Do you give money to the Canadian Jewish Congress? If so, why?

Seriously, I'd like to know. And, if you do give money, what do you get for it? [*See below for the answer.] A couple nice dinners? A chance to waft Bernie Farber and Marc Freiman onward and upward to their Orders of Canada and Queen's Jubilee Medals and the other baubles of the Canadian state?

Hey, great. But what does this organization actually do for the Jewish community in Canada?

Here's my prediction: If the Farber/Freiman view prevails, a couple of decades down the road there will be no Jewish community in Canada, except for a few elderly types who can't unload their property and flee somewhere where Judaism hasn't been entirely Farbered.

It is just about possible to have a principled difference of opinion on the merits of Section 13 - although the fact that the CJC entered into a cosy relationship with Stormfront member Richard Warman speaks very poorly for them. But what are we to make of the CJC's reaction to an attempted machete attack on two Carleton University Zionists? That's right, machetes. This is either the opening of the Janjaweed's Ottawa branch office or an attempt to re-enact the murder of Theo van Gogh. In the words of Nick Bergamini, a (non-Jewish) friend of Israel:

One of them opened the trunk and I saw glistening in the street light the reflection of a 12-inch machete. "Fucking Jew," he shouted. I began to run for my life as he was only 5 or 6 feet away. I ran, and as I looked back, I saw the long shiny blade slicing through the air about 12 inches from my neck.

The Ottawa Citizen sought the reaction of both the university and what Ezra Levant calls the "Official Jews". Needless to say, the university served up the usual addle-brained mush:

Jason MacDonald, a spokesman for the University, said Carleton provided opportunities for students to discuss emotional issues.

“The Israel and Palestine issue is one of the things that can cause people to become emotional,” MacDonald said. “Our job is to make sure that these debates can happen without anyone’s personal safety being threatened.

“We have met with student groups on both sides of such issues and told them that we are not here to tell them what to think, but certain kinds of behaviour are not acceptable.”

Gotcha. So you'll be issuing a memo saying machete slayings fall into the "not acceptable" category. Excellent. Bound to do the trick. Yet, as pitiful as Mr MacDonald was, the Official Jew managed to be even worse:

Len Rudner, director of the Ontario chapter of the Canadian Jewish Congress, said being a Jew or Zionist in Canada should not prompt such an attack.

“Maybe we should consider the impact that words can have in accelerating the argument to the point where people feel that this kind of behaviour is acceptable,” Rudner said.

That's it? A guy is running through the streets of Gatineau with a machete yelling "Fucking Jew!", and that's your best shot? As Scaramouche notes, this anodyne handwringing is in marked contrast to the Ceej's robust language when the last Klansman in the Maritimes decides to dust off his sheet. If you're such an expert on "the impact that words can have", maybe you could try using some that would have an impact, you pathetic little pansy.

Canada is now a land where taxpayer-funded Jew-haters call for a new Holocaust - with impunity. This happened on your watch, Bernie Farber - while you were busy throwing awards dinners for Richard Warmfront saluting him as All-Time Greatest Human Rights Activist Of All Time. So now that we're advancing remorselessly from the spirited debate of Israeli Apartheid Week through the cheery exchange of ideas of "Jewish child, you're gonna fuckin' die!" to the multicultural outreach of machete attacks (and at Bernie Farber's alma mater, too), what's the official position of the Canadian Jewish Congress?

"Maybe we should consider the impact that words can have in accelerating the argument..."

As Ezra Levant writes:

So we have an actual crime with an actual weapon. And Rudner is calling for not the enforcement of the criminal code, but more censorship..?

We didn't do anything. Ten thugs did.

Words didn't have an impact. A machete did -- or almost did.

Accelerating the argument? A machete isn't an argument. It isn't speech, even offensive or "hateful" speech. It is a tool of violence.

And Rudner thinks that -- what? more human rights commissions prosecuting more Zionists like Mark Steyn and me? -- would make these thugs "feel" their behaviour was not "acceptable"?

