PING!
Posted on 06/07/2006 7:23:49 AM PDT by GMMAC
CUPE's disgrace
How does bashing the Jewish state help Canadian public workers?
Martin Peretz and David Sax
National Post
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Disbelief seemed the most natural reaction following the anti-Israel resolution passed by the Ontario convention of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) -- the largest provincial block of the largest union in the country -- on May 27. It came on a Saturday, during a sweltering summer weekend, when attentions were focused on baseball games and cottages, and Jewish union members were noticeably absent, celebrating the Sabbath. CUPE's decision, to boycott Israel and implement a divestment campaign against the Jewish state, took most of its members and the Canadian public by surprise. How could a public union implement such policies? What did this have to do with provincial labour politics?
Four days later, the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) in Britain, the largest teachers' union in Britain, voted to boycott Israeli academics and institutions of learning that don't disassociate themselves from the government's "apartheid" policy in the disputed territories.
The motion received 106 ayes to 71 nays, with 21 not voting. Not exactly an overwhelming victory for the stigmatizers. But at least the British decision had been widely covered and publicly debated for much of the past year. By contrast, CUPE's stance was unexpected: There had been no prior warning or substantial debate.
Moreover, the resolution's unanimous support (896 "for" to 0 "against") came off as highly suspicious. Were there no dissenting voices? Do all 200,000-plus Ontario public employees feel so strongly united against the Jewish state?
For years, those who don't want Israel to defend itself with fences and counter-terrorism operations -- that is, those who really do not understand the preconditions for its existence -- have been clamoring for Israeli withdrawal from the lands it won 39 years ago in a war it did not start.
Hamas, which now governs Palestine, openly intends to extinguish the Jewish state. Yet Israel's government is planning to unilaterally pull out of 90% of the West Bank, and to take on the resultant risks of Palestinian rocket attacks against its cities. One would think that might give some pause to CUPE and the teachers. But, of course, it doesn't -- because their judgments are skewed by ignorance.
Those who slanderously label Israel an "apartheid state" need only visit the medical school of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Hadassah Hospital, where Palestinian patients from the territories receive Israeli medical care. Only days ago, during the fratricide between Hamas and Fatah, a wounded Fatah security official, first taken to a Gaza hospital, was airlifted to Tel Aviv so he could be treated at Siroski Medical Center in order to save an endangered leg. (Mission accomplished.)
As Benjy Pogrund, a South African journalist now living in Israel, has pointed out on many occasions, the very use of the word "apartheid" is meant to distort. Apartheid was applied in South Africa to separate and distinguish the races by color, in work, in schooling, in residence, in medical care -- in every phase of life. Israeli Arabs face none of that. Although they receive marginal second-class-treatment in some respects, rather like many minorities in Western nations, they are nonetheless completely integrated into Israeli life. That's why many Arab citizens of Israel are so often victims of Palestinian terror. They ride in its buses, eat in its restaurants, shop in its malls. There is no colour line in Israel.
Let's assume that CUPE Ontario and the British teachers are really concerned about human rights. Have they declared a boycott against China, which ruthlessly steamrolls its workers and sucks jobs away from Canada? Have they placed their hex on Iran? What about Palestine's governing Hamas party, dispatchers of teenage suicide bombers?
Each of these polities have monstrous records on human rights -- yet, lo, from the champions of the people, there is silence.
That's because any state that opposes Western politics and Western values engages CUPE's ideological sympathy and support. These are the cohorts, if not precisely the same people, that saw in Stalinism, Maoism and Castroism hope for mankind. They allied themselves with these brutal ideologies and states. And now they find new comrades in the Palestinian revolution in its newest dispensation, a Muslim jihad against every idea they supposedly hold dear -- freedom, tolerance, feminism, sexual equality.
But for argument' sake, let us take seriously the union's position that Israel is at fault in the Arab-Israeli conflict. What should Israel do? The only solution that would seem to satisfy the Palestinians and their supporters is a complete reversal of history -- that is, the end of the Jewish state. This seems to be what CUPE Ontario wants. After all, it has called for Israel to recognize the "right of return" for all Palestinian refugees since 1948, something espoused only by the most militant Palestinian factions because it amounts to the eradication of Israel's Jewish character and the death of a two state solution.
