Category: Archives

Past Correspondence with Amnesty International, Canada regarding David Matas

(Note: CPA’s work over the past 34 years has been largely undocumented… Read more

(Note: CPA’s work over the past 34 years has been largely undocumented on our website, but we are trying to rectify this.)

AI-Canada Stated Zionist Legal Network Coordinator Didn’t Compromise their Commitment to Impartiality

The following letters were exchanged between CPA and Bonnie Harnden, Executive Assistant of Amnesty International Canada in Jan./Feb 2002.
We checked recently with AI-Canada about the status of David Matas and we received the following response on Feb. 24, 2014 from Denise Glasbeek, Information Services Coordinator, Amnesty International, Canadian Section (English-Speaking):
“I don’t have an exact date for when David Matas ceased to work with Amnesty International. It was sometime close to but before 2006, I believe. To clarify, he was not employed at Amnesty International Canada. He was a volunteer with our Legal Network.” We recognize that AI-Canada has increased its engagement with and promotion of Palestinian human rights in recent years, but to our knowledge, although he is no longer involved with them, they have never distanced themselves from David Matas.
Interestingly, Matas was fully informed about the 2002 exchange of letters and even wrote about them in his outrageous 2005 “Hasbara” book “Aftershock: Anti-Zionism & Anti-Semitism”

We started our engagement with AI, Canada in Jan. 2002, by inquiring about the status of David Matas and his involvement with them, and we received the following response from Bonnie Harnden.
________________________________

—– Original Message —–
From: bharnden@…
To: hkawas@…
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 7:25 AM
Subject: David Matas

Dear Hanna,
David Matas is a long-time volunteer member of Amnesty Canada. He is currently the Coordinator of our Legal Network.
David is also very active in a number of other organizations.
Bonnie Harnden
Executive Assistant
AI Canada
_________________________________-
The following letter was sent to Bonnie Harnden, Executive Assistant, AI Canada under the title “A Staunch Supporter of Israel CANNOT be Impartial”
Jan. 19, 2002
From: “hkawas” hkawas@…
To: bharnden@…
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2002 1:09 AM
Subject: A Staunch Supporter of Israel CANNOT be Impartial

Bonnie Harnden
Executive Assistant, AI Canada

Dear Bonnie

I was disturbed and saddened to learn that David Matas is still working with Amnesty International – Canada.
Mr. Matas is a staunch supporter and uncritical advocate of Israel and Zionism, and he is also is an apologist for Israeli injustices and atrocities against the Palestinian people.

As a “Senior Legal Counsel” to the B’nai Brith Canada, he recently wrote:

“There may be some who assert the right of return for Palestinians without any awareness of the impact it would have on the Jewish people. Others are aware but either do not care, or worse, support that impact. For those in support, ‘the right of return of the Palestinian people’ is today what the ‘final solution to the Jewish problem’ was in the days of Hitler, a mask of words disguising the end result: a denial of the Jewish people’s right to a national identity in its historic homeland.”
He also stated in the same position paper that:
“Israel has not stripped Palestinians of their nationality in violation of international law”.
And then further stated:
“The non-governmental organizations Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have both endorsed the claimed right of Palestinians to Israel… In doing so, they have abandoned their human rights mandates and called for a human rights violation.”
(Israel And The Palestinians: Myths and Realities http://www.bnaibrith.ca/institute/articles/dm010730.html)

This leads us to the following questions:

1- If Mr. Matas thinks that Amnesty International calls for “a human rights violation”, why is he still working with AI Canada?
2- Can a man with so much blind loyalty to Israel and the cause of Zionism be impartial?
3- After all these years of his involvement with your organization, why has AI Canada never questioned his impartiality?
4- Can we trust that the campaigns you are conducting are not politically motivated? i.e. Are the campaigns you are conducting against human rights abuses in certain Arab and Moslem countries motivated by human rights principles or by a political pro-Israeli agenda? And what guarantees can you give the public about this question when you have the likes of Mr. David Matas
working as the Coordinator for your Legal Network?

Amnesty International claims that it “is impartial. It does not take sides in political conflicts. It neither supports nor opposes any government or political system.”

If you are true to your principles, we do NOT think Mr. Matas should be involved in the work of Amnesty International in any capacity.
He not only supports a political system, but he supports a political system that denies the suffering of the Palestinian people, their inalienable rights and their HUMANITY.

