Frank Frank

Somehow along the way I got on the mailing list for B'nai Brith Canada, the Jewish human rights organization (which actually began its history as a masonic-type Jewish fraternal organization, something like the Knights of Columbus).

The word on the street among those of us fighting the thought policing of the Canadian "human rights" commissions is that B'nai Brith, while having been a frequent intervenor and occasional complainant before Canada's human rights commissions, are not as censorious in their general outlook as the Canadian Jewish Congress. While B'nai Brith won't break with its past and come out against the "human rights" commissions now that Jews and somewhat jewish writers are being targeted by Islamist fatwas via the hrcs, they have come out against the supposed misjudgments that have allowed the fatwas to be heard by the hrcs, because they still hope to use the hrcs to protect Jews in Canada.

There are, however, apparently voices within B'nai Brith opposed to the hrcs, realizing that the old game whereby "hate speech" prosecutions were basically reserved for antisemites can no longer be sustained.

Anyway, today via the mailiing list comes news that Frank Dimant, Executive Vice President (basically B'nai Brith's executive head) has started a new blog, Frankly Speaking

‘Frankly Speaking’, we believe it is about time that the pressing issues of concern to Canada’s Jewish community were addressed head on. No more nuanced meaning disguised under the banner of political correctness. ‘Frank’ talk is what you will come to expect as a regular visitor to the blog.

Frank Dimant is one of Canadian Jewry’s senior leaders. He can always be counted on to tell the truth as he sees it. He will communicate what many of you are thinking, but often reluctant to say out loud.

Now that is something I'd like to read!

Most of the mailing is a cry for us to join together in fighting "online hate". There is no indication that our tools should be other than fighting back with the truth (especially about Israel), at sites like Youtube and Facebook.

So I checked out Frank's blog:

...The protestations on the lack of human rights in Arab countries are so muted that you cannot even hear them. The lack of rights granted to homosexuals and lesbians in Muslim countries brings absolutely no protest from Canadian human rights organizations. The torture of citizens in Arab lands is not an issue for academia. Child labour is simply not on the agenda. The stoning of men and women on charges of adultery barely raises an eyebrow. The right of Hindus to pray in their temples is not a matter of public concern. The list can go on indefinitely.

The dual standard of judging the Jewish nation and the Islamic world is so blatantly biased that it cries out for justice. Sadly, today, the international human rights bodies and human rights organizations, including the United Nations, are controlled by the very entities that promote hatred against the Jewish people and their ancestral homeland.

Sadly, we as a worldwide Jewish community, together with our friends and allies - and we do have friends - have failed to take the initiative. Instead of being on the offensive, we fall back on classical defense lines. We list the Nobel Prize winners that the Jewish people have produced, we list the universities that exist and flourish in Israel, we speak about the human rights of Arab citizens in Israel in stark contrast to the lack of rights they would have in neighboring Arab countries, but these defenses fall on deaf ears.

We have done ourselves and our friends a disservice. We have not launched an offensive to fend off the Islamists. We have not focused our attention on the tragic wars being promoted by Islamists whose ultimate aim is to impose Islamic rule throughout the world. We have not exposed in consistent or systemic fashion the depths of anti-Jewish hatred being taught to young children in the Arab/Muslim world, nor have we done nearly enough to highlight the threat of Ahmadinijad and Iran to the civilized community of nations.

It is high time that we begin a pro-active campaign of exposing our enemies for who and what they are and the threat they pose not only to our survival, but indeed to the very fundamental survival of western civilization as we know it.

The rights of women to dress in the fashion they so choose, to drive cars and be educated, which are so elementary to us and yet a rarity in the Muslim world, the rights of Christians not to be intimidated by Islamic rulers, the rights of Buddhists to have their shrines remain intact, and the rights of the Baha’i to practice their faith, are all basic human rights that are denied by the Islamist forces.

If the so-called politically correct human rights organizations refuse to address these issues, we must not be silent when such injustices are committed and when they risk being superimposed on western civilization. It is time for us to shatter the silence and step into the void. ‘Frankly Speaking’, it is long overdue.

Frankly Speaking » Blog Archive » Drowning in Political Correctness

Now I have always wanted to join a real human rights organization, i.e. one that talked something like this. If Frank can only come to the conclusion that the Canadian "human rights" commissions, in having acquired the right to police our freedom of expression, and in first having gone after marginal antisemites with the heavy hand of the state, has now led to an environment in which the fear of a "hate speech" prosecution by "the hrc" is now being felt more widely by many Canadian writers, especially writers who might write like Frank, then I might consider switching from the mailing to the membership list.

In the meantime, and knowing that B'nai Brith does not support the prosecution of Mark Steyn by the HRCs, but knowing that what Frank Dimant has written here is not much different from the kind of things Steyn writes, how will the frank blogger envision a future in which the HRCs should and can only police the "right" kind of "hate" mongers? I mean, for a man who is aware of the antisemitic, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Western corruption that has crept into the entire complex of the "human rights" world view, from the UN down, how can he expect the "human rights" agents of the Canadian state not also to be so influenced by the inherent antisemitism in the politically-correct world view of the victimary left?

And more generally, how could he ever imagine a body set up to police "hate speech" that was not either just a way to fine the most marginal nutters, at considerable expense to the taxpayer who would otherwise never hear of these lost losers, or a way to make, through its choice of prosecutions, one politically-correct worldview the officially protected world view of the Canadian state and "democracy", at the expense of others? The mere existence of a "hate speech" law is either a way for the righteous to become more disturbingly righteous by allowing them to scapegoat and punish the pathetic and inconsequential, or, when such a law is applied to silence figures with any significant audience, a way to chill all kinds of dissident opinion that should be heard in a free and democratic society, if we believe that allowing people to air their resentments - resentment being something so fundamental and inescapable to the human condition - is usually a much better way to mediate and defer resentment than is the stateist attempt to try and silence the "hate".

Let's see if frank Frank will contest the point. Let's see if he really believes that a free and open society with real human rights is always the best way to protect Jews and free people generally?