 65-year old fisherman in Gaza City, who has spent 50 years of his life in the sea, and now lives in the Beach Camp. “I am totally satisfied to be a fisherman in Gaza, but completely exhausted by the conditions imposed on us.”

The aged fisherman is also a father of 8. I asked him how he takes care of his dependents, and how he feeds them: “No one can bear the situation that the fishermen are living with. He should go to the sea and see how much they suffer. We were peacefully fishing before the time of the siege on Gaza, as we just depended on our livelihood. We have become unable to secure even the basic needs of our life.

I asked him about his own experience regarding the Israeli navy forces. He took deep breath, then pointed at his son to tell us the story. Ahmed is 24 years old, and is also a fisherman.

“I was with my boat about a year ago at Sudania coast, north of the Gaza Strip,” he said. “With no alert and at 10 pm, I found that the Israeli ship started firing missiles toward my boat, exactly at my net. They ordered me to get back without my net. I tried to save my big net, which costs around $2000, but it was in vain. Then I found myself obliged after staying in the sea from 10am to 7am to get back home, and they took the net — including what I had fished. That even had increased our tragedy, as they took the net which we all depend on for fishing.”

“We are passing through a rough time, and we are suffering,” said Ismeal, as he took me to see the bullets still in the boats, the fishermen unable to get them repaired. “The siege has suffocated us for almost 3 years.”

Ismeal finished his interview with me, calling upon all of those people who claimed humanity, to stand beside the Palestinian people, their besieged people in Gaza, and to take responsibility for ending this daily suffering.

Source: Dissident Voice

Here’s What Israel Is Really Costing American Taxpayers

IT IS OFTEN REPORTED THAT ISRAEL receives about $9.2 billion every year in the form of economic aid from the U.S. government, but there are many billions of dollars more in hidden costs and economic losses lurking beneath the surface. A recently published economic analysis concluded that U.S. support for the state of Israel has cost U.S. taxpayers nearly $3 trillion. About 60 percent of those costs (about $1.7 trillion) arose from the U.S. defense of the ever-expanding Israeli empire.

Support for the empire comes to $1.8 trillion, including special trade advantages, preferential contracts, or aid buried in other accounts.

In addition to the financial outlay, U.S. aid to Israel costs some 275,000 American jobs each year. The trade-aid imbalance with Israel is between $6 billion and $10 billion. The largest single element in the costs has been the series of oil-supply crises that have accompanied the Israeli-Arab wars and the construction of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. These have cost the U.S. $1.5 trillion, excluding the additional costs incurred since 2001.

The cost of supporting Israel increased drastically after the 1973 Israeli-Arab war. U.S. support for Israel during that war resulted in additional costs for the American taxpayer of between $750 billion and $1 trillion. When Israel was losing the war, President Richard Nixon stepped in to supply the Jewish state with U.S. weapons. Nixon’s intervention triggered the Arab oil embargo, which cost the U.S. as much as $600 billion in lost GDP and another $450 billion in higher oil import costs.

The 1973 oil crisis cost the U.S. economy no less than $900 billion, and probably as much as $1.2 trillion. As a result of the oil embargo the U.S. government created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to “insulate Israel and the U.S. against the wielding of a future Arab “oil weapon.”

The billion-barrel SPR has cost taxpayers more than $134 billion so far. Making things worse, Israel gets “first call” on any oil available to the U.S. if Israel’s oil supply is stopped, according to an oil supply guarantee, which former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger provided Israel in 1975. The $3 trillion figure is actually too low, as it does not include the increased costs incurred during the year-long buildup to the ongoing wars against Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, in which Israel plays a significant covert role.

The higher oil prices incurred as a result of the Anglo-American campaign against Iraq were absorbed by taxpayers. Israel also has many hidden costs to the taxpayer. “Loans” made to Israel by the U.S. government invariably wind up being paid by the American taxpayer as does the interest on the money to Israel. Thus, it is reasonable to consider all government loans to Israel the same as grants. Israel has received over $42 billion in waived loans.

Source: American Free Press

Gathering Discusses Breaking Bankers' Hold on World

ROUGEMONT, Quebec, Canada, Sept. 4 – Here at the 70^th anniversary of the Congress of the Pilgrims of Saint Michael near Montreal, real monetary reform is being discussed today through Monday, Sept. 7, with representatives from Poland, Argentina, Madagascar, Africa’s Ivory Coast and other locales telling attendees that the death grip that private central banks have over nations can and must be broken. “Can” is the operative word, as attendees see it.

