Angry in the Great White North

Sid Ryan is the head of the Ontario office of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and is no stranger to controversy.  One of his pet projects, in his role of representing public employees in Ontario, is to agitate against Israel.

Yeah, I don't quite see the connection either.

In any case, back in January, Sid Ryan came up with what he thought was a good idea.  In order to punish Israel for the fighting in Gaza, he led his union is demanding that Israeli academics visiting Ontario schools be banned unless they publicly denounced Israel.

It wasn't clear if show trials were part of Sid Ryan's vision, but even without knowing all the details, the response was almost universally negative. 

The National Post called Sid Ryan's bigotry "disgusting".

The Toronto Sun ran an editorial calling Sid Ryan a "fanatic".

The Toronto Star called Ryan an "inveterate publicity hound" whose hyperbole was "sadly misplaced".

These were just the editorials.  This quick survey didn't include all the criticism from columnists.

As a result, Sid Ryan was slapped down hard by CUPE's national president:

CUPE's national president has rebuked the union's Ontario leader over his call for a boycott of Israeli academics.

On Jan. 2, Sid Ryan, head of the provincial office of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, said in a news release "... we are ready to say Israeli academics should not be on our campuses unless they explicitly condemn the (Islamic) university bombing and the assault on Gaza in general."

Jewish groups condemned the proposal and, yesterday, they were joined by Paul Moist, president of CUPE's national office.

"I believe such a resolution is wrong and would violate the anti-discrimination standards set out in the CUPE Constitution," Moist said in a release.

"I will be using my influence in any debates on such a resolution to oppose its adoption."

In an interview, he added: "We don't discriminate against people based on their nationality."

To most observers, it would seem that Paul Moist was fed up with the bad press, and quite possibly personally offended by Sid Ryan's outrageous idea.

You would think this was the end of the story.  I certainly did.  But then I stumbled across this story in the March/April issue of the YU Free Press.  The YU Free Press is the CUPE mouthpiece at York University, published by CUPE Local 3903 in conjunction with campus radicals. 

And in this issue, we learn that this was not a case of Canadians from across the political spectrum reacting to a vile idea from a radical using his official capacity as a union president as a platform to launch repeated attacks on Israel.  In an article entitled "Why We Should All Support Israeli Apartheid Week", we learn of the identity of those who caused Sid Ryan so much grief.

It was the Jews!

Colour me surprised:

[Paul Moist's] statements were made in the shadow of a wave of scathing press releases, memos, letters and email campaigns initiated by the Canada Israel Committee, Canadian Jewish Congress, Jewish Defence League, and B'nai Brith Canada which flood people's inboxes with outrageous accusations of "anti-Semitism" directed at community representatives such as Ryan.

Did these groups react (and strongly) to Sid Ryan's comments?  Of course.  But only Sid Ryan and his fellow Israel-haters would suggest that if it weren't for those Jews, then they'd have had the freedom of action to compel Israeli academics play Sid Ryan's disgusting little games.

Might I suggest that people of all backgrounds are capable on their own of recognizing a terrible idea from a hate-monger?  And then reactoing strongly to it?

But then that wouldn't fit in Sid Ryan's world view.  For Sid Ryan and his puppets at YU Free Press, everything happens in the "shadow" of the great Jewish conspiracy.