Yours truly,

Hanna Kawas
Chairperson,
Canada Palestine Association
Vancouver, Canada
________________________________________
Bonnie Harnden’s response:

—– Original Message —–
From: bharnden@…
To: “hkawas” hkawas@…
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2002 8:31 AM
Subject: Re: A Staunch Supporter of Israel CANNOT be Impartial

Dear Hanna,

David Matas is a longstanding volunteer with Amnesty International. His work with the organization has been in keeping with AI’s commitment to impartiality and independence. Mr. Matas always makes it clear when he is speaking or acting on behalf of AI and when he is doing so on behalf of other organizations. Mr. Matas has no role in developing or presenting Amnesty’s policies or actions in relation to the Middle East.

Amnesty’s work on human rights concerns in the Middle East has always been scrupulously impartial, and not influenced by political considerations. In Israel, the Occupied Territories and the Palestinian Authority the organization has spoken out frequently and very publicly with respect to human rights abuses attributable to Israeli forces, the Palestinian Authority and armed groups. Those reports are available on our website.

Bonnie Harnden
Executive Assistant
AI Canada
________________________________________
Our final response to Bonnie Harnden, under the title “Amnesty International-Canada Violates the Principles of Human Rights” Feb. 15, 2002
From: hkawas
To: bharnden@…
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2002 11:25 PM
Subject: Amnesty International-Canada Violates the Principles of Human Rights

Bonnie Harnden
Amnesty International Canada

We in the Canada Palestine Association are outraged that David Matas, a self declared violator of Palestinian human rights, is allowed to work in Amnesty International – Canada. Human rights are universal, and a violator of human rights in one country can not be a defender of human rights anywhere else.
What is even more incomprehensible is that Matas has publicly criticized Amnesty for its support of the Palestinian right of return, accusing you of having “abandoned (your) human rights mandate”, and yet he continues to work with you and you continue to involve him in a position of trust. The principles of human rights do not lend themselves to such opportunism.

1- Mr. David Matas supports Zionism as an exclusive ideology that allows any Jew to automatically gain Israeli citizenship regardless of his/her birth place, while at the same time he vehemently denies a native of Palestine and her/his descendants the right of return to their homeland.

2- Mr. Matas DENIES the direct responsibility of the Zionist movement for the mass expulsion of the majority of the Palestinian people and the subsequent tragedy of the Palestinian dispossession. Many historians, including Israelis, have documented this direct Israeli responsibility.

“The Jewish military advantage was translated into an act of mass expulsion of more than half of the Palestinian population. The Israeli forces, apart from rare exceptions, expelled the Palestinians from every village and town they occupied. In some cases, this expulsion was accompanied by massacres as was the cases in Lydda, Ramleh, Dawimiyya, Sa’sa, Ein Zietun and other
places. Expulsion also was accompanied by rape, looting and confiscation.”
Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe in “The Link”, January-March, 1998.

3- Mr. Matas not only defends the apartheid nature of the state of Israel, he also justifies it and believes that Israel should be the state of the Jewish people only and not of ALL its citizens. He supports the exclusive “Jewish character of the State of Israel” and “the preservation of the cultural identity of the Jewish people” in Israel.

a- On that basis, he thereby supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the state of Israel which was created according to the UN Partition Plan of Nov. 29, 1947, with a population of 50 percent Jewish and 50 percent Arab
Palestinians on 56 per cent of historic Palestine.
b- Mr. Matas believes that any natural demographic change inside Israel should be stopped by all means similar to what happened in 1947/1948.
c. He also supports all the Israeli laws and regulations that make Israel an exclusionary state and not secular for all of its citizens. The basic law, the law of return and the Jewish National Fund regulations are but a few examples.

4- Mr. Matas says the Holocaust “was global, not just European. It had a Middle East dimension, because of the failure of the states of the Middle East to offer protection to Jewish refugees”. Accordingly, he concludes that Palestinians should share in the “obligation to remedy these wrongs (of the Nazis)”, presumably by giving away their country. This is the utmost in victimizing the victim. Canada and the U.S. were two of the worst countries in turning away Jewish refugees during that period, but Mr. Matas hasn’t called for the state of Israel to be established in New York or on Vancouver Island. We refer him to the book, “The Holocaust, Victims Accuse”, published 1977 by the Orthodox Jewish group Neturei Karta, to fill the gaps in his rather selective analysis.

These are just a few examples of what David Matas stands for, and we do not understand how AI-Canada can claim that it is committed to “impartiality and independence” if it allows such a person to coordinate its legal network, and especially when this coordinator thinks that AI called for “a human rights violation” when it supported the Palestinians’ inalienable human rights.

We urge AI-Canada to:
1- Stop working with people like David Matas who call and work for violations of other peoples’ human and national rights.
2- To start a campaign to call on the Canadian government to stop the tax-deductible status of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) that discriminates on the basis of religion. The JNF and its subsidiaries control around 93 per cent of the land in Israel. This land is set aside for the exclusive use of Jews only, and the 20 per cent Muslim and Christian Israeli minority cannot buy nor even lease this land.
As a Canadian human rights organization, you do not want Canada to be an accessory to such discrimination.

