TOURO TALKS
Sponsored by Robert and Arlene Rosenberg
A conversation between Touro president Dr. Alan Kadish and college students, thought leaders, and experts from around the world, discussing academic and contemporary issues.
Produced by Nahum Twersky and Prof. Sam Levine of Touro Law's Jewish Law Institute.
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[DESCRIPTION] Irwin Cotler speaks to the camera from a room. The Touro University logo is at the bottom right.
[IRWIN COTLER] What is needed now are actionable deliverables within specific time frameworks so that we combat anti-Semitism, which has to be seen, as we've learned only too well throughout history, that is not only threatening to Jews, but it is, as my colleague Ahmed Shaheed, the former UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion, as we said many times together, that it's toxic to democracy, that it's the canary in the mineshaft of global evil that is an ongoing threat, as we've seen to our individual and collective security.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[DESCRIPTION] Touro Talks intro displaying photos of students and faculty across the university, fading into the Touro University logo.
[TEXT] Fighting Apartheid, Antisemitism, and Injustice: A Conversation With Irwin Cotler,
Former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Touro Talks is sponsored by Robert and Arlene Rosenberg
[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish speaks to the camera with a plain background. The Touro University logo is at the bottom right.
[ALAN KADISH] Hi, I'm Dr. Alan Kadish, the president of Touro University. Welcome to Touro Talks. Today's guest is Irwin Cotler. He is the international chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Center for human rights, an emeritus professor of law at McGill University, a former minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, and long time member of parliament in Canada. He's an international rights lawyer.
[TEXT] Dr. Alan Kadish, President, Touro University
[ALAN KADISH] Professor Cotler has served as international counsel to prisoners of conscience, including, among many others, Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky, and Nelson Mandela. And he's been a legal advocate in support of Israel and opposing anti-Semitism. Professor Kotler has received 15 honorary degrees and in 2023 was awarded Israel's Presidential Medal of Honor. Welcome, Professor Cotler
[DESCRIPTION] Irwin Cotler joins Dr. Alan Kadish.
[IRWIN COTLER] Thank you, Dr. Kadish. It's a pleasure to be interacting with you, as I have my own long history, with Touro University, for whom I have the highest respect and now for your inspired leadership.
[ALAN KADISH] Thank you so much. It's great having you on here. And I thought we'd start with a little bit of history about you. Tell us in a few minutes about your career and how you ended up as a respected expert on human rights and international law.
[IRWIN COTLER] I don't know about a respected expert, but I will say that whatever I've done is due to the teachings of my parents, a blessed memory.
[TEXT] The Hon. Irwin Cotler, Former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada
[IRWIN COTLER] They were, my first, if I could put it that way, teachers and mentors in human rights. It was my father who taught me at a young age, before I could understand the profundity of his message, when he said to me that the pursuit of justice, and he used the words tzedek tzedek tirdof, we've just had parashat shoftim, which resonated for me in that regard.
He said that the pursuit of Justice, as he put it, is equal to all the other commandments combined. This, as he put it, must be your life's mission. This is what you must teach unto your children.
But it was my mother who's yahrzeit, coming up in a week, 20 years since her passing, who would say to me when she heard my father say these things that if you want to pursue justice, you have to understand-- you have to feel the injustice about you. You have to go in and about your community and beyond and feel the injustice and combat the injustice. Otherwise, as she put it, the pursuit of justice will remain a theoretical abstraction.
And so, as a result of the teachings of my parents, blessed memory, and wonderful teachers that I had in Jewish day schools, which included Holocaust survivors amongst them, unfortunately, same at university, I got involved in what might be called the two great human rights struggles of the second half of the 20th century-- the struggle for human rights in the former Soviet Union and, within that, the struggle for Soviet Jewry, and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and got involved with the two people who emerged as the faces, the identity, the vision and hopes of those two struggles. That was Natan Sharansky in the former Soviet Union and Nelson Mandela in South Africa.
[ALAN KADISH] So how did you get involved with Mandela?
[IRWIN COTLER] Well, what happened is I was paying a visit to South Africa in 1981. I was there as a guest of the anti-apartheid movement and at the same time as Jewish leadership. And there was a crossover there. And at one point, I was asked if I would speak to the Jewish students group, law students group, on the case of Natan Sharansky.
And I said, yes, I would be pleased to do it, but I'd also like to talk about Nelson Mandela. I know that he's a banned person, and I don't want to get anybody in trouble. And they said, no, please go ahead.
And so they organized it at Fitz University and, to this day, one of the largest public gatherings. And I spoke on the topic, if Sharansky, why not Mandela? At the end of my talk, my wife, who was in the audience, came up to approach me, and I wasn't there because I'd been arrested.
And I was taken to Pik Botha, the then-foreign minister of South Africa. And as I entered his office, he said to me, Mr. Cotler, who is that? He pointed to a picture in the wall, and I said, yes, that's Anatoly Sharansky.
He said, right. I could not understand how somebody like you, who represents a great hero, Natan Sharansky, and fighting against the Communist Soviet Union, which is our enemy as well, can in the same breath also represent Nelson Mandela, who is also a Communist and also our enemy. And I said to Pik Botha at the time and answered.
I said, both Sharansky and Mandela are fighting for the same thing. They're both fighting for democracy. They're both fighting for human rights.
They're both fighting in the pursuit of justice. And for so long as it takes from wherever I am, I'm going to fight against this apartheid regime until it is dismantled. As I said to Pik Botha, apartheid is not just a racist philosophy. That would be bad enough.
It's a racist legal regime. It's the only post-World War II regime that has institutionalized racism as a matter of law. And he told me at that point, you're a brash young man and said, how long you expect to be here?
I said, 12 days. He said, OK, I will let you go in and about the country, see who you want, speak to who you want. And when you come back after some 12 days, tell me what you've seen, if South Africa is not an egalitarian country, separate but equal, et cetera. I came back 12 days later, and he said to me, OK, young man. What do you have to say?
I said, you're right, Mr. Botha, South Africa is egalitarian if you're white. If you're Brown or Black, it's even worse than I thought. And I will go back and fight against this regime until it's dismantled.
And he repeated then what he'd said during the 3 and 1/2 hours that we were together, that I was a brash young man. And so I did return to Canada, and that began my odyssey. But before that happened, after that arrest, I was contacted at that time by Mandela's lawyer, Mr. Maslow, who said to me, look.
We have a legal team here in South Africa, and we're fine here. But what we need is somebody to do outside South Africa what you've done for Sharansky on behalf of Mandela. And so that's when I took up that instruction and began to advocate for Mandela outside South Africa, in Canada and beyond.
And Mandela became our second honorary citizen in Canada after Raoul Wallenberg. But it was that experience, that encounter in South Africa with the apartheid regime up close and my involvement with the lawyers for Mandela, with whom I continued to have an ongoing relationship and would come back to South Africa for a reunion every few years that included Arthur Chaskalson, who then was a young lawyer and ended up being the president of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and included George Bizos of Greek origin, with whom I worked together. So I maintain a very close contact with the Mandela group and continued to come back to South Africa and continue the kind of joint involvement in both those struggles against apartheid and with regard to the former Soviet Union.
[ALAN KADISH] Did you spend much time with Mandela himself?
[IRWIN COTLER] No, I didn't. I did not meet him at the time. He was in Robben Island.
So we did not have occasion to meet then. We had one encounter when he came to Canada. I believe Canada was the first country that he visited after he was released. And I was invited then to a dinner with him, was introduced to him by the then-Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney of Canada. And that's when I had a very brief encounter with him. I did have meetings with his widow, Winnie Mandela, and with one of his grandsons. And so there has been a connection that has continued.
[ALAN KADISH] He was certainly a great freedom fighter and a great hero against apartheid. Some have suggested, however, that some of the things that he did after he was released and after apartheid was ended were open to criticism. Did you get involved with that at all? What's your evaluation of how he governed and his relationship, particularly to Israel, to Jews, and perhaps to the question of communism? What's your sense of how that was after he took power?
