Conservatives Seek Jews, Get Officially Rebuked

The Conservative Party shows real drive in isolating Jewish people for targeted pestering. They developed lists of the names and addresses of Jewish people in order to send greeting cards on Rosh Hashanah a couple years running. And then they sent nasty and misleading attack messages out about their Liberal opponents. The Ottawa Citizen reported¹ (8 October 2007) that a number of Jewish people were startled to find greeting cards in their mailboxes on Rosh Hashanah.

“A Conservative official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the mailing lists the Prime Minister’s Office uses are drawn from community directories, free publications available to the general public or word of mouth from friends and relatives, but not government records.”

I can’t help but think that it’s a bit creepy to imagine Conservatives getting names and addresses via “word of mouth from friends and relatives.” How exactly would a conversation go in which someone from the Conservative Party asks people to divulge contact information about their relatives and friends? In spite of the types of sources the official mentioned were used, a number of people that received these cards were not practicing Jews and did not have their names or contact information available in such sources to begin with. It casts doubt on how this list was developed.

A year later (10 September 2008), The Ottawa Citizen² followed up its report with another. The Conservatives repeated their weird greeting card campaign, with much the same sort of response. Many people in Jewish communities did not like receiving the blatant grab for votes delivered under the guise of goodwill. Indeed, the article quotes one person’s sentiments

“‘I was a little alarmed at the idea that the government might have some list of Canadian Jews, whether or not they’re using that for benevolent or malevolent or cynical reasons,” Mr. Terkel said. “It doesn’t seem my religion should be the business of any federal government.’”

Although the statement ought to apply to any religion, I would have thought the Conservatives might have given a little extra consideration to the issue not just because of the outcry the prior year but in the context of history, they should know better than to present themselves organizing lists of Jews. Bad form.

Finally they changed tactics as the Canadian Press reported³ (19 November 2009)

“Conservative MPs have distributed taxpayer-funded pamphlets that suggest the Grits are anti-Semitic.”

It goes on to quote Montreal Liberal MP Irwin Cotler

“‘To intentionally misrepresent the facts and to drive a wedge and to seek to associate the Liberals somehow with fuelling anti-Semitic polices or being associated with terrorism, that, I have to say, is something that I have not seen (before),’ said Cotler.”

It wasn’t just the Liberals that were outraged, even though they were the target of the attack. Both the NDP and the Bloc stood against it as well, derided it as a low point in the attack propaganda the Conservative Party distributes.

And finally, The Star reported⁴ (27 November 2009) that the Tories got officially rebuked by the Peter Milliken (the Commons Speaker).

“Agreeing that former justice minister Irwin Cotler (Mount Royal) had been dealt a ‘direct and personal’ blow with the circulation of the flyers, Commons Speaker Peter Milliken said ‘the mailing constitutes interference with (Cotler’s) ability to perform his parliamentary functions in that its content is damaging to his reputation and his credibility.’”

It also pointed out that after receiving the propaganda, some people in Cotler’s riding wanted him to leave parliament as well as the Jewish community. Cotler “…is an internationally recognized expert on human rights, especially surrounding Israel, and whose daughter has served in the Israeli military.” So the Tory attack campaign seems to have accomplished significant damage to Cotler’s reputation.

Will the official rebuke, shaming as it is, be enough to stop the Conservatives from their propaganda campaigns targeting Jews? I doubt it, the reports linked above seem to show that the Conservative Party is unable to see anything wrong with its actions.