Justice and Inclusiveness in the International area

Isr4apundit ^ | May 3/08 | Ted Belman

[tedbel]

Recently I reported on a speech by Michael Ignatieff under the title Ignatieff in the lion’s den and also posted Ignatieff’s non-apology by my friend Rochelle Wilner. Ignatieff had come to the Jewish community to apologize for accusing Israel of war crimes. Unfortunate he kept stressing the need for Israel to abide by international human rights law and the Geneva Convention. Irwin Cotler was in the room.

I wrote to Irwin subsequently to plead with him to make Israel's case vis a vis international law. Whether he was responding to me or not, a week or so later, he delivered a speech to THE SPEAKERS ACTION GROUP and the CANADIAN JEWISH CIVIL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION entitled THE LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS...21ST CENTURY CHALLENGES and he did just that. I was also present to hear that speech. It was a great speech delivered extemporaneously and fortunately recorded. I got a copy of the recording and struggled to type it. In many ways it is grammatically incorrect as license was taken to have more impact. This is not the full speech but the parts that I wanted to focus on.

Irwin Cotler spoke on justice and inclusiveness in the international area.

On the eve of the sixtieth anniversary of the State of Israel of the reconstitution of an aboriginal people in its ancestral homeland. And I have used the term aboriginal people with respect to the Jewish people because very often one hears reference to the notion that Israel and the Jewish people as being a colonial implant in the Middle East post holocaust. It is important to appreciate the aboriginalness of the Jewish people with respect to its legitimacy in this present day, The only people in the world today who inhabit the same land, embrace

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