If that's what CUPE and NATFHE want, let them be candid and say so. And if it's not what the unions want, let them be done with their mischief. Such escapades only serve to further sully people's negative image of public unions as arrogant. Our tax dollars and their members would better be served by their blessed silence.
Martin Peretz is editor-in-chief at The New Republic magazine in Washington D.C. David Sax is a Toronto-based freelance journalist and contributor to The New Republic.
© National Post 2006
No mystery why Canada's leftists are now actively
running interference for busted terror cell members.
When publicly subsidized social fascists think they can openly strut their stuff,
the time's plainly long past to re-write laws with respect to tax deductibility of dues
& thus effectively taxpayer subsidized, freedom-denying state-compelled union membership!
PING!
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"No mystery why Canada's leftists are now actively running interference for busted terror cell members."
There's money in terror and unions have used it as a means to their ends in the past. Shame on them. It's a black mark on Canada especially in light of the past week's events. These are the people that will hold the doors open when Al Qaida storms our parliament.
Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel.
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| Why CUPE's boycott is shameful ^ |
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| Posted by West Coast Conservative On News/Activism ^ 06/02/2006 11:58:58 AM CDT · 3 replies · 195+ views Toronto Sun ^ | June 2, 2006 | Michael Coren A message to all CUPE members. Your Ontario region has passed an anti-Israel motion that has made your union internationally notorious. It is so extreme, shrill and one-sided that CUPE is now more opposed to Israel than Fatah, President Mahmoud Abbas and several Arab governments. The vote was held on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and thus no observant Jew could even be present. If they had been there they might have given a basic history lesson to the assembled comrades. The Jewish state, Israel, came into existence more than 1300 years before the birth of Jesus Christ and 2000... Read | Comments |
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| ADL blasts Canada's anti-Israel boycott ^ |
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| Posted by West Coast Conservative On News/Activism ^ 06/01/2006 11:37:28 AM CDT · 8 replies · 242+ views Jerusalem Post ^ | June 1, 2006 he Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Thursday labeled as "deplorable and offensive" a call by the Ontario branch of Canada's largest labor unions for a full range of anti-Israel boycott activity. At its annual meeting on May 28, the Ontario chapter of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) unanimously passed a resolution to "support the international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions" against Israel. The vote almost directly coincided with the passage on May 29 of an anti-Israel boycott resolution by an academic union in Britain. "Once again, a labor union has voted to take the deplorable and offensive step... Read | Comments |
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| CUPE in Ontario votes to boycott Israel (Canada's largest union) ^ |
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| Posted by Allan On News/Activism ^ 05/28/2006 8:36:01 PM CDT · 37 replies · 658+ views Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ^ | May 27, 2006 | CBC News The Ontario divison of Canada's largest union has voted to support an international campaign that is boycotting Israel over its treatment of Palestinians. Delegates to the Canadian Union of Public Employees Ontario convention in Ottawa voted overwhelmingly Saturday to support the campaign until it sees Israel recognizing the Palestinians' right to self-determination. The Ontario group represents more than 200,000 workers. The global campaign started last July and has been supported by many North American churches, 20 Quebec organizations, and others, Canadian Press said. CUPE also condemned what they called Israel's "apartheid wall," saying it is illegal under international law. "Boycott,... |
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Ping!
"The West has given more significance to the myth of the genocide of the Jews, even more significant than God, religion, and the prophets...."—Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
The Holocaust Chronicle ~
"Palestine is the wrong name for their State. It should be called Anarchy."—FReeper sgtbono2002
"Then let's wait and see what the Arabs do after they take Gaza. There's nothing like Arab reality to break up a Jewish fantasy."—FReeper Noachian
A student told his professor he was going to "Palestine" to "fight for freedom, peace and justice,"—Orwellian leftist code words that mean "murder Jews."
The Nature Of Bruce ~
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