Naomi Lakritz
The Calgary Herald (via Ottawa Citizen)
Saturday, June 03, 2006
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=20af7d33-36cb-4dbe-a720-e7bfb28b24a5
So, has CUPE Ontario hammered out any good collective agreements
lately? Settled its members' grievances satisfactorily? Organized
downtrodden workers? Or is the union too busy denouncing Jews for
defending themselves against terrorism to be bothered doing what
unions are supposed to do?
After CUPE Ontario voted last weekend to join an international boycott
against Israel, its president, Sid Ryan, said, "This is not an attack
on Jewish people."
Yes, and some of your best friends are Jewish. Right, Sid? C'mon,
let's see how many patronizing cliches you can trot out.
Israel is a Jewish state and Jews are the only people who are ever
condemned for defending themselves from those who would kill them. To
say this is not an attack on Jews is like boycotting France and
insisting it's not an attack on the French. Or crossing one of CUPE's
picket lines and saying it's not an attack on the union's members.
Likening Israel's wall to South African apartheid is disgraceful. The
wall went up because Israelis were tired of picking bits of their
children's bodies off the bloodied floors of pizza parlours. You see,
Sid, suicide bombers weren't dropping in at these places just for the
pepperoni.
CUPE B.C., as rife with anti-Semitism as its Ontario counterpart,
stated a while back that the union "shares the concerns of (those) who
oppose the escalation of (Israel's) retaliatory violence." The union
does not appear to oppose the initial violence that led to Israel's
retaliation. What's the matter with those uppity Jews in Israel? Can't
they just meekly allow themselves to be slain? Would CUPE tell the
people of Darfur to sit back and allow the Janjaweed to murder them? I
doubt it.
CUPE B.C. also produced an "educational" booklet, which asked: "What
is daily life like under Israeli occupation?" That booklet sounds
about as "educational" as the anti-Semitic textbooks used to poison
kids' minds in Palestinian schools.
A far more relevant question might be: What is daily life like under
the threat of losing your loved ones to suicide bombers? A woman I
know in Jerusalem says she and her husband split up the kids between
them and ride separate buses to movies and restaurants. That way, if
one bus is blown up, some family members will survive on the other
bus.
A more "educational" booklet might inform people that Palestinians are
not oppressed by Israelis, but by their own leaders, who keep them
that way. Where was CUPE's outrage when the Palestinians elected Hamas
terrorists to govern them?
Ryan and his coterie are cowardly poseurs. They're not even the
leftists they pride themselves on being. The real leftists were Jews
who came from Eastern Europe and organized the trade unions in Toronto
and New York's garment districts. And back then, unions actually
focused on workplace issues.
Nowadays, union leaders are too busy drinking their own political
bathwater to spare a thought for mundane concerns about members' jobs.
Why bother with petty gripes about holiday pay when there's a whole
world out there that needs changing?
As my friend, Dan MacLennan, president of the Alberta Union of
Provincial Employees, says, "Israel is not a workplace issue."
MacLennan will not discuss politics publicly, and his union does not
endorse any political party. It's a position CUPE would do well to
emulate -- if they could pull their anti-Semitic heads out of their
backsides for a moment.
Hamas's charter calls for the killing of Jews, but Ryan is silent on
that.
He attacks the only democracy in the Middle East, but he'd be the
first to squawk about how precious democracy is if his union's right
to organize wasn't respected over here.
This week, Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior
Hamas official, said there's no need for President Mahmoud Abbas to
hold a referendum on Israel.
"Nobody will recognize Israel," al-Zahar said. He'd feel right at home
in CUPE, which didn't recognize its Jewish members either. It held its
convention on Saturday -- the Jewish Sabbath -- when no Jewish members
would be there to oppose the boycott.
The day CUPE boycotts countries other than Israel for defending
themselves against murderers, then I'll believe it's not about Jews.
Naomi Lakritz writes for the Calgary Herald.
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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