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June 21, 2002
Sniping over Middle East
Union's resolution draws rebuke from former leader.
PAT JOHNSON REPORTER
The conflict in the Middle East continues to have damaging repercussions
on the Canadian left. Last week's adoption of an anti-Israel resolution
by the Canadian Labor Congress (CLC) has been blasted by a former
president of the national umbrella organization.
Dennis McDermott, the fiery former leader of the CLC, sent a blistering
open letter to the Canadian labor movement, implying that anti-Semitism
is at the root of the resolution.
At the CLC convention, which was held in Vancouver June 10 to 14,
union members passed a resolution that called on Israel to remove
all its forces from the West Bank and Gaza and urged that a United
Nations peacekeeping force be installed in the region. The resolution
condemned "the violence perpetrated by the Israeli occupation
forces against Palestinian lives and property...." The resolution
was accompanied by a policy statement that equated Israel to South
Africa's former apartheid regime.
McDermott's extensive letter criticized the CLC resolution because,
he said, it paints Israel as the aggressors.
"There is much ado about the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and
the Golan Heights," wrote McDermott. "Israel won those
territories fair and square in defensive response to Arab attacks."
McDermott praised Israel for the nation's courage over a half-century
of living under constant threat from neighboring states.
"Israel is not perfect," McDermott concluded, "nor
should it be expected to be any more than any other nation. With
all of its shortcomings, Israel still stands as the only genuine
democracy in the Middle East. Israel shines as a beacon of light
in the midst of Middle East totalitarian darkness."
McDermott's broadside is the latest in a divisive series of events
in the Canadian labor movement and their political allies in the
New Democratic party. The Middle East was the catalyst that led
that party's foreign affairs critic Svend Robinson on an attention-getting
trip to Israel. His statements upon his return led party leader
Alexa McDonough to strip Robinson of his responsibilities for the
Middle East. McDonough has had her own recent trouble with Buzz
Hargrove, another senior Canadian labor leader, who was critical
of the NDP's policies under McDonough's leadership.
The CLC convention was the latest venue for high-level bickering.
Before the convention, Canadian Jewish Congress expressed its concern
about the proposed resolution. In a letter to Congress national
president Keith Landy, Ken Georgetti, president of the CLC, attempted
to assure the Jewish community that a balance would be found between
the two contending sides of the issue.
"I can assure you that the Canadian Labor Congress has no interest
in seeing either Israel or the Jewish community marginalized,"
Georgetti wrote to Landy on June 7. "All of us are concerned
at the killing of innocent citizens on both sides of this dispute
and we fervently wish for a peaceful solution that guarantees Israel
the right to exist within safe and secure borders and the right
of Palestinians to self-determination."
The resolution and the accompanying policy statement were criticized
by Congress and McDermott for not being balanced and for making
a moral equivalence between suicidal terrorists and a democratic
state defending its right to exist.
At the same time, CLC officials were launching their own counter-offensives
at critics who charged the labor organization with anti-Semitism.
Georgetti published a scathing letter in the Globe and Mail
after columnist Margaret Wente implied anti-Semitism may be at the
root of the Mideast policy and another CLC official told the Bulletin
he was personally offended by suggestions that there was any bigotry
behind the political stand of the convention.
Georgetti stressed that the CLC's Mideast resolution was blown out
of proportion, noting that only four of almost 1,500 resolutions
considered by the convention dealt with Middle East policy.
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