[IRWIN COTLER] Well, Mandela, as you know, endured 27 years in a South African prison and emerged after that period to not only preside over the dismantling of apartheid but become the first president of a democratic, egalitarian, non-racial South Africa. And in the brief conversation I had with him but more in his own writings, he spoke of Israel having the right to live in peace and security. And what some may not realize is that he actually wrote about how the Irgun had inspired him.
What also happened is while he was in prison, he was visited often by PLO leaders, including Arafat and the like. But regrettably, the Israeli leadership was not engaged as it should have been with the anti-apartheid movement. And he was largely hearing only one side.
That did not mean that he ever recanted his support for Israel's right to live in peace and security, which he reaffirmed on a number of occasions. But of course, he became a strong advocate for the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and their independent state, something that I supported as well, and I never saw those two things as having to be in conflict. So admittedly, there's been some concern with some of his seeming identifications afterwards, but I always regarded him as being, as I said, a role model for the struggle for democracy, freedom, and justice. And what is often forgotten has been also his support for Israel's right to live in peace and security.
[ALAN KADISH] Thank you. Changing gears for a moment, looking back at the fight for freedom of Jews in the former Soviet Union, particularly your own work as well as other organizations that helped achieve freedom for at least many of the Jews from the former Soviet Union, how do you view that movement? Do you think it-- would you have done anything differently in retrospect, or do you think that the struggle, which was, I would say, more successful than most protest movements, really was handled pretty well?
[IRWIN COTLER] I do think it was handled pretty well. I think that the struggle for Soviet Jewry was, in fact, a model for what we today sometimes referred to as intersectionality, a model for a critical mass of advocacy in the pursuit of justice. You had women for Soviet Jewry, students for Soviet Jewry, academics for Soviet Jewry, lawyers for Soviet Jewry, scientists for Soviet Jewry-- as I say, a critical mass of advocacy and the Jewish community being an important component of it. But it went much beyond the Jewish community.
It became really a framework for the struggle for justice internationally and worldwide and led by Anatoly Sharansky, who sometimes forgotten that while he was a leader, of course, of the Soviet Jewry movement as a refusenik who was then in prison, Sharansky was also a leader in four other movements which also reflected this intersectionality as well. He was a leader of the Helsinki Watch movement, and he was one of the founders of the Helsinki Watch movement. And as we're meeting today, we're commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act, whose principal seven speaks about the right to know and act upon one's rights, which have inspired not only Soviet Jews but political prisoners worldwide.
He became, together with Andrei Sakharov, a leader of the democracy movement and was a spokesman for that person. He became a leader in both the ethnic and religious rights movements. I always used to meet while he was in prison with Pentecostals or with Ukrainians, who spoke of Sharansky as having championed their cause. And he was also a leader of the movement regarding freeing political prisoners in the former Soviet. So Sharansky himself was the embodiment of what we would today call the intersectional struggle for human rights and a looking glass to why the struggle for Soviet Jewry was, in all its manifestations, a case study for the pursuit of justice by human rights groups within which Jews played a prominent role.
[ALAN KADISH] So let's switch gears for a second and talk a little bit about anti-Semitism. In the period leading up to October 7, what was your sense of how the world was doing on anti-Semitism scorecard? Let me use that phraseology as a question.
[IRWIN COTLER] Well--
[ALAN KADISH] Do you think that, prior to October 7, things were pretty calm and quiet, that the work you and others had done had been successful? What was your impression?
[IRWIN COTLER] No, they weren't quiet. The fires of anti-Semitism which exploded on October 7 and beyond were already burning before October 7. I can just share with you my own findings as Canada's first special envoy for Holocaust remembrance and combating anti-Semitism in 2021 four years ago and when I spoke of my principal findings as including the following-- first, that the combating of anti-Semitism in that kind of tripartite paradigm of combating anti-Semitism from the far right, the far left, and radical Islam, while true, was insufficient-- that what we were witnessing, as I said then, and it holds even more true now, was the increasing mainstreaming, normalizing, and legitimation of anti-Semitism in the political culture, the popular culture, the entertainment culture, the sports culture, the media culture, and in particular the campus culture.
And all this with the absence of outrage, I said at the time, and even more so with indifference and inaction that underpinned the fires of anti-Semitism that were burning then. I also spoke of the erosion of allyship, where when we spoke about intersectionality, one would have thought that there would have been that critical mass of advocacy as there was for Soviet Jewry, combating anti-Semitism. But we did not find that.
We found an increasing erosion of allyship. We also found anti-Semitism being laundered under the protective cover of the UN, the authority of international law, the culture of human rights, the very struggle against anti-Semitism itself. And we found that even for example, in Canada, astonishingly so, that under Canada's anti-racism strategy, astonishingly, anti-Semites and individuals who were the recipients of grants and furtherance of their-- so there was this corrosive situation that we had leading up to October 7, which, as I said, exploded on October 7 and beyond.
[ALAN KADISH] So how do you explain the explosion on October 7? In some ways, to some of us, it seemed seem paradoxical. Others weren't surprised at all. Why did October 7 legitimize the further mainstreaming of anti-Semitism?
[IRWIN COTLER] Well, as I said, the first thing is that the fires of anti-Semitism were burning and were not being sufficiently combated and extinguished before. But with October 7, we witnessed not only unspeakable atrocities often spoken of as being the worst day in Jewish history since the Holocaust, committed not only by a terrorist group under Canadian law, American law, international law, Hamas, but by a genocidal anti-Semitic statelet not because I say so, but because they say so in their founding charter of 1988 and since and have since October 7-- and this is something that gets often ignored now-- have said that they will commit October 7 again and again and again until Israel's annihilation. I'm quoting Hamas leaders directly.
Now, one would have thought that this would have resulted in a global condemnation of anti-Semitism. One would have thought that this would have resulted in global action against anti-Semitism. But what we found in the immediate aftermath of October 7 was the denial even that these unspeakable atrocities had taken place or indifference to them or, worse, support for them or justification for them, or even glorification of them in the public squares and in the streets and in the campus community and the like.
So what is needed at this point is what we called for, as I said, before October 7, but certainly after October 7, is what we need is less virtue signaling, less kind of proverbial declarations. What is needed now are actionable deliverables within a specific time frameworks so that we combat anti-Semitism, which has to be seen, as we've learned only too well throughout history, that is not only threatening to Jews, but it is, as my colleague Ahmed Shaheed, the former UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion, as we said many times together, that it's toxic to democracy, that it's the canary in the mineshaft of global evil that is an ongoing threat, as we've seen, to our individual and collective security.
And so at this point, if we want to protect our democracies and we want to defend our individual citizens and we want to protect and defend the collective security of our citizens and particularly our Jewish citizens in our democracy, then we have to combat anti-Semitism as a priority for all governments-- federal, state, municipal-- as a matter of principle and policy of the first order.
[ALAN KADISH] So how would you do that? There's certainly been a lot of organizations, both before October 7 and since then, that have tried to fight anti-Semitism. Do you have any suggestions for things that should have been done or should be done, that are fundamentally different from the efforts that have gone on?
[IRWIN COTLER] Well, I think we need both a whole of government and a whole of civil society strategy for that purpose. With regard to a whole of government, we need federal kind of provincial, US state, and municipal governments working together in tandem. Too often, they work in silos. I recall myself as a cabinet minister, and very often, governments work in silos when they need to work in tandem, but not only working in tandem-- governments, parliaments, and civil society-- but also working across party lines.
What I've been experiencing and we've been witnessing has been the undo sort of weaponization of anti-Semitism for political purposes. What we need are Democrats and Republicans coming together in joint common cause because this is not a party matter. And I become concerned.
I see this somewhat in Canada but more in the United States that the combating of anti-Semitism is not, as it must be, a bipartisan priority but sometimes becomes a partisan one, weaponized for political purposes. And we need, of course, the targeting of the various sectors in that regard, which includes, of course, the university sector but not only the university sector. It requires interfaith collaboration as a priority.