In the meantime, however, we feel obliged to condemn AI-Canada and expose your hypocritical practices to all peace and human rights activists.
We will urge all those who are concerned with the universality of human rights to protest AI-Canada’s practices.

Yours truly

Hanna Kawas
Chairperson,
Canada Palestine Association, Vancouver, B.C.

MP Irwin Cotler: “Canada remained (at Durban I) at the request of the Israeli government”

From a Facebook post on Dec. 4, 2009:

The loyalty war for Israel between the two main Canadian parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals, is heating up and in the process, exposing many facts. One of them is that Canada stayed at the Durban I conference not to further the anti racism agenda, but “at the request of the Israeli government” to further another country’s agenda in implementing apartheid, ethnic cleansing and war crimes against the Palestinian people.
And for the first time the Zionists seemed to have discovered that the Conservative Party policy “plays up dangerous stereotypes” and concretely promotes antisemitism against all Jews, Zionists or not (see below).

Hanna
————————————————————–
http://www.jewishindependent.ca/archives/Dec09/archives09Dec04-11.html

December 4, 2009
Get rid of 10-percenters
Editorial
A recent flyer sent out by Conservative members of Parliament, promoting their party’s Israel record at the expense of the Liberals, has put the Jewish community at the centre of controversy.
MPs are allowed to send – with free postage – flyers to up to 10 percent of the voters in a riding outside their own. These so-called “10-percenters” cost taxpayers about $10 million a year. Their benefits are less clear.
Liberal MP Dr. Carolyn Bennett apologized recently for her 10-percenter that attacked the Conservatives’ handling of the H1N1 (swine) flu among First Nations communities with the slogan “No vaccines, just body bags” and a picture of body bags and a sick aboriginal child. Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq chastised Bennett and told CBC, “First Nations communities should not be used as punching bags for a political party.”
Perhaps not to be outdone in the fear-mongering-among-vulnerable-minorities department, the Conservatives recently sent out a flyer to several Liberal ridings with large numbers of Jewish voters, including ones in Quebec, Toronto and Winnipeg.
On one side of the flyer asking which federal political leader “is on the right track to represent and defend the values of Canada’s Jewish community?” there are two columns, each with three points. On the left, the Conservatives: “Led the world in refusing participation in Durban II hate-fest against Israel”; “Insisted on banning Hezbollah and led the world in defunding Hamas-led Palestinian Authority”; “Strongly backed Israel’s right to self-defence against Hezbollah during 2006 conflict.” On the right, the Liberals: “Willingly participated in overtly anti-Semitic Durban I”; “Opposed defunding Hamas and asked that Hezbollah be delisted as a terrorist organization”; “Michael Ignatieff accused Israel of committing war crimes during 2006 conflict.”
It is true that the Conservatives have been unambiguously supportive of Israel and have strongly condemned anti-Semitism. Under Stephen Harper’s leadership, for example, Canada joined the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research. The Conservatives have spent millions on the Jewish community, as part of the security infrastructure pilot program (though B’nai Brith Canada (BBC) notes in its annual anti-Semitism report that the Liberals made a pre-election pledge of $75 million for a similar program, which BBC considered “clearly a more realistic figure” than the Conservatives’ $3 million) and the federal government will provide Lubavitch B.C. with $633,300 from the Infrastructure Stimulus Fund to renovate the Lubavitch Centre (the B.C. government and Lubavitch B.C. will each invest an identical amount).
Wouldn’t it have been nice to see a positive 10-percenter promoting these achievements? Instead, the recent flyer comes so close to mistruths that, as of Monday, House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken ruled the flyer had breached the Parliamentary privileges of Liberal MP Irwin Cotler (to whose riding flyers were sent) and the House was set to vote on sending Cotler’s complaint to the Procedure and House Affairs Committee for an inquiry.
For example, it was the Liberal party that designated Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations in 2002, thereby making the financing of them illegal. While the Canadian delegation under the Liberals went “willingly” to Durban I, there was no indication that it would turn into the hate-fest it did and, according to Cotler, once it turned ugly, Canada remained at the request of the Israeli government. Finally, Ignatieff did accuse Israel of war crimes, though he did apologize and has since repeated his and his party’s strong support for Israel, calling in a speech to Canadian Jewish Congress for “all parties to be genuine defenders of Israel.”
Where does this leave us as Jews? Well, most of us were probably already familiar with the record of the Conservatives and Liberals on Israel. So what was the purpose of sending the flyer?
One of the results has been to bring to the national public stage divisions within the Jewish community. More than 100 Jews signed a letter of protest to the Harper government, supporting the Liberals’ record. Among the signatories was David Matas, senior legal counsel of BBC. Meanwhile, Frank Dimant, BBC chief executive officer, told the CBC that “he doesn’t interpret the pamphlets as accusing the Liberals of anti-Semitism. Rather, he said, they seem to accurately recount the fact that on several key issues, the Conservatives ‘were more in tune with the Jewish community’ than the Liberals.”
Even if that’s the case, one has to wonder at all the money and effort spent on the Jewish community, which makes up less than one percent of the Canadian population. The attention generates conflicting feelings. It feels great to have such strong supporters of Israel in Parliament, but so much attention to gaining Jewish votes (as if Jews are one-issue voters) could backfire, as it plays up dangerous stereotypes, not the least of which are that Jews control the world’s political institutions and that Jews have a double loyalty, first to Israel, second to their country of residence.
Such messaging, no matter how unintentional, should concern us. As should the messaging that a government doesn’t care about its First Nations citizens. As should any such propagandizing by any political party – especially with taxpayer dollars. Whatever the initial purpose of these 10-percenters was, it’s time to get rid of them.

