TORONTO — The Jewish Defence League of Canada is back – again.
The on-again, off-again organization has been reconstituted under its former leader, Meir Weinstein, in response to a growing radical Islamic element in Canadian society, Weinstein said last week.
About 50 JDL members along with supporters from other Jewish organizations, held a vigil last week at Ryerson University to protest an Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) event.
Weinstein, who used to go by the name Meir Halevi, said the JDL’s purpose is “to confront anti-Semitism. We see it as worse than ever before.
“We believe this Israel Apartheid Week program is an attempt to foment hatred for the Jewish people and justification for the terrorists.”
JDL members handed out leaflets and attempted to turn the tables on IAW organizers, arguing Israel’s Arab neighbours routinely practice discrimination but do not come under the microscope the way Israel does, he said.
In addition to protesting anti-Israel events – earlier, the group picketed outside the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) during an appearance by anti-Zionist speaker Norman Finkelstein – JDL monitors various organizations on the Internet and “we have moles in anti-Israeli groups to gather more information,” Weinstein said.
He said the JDL is also highlighting the participation of Canadian Arab groups at a conference in Cairo last year that forged closer links between the international antiwar movement and Islamic radical organizations, including Hamas and Hezbollah.
Referring to an Ottawa Citizen story from May 2007, Weinstein said representatives of the Canadian Arab Federation and the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid as well as Not in my Name – Jews Against Israel’s Wars, attended the conference.
The Citizen reported that “according to conference literature, the main purpose of the gathering, sponsored by the officially banned Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptian opposition parties, was to forge ‘an international alliance against imperialism and Zionism’.”
Weinstein said “the situation today is more serious than ever.”
People from Islamic states that do not recognize Israel and “who have a negative view of Jews” are immigrating to Canada and bringing those attitudes with them.
It was at a pro-Hezbollah rally during Israel’s 2006 war with the Islamic terror group that Weinstein felt the need to reconstitute the JDL. (It had been most active in the 1980s, was moribund for a time, then was re-invented for a few years as the United Israel Action Committee before again lapsing into inactivity).
The Hezbollah flag was being flown freely even though Hezbollah had been designated a terrorist organization by the Canadian government. Some chanted “death for the Jews,” he said, and police stood by and did nothing.
The JDL got back together around September 2007. Its first activity was to protest a forum sponsored by the Coalition against Israeli Apartheid at OISE. Fistfights broke out when supporters of the Coalition confronted JDL protesters, Weinstein said.
“We don’t think it’s fair that when we’re protesting that people should put fists in our faces and try to push us around. That doesn’t happen,” he said.
Last week’s protest at the IAW event was peaceful. “We are not looking to start any confrontation,” he said. “The emphasis is on defence.”
Weinstein distanced the JDL in Canada from the American JDL whose leader Irv Rubin was jailed for planning bomb attacks against Muslims (he died awaiting trial). Weinstein said there were no organizational links between the two groups, though he did contribute to its website.
The JDL name “has more positives to it than negatives. I think haters of Jews are used to seeing Jews as timid and easy to push around. The JDL makes it clear this is one group you can’t push around,” he said.