It requires, as we did in Canada 10 years ago now-- it's the 10th anniversary of a resolution that was unanimously adopted. But I suspect today that even the institutional memory of Canadian parliamentarians does not remember that we unanimously adopted a resolution 10 years ago then, when I was a member of parliament, that said the combating of anti-Semitism must be a priority in both our domestic and foreign policy and that this must be so as a matter of principle and policy. And we've seen recently, as in Australia, how the domestic and the international is linked when Australia determined the involvement of Iran in the manner of the fomenting of anti-Semitism in Australia, in the fomenting of hate crimes in Australia.
So it requires, therefore, an integration of both our domestic and a foreign policy and making it a priority in both our domestic and foreign policy and working together in an integrated fashion, not only internationally, for example, among the G7 countries, of which Canada is now the chair-- and I've certainly called on them to make the issue of anti-Semitism a priority amongst the G7-- but within each of the G7 countries, as I've sought to share with you. And you might want to provide perhaps your readers afterwards the Canadian government justice and human rights parliamentary committee came out with an excellent report in December 2024 with an inventory of recommendations along all lines, as I mentioned-- government, parliament, university, civil society, and the like which I won't now burden you with.
But I think for your listeners and for your readers, this is an excellent case study of a set of recommendations which, regrettably, in Canada have yet to be implemented. There's been, as I said, very important declaratory statements, important virtue signaling, important performative approaches. But what is needed is implementation and actionable actions taken on the ground within time frames, as I said, in a coordinated fashion-- federal, provincial, municipal and the like.
[ALAN KADISH] So, not surprisingly, given your background, you've suggested an extremely important approach to combating anti-Semitism using the political structure. One of the things that we've seen in the United States is that although you're absolutely correct, Congress is no longer unanimously in support of Israel, which wasn't the case a decade ago. But we've seen, perhaps even more impressively, a dissociation between polls of citizens' views and what Congress supports because the majority of Democrats in Congress, for example, still are strong supporters of Israel.
But population surveys and polls don't suggest that that extends to the Democratic electorate. So my question to you is-- and some of us feel that one of the challenges is that the educational system, while not co-opted in the same way it is in the Middle East, is still co-opted to support anti-Semitism on the K through 12 level as well as the University level. Do you think government action is the right way to approach the educational challenges, or do we need a different approach to try to not inculcate young people with at least tolerating anti-Semitism?
[IRWIN COTLER] Well, I think you've hit on a number of important points, and it goes beyond government action here. One of the more disturbing poll results you referenced was the one that showed that in the age group 18 to 24-- we're talking about the university campus age group-- more people in that age demographic support Hamas than support Israel. There are other very disturbing findings, but I found out to be amongst the most principal disturbing findings. That tells us that we have a particular concern with that demographic cohort, and it tells us, therefore, that there's a particular challenge for the universities and the campus sector.
One of the things that we've recommended in Canada and have sought to implement-- and of course, it's been recommended in the US but has yet to be effectively implemented-- has been not only the adoption, but the implementation of the IHRA working definition on anti-Semitism, which remains the most authoritative, comprehensive, representative, and democratically-adopted definition that we have, where we have more than 40 countries that have adopted it, et cetera, et cetera. But it's not enough to adopt that definition. It needs to be implemented.
And we in Canada have a government-produced manual setting forth a framework for education and training anti-Semitism within governments, within parliaments, within universities, within law enforcement units, within judiciaries and the like-- In other words, a whole of government, whole of civil society commitment to and implementation of an experience of education and training programs with respect to the IHRA working definition because education is crucial. And if you want to combat anti-Semitism, you have to be able to know how to identify it, how to recognize it, and therefore how to combat it.
And that's why not just the adoption of the IHRA working definition but the implementation of it is crucial. We have the tools to do it. We have to implement it.
And it's the same thing with regard to the matter of Holocaust education. And we need education as well in the understanding of anti-Semitism, both of traditional anti-Semitism and the new anti-Semitism, where traditional anti-Semitism is discrimination against, denial of, assault upon the rights of Jews to live as equal members in whatever society they inhabit. The new anti-Semitism, I spoke of this 25 years ago, was a discrimination against, denial of, assault upon the right of the Jewish people to live as an equal member of the family of nations.
What is common to both forms of anti-Semitism, classical and new, is discrimination. All that has happened is that it's moved from discrimination against Jews as individuals to discrimination against the Jews as a people, reverberating back to discrimination against Jews as individuals. And increasingly, not only are we talking about discrimination but hate crimes targeting Jews, where the FBI in your country and similarly Statistics Canada in our country, reported the highest level of hate crimes targeting Jews since the FBI began compiling statistics in 1991.
And as I said when I was minister of justice and attorney general that hate crimes have a particular fallout because hate crimes are identity crimes. They're community-based crimes. They reverberate within and amongst the community.
And so when you have a hate crime, as when you have the killing of Israeli embassy staffers in Washington or what you have in Boulder, Colorado, or you had in Montreal over the last two weeks, where a Hasidic Jew with his children is attacked by a random assailant or just a few days ago, where a Jewish woman shopping in the only kosher grocery in Ottawa is stabbed, or another Jew just 10 days ago is told by an assailant that we will kill all you Jews, et cetera-- in other words, mounting not only threats but then finding expression in actual hate crimes which reverberate internationally amongst the Jewish community.
And we can't just say, well, all groups are targeted for hate. That's true. And we can't just say that it's important to combat all hate crimes, regardless of the targeted group. That, of course, is an imperative. I said so as a parliamentarian, as a minister of justice.
But at the same time, we can't conflate it as if all hate crimes are the same when in Canada, for example. Canadian Jews, who are 1% of the population of Canada, are the targets of more than 70% of all religiously hate-motivated crimes. And so we have to understand the imperatives of combating hate crimes as being a specific and emerging and standing threat to the safety and security not only of the Jewish community but, as I said, to the collective security of Canadians.
[ALAN KADISH] So, of course, I agree with most of your points, and some of those stories you've told about what's recently been happening in Canada are horrific. And I would say that overall, we could tell the same series of stories about things that have happened in the United States where Jews are maybe a little more than 1% of the population but constitute a huge percentage of the religiously-based hate crimes that we have in the United States. And I think you're 100% right that trying to say and treat anti-Semitism as part of a general prejudice problem underestimates the threat and creates solutions that aren't optimal.
I want to go back to the point you made about education for a moment. Of course, we believe in the power of education, but I think that at least in the United States, focusing entirely on college campuses, which is something we can come back to in a moment, misses significant part of the population because for better or worse, a lot of 18 to 24-year-old Americans don't end up graduating from college or don't end up being in college. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is a topic for an entirely another conversation.
But the fact is that focusing only on universities has the potential for missing part of the problem. And one of the things I think which is an enormous effort but where we need to put more focus is the method of knowledge acquisition for young people today is primarily social media. And that can affect everyone or impact everyone, regardless of which college or university they're in or whether they're in school at all.
And so some of the researchers at Touro are actually doing ways to combat online anti-Semitism through a variety of means, both by supporting people exposed to it and by attempting to engage those people who are anti-Semites and posting online. But I think part of the problem of governmental control and definitions is that there's so much skepticism about institutions these days and no uniform source of media or information that we really have to think about how the young people, the ones you're concerned about, get information as we think about how to combat anti-Semitism. Have you thought a little bit about how to deal with social media? Do you have any thoughts, or is that for somebody much younger than the two of us to try to sort out?
[IRWIN COTLER] No, I think you've touched on two particularly important points, among others. The first one is that cohort that I mentioned between 18 and 24 that support more Hamas than Israel is not only a campus cohort. And therefore, our educational and policy oriented actions re anti-Semitism have to go beyond the University campus. I do believe, as I said, that the IHRA working definition is not one that needs to be limited to the campus culture, as I mentioned, and what's worried me recently in particular has been the explosion of anti-Semitism in the health sector because everybody requires health care.