To liberate people from this far-reaching, sustained villainy, participants from these nations and from the U.S. and Canada agree that what’s called “social credit” is the answer—because it means money would be a societal creation brought into existence debt-free, instead of keeping the ruinous arrangement used for many decades that obligates governments to, in essence, buy money from central banks.

The current bind means that the very lifeblood of economic activity lies in the hands of secretive banking interests to whom all the benefits of money and credit creation flow, resulting in chronic poverty even in nations rich in natural resources. If every other major political problem, plot and scandal are the tentacles of the “octopus” of global control, then central banking is the head and brain.

Social credit, or national credit (which is given others names locally regarding grassroots efforts to test the mechanics of the system and help people learn it) means that grassroots efforts would lead, from the bottom up, toward national policies to make national governments the sovereign in terms of creating money and credit as an extension of the people. Central banks could no longer be the “snake-oil concessionaire” selling currency to nations in exchange for government bonds (which obligates the people to the huge debt created in the exchange).

The social dividend that is part of the social credit proposal would provide the peoples of nations with individual non-welfare income to supplement what they earn working, and the job markets would be liberated from debt and provide much more work anyway, backers say. And something called the compensated discount would ensure both stable prices and sufficient business income.

Notably, to explain more of the key details, this writer will focus on one of the Congress’s central participants, former Swiss banker Francois De Siebenthal, who said he turned down overtures to join the shadowy Bilderberg Group and decided to forgo central banking job promotion and advocate real reforms instead.

“We can start to liberate ourselves and others that have so much violence in their countries,” said guest speaker Rodrigo Velasquez during preliminary speeches Friday in preparation for the official start of the Congress on Saturday. Velasquez, whose home is in Colombia, referred to the chronic shortage of purchasing power afflicting the peoples of many nations, which tempts them to plunder rather than work when gainful employment is elusive.

Source: American Free Press

Israeli Organ Harvesting The New "Blood Libel"?

Last week Sweden’s largest daily newspaper published an article containing shocking material: testimony and circumstantial evidence indicating that Israelis may have been harvesting internal organs from Palestinian prisoners without consent for many years.

Worse yet, some of the information reported in the article suggests that in some instances Palestinians may have been captured with this macabre purpose in mind.

In the article, “Our sons plundered for their organs,” veteran journalist Donald Bostrom writes that Palestinians “harbor strong suspicions against Israel for seizing young men and having them serve as the country’s organ reserve – a very serious accusation, with enough question marks to motivate the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to start an investigation about possible war crimes.”¹

An army of Israeli officials and apologists immediately went into high gear, calling both Bostrom and the newspaper’s editors “anti-Semitic.” The Israeli foreign minister was reportedly “aghast” and termed it “a demonizing piece of blood libel.” An Israeli official called it “hate porn.”

Commentary magazine wrote that the story was “merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of European funded and promoted anti-Israel hate.” Numerous people likened the article to the medieval “blood libel,” (widely refuted stories that Jews killed people to use their blood in religious rituals). Even some pro-Palestinian writers joined in the criticism, expressing skepticism.

The fact is, however, that substantiated evidence of public and private organ trafficking and theft, and allegations of worse, have been widely reported for many years. Given such context, the Swedish charges become far more plausible than might otherwise be the case and suggest that an investigation could well turn up significant information.

Below are a few examples of previous reports on this topic.

Israel’s first heart transplant

Israel’s very first, historic heart transplant used a heart removed from a living patient without consent or consulting his family.

In December 1968 a man named Avraham Sadegat (the New York Times seems to give his name as A Savgat)² died two days after a stroke, even though his family had been told he was “doing well.”

After initially refusing to release his body, the Israeli hospital where he was being treated finally turned the man’s body over to his family. They discovered that his upper body was wrapped in bandages; an odd situation, they felt, for someone who had suffered a stroke.

When they removed the bandages, they discovered that the chest cavity was stuffed with bandages, and the heart was missing.

During this time, the headline-making Israeli heart transplant had occurred. After their initial shock, the man’s wife and brother began to put the two events together and demanded answers.

The hospital at first denied that Sadegat’s heart had been used in the headline-making transplant, but the family raised a media storm and eventually applied to three cabinet ministers. Finally, weeks later and after the family had signed a document promising not to sue, the hospital admitted that Sadagat’s heart had been used.

The hospital explained that it had abided by Israeli law, which allowed organs to be harvested without the family's consent.³ (The United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime includes the extraction of organs in its definition of human exploitation.)

