A Secret War in 120 Countries-The Pentagon’s New Power Elite

A Secret War in 120 Countries
The Pentagon’s New Power Elite

By Nick Turse

Tomdispatch, August 4, 2011

Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission.  Now, say that 70 times and you’re done... for the day.  Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries.  This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed, until now.
After a U.S. Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden’s chest and another in his head, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the American military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight.  It was atypical.  While it’s well known that U.S. Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it’s increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has remained deeply in the shadows.
Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency.  By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120.  "We do a lot of traveling -- a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq," he said recently.  This global presence -- in about 60% of the world’s nations and far larger than previously acknowledged -- provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

The Rise of the Military’s Secret Military

Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight U.S. service members died, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987.  Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate.  Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions.  Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Army’s "Green Berets" and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialized helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States’ most specialized and secret missions.  These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.
One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists.  Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes American citizens.  It has been operating an extra-legal "kill/capture" campaign that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be CIA Director David Petraeus, calls "an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine."
This assassination program has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen.  In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets. 

Growth Industry

From a force of about 37,000 in the early 1990s, Special Operations Command personnel have grown to almost 60,000, about a third of whom are career members of SOCOM; the rest have other military occupational specialties, but periodically cycle through the command.  Growth has been exponential since September 11, 2001, as SOCOM’s baseline budget almost tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.3 billion.  If you add in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has actually more than quadrupled to $9.8 billion in these years.  Not surprisingly, the number of its personnel deployed abroad has also jumped four-fold.  Further increases, and expanded operations, are on the horizon.
Lieutenant General Dennis Hejlik, the former head of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command -- the last of the service branches to be incorporated into SOCOM in 2006 -- indicated, for instance, that he foresees a doubling of his former unit of 2,600.  "I see them as a force someday of about 5,000, like equivalent to the number of SEALs that we have on the battlefield. Between [5,000] and 6,000," he said at a June breakfast with defense reporters in Washington.  Long-term plans already call for the force to increase by 1,000.     
During his recent Senate confirmation hearings, Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven, the incoming SOCOM chief and outgoing head of JSOC (which he commanded during the bin Laden raid) endorsed a steady manpower growth rate of 3% to 5% a year, while also making a pitch for even more resources, including additional drones and the construction of new special operations facilities.
A former SEAL who still sometimes accompanies troops into the field, McRaven expressed a belief that, as conventional forces are drawn down in Afghanistan, special ops troops will take on an ever greater role.  Iraq, he added, would benefit if elite U.S forces continued to conduct missions there past the December 2011 deadline for a total American troop withdrawal.  He also assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that "as a former JSOC commander, I can tell you we were looking very hard at Yemen and at Somalia."
During a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association's annual Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict Symposium earlier this year, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, the outgoing chief of Special Operations Command, pointed to a composite satellite image of the world at night.  Before September 11, 2001, the lit portions of the planet -- mostly the industrialized nations of the global north -- were considered the key areas. "But the world changed over the last decade," he said.  "Our strategic focus has shifted largely to the south... certainly within the special operations community, as we deal with the emerging threats from the places where the lights aren't." 
To that end, Olson launched "Project Lawrence," an effort to increase cultural proficiencies -- like advanced language training and better knowledge of local history and customs -- for overseas operations.  The program is, of course, named after the British officer, Thomas Edward Lawrence (better known as "Lawrence of Arabia"), who teamed up with Arab fighters to wage a guerrilla war in the Middle East during World War I.  Mentioning Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, and Indonesia, Olson added that SOCOM now needed "Lawrences of Wherever."
While Olson made reference to only 51 countries of top concern to SOCOM, Col. Nye told me that on any given day, Special Operations forces are deployed in approximately 70 nations around the world.  All of them, he hastened to add, at the request of the host government.  According to testimony by Olson before the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year, approximately 85% of special operations troops deployed overseas are in 20 countries in the CENTCOM area of operations in the Greater Middle East: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.  The others are scattered across the globe from South America to Southeast Asia, some in small numbers, others as larger contingents. 
Special Operations Command won’t disclose exactly which countries its forces operate in.  "We’re obviously going to have some places where it’s not advantageous for us to list where we’re at," says Nye.  "Not all host nations want it known, for whatever reasons they have -- it may be internal, it may be regional." 
But it’s no secret (or at least a poorly kept one) that so-called black special operations troops, like the SEALs and Delta Force, are conducting kill/capture missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen, while "white" forces like the Green Berets and Rangers are training indigenous partners as part of a worldwide secret war against al-Qaeda and other militant groups. In the Philippines, for instance, the U.S. spends $50 million a year on a 600-person contingent of Army Special Operations forces, Navy Seals, Air Force special operators, and others that carries out counterterrorist operations with Filipino allies against insurgent groups like Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf.
Last year, as an analysis of SOCOM documents, open-source Pentagon information, and a database of Special Operations missions compiled by investigative journalist Tara McKelvey (for the Medill School of Journalism’s National Security Journalism Initiative) reveals, America’s most elite troops carried out joint-training exercises in Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Germany, Indonesia, Mali, Norway, Panama, and Poland.  So far in 2011, similar training missions have been conducted in the Dominican Republic, Jordan, Romania, Senegal, South Korea, and Thailand, among other nations.  In reality, Nye told me, training actually went on in almost every nation where Special Operations forces are deployed.  "Of the 120 countries we visit by the end of the year, I would say the vast majority are training exercises in one fashion or another.  They would be classified as training exercises."