But what has not been noticed has been the staggering and dramatic increases of anti-Semitism. We've seen this on a global level from Australia, who are openly-- you have people in the medical sector having said how they would target differently Jewish patients, et cetera. So without going into the health sector is an extremely important component, as is the workplace and as well the whole question of law enforcement.
We need a better understanding of hate crimes. And I have found in my discussions with police and prosecutors and the like that they are seeking direction from governments across all levels in terms of how to identify a hate crime, how to report a hate crime, how to combat a hate crime, how to enforce it, et cetera, et cetera. And so that's a particularly important component.
But the thing that you mentioned that I did not and I'm glad you referenced it because that's crucial is that we are seeing not only a dramatic rise in hate crimes but a dramatic rise in incendiary hate speech. And that incendiary hate speech, as we've learned, does not remain only online, but it leads to offline hate crimes. And there's a clear interrelationship between hate speech and hate crimes.
And I also have to say that as somebody who did his graduate law degree at Yale Law School and taught in the states at Harvard and the like, I say this because I'm an apostle also of a freedom of speech and the First Amendment doctrine, and I learned from the best. But even under the First Amendment, as one of my law teachers at Yale once said to me, not all speech is protected speech. Perjury is not protected speech because of the right to protection and a fair trial.
Pornography is not protected, and I can go down the line. And so we have to be much more effective in combating hate speech and not allow that shibboleth for some to say that all speech is protected speech or everything is part of academic freedom. No, and that's both a misrepresentation of the nature of free speech, even under American law, and of course in Canadian law, we have more specific frameworks with regard to hate speech which deal with the right of minorities, protection against a group vilifying a speech-- of seeing hate speech as being an assault, not only on the inherent dignity of the human person but on the equal dignity of all persons.
And we have important Supreme Court jurisprudence in that regard, and I would recommend that as well in terms of understanding more what free speech and hate speech is all about and how there is no such thing as all speech is protected speech. That's a misrepresentation, as I said, of the First Amendment. And so here too, we need to be combating it and hold also the corporations accountable for those who are, in fact, helping not to combat hate speech but in fact to incentivize it.
[ALAN KADISH] So I agree with you completely. I've long talked about the fact that academic freedom and the First Amendment are actually two different things and the things that may be protected by the First Amendment that aren't appropriate on college campuses. Let's switch gears for a moment and talk about one last topic, which is the United Nations. What's your impression of how things are at the United Nations in terms of anti-Semitism, and should we criticize?
Should we engage? What's your feeling about how we can interact with the United Nations in a more positive way? Because there does appear to have been a lot of negativity in the United Nations regarding Israel as well as regarding anti-Semitism.
Well, as a Canadian, I grew up with the United Nations as being part of my DNA of international laws, being, as I've said, even as a minister, as a centerpiece of our identity as human rights as being an organizing idiom of Canadian foreign policy and the like. But at the same time, I remember something that was told to me 20 years ago when I was minister by then-Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, who said that a United Nations-- and I'm quoting him directly. A United Nations that does not make the combating of anti-Semitism as a forefront of its policy is a United Nations that has betrayed its past and forfeited its future.
I'm sad to say that not only does the United Nations not put the combating of anti-Semitism at the forefront of its policies, but what we are seeing, as I said recently, has been the laundering of anti-Semitism under the United Nations, its related institutions, structures, and the like, which is, as I said, as Kofi Annan put it, both a betrayal of the UN and, in fact, the forfeiting of its future. And so we need to, in fact, bring the UN back to its founding charter and its founding ideals. I don't believe that means disengaging from the UN. I mean it's holding the UN to account to its own founding principles.
I believe it means that we have to engage as best we can at all levels. We now have a whole framework of special envoys to combat anti-Semitism which engage with UN bodies. We have global guidelines that you and the US adopted two years ago to combat anti-Semitism, which can relate also to UN structures.
You have a wonderful NGO, United Nations Watch, that is headed up by my former student, Hillel Neuer, a brilliant lawyer who set forth action plans for the combating of anti-Semitism-- for example, that it is outrageous that the UN special rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, who herself indulges anti-Semitism and incentivizes it, should not be held to account, et cetera. So I think we need to hold the UN special procedures to account when they breach their own founding charter when you have a situation like the UN Council on Human Rights that recently elected to its council major human rights violators like Russia and China and Turkey.
When you have a situation that those who are supposed to be the protectors of human rights become the violators of human rights, that the UN Commission on the Status of Women is headed up by Saudi Arabia, et cetera, I can go on. I think we have to heed Kofi Annan's warning and return the UN to its founding principles and ideals and hold them to account for those principles and ideals, lest what will happen will not only be prejudicial to Israel and the Jewish people and to human rights but to the undermining of the UN as a whole.
[ALAN KADISH] So I agree with you completely. We have long talked about how the UN appears at times to have institutionalized anti-Semitism. And overall, you've painted a picture that we have a lot of work to continue to do.
And however, I will say this. One of my teachers once told me probably the most important lesson I've learned, which is pessimism is not a Jewish trait. So we can't be unrealistic, but we have to be optimistic that with the hard work of people like you and others that we can continue to combat the scourge of anti-Semitism that seems to have pervaded many countries, many of our citizens, and, as you said, the United Nations. So I'm going to wrap things up now, first of all, by thanking you very much for being with us and sharing your wisdom and years of experience with our audience to tell us about what you see about waht's going on in the world and how you think we ought to combat it.
Because of your great contributions, we do have a citation for you, and I'll read the citation now. Presented to the honorable Irwin Cotler, it is with immense pride and profound respect that Touro University confers the presidential citation upon Professor Irwin Cotler, a giant in the domain of human rights, constitutional law, and moral courage, for your esteemed tenure as minister of Justice and attorney general of Canada, during which you spearheaded landmark reforms, including the enactment of marriage equality through the Civil Marriage Act, Canada's first anti-racism initiative, and pivotal anti-human trafficking legislation. You, professor, have consistently advanced justice and equality.
You are renowned for your unparalleled efforts in rectifying wrongful conclusions and creating a more representative judiciary. As an international human rights lawyer widely known as counsel for the oppressed, you've defended icons of conscience ranging from Natan Sharansky to Nelson Mandela, Leonardo Lopez, Vladimir Kara-Muzra, and other courageous prisoners of conscience. You are the recipient of the prestigious Defender of Freedom Award from the Geneva summit for human rights, recognizing your lifelong work in defending political prisoners under authoritarian regimes, and for an enduring commitment to truth and justice in the face of oppression.
As the founder and chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights, you've advocated, advised, and mobilized for human rights across the world, holding the legacy of Wallenberg and uplifting the voices of the vulnerable. In the spirit of humanism, courage, and academic excellence, Touro University bestows this citation upon you, not only in celebration of past achievements but to affirm the additional work we need to do in our shared commitment to a world where justice, human dignity, and freedom prevail. We're honored to be able to present you with this citation. Thank you for joining us today.
[IRWIN COTLER] I'm very moved and humbled by the citation and those words. I just want to say you said something before the citation about hope, and I believe-- and here too, my parents also taught me this about 'netzach yisrael lo yishaker,' that the pursuit of justice will prevail but that we cannot hope that it will happen without our involvement. And here, I also go back to my parental teachings in Pirkei Avot, 'Lo alecha ham'lacha ligmor, Lo alecha ligmor-' But tell me that it's incumbent upon each of us, to continue the pursuit and not to desist from it and to realize always that we are working on behalf of a just cause.
As I always have said, I come to support of Israel and the Jewish people not simply because it's a Jewish cause but because I believe profoundly that it's just cause. And if it's a just cause, that deserves all our support, whether Jewish, non-Jewish, in the furtherance of that just cause. So thank you for those moving words in the citation. As I said, coming from you and from Touro University, for whom I have the highest regard and which has emerged also as a beacon of inspiration with respect to university leadership and education of its students, at this point in time, I'm honored by this. And I will do my best to continue in a pursuit of common cause.
[ALAN KADISH] Thank you again to our audience. Thank you to our Touro Talk sponsors, Robert and Arlene Rosenberg, and to you for joining the Touro Talks conversation. Have a good day and a fruitful new year. Thank you.
