human rights tribunal of ontario=big zionist joke?

HUMAN RIGHTS TRIBUNAL OF ONTARIO JOINS CAMPAIGN TO CRIMINALIZE CRITICISM OF ISRAEL AS ANTI-SEMITIC

In a shocking decision issued on April 22 Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario Chair Michael Gottheil condemned the complainant in a reprisal case, Jewish Professor David Noble, as an anti-semite for attempting to expose the influence of the Israel lobby at York University. Writing about a flyer Noble distributed to his classes suggesting that the presence of prominent pro-Israel advocates, fund-raisers, and lobbyists on the Board of the York University Foundation might have influenced the university to clamp down on pro-Palestinian activists, Gottheil stated:

"I also find that the pamphlet could be taken as suggesting the existence of a 'Jewish conspiracy', with broad influence. While the complainant went to lengths to explain that the organizations and individuals he identified as being inter-connected and as having influence were so identified because of their support for the state of Israel, he acknowledged that these organizations would self-identify as Jewish organizations and Israel would self-identify as a Jewish state. Thus, whatever the complainant might have intended, it was not unreasonable in my view for these organizations, the individuals, and the University to have considered the pamphlet as playing into the notion of a "Jewish conspiracy," a notion the complainant acknowledged existed, and expressed through anti-Semitic writings such as the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion.'"

This is surely an echo of the current excesses of the Israel lobby, which has been seeking to criminalize as racism and hate speech all criticism of Israel. (By the same twisted logic, all criticism of Noble, a self-identifying Jew himself, should be construed as anti-semitic, including this attack by the Tribunal.)

The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario must be held accountable for this dubious decision, which legitimates the preposterous proposition that any and all criticism of Israel or the Israel Lobby is anti-semitic, even when made by Jews, and condemned for directly contributing to a political agenda that threatens Canadian civil liberties.