Indications that the removal of Sadagat’s heart was the actual cause of death went unaddressed.

Director of forensic medicine on missing organs

A 1990 article in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs entitled “Autopsies and Executions” by Mary Barrett reports on the grotesque killings of young Palestinians. It includes an interview with Dr. Hatem Abu Ghazalch, the former chief health official for the West Bank under Jordanian administration and director of forensic medicine and autopsies.

Barrett asks him about “the widespread anxiety over organ thefts which has gripped Gaza and the West Bank since the intifada began in December of 1987.”

He responded:

"There are indications that for one reason or another, organs, especially eyes and kidneys, were removed from the bodies during the first year or year and a half. There were just too many reports by credible people for there to be nothing happening. If someone is shot in the head and comes home in a plastic bag without internal organs, what will people assume?”⁴

Mysterious Scottish death

In 1998 a Scot named Alisdair Sinclair died under questionable circumstances while in Israeli custody at Ben Gurion airport.

His family was informed of the death and, according to a report in J Weekly, “...told they had three weeks to come up with about $4,900 to fly Sinclair's corpse home. [Alisdair’s brother] says the Israelis seemed to be pushing a different option: burying Sinclair in a Christian cemetery in Israel, at a cost of about $1,300.”

The family scraped up the money, brought the body home, and had an autopsy performed at the University of Glasgow. It turned out that Alisdair’s heart and a tiny throat bone were missing. At this point the British Embassy filed a complaint with Israel.

The J report states:

“A heart said to be Sinclair's was subsequently repatriated to Britain, free of charge. James wanted the [Israeli] Forensic Institute to pay for a DNA test to confirm that this heart was indeed their brother's, but the Institute's director, Professor Jehuda Hiss refused, citing the prohibitive cost, estimated by some sources at $1,500.”

Despite repeated requests from the British Embassy for the Israeli pathologist's and police reports, Israeli officials refused to release either.^{5 6 7}

Israeli government officials raise questions

Palestinian journalist Khalid Amayreh reports in an article in CCUN:

“In January, 2002, an Israeli cabinet minister tacitly admitted that organs taken from the bodies of Palestinian victims might have been used for transplants in Jewish patients without the knowledge of the Palestinian victims’ families.

“The minister, Nessim Dahan, said in response to a question by an Arab Knesset member that he couldn’t deny or confirm that organs of Palestinian youths and children killed by the Israeli army were taken out for transplants or scientific research.

“‘I couldn’t say for sure that something like that didn’t happen.’”

Amayreh writes that the Knesset member who posed the question said that he “had received ‘credible evidence proving that Israeli doctors at the forensic institute of Abu Kabir extracted such vital organs as the heart, kidneys, and liver from the bodies of Palestinian youth and children killed by the Israeli army in Gaza and the West Bank.”⁸

Israel’s chief pathologist removed from post for stealing body parts

For a number of years there were allegations that Israel’s leading pathologist was stealing body parts. In 2001 the Israeli national news service reported:

“... the parents of soldier Ze’ev Buzgallo who was killed in a Golan Heights military training accident, are filing a petition with the High Court of Justice calling for the immediate suspension of Dr. Yehuda Hiss and that criminal charges be filed against him. Hiss serves as the director of the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute....According to the parents, the body of their son was used for medical experimentation without their consent, experiments authorized by Hiss.⁹

In 2002 the service reported:

“The revelation of illegally stored body parts in the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute has prompted MK Anat Maor, chairman of the Knesset Science Committee, to demand the immediate suspension of the director, Prof. Yehuda Hiss."

Alisdair Sinclair’s death had first alerted authorities to Hiss’s malfeasance in 1998, though nothing was done for years. The Forward reported:

“In 2001, an Israeli Health Ministry investigation found that Hiss had been involved for years in taking body parts, such as legs, ovaries and testicles, without family permission during autopsies, and selling them to medical schools for use in research and training. He was appointed chief pathologist in 1988. Hiss was never charged with any crime, but in 2004 he was forced to step down from running the state morgue, following years of complaints.”¹⁰

Harvesting kidneys from impoverished communities

According to the Economist, a kidney racket flourished in South Africa between 2001 and 2003. “Donors were recruited in Brazil, Israel and Romania with offers of $5,000-20,000 to visit Durban and forfeit a kidney. The 109 recipients, mainly Israelis, each paid up to $120,000 for a “transplant holiday”; they pretended they were relatives of the donors and that no cash changed hands.”¹¹

In 2004 a legislative commission in Brazil reported, “At least 30 Brazilians have sold their kidneys to an international human organ trafficking ring for transplants performed in South Africa, with Israel providing most of the funding.”