[IRWIN COTLER] Thank you. 'Shana Tova.'
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[TEXT] Touro Talks, Touro University, touro.edu/tourotalks
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[IRWIN COTLER] What is needed now are actionable deliverables within specific time frameworks so that we combat anti-Semitism, which has to be seen, as we've learned only too well throughout history, that is not only threatening to Jews, but it is, as my colleague Ahmed Shaheed, the former UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion, as we said many times together, that it's toxic to democracy, that it's the canary in the mineshaft of global evil that is an ongoing threat, as we've seen to our individual and collective security.
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[DESCRIPTION] Touro Talks intro displaying photos of students and faculty across the university, fading into the Touro University logo.
[TEXT] Fighting Apartheid, Antisemitism, and Injustice: A Conversation With Irwin Cotler,
Former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Touro Talks is sponsored by Robert and Arlene Rosenberg
[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish speaks to the camera with a plain background. The Touro University logo is at the bottom right.
[ALAN KADISH] Hi, I'm Dr. Alan Kadish, the president of Touro University. Welcome to Touro Talks. Today's guest is Irwin Cotler. He is the international chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Center for human rights, an emeritus professor of law at McGill University, a former minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, and long time member of parliament in Canada. He's an international rights lawyer.
[TEXT] Dr. Alan Kadish, President, Touro University
[ALAN KADISH] Professor Cotler has served as international counsel to prisoners of conscience, including, among many others, Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky, and Nelson Mandela. And he's been a legal advocate in support of Israel and opposing anti-Semitism. Professor Kotler has received 15 honorary degrees and in 2023 was awarded Israel's Presidential Medal of Honor. Welcome, Professor Cotler
[DESCRIPTION] Irwin Cotler joins Dr. Alan Kadish.
[IRWIN COTLER] Thank you, Dr. Kadish. It's a pleasure to be interacting with you, as I have my own long history, with Touro University, for whom I have the highest respect and now for your inspired leadership.
[ALAN KADISH] Thank you so much. It's great having you on here. And I thought we'd start with a little bit of history about you. Tell us in a few minutes about your career and how you ended up as a respected expert on human rights and international law.
[IRWIN COTLER] I don't know about a respected expert, but I will say that whatever I've done is due to the teachings of my parents, a blessed memory.
[TEXT] The Hon. Irwin Cotler, Former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada
[IRWIN COTLER] They were, my first, if I could put it that way, teachers and mentors in human rights. It was my father who taught me at a young age, before I could understand the profundity of his message, when he said to me that the pursuit of justice, and he used the words tzedek tzedek tirdof, we've just had parashat shoftim, which resonated for me in that regard.
He said that the pursuit of Justice, as he put it, is equal to all the other commandments combined. This, as he put it, must be your life's mission. This is what you must teach unto your children.
But it was my mother who's yahrzeit, coming up in a week, 20 years since her passing, who would say to me when she heard my father say these things that if you want to pursue justice, you have to understand-- you have to feel the injustice about you. You have to go in and about your community and beyond and feel the injustice and combat the injustice. Otherwise, as she put it, the pursuit of justice will remain a theoretical abstraction.
And so, as a result of the teachings of my parents, blessed memory, and wonderful teachers that I had in Jewish day schools, which included Holocaust survivors amongst them, unfortunately, same at university, I got involved in what might be called the two great human rights struggles of the second half of the 20th century-- the struggle for human rights in the former Soviet Union and, within that, the struggle for Soviet Jewry, and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and got involved with the two people who emerged as the faces, the identity, the vision and hopes of those two struggles. That was Natan Sharansky in the former Soviet Union and Nelson Mandela in South Africa.
[ALAN KADISH] So how did you get involved with Mandela?
[IRWIN COTLER] Well, what happened is I was paying a visit to South Africa in 1981. I was there as a guest of the anti-apartheid movement and at the same time as Jewish leadership. And there was a crossover there. And at one point, I was asked if I would speak to the Jewish students group, law students group, on the case of Natan Sharansky.
And I said, yes, I would be pleased to do it, but I'd also like to talk about Nelson Mandela. I know that he's a banned person, and I don't want to get anybody in trouble. And they said, no, please go ahead.
And so they organized it at Fitz University and, to this day, one of the largest public gatherings. And I spoke on the topic, if Sharansky, why not Mandela? At the end of my talk, my wife, who was in the audience, came up to approach me, and I wasn't there because I'd been arrested.
And I was taken to Pik Botha, the then-foreign minister of South Africa. And as I entered his office, he said to me, Mr. Cotler, who is that? He pointed to a picture in the wall, and I said, yes, that's Anatoly Sharansky.
He said, right. I could not understand how somebody like you, who represents a great hero, Natan Sharansky, and fighting against the Communist Soviet Union, which is our enemy as well, can in the same breath also represent Nelson Mandela, who is also a Communist and also our enemy. And I said to Pik Botha at the time and answered.
I said, both Sharansky and Mandela are fighting for the same thing. They're both fighting for democracy. They're both fighting for human rights.
They're both fighting in the pursuit of justice. And for so long as it takes from wherever I am, I'm going to fight against this apartheid regime until it is dismantled. As I said to Pik Botha, apartheid is not just a racist philosophy. That would be bad enough.
It's a racist legal regime. It's the only post-World War II regime that has institutionalized racism as a matter of law. And he told me at that point, you're a brash young man and said, how long you expect to be here?
I said, 12 days. He said, OK, I will let you go in and about the country, see who you want, speak to who you want. And when you come back after some 12 days, tell me what you've seen, if South Africa is not an egalitarian country, separate but equal, et cetera. I came back 12 days later, and he said to me, OK, young man. What do you have to say?
I said, you're right, Mr. Botha, South Africa is egalitarian if you're white. If you're Brown or Black, it's even worse than I thought. And I will go back and fight against this regime until it's dismantled.
And he repeated then what he'd said during the 3 and 1/2 hours that we were together, that I was a brash young man. And so I did return to Canada, and that began my odyssey. But before that happened, after that arrest, I was contacted at that time by Mandela's lawyer, Mr. Maslow, who said to me, look.
We have a legal team here in South Africa, and we're fine here. But what we need is somebody to do outside South Africa what you've done for Sharansky on behalf of Mandela. And so that's when I took up that instruction and began to advocate for Mandela outside South Africa, in Canada and beyond.
And Mandela became our second honorary citizen in Canada after Raoul Wallenberg. But it was that experience, that encounter in South Africa with the apartheid regime up close and my involvement with the lawyers for Mandela, with whom I continued to have an ongoing relationship and would come back to South Africa for a reunion every few years that included Arthur Chaskalson, who then was a young lawyer and ended up being the president of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and included George Bizos of Greek origin, with whom I worked together. So I maintain a very close contact with the Mandela group and continued to come back to South Africa and continue the kind of joint involvement in both those struggles against apartheid and with regard to the former Soviet Union.
[ALAN KADISH] Did you spend much time with Mandela himself?
[IRWIN COTLER] No, I didn't. I did not meet him at the time. He was in Robben Island.
So we did not have occasion to meet then. We had one encounter when he came to Canada. I believe Canada was the first country that he visited after he was released. And I was invited then to a dinner with him, was introduced to him by the then-Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney of Canada. And that's when I had a very brief encounter with him. I did have meetings with his widow, Winnie Mandela, and with one of his grandsons. And so there has been a connection that has continued.
[ALAN KADISH] He was certainly a great freedom fighter and a great hero against apartheid. Some have suggested, however, that some of the things that he did after he was released and after apartheid was ended were open to criticism. Did you get involved with that at all? What's your evaluation of how he governed and his relationship, particularly to Israel, to Jews, and perhaps to the question of communism? What's your sense of how that was after he took power?
[IRWIN COTLER] Well, Mandela, as you know, endured 27 years in a South African prison and emerged after that period to not only preside over the dismantling of apartheid but become the first president of a democratic, egalitarian, non-racial South Africa. And in the brief conversation I had with him but more in his own writings, he spoke of Israel having the right to live in peace and security. And what some may not realize is that he actually wrote about how the Irgun had inspired him.