The Pentagon’s Power Elite

Once the neglected stepchildren of the military establishment, Special Operations forces have been growing exponentially not just in size and budget, but also in power and influence.  Since 2002, SOCOM has been authorized to create its own Joint Task Forces -- like Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines -- a prerogative normally limited to larger combatant commands like CENTCOM.  This year, without much fanfare, SOCOM also established its own Joint Acquisition Task Force, a cadre of equipment designers and acquisition specialists. 
With control over budgeting, training, and equipping its force, powers usually reserved for departments (like the Department of the Army or the Department of the Navy), dedicated dollars in every Defense Department budget, and influential advocates in Congress, SOCOM is by now an exceptionally powerful player at the Pentagon.  With real clout, it can win bureaucratic battles, purchase cutting-edge technology, and pursue fringe research like electronically beaming messages into people’s heads or developing stealth-like cloaking technologies for ground troops.  Since 2001, SOCOM’s prime contracts awarded to small businesses -- those that generally produce specialty equipment and weapons -- have jumped six-fold.
Headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, but operating out of theater commands spread out around the globe, including Hawaii, Germany, and South Korea, and active in the majority of countries on the planet, Special Operations Command is now a force unto itself.  As outgoing SOCOM chief Olson put it earlier this year, SOCOM "is a microcosm of the Department of Defense, with ground, air, and maritime components, a global presence, and authorities and responsibilities that mirror the Military Departments, Military Services, and Defense Agencies." 
Tasked to coordinate all Pentagon planning against global terrorism networks and, as a result, closely connected to other government agencies, foreign militaries, and intelligence services, and armed with a vast inventory of stealthy helicopters, manned fixed-wing aircraft, heavily-armed drones, high-tech guns-a-go-go speedboats, specialized Humvees and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, as well as other state-of-the-art gear (with more on the way), SOCOM represents something new in the military.  Whereas the late scholar of militarism Chalmers Johnson used to refer to the CIA as "the president's private army," today JSOC performs that role, acting as the chief executive’s private assassination squad, and its parent, SOCOM, functions as a new Pentagon power-elite, a secret military within the military possessing domestic power and global reach. 
In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans.  Once "special" for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.
That aura now benefits from a well-honed public relations campaign which helps them project a superhuman image at home and abroad, even while many of their actual activities remain in the ever-widening shadows.  Typical of the vision they are pushing was this statement from Admiral Olson: "I am convinced that the forces… are the most culturally attuned partners, the most lethal hunter-killers, and most responsive, agile, innovative, and efficiently effective advisors, trainers, problem-solvers, and warriors that any nation has to offer."
Recently at the Aspen Institute’s Security Forum, Olson offered up similarly gilded comments and some misleading information, too, claiming that U.S. Special Operations forces were operating in just 65 countries and engaged in combat in only two of them.  When asked about drone strikes in Pakistan, he reportedly replied, "Are you talking about unattributed explosions?" 
What he did let slip, however, was telling.  He noted, for instance, that black operations like the bin Laden mission, with commandos conducting heliborne night raids, were now exceptionally common.  A dozen or so are conducted every night, he said.  Perhaps most illuminating, however, was an offhand remark about the size of SOCOM.  Right now, he emphasized, U.S. Special Operations forces were approximately as large as Canada’s entire active duty military.  In fact, the force is larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where America’s elite troops now operate each year, and it’s only set to grow larger. 
Americans have yet to grapple with what it means to have a "special" force this large, this active, and this secret -- and they are unlikely to begin to do so until more information is available.  It just won’t be coming from Olson or his troops.  "Our access [to foreign countries] depends on our ability to not talk about it," he said in response to questions about SOCOM’s secrecy.  When missions are subject to scrutiny like the bin Laden raid, he said, the elite troops object.  The military’s secret military, said Olson, wants "to get back into the shadows and do what they came in to do."
Nick Turse is a historian, essayist, and investigative journalist. The associate editor of TomDispatch.com and a new senior editor at Alternet.org, his latest book is The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso Books). This article is a collaboration between Alternet.org and TomDispatch.com.
Copyright 2011 Nick Turse