According to an IPS report: “The recipients were mostly Israelis, who receive health insurance reimbursements of 70,000 to 80,000 dollars for life-saving medical procedures performed abroad.”

IPS reports:

The Brazilians were recruited in Brazil’s most impoverished neighbourhoods and were paid $10,000 per kidney, “but as ‘supply’ increased, the payments fell as low as 3,000 dollars.” The trafficking had been organized by a retired Israeli police officer, who said “he did not think he was committing a crime, given that the transaction is considered legal by his country's government.”

The Israeli embassy issued a statement denying any participation by the Israeli government in the illegal trade of human organs but said it did recognize that its citizens, in emergency cases, could undergo organ transplants in other countries, "in a legal manner, complying with international norms," and with the financial support of their medical insurance.

However, IPS reports that the commission chair termed the Israeli stance “at the very least ‘anti-ethical’, adding that trafficking can only take place on a major scale if there is a major source of financing, such as the Israeli health system.” He went on to state that the resources provided by the Israeli health system "were a determining factor" that allowed the network to function.¹²

Tel Aviv hospital head promotes organ trafficking

IPS goes on to report:

“Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who heads the Organs Watch project at the U.S. University of California, Berkeley, testified to the Pernambuco legislative commission that international trafficking of human organs began some 12 years ago, promoted by Zacki Shapira, former director of a hospital in Tel Aviv.

“Shapira performed more than 300 kidney transplants, sometimes accompanying his patients to other countries, such as Turkey. The recipients are very wealthy or have very good health insurance, and the ‘donors’ are very poor people from Eastern Europe, Philippines and other developing countries, said Scheper-Hughes, who specialises in medical anthropology.”

Israel prosecutes organ traffickers

In 2007 Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper reported that two men confessed to persuading “Arabs from the Galilee and central Israel who were developmentally challenged or mentally ill to agree to have a kidney removed for payment.” They then would refuse to pay them.

The paper reported that the two were part of a criminal ring that included an Israeli surgeon. According to the indictment, the surgeon sold the kidneys he harvested for between $125,000 and $135,000.¹³

Earlier that year another Israeli newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, reported that ten members of an Israeli organ smuggling ring targeting Ukrainians had been arrested.¹⁴

In still another 2007 story, the Jerusalem Post reported that “Professor Zaki Shapira, one of Israel's leading transplant surgeons, was arrested in Turkey on Thursday on suspicion of involvement in an organ trafficking ring. According to the report, the transplants were arranged in Turkey and took place at private hospitals in Istanbul.”

Israeli organ trafficking comes to the U.S.?

In July of this year even US media reported on the arrest of Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, from Brooklyn, recently arrested by federal officials in a massive corruption sweep in New Jersey that netted mayors, government officials and a number of prominent rabbis. Bostrom opens his article with this incident.

According to the federal complaint, Rosenbaum, who has close ties to Israel, said that he had been involved in the illegal sale of kidneys for 10 years. A US Attorney explained: "His business was to entice vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000 which he would turn around and sell for $160,000."¹⁵

This is reportedly the first case of international organ trafficking in the U.S.

University of California anthropologist and organ trade expert Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who informed the FBI about Rosenbaum seven years ago, says she heard reports that he had held donors at gunpoint to ensure they followed through on agreements to “donate” their organs.¹⁶

Israel’s organ donor problems

Israel has an extraordinarily small number of willing organ donors. According to the Israeli news service Ynet, “the percentage of organs donated among Jews is the lowest of all the ethnic groups... In western countries, some 30 per cent of the population have organ donor cards. In Israel, in contrast, four percent of the population holds such cards.¹⁷

“According to statistics from the Health Ministry’s website, in 2001, 88 Israelis died waiting for a transplant because of a lack of donor organs. In the same year, 180 Israelis were brain dead, and their organs could have been used for transplant, but only 80 of their relatives agreed to donate their organs.”

According to Ynet, the low incidence of donors is related to “religious reasons.” In 2006 there was an uproar when an Israeli hospital known for its compliance with Jewish law performed a transplant operation using an Israeli donor. The week before, “a similar incident occurred, but since the patient was not Jewish it passed silently.”^{18 19}

The Swedish article reports that ‘Israel has repeatedly been under fire for its unethical ways of dealing with organs and transplants. France was among the countries that ceased organ collaboration with Israel in the 1990s. Jerusalem Post wrote that “the rest of the European countries are expected to follow France’s example shortly.”