What also happened is while he was in prison, he was visited often by PLO leaders, including Arafat and the like. But regrettably, the Israeli leadership was not engaged as it should have been with the anti-apartheid movement. And he was largely hearing only one side.
That did not mean that he ever recanted his support for Israel's right to live in peace and security, which he reaffirmed on a number of occasions. But of course, he became a strong advocate for the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and their independent state, something that I supported as well, and I never saw those two things as having to be in conflict. So admittedly, there's been some concern with some of his seeming identifications afterwards, but I always regarded him as being, as I said, a role model for the struggle for democracy, freedom, and justice. And what is often forgotten has been also his support for Israel's right to live in peace and security.
[ALAN KADISH] Thank you. Changing gears for a moment, looking back at the fight for freedom of Jews in the former Soviet Union, particularly your own work as well as other organizations that helped achieve freedom for at least many of the Jews from the former Soviet Union, how do you view that movement? Do you think it-- would you have done anything differently in retrospect, or do you think that the struggle, which was, I would say, more successful than most protest movements, really was handled pretty well?
[IRWIN COTLER] I do think it was handled pretty well. I think that the struggle for Soviet Jewry was, in fact, a model for what we today sometimes referred to as intersectionality, a model for a critical mass of advocacy in the pursuit of justice. You had women for Soviet Jewry, students for Soviet Jewry, academics for Soviet Jewry, lawyers for Soviet Jewry, scientists for Soviet Jewry-- as I say, a critical mass of advocacy and the Jewish community being an important component of it. But it went much beyond the Jewish community.
It became really a framework for the struggle for justice internationally and worldwide and led by Anatoly Sharansky, who sometimes forgotten that while he was a leader, of course, of the Soviet Jewry movement as a refusenik who was then in prison, Sharansky was also a leader in four other movements which also reflected this intersectionality as well. He was a leader of the Helsinki Watch movement, and he was one of the founders of the Helsinki Watch movement. And as we're meeting today, we're commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act, whose principal seven speaks about the right to know and act upon one's rights, which have inspired not only Soviet Jews but political prisoners worldwide.
He became, together with Andrei Sakharov, a leader of the democracy movement and was a spokesman for that person. He became a leader in both the ethnic and religious rights movements. I always used to meet while he was in prison with Pentecostals or with Ukrainians, who spoke of Sharansky as having championed their cause. And he was also a leader of the movement regarding freeing political prisoners in the former Soviet. So Sharansky himself was the embodiment of what we would today call the intersectional struggle for human rights and a looking glass to why the struggle for Soviet Jewry was, in all its manifestations, a case study for the pursuit of justice by human rights groups within which Jews played a prominent role.
[ALAN KADISH] So let's switch gears for a second and talk a little bit about anti-Semitism. In the period leading up to October 7, what was your sense of how the world was doing on anti-Semitism scorecard? Let me use that phraseology as a question.
[IRWIN COTLER] Well--
[ALAN KADISH] Do you think that, prior to October 7, things were pretty calm and quiet, that the work you and others had done had been successful? What was your impression?
[IRWIN COTLER] No, they weren't quiet. The fires of anti-Semitism which exploded on October 7 and beyond were already burning before October 7. I can just share with you my own findings as Canada's first special envoy for Holocaust remembrance and combating anti-Semitism in 2021 four years ago and when I spoke of my principal findings as including the following-- first, that the combating of anti-Semitism in that kind of tripartite paradigm of combating anti-Semitism from the far right, the far left, and radical Islam, while true, was insufficient-- that what we were witnessing, as I said then, and it holds even more true now, was the increasing mainstreaming, normalizing, and legitimation of anti-Semitism in the political culture, the popular culture, the entertainment culture, the sports culture, the media culture, and in particular the campus culture.
And all this with the absence of outrage, I said at the time, and even more so with indifference and inaction that underpinned the fires of anti-Semitism that were burning then. I also spoke of the erosion of allyship, where when we spoke about intersectionality, one would have thought that there would have been that critical mass of advocacy as there was for Soviet Jewry, combating anti-Semitism. But we did not find that.
We found an increasing erosion of allyship. We also found anti-Semitism being laundered under the protective cover of the UN, the authority of international law, the culture of human rights, the very struggle against anti-Semitism itself. And we found that even for example, in Canada, astonishingly so, that under Canada's anti-racism strategy, astonishingly, anti-Semites and individuals who were the recipients of grants and furtherance of their-- so there was this corrosive situation that we had leading up to October 7, which, as I said, exploded on October 7 and beyond.
[ALAN KADISH] So how do you explain the explosion on October 7? In some ways, to some of us, it seemed seem paradoxical. Others weren't surprised at all. Why did October 7 legitimize the further mainstreaming of anti-Semitism?
[IRWIN COTLER] Well, as I said, the first thing is that the fires of anti-Semitism were burning and were not being sufficiently combated and extinguished before. But with October 7, we witnessed not only unspeakable atrocities often spoken of as being the worst day in Jewish history since the Holocaust, committed not only by a terrorist group under Canadian law, American law, international law, Hamas, but by a genocidal anti-Semitic statelet not because I say so, but because they say so in their founding charter of 1988 and since and have since October 7-- and this is something that gets often ignored now-- have said that they will commit October 7 again and again and again until Israel's annihilation. I'm quoting Hamas leaders directly.
Now, one would have thought that this would have resulted in a global condemnation of anti-Semitism. One would have thought that this would have resulted in global action against anti-Semitism. But what we found in the immediate aftermath of October 7 was the denial even that these unspeakable atrocities had taken place or indifference to them or, worse, support for them or justification for them, or even glorification of them in the public squares and in the streets and in the campus community and the like.
So what is needed at this point is what we called for, as I said, before October 7, but certainly after October 7, is what we need is less virtue signaling, less kind of proverbial declarations. What is needed now are actionable deliverables within a specific time frameworks so that we combat anti-Semitism, which has to be seen, as we've learned only too well throughout history, that is not only threatening to Jews, but it is, as my colleague Ahmed Shaheed, the former UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion, as we said many times together, that it's toxic to democracy, that it's the canary in the mineshaft of global evil that is an ongoing threat, as we've seen, to our individual and collective security.
And so at this point, if we want to protect our democracies and we want to defend our individual citizens and we want to protect and defend the collective security of our citizens and particularly our Jewish citizens in our democracy, then we have to combat anti-Semitism as a priority for all governments-- federal, state, municipal-- as a matter of principle and policy of the first order.
[ALAN KADISH] So how would you do that? There's certainly been a lot of organizations, both before October 7 and since then, that have tried to fight anti-Semitism. Do you have any suggestions for things that should have been done or should be done, that are fundamentally different from the efforts that have gone on?
[IRWIN COTLER] Well, I think we need both a whole of government and a whole of civil society strategy for that purpose. With regard to a whole of government, we need federal kind of provincial, US state, and municipal governments working together in tandem. Too often, they work in silos. I recall myself as a cabinet minister, and very often, governments work in silos when they need to work in tandem, but not only working in tandem-- governments, parliaments, and civil society-- but also working across party lines.
What I've been experiencing and we've been witnessing has been the undo sort of weaponization of anti-Semitism for political purposes. What we need are Democrats and Republicans coming together in joint common cause because this is not a party matter. And I become concerned.
I see this somewhat in Canada but more in the United States that the combating of anti-Semitism is not, as it must be, a bipartisan priority but sometimes becomes a partisan one, weaponized for political purposes. And we need, of course, the targeting of the various sectors in that regard, which includes, of course, the university sector but not only the university sector. It requires interfaith collaboration as a priority.
