Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

346 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:341
easy thing to do is simply to just get along and go along with this anti-
Israeli rhetoric, to pretend it is just being even-handed, and to excuse
oneself with the label of “honest broker.” There are, after all, a lot more
votes—a lot more—in being anti-Israeli than in taking a stand [Canada
has 940,000 Muslims and 345,000 Jews]. But, as long as I am Prime
Minister, whether it is at the UN or the Francophone or anywhere else,
Canada will take that stand, whatever the cost.
We are free citizens, but also the elected representatives of free peoples.
We have a solemn duty to defend the vulnerable, to challenge the
aggressor, to protect and promote human rights, human dignity, at home
and abroad.
• Stephen Harper’s government has worked with the Jewish community to
address threats from antisemitic attacks on schools, community centers,
cemeteries, and synagogues by providing millions from its Security
Infrastructure Program and Communities At Risk Fund to assist with the
installation of security equipment to help keep those institutions, and
those who attend them, safe.
• Conservative MPs were instrumental in passing legislation and ensuring
$100 million in federal funding for the construction of the Canadian
Museum for Human Rights, to teach Canadians about the Holocaust and
other human rights atrocities.
• The Harper government pledged funding for the Wheel of Conscience
monument to memorialize the refusal of entry in 1939 to over 900 Jewish
refugees fleeing the Nazis on the SS St. Louis, many of whom perished
in the Holocaust after being sent back to Poland.
• The Harper government played a major role in the approval of Canada’s
first National Holocaust Memorial.
• Under Prime Minister Harper, the Canadian government supported the
creation by B’nai Brith’s League for Human Rights of a National Task