“Half of the kidneys transplanted to Israelis since the beginning of the 2000s have been bought illegally from Turkey, Eastern Europe or Latin America. Israeli health authorities have full knowledge of this business but do nothing to stop it. At a conference in 2003 it was shown that Israel is the only western country with a medical profession that doesn’t condemn the illegal organ trade. The country takes no legal measures against doctors participating in the illegal business – on the contrary, chief medical officers of Israel’s big hospitals are involved in most of the illegal transplants, according to Dagens Nyheter (December 5, 2003).”

To fill this need former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, then health minister of Israel, organized a big donor campaign in the summer of 1992, but while the number of donors skyrocketed, need still greatly surpassed supply.

Palestinian disappearances increase

Bostrom, who earlier wrote of all this in his 2001 book Inshallah,²⁰ reports in his recent article:

“While the campaign was running, young Palestinian men started to disappear from villages in the West Bank and Gaza. After five days Israeli soldiers would bring them back dead, with their bodies ripped open.

“Talk of the bodies terrified the population of the occupied territories. There were rumors of a dramatic increase of young men disappearing, with ensuing nightly funerals of autopsied bodies.”

“I was in the area at the time, working on a book. On several occasions I was approached by UN staff concerned about the developments. The persons contacting me said that organ theft definitely occurred but that they were prevented from doing anything about it. On an assignment from a broadcasting network I then travelled around interviewing a great number of Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza – meeting parents who told of how their sons had been deprived of organs before being killed.”

He describes the case of 19-year-old Bilal Achmed Ghanan, shot by Israeli forces invading his village.

“The first shot hit him in the chest. According to villagers who witnessed the incident he was subsequently shot with one bullet in each leg. Two soldiers then ran down from the carpentry workshop and shot Bilal once in the stomach. Finally, they grabbed him by his feet and dragged him up the twenty stone steps of the workshop stair... Israeli soldiers loading the badly wounded Bilal in a jeep and driving him to the outskirts of the village, where a military helicopter waited. The boy was flown to a destination unknown to his family.”

Five days later he was returned, “dead and wrapped up in green hospital fabric.” Bostrom reports that as the body was lowered into the grave, his chest was exposed and onlookers could see that he was stitched up from his stomach to his head. Bostrom writes that this was not the first time people had seen such a thing.

“The families in the West Bank and in Gaza felt that they knew exactly what had happened: “Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,” relatives of Khaled from Nablus told me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin and the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who had all disappeared for a number of days only to return at night, dead and autopsied.”

Why autopsies?

Bostrom describes the questions that families asked:

“Why are they keeping the bodies for up to five days before they let us bury them? What happened to the bodies during that time? Why are they performing autopsy, against our will, when the cause of death is obvious? Why are the bodies returned at night? Why is it done with a military escort? Why is the area closed off during the funeral? Why is the electricity interrupted?”

Israel’s answer was that all Palestinians who were killed were routinely autopsied. However, Bostrom points out that of the133 Palestinians who were killed that year, only 69 were autopsied.

He goes on to write:

“We know that Israel has a great need for organs, that there is a vast and illegal trade of organs which has been running for many years now, that the authorities are aware of it and that doctors in managing positions at the big hospitals participate, as well as civil servants at various levels. We also know that young Palestinian men disappeared, that they were brought back after five days, at night, under tremendous secrecy, stitched back together after having been cut from abdomen to chin.

“It’s time to bring clarity to this macabre business, to shed light on what is going on and what has taken place in the territories occupied by Israel since the Intifada began.”²¹

The new “Blood Libel”?

In scanning through the reaction to Bostrom’s report, one is struck by the multitude of charges that his article is a new version of the old anti-Semitic “blood libel.” Given that fact, it is interesting to examine a 2007 book by Israel’s preeminent expert on medieval Jewish history, and what happened to him.

The author is Bar-Ilan professor (and rabbi) Ariel Toaff, son of the former chief rabbi of Rome, a religious leader so famous that an Israeli journalist writes that Toaff’s father “is to Italian Jewry as the Eiffel Tower is to Paris.” Ariel Toaff, himself, is considered “one of the greatest scholars in his field.”^{22 23}

In February 2007 the Israeli and Italian media were abuzz (though most of the U.S. media somehow missed it) with news that Professor Toaff had written a book entitled "Pasque di Sangue" (“Blood Passovers”)²⁴ containing evidence that there “was a factual basis for some of the medieval blood libels against the Jews.”