It requires, as we did in Canada 10 years ago now-- it's the 10th anniversary of a resolution that was unanimously adopted. But I suspect today that even the institutional memory of Canadian parliamentarians does not remember that we unanimously adopted a resolution 10 years ago then, when I was a member of parliament, that said the combating of anti-Semitism must be a priority in both our domestic and foreign policy and that this must be so as a matter of principle and policy. And we've seen recently, as in Australia, how the domestic and the international is linked when Australia determined the involvement of Iran in the manner of the fomenting of anti-Semitism in Australia, in the fomenting of hate crimes in Australia.
So it requires, therefore, an integration of both our domestic and a foreign policy and making it a priority in both our domestic and foreign policy and working together in an integrated fashion, not only internationally, for example, among the G7 countries, of which Canada is now the chair-- and I've certainly called on them to make the issue of anti-Semitism a priority amongst the G7-- but within each of the G7 countries, as I've sought to share with you. And you might want to provide perhaps your readers afterwards the Canadian government justice and human rights parliamentary committee came out with an excellent report in December 2024 with an inventory of recommendations along all lines, as I mentioned-- government, parliament, university, civil society, and the like which I won't now burden you with.
But I think for your listeners and for your readers, this is an excellent case study of a set of recommendations which, regrettably, in Canada have yet to be implemented. There's been, as I said, very important declaratory statements, important virtue signaling, important performative approaches. But what is needed is implementation and actionable actions taken on the ground within time frames, as I said, in a coordinated fashion-- federal, provincial, municipal and the like.
[ALAN KADISH] So, not surprisingly, given your background, you've suggested an extremely important approach to combating anti-Semitism using the political structure. One of the things that we've seen in the United States is that although you're absolutely correct, Congress is no longer unanimously in support of Israel, which wasn't the case a decade ago. But we've seen, perhaps even more impressively, a dissociation between polls of citizens' views and what Congress supports because the majority of Democrats in Congress, for example, still are strong supporters of Israel.
But population surveys and polls don't suggest that that extends to the Democratic electorate. So my question to you is-- and some of us feel that one of the challenges is that the educational system, while not co-opted in the same way it is in the Middle East, is still co-opted to support anti-Semitism on the K through 12 level as well as the University level. Do you think government action is the right way to approach the educational challenges, or do we need a different approach to try to not inculcate young people with at least tolerating anti-Semitism?
[IRWIN COTLER] Well, I think you've hit on a number of important points, and it goes beyond government action here. One of the more disturbing poll results you referenced was the one that showed that in the age group 18 to 24-- we're talking about the university campus age group-- more people in that age demographic support Hamas than support Israel. There are other very disturbing findings, but I found out to be amongst the most principal disturbing findings. That tells us that we have a particular concern with that demographic cohort, and it tells us, therefore, that there's a particular challenge for the universities and the campus sector.
One of the things that we've recommended in Canada and have sought to implement-- and of course, it's been recommended in the US but has yet to be effectively implemented-- has been not only the adoption, but the implementation of the IHRA working definition on anti-Semitism, which remains the most authoritative, comprehensive, representative, and democratically-adopted definition that we have, where we have more than 40 countries that have adopted it, et cetera, et cetera. But it's not enough to adopt that definition. It needs to be implemented.
And we in Canada have a government-produced manual setting forth a framework for education and training anti-Semitism within governments, within parliaments, within universities, within law enforcement units, within judiciaries and the like-- In other words, a whole of government, whole of civil society commitment to and implementation of an experience of education and training programs with respect to the IHRA working definition because education is crucial. And if you want to combat anti-Semitism, you have to be able to know how to identify it, how to recognize it, and therefore how to combat it.
And that's why not just the adoption of the IHRA working definition but the implementation of it is crucial. We have the tools to do it. We have to implement it.
And it's the same thing with regard to the matter of Holocaust education. And we need education as well in the understanding of anti-Semitism, both of traditional anti-Semitism and the new anti-Semitism, where traditional anti-Semitism is discrimination against, denial of, assault upon the rights of Jews to live as equal members in whatever society they inhabit. The new anti-Semitism, I spoke of this 25 years ago, was a discrimination against, denial of, assault upon the right of the Jewish people to live as an equal member of the family of nations.
What is common to both forms of anti-Semitism, classical and new, is discrimination. All that has happened is that it's moved from discrimination against Jews as individuals to discrimination against the Jews as a people, reverberating back to discrimination against Jews as individuals. And increasingly, not only are we talking about discrimination but hate crimes targeting Jews, where the FBI in your country and similarly Statistics Canada in our country, reported the highest level of hate crimes targeting Jews since the FBI began compiling statistics in 1991.
And as I said when I was minister of justice and attorney general that hate crimes have a particular fallout because hate crimes are identity crimes. They're community-based crimes. They reverberate within and amongst the community.
And so when you have a hate crime, as when you have the killing of Israeli embassy staffers in Washington or what you have in Boulder, Colorado, or you had in Montreal over the last two weeks, where a Hasidic Jew with his children is attacked by a random assailant or just a few days ago, where a Jewish woman shopping in the only kosher grocery in Ottawa is stabbed, or another Jew just 10 days ago is told by an assailant that we will kill all you Jews, et cetera-- in other words, mounting not only threats but then finding expression in actual hate crimes which reverberate internationally amongst the Jewish community.
And we can't just say, well, all groups are targeted for hate. That's true. And we can't just say that it's important to combat all hate crimes, regardless of the targeted group. That, of course, is an imperative. I said so as a parliamentarian, as a minister of justice.
But at the same time, we can't conflate it as if all hate crimes are the same when in Canada, for example. Canadian Jews, who are 1% of the population of Canada, are the targets of more than 70% of all religiously hate-motivated crimes. And so we have to understand the imperatives of combating hate crimes as being a specific and emerging and standing threat to the safety and security not only of the Jewish community but, as I said, to the collective security of Canadians.
[ALAN KADISH] So, of course, I agree with most of your points, and some of those stories you've told about what's recently been happening in Canada are horrific. And I would say that overall, we could tell the same series of stories about things that have happened in the United States where Jews are maybe a little more than 1% of the population but constitute a huge percentage of the religiously-based hate crimes that we have in the United States. And I think you're 100% right that trying to say and treat anti-Semitism as part of a general prejudice problem underestimates the threat and creates solutions that aren't optimal.
I want to go back to the point you made about education for a moment. Of course, we believe in the power of education, but I think that at least in the United States, focusing entirely on college campuses, which is something we can come back to in a moment, misses significant part of the population because for better or worse, a lot of 18 to 24-year-old Americans don't end up graduating from college or don't end up being in college. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is a topic for an entirely another conversation.
But the fact is that focusing only on universities has the potential for missing part of the problem. And one of the things I think which is an enormous effort but where we need to put more focus is the method of knowledge acquisition for young people today is primarily social media. And that can affect everyone or impact everyone, regardless of which college or university they're in or whether they're in school at all.
And so some of the researchers at Touro are actually doing ways to combat online anti-Semitism through a variety of means, both by supporting people exposed to it and by attempting to engage those people who are anti-Semites and posting online. But I think part of the problem of governmental control and definitions is that there's so much skepticism about institutions these days and no uniform source of media or information that we really have to think about how the young people, the ones you're concerned about, get information as we think about how to combat anti-Semitism. Have you thought a little bit about how to deal with social media? Do you have any thoughts, or is that for somebody much younger than the two of us to try to sort out?
[IRWIN COTLER] No, I think you've touched on two particularly important points, among others. The first one is that cohort that I mentioned between 18 and 24 that support more Hamas than Israel is not only a campus cohort. And therefore, our educational and policy oriented actions re anti-Semitism have to go beyond the University campus. I do believe, as I said, that the IHRA working definition is not one that needs to be limited to the campus culture, as I mentioned, and what's worried me recently in particular has been the explosion of anti-Semitism in the health sector because everybody requires health care.
But what has not been noticed has been the staggering and dramatic increases of anti-Semitism. We've seen this on a global level from Australia, who are openly-- you have people in the medical sector having said how they would target differently Jewish patients, et cetera. So without going into the health sector is an extremely important component, as is the workplace and as well the whole question of law enforcement.
