The CJN goes to press at noon on Mondays. Most weeks, we work on putting the paper together until the last possible minute, in order to ensure it’s as up-to-date as possible. But sometimes, major news happens in the time between when the paper is printed and it gets delivered to your door (though readers can cut down on that lag by logging on to the digital edition of The CJN).
This is one of those weeks.
As I write, Israeli voters are preparing to cast their ballots in a national election; by the time you read these words, however, the election will most likely have been decided. In coming editions of The CJN, we’ll have lots to say about the outcome of the election – what it means for Israelis and for the Jewish Diaspora. But for now, we encourage you to visit cjnews.com for up-to-the-minute news and commentary about the election.
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Meanwhile, back here in Canada last week, the Jewish community found itself in the middle of a political debate as this country’s major parties geared up for their own election campaigns. The dispute centred around the propriety of invoking the Holocaust when referring to events other than the genocide of European Jewry.
On March 9 Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau caused a storm when he told an audience at McGill University, “We should all shudder to hear the same rhetoric that led to a ‘none is too many’ immigration policy towards Jews in the ’30s and ’40s being used to raise fears against Muslims today.”
Trudeau was ostensibly reacting to two recent incidents: the first was Conservative MP John Williamson’s abhorrent comments, just two days earlier, regarding Canada’s temporary foreign workers program – that “It makes no sense to pay ‘whities’ to stay home while we bring in brown people to work in these jobs.” (Williamson quickly apologized.) The second was the Harper government’s ongoing effort to make it illegal for Muslim women to cover their faces during citizenship swearing-in ceremonies.
A day after Trudeau made his Holocaust reference, Public Security Minister Stephen Blaney offered one of his own. During a hearing regarding Bill C-51, the government’s proposed anti-terror legislation, Blaney sought to juxtapose jihadist incitement with propaganda disseminated by the Nazis in the 1930s. “The Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers,” he testified. “It began with words.”
As The CJN’s Paul Lungen reports, Jewish groups were quick to criticize Trudeau for comparing the exclusionary tactics once adopted by the Canadian government to present-day immigration policy. Those same groups, Lungen notes, were not vocally critical of Blaney’s comment – though, to be fair, others have previously used the same terminology, and the recent terror attack at a kosher supermarket in Paris indicates that hateful words can lead to tangible danger for Jews.
Still, it’s probably best if politicians avoid making comparative references to the Holocaust altogether. As CIJA CEO Shimon Fogel told Lungen, “politicians run an obvious risk when they invoke the Holocaust in policy debates, and we generally think that such references are best avoided, as they distract from the issues at hand.”
That’s good advice, for politicians of every stripe. — YONI