He now wants them abolished, claiming that they serve no purpose other than "criminalize political dissidents". Wrong, wrong, wrong, Mr. Levant. Those laws exist to provide recourse for people who are victimized by those who believe that discrimination and spreading lies is an appropriate way to forward their agenda.
We won't ignore the fact that Levant finds himself on the wrong side of such allegations these days, either. It's amazing, how a man who in the past has screamed blue murder when something has happened that threatens Israel and Israelis, now finds it politically convenient to demands the laws be repealed when the shoe is on the other foot.
Ezra argues that the laws are being implemented with a double-standard:
Why wasn't the head of the Canadian Islamic Congress, Mohamed Elmasry, charged with a hate crime when he went on TV last year, stating that every adult Jew in Israel -- which would include pregnant women, old men, young folks at a pizza parlour or dance club -- are legitimate targets for Palestinian terrorism?
Well, Ezra, here's the challenge for you - can you demonstrate that such a statement is in fact a hate crime? Is it inciting hatred here in Canada? Is it inciting people to treat Canada's Jewish citizens as second-class members of society? If you can make such a representation, then I suggest you pursue the complaint - being a lawyer (or a former lawyer - I'm not sure which these days), you should be quite capable of putting together a decent brief on the topic.
Canada's hate crime laws exist for a reason - and people like Jim Keegstra, whose denial of the Holocaust in WWII, resulted in his teaching a series of blatant falsehoods about not only documented history, but about both the Jewish people and Nazi Germany. He knowingly did so in contravention of both the school curriculum and Canada's laws at the time.
Using Ezra's logic, Mr. Keegstra is nothing more than a political dissident - persecuted because he was "WASP"ish. This is false, and a decade worth of court cases has demonstrated the falsehood of that assertion repeatedly.
In a sense, one can argue that our Hate Crimes statutes create a class of "thoughtcrime"
, but they provide a legal recourse when someone - as Jim Keegstra or Ernst Zundel did - perpetrates outrageous lies about an entire population, without so much as the slightest foundation in fact. I suspect that the reason that the 17 clowns that were arrested earlier aren't charged with "hate crimes" is because they haven't committed any per se. (Plotting to bomb something isn't a hate crime, but plotting to bomb a Synagogue during prayers because it's full of Jews certainly would be - notice the difference)
Besides - the evidence is hardly all in on the Toronto 17 - at the moment, it could be anything from youthful stupidity speaking to outright organized crime or simply a setup that happened to dupe a bunch of idiots.
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