We need a better understanding of hate crimes. And I have found in my discussions with police and prosecutors and the like that they are seeking direction from governments across all levels in terms of how to identify a hate crime, how to report a hate crime, how to combat a hate crime, how to enforce it, et cetera, et cetera. And so that's a particularly important component.
But the thing that you mentioned that I did not and I'm glad you referenced it because that's crucial is that we are seeing not only a dramatic rise in hate crimes but a dramatic rise in incendiary hate speech. And that incendiary hate speech, as we've learned, does not remain only online, but it leads to offline hate crimes. And there's a clear interrelationship between hate speech and hate crimes.
And I also have to say that as somebody who did his graduate law degree at Yale Law School and taught in the states at Harvard and the like, I say this because I'm an apostle also of a freedom of speech and the First Amendment doctrine, and I learned from the best. But even under the First Amendment, as one of my law teachers at Yale once said to me, not all speech is protected speech. Perjury is not protected speech because of the right to protection and a fair trial.
Pornography is not protected, and I can go down the line. And so we have to be much more effective in combating hate speech and not allow that shibboleth for some to say that all speech is protected speech or everything is part of academic freedom. No, and that's both a misrepresentation of the nature of free speech, even under American law, and of course in Canadian law, we have more specific frameworks with regard to hate speech which deal with the right of minorities, protection against a group vilifying a speech-- of seeing hate speech as being an assault, not only on the inherent dignity of the human person but on the equal dignity of all persons.
And we have important Supreme Court jurisprudence in that regard, and I would recommend that as well in terms of understanding more what free speech and hate speech is all about and how there is no such thing as all speech is protected speech. That's a misrepresentation, as I said, of the First Amendment. And so here too, we need to be combating it and hold also the corporations accountable for those who are, in fact, helping not to combat hate speech but in fact to incentivize it.
[ALAN KADISH] So I agree with you completely. I've long talked about the fact that academic freedom and the First Amendment are actually two different things and the things that may be protected by the First Amendment that aren't appropriate on college campuses. Let's switch gears for a moment and talk about one last topic, which is the United Nations. What's your impression of how things are at the United Nations in terms of anti-Semitism, and should we criticize?
Should we engage? What's your feeling about how we can interact with the United Nations in a more positive way? Because there does appear to have been a lot of negativity in the United Nations regarding Israel as well as regarding anti-Semitism.
Well, as a Canadian, I grew up with the United Nations as being part of my DNA of international laws, being, as I've said, even as a minister, as a centerpiece of our identity as human rights as being an organizing idiom of Canadian foreign policy and the like. But at the same time, I remember something that was told to me 20 years ago when I was minister by then-Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, who said that a United Nations-- and I'm quoting him directly. A United Nations that does not make the combating of anti-Semitism as a forefront of its policy is a United Nations that has betrayed its past and forfeited its future.
I'm sad to say that not only does the United Nations not put the combating of anti-Semitism at the forefront of its policies, but what we are seeing, as I said recently, has been the laundering of anti-Semitism under the United Nations, its related institutions, structures, and the like, which is, as I said, as Kofi Annan put it, both a betrayal of the UN and, in fact, the forfeiting of its future. And so we need to, in fact, bring the UN back to its founding charter and its founding ideals. I don't believe that means disengaging from the UN. I mean it's holding the UN to account to its own founding principles.
I believe it means that we have to engage as best we can at all levels. We now have a whole framework of special envoys to combat anti-Semitism which engage with UN bodies. We have global guidelines that you and the US adopted two years ago to combat anti-Semitism, which can relate also to UN structures.
You have a wonderful NGO, United Nations Watch, that is headed up by my former student, Hillel Neuer, a brilliant lawyer who set forth action plans for the combating of anti-Semitism-- for example, that it is outrageous that the UN special rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, who herself indulges anti-Semitism and incentivizes it, should not be held to account, et cetera. So I think we need to hold the UN special procedures to account when they breach their own founding charter when you have a situation like the UN Council on Human Rights that recently elected to its council major human rights violators like Russia and China and Turkey.
When you have a situation that those who are supposed to be the protectors of human rights become the violators of human rights, that the UN Commission on the Status of Women is headed up by Saudi Arabia, et cetera, I can go on. I think we have to heed Kofi Annan's warning and return the UN to its founding principles and ideals and hold them to account for those principles and ideals, lest what will happen will not only be prejudicial to Israel and the Jewish people and to human rights but to the undermining of the UN as a whole.
[ALAN KADISH] So I agree with you completely. We have long talked about how the UN appears at times to have institutionalized anti-Semitism. And overall, you've painted a picture that we have a lot of work to continue to do.
And however, I will say this. One of my teachers once told me probably the most important lesson I've learned, which is pessimism is not a Jewish trait. So we can't be unrealistic, but we have to be optimistic that with the hard work of people like you and others that we can continue to combat the scourge of anti-Semitism that seems to have pervaded many countries, many of our citizens, and, as you said, the United Nations. So I'm going to wrap things up now, first of all, by thanking you very much for being with us and sharing your wisdom and years of experience with our audience to tell us about what you see about waht's going on in the world and how you think we ought to combat it.
Because of your great contributions, we do have a citation for you, and I'll read the citation now. Presented to the honorable Irwin Cotler, it is with immense pride and profound respect that Touro University confers the presidential citation upon Professor Irwin Cotler, a giant in the domain of human rights, constitutional law, and moral courage, for your esteemed tenure as minister of Justice and attorney general of Canada, during which you spearheaded landmark reforms, including the enactment of marriage equality through the Civil Marriage Act, Canada's first anti-racism initiative, and pivotal anti-human trafficking legislation. You, professor, have consistently advanced justice and equality.
You are renowned for your unparalleled efforts in rectifying wrongful conclusions and creating a more representative judiciary. As an international human rights lawyer widely known as counsel for the oppressed, you've defended icons of conscience ranging from Natan Sharansky to Nelson Mandela, Leonardo Lopez, Vladimir Kara-Muzra, and other courageous prisoners of conscience. You are the recipient of the prestigious Defender of Freedom Award from the Geneva summit for human rights, recognizing your lifelong work in defending political prisoners under authoritarian regimes, and for an enduring commitment to truth and justice in the face of oppression.
As the founder and chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights, you've advocated, advised, and mobilized for human rights across the world, holding the legacy of Wallenberg and uplifting the voices of the vulnerable. In the spirit of humanism, courage, and academic excellence, Touro University bestows this citation upon you, not only in celebration of past achievements but to affirm the additional work we need to do in our shared commitment to a world where justice, human dignity, and freedom prevail. We're honored to be able to present you with this citation. Thank you for joining us today.
[IRWIN COTLER] I'm very moved and humbled by the citation and those words. I just want to say you said something before the citation about hope, and I believe-- and here too, my parents also taught me this about 'netzach yisrael lo yishaker,' that the pursuit of justice will prevail but that we cannot hope that it will happen without our involvement. And here, I also go back to my parental teachings in Pirkei Avot, 'Lo alecha ham'lacha ligmor, Lo alecha ligmor-' But tell me that it's incumbent upon each of us, to continue the pursuit and not to desist from it and to realize always that we are working on behalf of a just cause.
As I always have said, I come to support of Israel and the Jewish people not simply because it's a Jewish cause but because I believe profoundly that it's just cause. And if it's a just cause, that deserves all our support, whether Jewish, non-Jewish, in the furtherance of that just cause. So thank you for those moving words in the citation. As I said, coming from you and from Touro University, for whom I have the highest regard and which has emerged also as a beacon of inspiration with respect to university leadership and education of its students, at this point in time, I'm honored by this. And I will do my best to continue in a pursuit of common cause.
[ALAN KADISH] Thank you again to our audience. Thank you to our Touro Talk sponsors, Robert and Arlene Rosenberg, and to you for joining the Touro Talks conversation. Have a good day and a fruitful new year. Thank you.
[IRWIN COTLER] Thank you. 'Shana Tova.'
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[TEXT] Touro Talks, Touro University, touro.edu/tourotalks
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