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January 16, 2009 Jewish Activists Condemn Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) for Supporting Crimes Against Humanity: CJC seeks to smear critics of Israeli atrocities Toronto – Activists and concerned community members are voicing outrage that, in the context of an ongoing Israeli military assault which has killed more than 900 Palestinians, wounded more than 4,000 and destroyed essential civilian infrastructure in the already devastated Gaza Strip, the Canadian Jewish Congress is seeking to smear those who have protested these atrocities. At 1:30pm on Wednesday January 14, some of these concerned community members will assemble in front of Toronto's Sutton Place Hotel (955 Bay Street at Wellesley) to denounce the CJC's attempts to distract people from ongoing Israeli crimes, and to provide information regarding the CJC's connection to the propaganda campaign accompanying the latest Israeli assault. Judy Deutsch, a member of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV)-Canada and one of the eight Jewish women who recently occupied the Israeli consulate in Toronto to protest the Israeli attack on Gaza, emphasizes that the real scandal is the whitewashing of Israeli crimes as they transparently unfold. "The disinformation from Israel is transparently dishonest and shameless and is a travesty to all civilians caught up in this needless invasion," Deutsch says. "There is no excuse for these distortions of the facts as there is such reliable information from numerous human rights and medical witnesses to the atrocities." Dan Freeman-Maloy, a graduate student at York University who researches Canadian-Israeli relations, notes that the CJC is directly connected to Israel's system of wartime diplomacy. "It is well known that Israel has established a National Information Directorate to justify its invasion of Gaza before world opinion, involving representatives of the IDF, key government ministries and the Jewish Agency," Freeman-Maloy explains. "The CJC, like the Canada-Israel Committee, is part of an advocacy system closely associated with the Jewish Agency, and its shameful apologetics for Israeli crimes amount to crass and cynical diplomacy." Andy Lehrer, a member of the IJV-Canada steering committee, adds that CJC smearing of anti-war demonstrations is wrought with hypocrisy. "Such charges are aimed at suppressing legitimate protest against Israeli war crimes," asserts Lehrer. "Ironically, the CJC has ignored repeated requests that they distance themselves from a bona fide hate group, the Jewish Defence League (JDL), which has had a high profile within the Jewish community, including at CJC-sponsored events. In addition, the JDL has engaged in verbal abuse and intimidation at Gaza solidarity events," Lehrer explains. "Last Thursday we held a vigil across the street from the CJC's own pro-Israel rally and were subjected to a barrage of hate speech and vitriolic abuse from the JDL, who had come out to support the CJC rally. Among the things they yelled were 'you're not Jews, you're shit,' 'you're rats' and 'blow yourselves up.' The next day I talked to Farber and asked him to publicly denounce the JDL. He refused." Foreign journalists have recently been barred from entering Gaza, multiple news offices within the Strip have been damaged by IDF attacks, and numerous journalists working from Gaza have been killed by IDF forces. While Israel wishes to see international perceptions shaped by its diplomats and their associates, Canadian journalists can hopefully adopt a more critical attitude.
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