Jewish Activists Condemn Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) for Supporting Crimes Against Humanity: CJC seeks to smear critics of Israeli atrocities

    TORONTO, Jan. 14 /CNW Telbec/ - 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.

For further information: Judy Deutsch, (416) 929-8349; Dan
Freeman-Maloy, (416) 537-9100; Andy Lehrer, (416) 597-2740