A truly embarrassing kurfuffle. Jason Kenney says one thing in Israel and another in the Star. Perhaps it's pointless to say he's saying different things to different audiences assuming there won't be a bleeding from one to the other:
http://www.nationalpost.com/m/blog.html?b=fullcomment&e=chris-selley-the-kairos-hoax&s=Opinion
Mr. Kenney pops up in the Toronto Star (a) to deny having called KAIROS anti-Semitic; (b) to deny having cut off funding to KAIROS because it's anti-Israel (let alone anti-Semitic); and (c) to deny having had anything whatsoever to do with cutting off KAIROS's funding in the first place. He writes:
While I disagree with the nature of KAIROS's militant stance toward the Jewish homeland, that is not the reason their request for taxpayer funding was denied. International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda – not me – is responsible for the Canada International Development Agency. And she has been clear that a cost-sharing program with KAIROS was not approved because it did not meet CIDA's current priorities, such as increased food aid.
Poor Ezra. Poor everyone who foolishly believed Canada was taking a principled stand against anti-Semitic organizations, or anti-Israel organizations, or organizations that criticise Israel too much and the Palestinians too little.
1 comment:
My sense is that it was taking too much of an environmentalist stance - and especially an anti-oil stance - for the Harper government. Look at its recent publications ( http://www.kairoscanada.org/en/publications/online-resources/ )- there's a list of articles on environmental issues.
(You focus a lot on Israel and anti-semitism, so much so I think it sometimes clouds your judgment. It's not always about Israel. You frequently leap to the judgment that this or that is anti-semitic. Much of the time, the people in question weren't even thinking about Israel. This is a big blind spot in your writing and I don't understand why it's such an obsession.)
(As for the 'militant stance toward the Jewish homeland' the only thing I could find in their policy page http://www.kairoscanada.org/en/rights-and-trade/focus-countries/palestine-israel/mid-east-policy/ that is remotely contentious is the avowal of 'right of return' (point 5). That's not very militant (indeed, the repeated declarations of a desire for peace and human rights sounds like the exact opposite of militant.)
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