The Cairo Clique: Anti-Zionism and the Canadian Left
Between them, the PFLP, the PFLP-GC and the PLF have been responsible for suicide bombings, car bombings, airplane hijackings, and shooting sprees that have taken hundreds of innocent lives. [14]
In its protest letter to the federal solicitor-general, the Stop War Coalition joined with several anti-Israel groups to defend the outlawed militias as "part of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, liberation and democracy," and Ottawa's decision to ban the groups' activities in Canada was "going down the path of McCarthyism." [15]
This was not merely an isolated case of some rogue branch of Canada's peace movement doing something rash and embarrassing. The Mobilization Against War and Occupation, which is by far the more active of the two "anti-war" fronts on Canada's west coast, openly opposes the existence of what it calls the "Zionist apartheid state of Israel." It further declares militant Islamists to be progressive: "Wherever Islam is fighting against imperialism, it is a progressive force. . . ‘The Left' must join with Muslims in this fight." [16] MAWO activists have been known to masquerade as Muslims to recruit in Vancouver-area mosques. [17]
In Quebec, several mainstream political party leaders have marched in "anti-war" demonstrations that have deliberately excluded Jewish leaders, along with marchers carrying placards that read "Juifs assassins" (Jewish assassins) and "Nous sommes tous Hezbollah" (We are all Hezbollah.) [18]
The Mobilization Against War and Occupation...declares militant Islamists to be progressive
In Montreal, a recently-formed "peace coalition" of labor and community groups with a focus on Israel-Palestine includes an openly pro-Hezbollah political front.[19] In Ontario, the leaders of the Toronto Stop The War Coalition take pains to provide platforms to radical Islamists. The Toronto coalition and its various partners, along with the Canadian Peace Alliance, regularly join with Iranian diplomats to celebrate the anniversary of the Khomeinist revolution, [20] and routinely travel abroad to confer with Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. [21]
It's hard to see how any of this is "progressive," or is about peace, or about ending the war in Afghanistan. It's much easier to see how it never was about these things at all.
Feasting With Mine Enemy
In April, 2007, the Egyptian English-language weekly newspaper, Al-Ahram, contained a glowing account of an international gathering in Cairo, under the headline, "Anti-Globalists Reach Out to Islamists." Swapping notes with senior officials from Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood were 20 Canadian activists, including representatives of the Canadian Peace Alliance. [22]
Among them was James Clark of the Toronto Stop The War Coalition, who was quoted verbatim to the effect that "Islamophobia" in the west could be exploited to "educate and mobilize" against western governments. He vowed that Canadian anti-war activists, inspired by the "Arab resistance" in Lebanon and Iraq, would work with Muslims in Canada to help defeat imperialism.
The involvement of so many Canadians at the Cairo conference eventually attracted some unwelcome attention in the Canadian news media, but it was after the fact. Canadian journalists, who do not generally subject the politics of the "anti-war" movement to any serious scrutiny, were obliged to rely mainly on the accounts of the conference participants themselves, and the Al-Ahram report. This presented something of a problem, context-wise.