Based on 35 years of research, Toaff had concluded that there were at least a few, possibly many, real incidents.

In an interview with an Italian newspaper (the book was published in Italy), Toaff says:

“My research shows that in the Middle Ages, a group of fundamentalist Jews did not respect the biblical prohibition and used blood for healing. It is just one group of Jews, who belonged to the communities that suffered the severest persecution during the Crusades. From this trauma came a passion for revenge that in some cases led to responses, among them ritual murder of Christian children.”^{25 26}

Professor Toaff was immediately attacked from all sides, including pressure orchestrated by Anti-Defamation League chairman Abe Foxman, but Toaff stood by his 35 years of research, announcing:

"I will not give up my devotion to the truth and academic freedom even if the world crucifies me... One shouldn't be afraid to tell the truth."

Before long, however, under relentless public and private pressure, Toaff had recanted, withdrawn his book, and promised to give all profits that had already accrued (the book had been flying off Italian bookshelves) to Foxman’s Anti-Defamation League. A year later he published a “revised version.”²⁷

Donald Bostrom’s experience seems to be a repeat of what Professor Toaff endured: calumny, vituperation, and defamation. Bostrom has received death threats as well, perhaps an experience that Professor Toaff also shared.

If Israel is innocent of organ plundering accusations, or if its culpability is considerably less than Bostrom and others suggest, it should welcome honest investigations that would clear it of wrongdoing. Instead, the government and its advocates are working to suppress all debate and crush those whose questions and conclusions they find threatening.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, rather than responding to calls for an investigation, is demanding that the Swedish government abandon its commitment to a free press and condemn the article. The Israeli press office, apparently in retaliation and to prevent additional investigation, is refusing to give press credentials to reporters from the offending newspaper.

Just as in the case of the rampage against Jenin, the attack on the USS liberty, the massacre of Gaza, the crushing of Rachel Corrie, the torture of American citizens, and a multitude of other examples, Israel is using its considerable, worldwide resources to interfere with the investigative process.

It is difficult to conclude that it has nothing to hide.

Notes

1. There are two English translations; this article uses the first:
   http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=8390&lg=en
   http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/authors/SwedishTrans.html
   
   The original Swedish article in Aftonbladet can be viewed at
   http://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/article5652583.ab
2. New York Times, Feb. 3, 1969, p. 8, Column 6 (53 words)
3. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1046041.html
   40 years after Israel's first transplant, donor's family says his heart was stolen By Dana Weiler-Polak, Haaretz Correspondent, Dec. 14, 2008
4. http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0490/9004021.htm
   Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 1990, Page 21, The Intifada: Autopsies and Executions
5. http://www.jweekly.com/
   October 30, 1998,Bizarre death of Scottish tourist involves suicide, missing heart by NETTY C. GROSS, Jerusalem Post Service
6. http://www.forward.com/articles/112915/
   The Forward, Illicit Body-Part Sales Present Widespread Problem, By Rebecca Dube, Aug. 26, 2009
7. http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg114437.html
   Masons, Muslims, Templars, Jews, Henry and Dolly.
8. http://ccun.org/Opinion
   Al-Jazeerah: Cross-Cultural Understanding, Khalid Amayreh, August 20, 2009
9. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/12699
10. http://www.forward.com/articles/112915/
    Forward, Illicit Body-Part Sales Present Widespread Problem, By Rebecca Dube, August 26, 2009
11. http://www.economist.com/
    The Economist, Organ transplants: The gap between supply and demand, Oct. 9, 2008
12. 12/http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=22524
    BRAZIL: Poor Sell Organs to Trans-Atlantic Trafficking Ring
    By Mario Osava, IPS, Feb. 23, 2004
13. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/935092.html
    Haaretz, Two Haifa men sentenced to jail for organ trafficking, By Fadi Eyadat, Dec. 18, 2007
14. http://www.jpost.com/
    Police uncover illegal organ trade ring
    By REBECCA ANNA STOIL, July 23, 2007
15. http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/671687
    Sting rocks U.S. transplant industry, David Porter, Carla K. Johnson, ASSOCIATED PRESS, july 25, 2009
16. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1102799.html
    U.S. Professor: I told FBI about kidney trafficking 7 years ago
    By Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz Correspondent, August, 3, 2009
17. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3388529,00.html
    A mitzvah called organ donation, Efrat Shapira-Rosenberg, 10.6.07
18. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3265889,00.html
    Orthodox in uproar over organ donation incident, Neta Sela, 06.22.06
19. http://www.israelshamir.net/English/Body_Snatchers.htm
    The Return of the Body Snatchers, By Israel Shamir
    