A Dismal United Church of Canada Resolution

ucc resolution

Initial Comments on Resolution passed by the United Church of Canada
by Hanna Kawas
Aug. 15, 2009

The one resolution passed by the 40th General Council of the United Church of Canada includes item 1(g) (see below), which calls on Palestinians to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

We also learned with horror this week, after reading the United Church Moderator’s statement that the official Church position, since 2003, has been the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. This position is more damaging than anything positive in the new resolution.

Does the Church understand that this is a racist position, that they are recognizing a state where one group (in this case, based on religion) is guaranteed more rights than other groups that constitute a huge 20% of the population?

Would they for a moment recognize or insist anyone else recognize Canada as a Christian state, or Eygpt as an Islamic state?

And its not just saying this is the official religion, but rather supporting exclusive priviliges enshrined in law based on that religion and institutional measures to ensure that this religion maintains a majority in the population base? (For further info, see my letter “Don’t Ask Palestinians if They Recognize Israel”

We are not surprised that the Zionist lobby in Canada is happy with these results.

Hanna Kawas

———————-
Resolution passed by the 40th General Council of the United Church of Canada

August 13, 2009

Amended proposal: Implementation of measures Towards Peace in The Middle East:

That the 40th General Council 2009

1. Record its convictions that a just peace in the Middle East will require:

a) The denunciation of Human Rights abuses committed by Israel and Palestine, as documented by Amnesty International and the United Nations, that will result in Member States of the United Nations taking subsequent, appropriate actions;

b) That the occupation and siege of Gaza by Israel cease, requiring the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza;

c) That the Government of Canada and Member States of the United Nations support international efforts to alleviate the humanitarian and economic situation in Gaza;

d) The withdrawal of Israeli military forces to pre-1967 borders and ending all forms of violence by the Israeli Government upon the Palestinian people;

e) The cessation of suicide bombings and other violent attacks directed towards Israeli civilians on the part of Palestinians;

f) Recognition that East Jerusalem, West Bank and the Gaza Strip constitute an integral part of the territory occupied in 1967 and Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem must be dismantled;

g) The recognition by the emergent State of Palestine of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state within safe and secure borders;

h) The recognition by the Israeli Government and the emergent state of Palestine of equal citizenship rights, protections, privileges and responsibilities for all of their respective citizens regardless of religious or national origins.

2. Direct the General Secretary, General Council to inform the Prime Minister of Canada and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, in writing, of the above convictions and urge that Canadian policy and commitments in the Middle East reflect this position.

3. Affirm the United Church of Canada’s participation in the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel and seek further ways of augmenting our physical presence in the Middle East.

4. Support the principles of the Amman Call particularly those that promote Peace-Making, Bridge-Building and the development of long term strategies for peace and right relations.

5. Direct the General Secretary, General Council to engage in consultation, dialogue and study (with relevant partners and other interested parties), concerning implications of past and future actions to end the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and enter into conversation as how to move the two peoples toward reconciliation (including, but not limited to economic boycott), and to report to the 41st General Council and to provide continuing guidance to the other United Church courts until GC41.

6. Recommend that the United Church Conferences, Presbyteries, congregations and community ministries immediately enter into consultation, dialogue, study and prayer, and then to take appropriate action toward ending the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, and enter into conversation as to how to move the two peoples toward reconciliation (including, but not limited to economic boycott).

7. Affirm the United Church’s support of its partners through financial commitment, solidarity, delegations and ecumenical accompaniment.