GERALD CAPLAN, Globe and Mail, Monday, Mar. 07, 2016
When it suits them, Canadian politicians embrace the rights established in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But there are limits, and most of them unaccountably seem to have to do with Israel.
Two years ago, for example, then-prime minister Stephen Harper insisted that Israeli policies should not be criticized, especially in public. To criticize Israel, he said, is to be guilty of “the new anti-Semitism. … It targets the Jewish people by targeting Israel.”
Why it was anti-Semitic to criticize the Israel government for its housing or land or human-rights policies, as indeed so many Israelis do, Mr. Harper never explained. Continue reading