    Israeli writer Israel Shamir reports that some years ago “...a leading Chabad rabbi, Yitzhak Ginzburgh, gave his religious permission for a Jew to take a liver from a non-Jew even without his consent. He said that ‘a Jew is entitled to extract the liver from a goy if he needs it, for the life of a Jew is more valuable than the life of a goy, likewise the life of a goy is more valuable than the life of an animal.’
20. http://www.bokus.com/b/9789170370939.html
21. http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=8390&lg=en
22. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/829381.html
    Ha’aretz. The Wayward Son, by Adi Schwartz, March 1, 2007
23. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/824152.html
    Ha’aaretz, Bar-Ilan to order professor to explain research behind blood libel book By Ofri Ilani, Haaretz Service and The Associated Press, Feb 11, 2007
24. http://www.bloodpassover.com/toafftableofcontents.htm
25. http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/824152.html
    Haaretz, Bar Ilan to order professor to explain research behind blood libel book, by Ofri Hani, Feb. 11, 2007.
26. Earlier books containing related information on medieval and modern Judaism, some of it particularly relevant to discussions of organ extraction, as well as on the widespread suppression of such information, were published some years ago, also by an Israeli professor, Israel Shahak, of whom Noam Chomsky once wrote, “Shahak is an outstanding scholar, with remarkable insight and depth of knowledge. His work is informed and penetrating, a contribution of great value.” We encourage people to read these books in full: “Jewish History, Jewish Religion, The Weight of Three Thousand Years” and Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel” coauthored by Professor Norton Mezvinsky.
27. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/957357.html
    Ha’aretz, 'Historian recants theory that Jews killed Christian child in ritual murder,' By Adi Schwartz, Feb 24, 2008

Source: If Americans Knew

Canadian Hate Speech Laws Ruled Unconstitutional

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal on Wednesday ruled that Section 13, Canada's much maligned human rights hate speech law, violates the Charter right to free expression because it carries the threat of punitive fines.

The shocking decision by Tribunal member Athanasios Hadjis leaves several hate speech cases in limbo, and appears to strip the Canadian Human Rights Commission of its controversial legal mandate to pursue hate on the Internet, which it has strenuously defended against complaints of censorship.

It also marks the first major failure of Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, an anti-hate law that was conceived in the 1960s to target racist telephone hotlines, then expanded in 2001 to the include the entire Internet, and for the last decade used almost exclusively by one complainant, activist Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman.

Mr. Warman's first big loss is a victory for the respondent Marc Lemire, webmaster of freeedomsite.org and a prominent figure in the Canadian far right.

Typically for the messy state of Canada's perennial hate speech debate, public reaction to the ruling yesterday was polarized, running the spectrum from glowing praise for the "bold" Mr. Hadjis, to criticism that his "outrageous" conclusion is "vulnerable on judicial review."

All sides seem to agree, however, that the stage is set for pitched battle in federal court, where CHRT rulings can be appealed. Another less likely outcome is for Parliament itself to repeal or amend Section 13, a law that even supporters say needs updating in the age of the Internet.

Neither the CHRC nor Mr. Warman would comment.

"No matter what happens, this decision is going to federal court," Mr. Lemire said. "This is the beginning of the end for Section 13 now. This law is 32 years old. Not a single person has ever won until today. But did I really win? I have given up six years of my life. The process is the punishment."

Mr. Warman, a former investigator for the CHRC, brought a complaint against Mr. Lemire in 2003, after monitoring his website for almost a year. He alleged that postings on the discussion forum, mostly written by others, contravened Section 13 in that they were "likely to expose" identifiable groups to "hatred or contempt." Mr. Warman later urged the CHRC investigators to expand their investigation to other websites he believed Mr. Lemire was involved with, but to "hold off on informing" Mr. Lemire "until the police take a good look at it." No criminal charges were ever filed.

In all but one case, Mr. Hadjis decided that these postings either did not contravene Section 13(1), or that Mr. Lemire cannot be held responsible for what others posted on his website.

Mr. Hadjis found Mr. Lemire violated the law in one case, by posting an article called "AIDS Secrets", written by an American neo-Nazi, which Mr. Hadjis found was "rife with hyperbole and moral condemnation. Homosexuals, and Blacks to a lesser extent, are denigrated as purveyors of a "killer" that is on the loose, agonizingly destroying the lives of American children and adults alike."