Of course. That's the CJC's answer. We need to give more powers to the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission, which will be able to spend even more money going after Steyn and Levant and Marc Lemire and the Treasurer of the Dead Beaver Creek League of White Supremacists, in care of his mum's basement, 27b Dufferin Street. Meanwhile, the Islamo-leftist alliance will metastasize in the heart of every multicultural metropolis until every event in the lives of Canadian Jewry - in synagogues and schools and community centres - has to be held behind guards and barricades (as it does already in parts of Europe). 

Kathy Shaidle likes to say that the likes of Farber and Rudner are "too stupid to be Jewish". In the current print edition of Maclean's, I note that in the Ann Coulter/University of Ottawa showdown, the CJC' took the side of a mob of Israeli Apartheid Week organizers over a steadfast friend of Israel, and suggested the only plausible explanation for the Ceej is that they're a Wahhabist front organization. We have more "hate speech" regulation than ever before, and we have more anti-Semitism than at any time since the 1930s. Ezra is right: A machete isn't "an argument". Islamic thugs want to save themselves the trouble of having an argument - by either killing you, or threatening to kill you to the point where certain subjects are no longer raised. They too understand "the impact of words", and they're in full agreement with the censorship junkies of the CJC that ordinary Canadians should use less of them, at least when it comes to matters of particular interest to Islam.

The CJC inhabits an alternative universe. Angry young men issue explicitly genocidal threats on the streets of Toronto, but the Ceej's high-priced lawyers swan off to a windowless hearing room at the Canadian "Human Rights" Tribunal to consider the latest developments in Year Six of the Marc Lemire investigation. If Kathy's wrong, these are the most stupid Jews in the history of the Jewish people. But on they will go, cardboard heroes pursuing phantom enemies, even as the world they have made collapses around them.

[UPPERDATE: See also the Binksmeister.]

[*UPDATE: Re: Why give money to the CJC? Because, as I should have remembered, it's hard not to for a Canadian Jew. A reader explains the set-up:

Actually, most Canadian Jews don't give money directly to the Canadian Jewish Congress.

The way it works is that every local Jewish community has a UJA ("United Jewish Appeal") campaign (or "CJA" Combined Jewish Appeal in Quebec). The money is collected by the local Federation. Locally, each community decides how much money stays local, how much of a percentage goes to Israel and overseas (via The Jewish Agency, Keren Hayesod and the Joint Distribution Commitee (this is called "overseas" funding) and how much money goes to "National Agencies". The national agencies are Congress, and other agencies like the Canada Israel Committee and JIAS (Jewish Immigrant Aid Service) and a few other smaller ones. The local money goes to stuff like Jewish education, social welfare, community buildings like the JCC, etc...and endowment funds.

This is the problem-most Canadian Jews make their UJA/CJC campaign donation in good faith, trusting that the Federation-the "official" Jews will be using it in the best possible way. They have no say in the professional staffing of the organized community. Basically a bunch of the richest families work together with the CEO of the Federation to staff the organizations. The bigger asshole you are, the better you do. And, in Toronto-90% of the campaign (about $52 million each year) comes from 10% of the richest families in Canada. They run the show.

I was a professional Jew for a year-so I know how it works. They hated my guts and bounced me-but not before I figured out the lay of the land.

I actually encourage every Jew I know not to give to UJA, but rather to take a trip to Israel instead-and put money directly into the Israeli economy. Or there are other reputable Jewish charities that have better overhead rates and do more good.

None of the Jews who give to UJA individually hired Bernie, or the other professionals, and they have little power to remove him. Congress if full of suck up Jews (see Moshe Ronen for an even more puffed up example). Anyone who gives to UJA is considered a member in good standing of CJC and can vote at their plenaries, but few people do.

So the system is set up to put the CJC all but beyond the direct funding decisions of individuals. It is amazing how so much of the minimal support for Section 13 rests on an institution all but immune to any direct pressure.]