Even with this finding, however, Mr. Hadjis declined to make any order against Mr. Lemire. As a statutory tribunal, Mr. Hadjis does not have the legal authority to officially declare a law unconstitutional. But if he finds it would be unconstitutional to enforce it, he can do as he has done, which is to "simply refuse to apply these provisions."

Part of his motivation was that virtually all the offending material was removed either before or shortly after Mr. Lemire received word of the complaint against him.

"Mr. Lemire had not only "amended" his conduct by removing the impugned material, but sought conciliation and mediation as soon as he learned of the complaint against him," Mr. Hadjis wrote. "The problem had thus already been eliminated, yet the complaint continued to be processed."

Section 13(1) remains valid Canadian law, despite this ruling. Its constitutionality was last upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in a 1990 split decision, before the Internet age.

That decision, about neo-Nazi John Ross Taylor, upheld the law as a justifiable limit on free expression largely because of its remedial, non-punitive purpose. But Mr. Hadjis found that that, today, the law "has become more penal in nature," and this renders it an unjustifiable limit on freedom of expression.

Ever since a 1998 amendment to allow the Tribunal to levy fines up to $10,000 -- payable to the government -- the pursuit of Section 13(1) cases "can no longer be considered exclusively remedial, preventative and conciliatory in nature," he wrote.

He cited Mr. Warman's request for a $7500 penalty against Mr. Lemire. Mr. Warman has won over a dozen other Section 13(1) cases, many leading to similar fines, payments to himself, and legal restrictions on Internet activity.

This criticism about a punitive law masquerading as a remedial one echoes that of Richard Moon, a law professor hired by the CHRC last year to provide an expert analysis of their online hate speech mandate. In essence, his advice was that it could not be done fairly, and so should not be done at all.

Prof. Moon said Wednesday's decision is "obviously a significant moment in the history of Section 13, but it seems like it is in some important sense inconclusive."

He said the ruling has no weight as legal precedent, and could theoretically be ignored by future tribunals, but in practice it is impossible to ignore, and it hints at a fundamental problem with the law.

"As soon as the Supreme Court confirmed that the scope of Section 13 was narrow, and confined to extremely hateful messages, then it was highly unlikely that we were going to have a kind of regular human rights process that involves conciliation between the parties," he said. "That was always something that we could have foreseen."

"We still believe Section 13 is constitutional. There seems to be some major difference of opinion within the Tribunal itself," said Bernie Farber, CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, referring to previous constitutional challenges of Section 13 that went the other way.

Marvin Kurz, legal counsel to B'nai Brith, which was an intervenor in this case along with the CJC and others, echoed Mr. Farber's question about why Mr. Hadjis did not simply "read out" the penalty section -- that is, ignore it, but allow the actual hate speech section to stand.

"Not only did he not do it, but he failed to explain why he did not consider the alternative," Mr. Kurz said. "It's like if the police act wrongly in a criminal case, you don't throw out the criminal law. That's what he's done here, and that doesn't make sense to me."

Ezra Levant, a blogger who has led the campaign against human rights hate speech law, said the ruling "shows that the CHRC has been acting illegally for many years," and it forces the Conservative government to make a "new kind of decision" about whether to appeal.

"If they launch an appeal, they are casting their lot with the censors," he said.

Pearl Eliadis, a human rights lawyer and a defender of Section 13, played down the importance of the ruling, and said Mr. Hadjis "just got it wrong. With respect, it's constitutionally not within the normal way that these provisions are dealt with." She said he should have simply ignored the offending penalty section and upheld the law.

Bruce Ryder, a constitutional law professor at York University, said Mr. Hadjis was correct to find that the penalty provision "exacerbated the chilling effect" on freedom of expression. But he said Mr. Hadjis' reasoning "broke down at the end," and he should have simply rejected the penalty provision.

He also wondered how Mr. Lemire was acquitted over the posting of an article that explicitly denied the Holocaust, which he called "outrageous and inconsistent with jurisprudence," and makes the entire ruling "vulnerable on judicial review."

Mark Steyn, a conservative author who was the target of a prominent hate speech complaint over his writing in Maclean's, said Mr. Hadjis' realized "that there is no future for Section 13 because of the damage done to it by the dress-up Nazis of the CHRC and and the sordid racket of Richard Warman."

"It makes explicit that section 13 has no friends," he said.

Source: National Post