Knesset bill would formalize second-class status for Arab citizens

Knesset bill would formalize second-class status for Arab citizens

Noam Sheizaf

  August 4, 2011

New Knesset bill aims to have "Jewish nature" of state preferred over democracy, cancel official status of Arabic, and have Jewish law "guide" courts’ rulings

There is one talking point repeated in every hasbara (the Hebrew term for state sponsored propaganda) talk given by an Israeli representative, or in every booklet your campus’ Jewish Agency representative might hand you. It has to do with "the full rights" of Palestinian citizens in Israel, including the status of Arabic as an official language, and the equality of all Israeli citizens under the law. This is the heart of "the only democracy in the Middle East" claim.

Those who are familiar with Israeli society, know that Arab citizens are discriminated against in many ways: Some of these ways are formal—like the new bill allowing segregated communities; the law against family unification of Arab citizens; the absentees’ property laws, and more—while other are a matter of practice, such as the fact that some government agencies won"t hire Arabs, or the that the courts mete out harsher sentences to Arab citizens convicted of the same crimes as Jewish citizens.

Yet a new bill, signed by members of opposition and coalition alike, aims to strip Israel even of the appearance of democracy. If passed (it has a fair chance), this law will determine that in any case of contradiction between democratic values and the Jewish nature of the state, the Jewish element will prevail. More specifically, the bill aims to cancel the status of Arabic as  one of Israel’s two official languages; it orders the state to develop communities for Jews only; and in a passage that seems to be taken from the Iranian constitution, declares that when there is no law referring to a certain case, courts should rule in the spirit of halakha, or Jewish religious jurisprudence.

Haaretz reports:

The bill, initiated by MKs Avi Dichter (Kadima ), Zeev Elkin (Likud ) and David Rotem (Yisrael Beiteinu ), and supported by 20 of the 28 Kadima MKs, would make democratic rule subservient to the state’s definition as "the national home for the Jewish people."
The legislation, a private member’s bill, won support from Labor, Atzamaut, Yisrael Beiteinu and National Union lawmakers.

Sources at the Knesset say the law currently has broad support, and they believe it will be passed during the Knesset’s winter session.

The bill is meant to pass a "basic law"—Israel’s substitute for a constitution—and will require a special majority to change it in the future.

People were concerned about the Boycott Law, which aimed to eliminate one of the most well known methods of opposition to the occupation, or by the Nakba Law, which prohibits certain institutions from marking the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948. But this new bill takes the game to a whole new level, by formally making 20 percent of Israel’s citizens—a native population that predates the state—as second class  citizens. They won’t be segregated in the way blacks were in the South or in South Africa (yet?), but Israel won’t even pretend to be their state anymore, and they will have even fewer rights than Jewish citizens. Israel will truly become, to use a phrase by Ahmad Tibi, "a Jewish democracy: Democracy for Jews and a Jewish state for everyone else."

What will the hasbara army do then?

The Looting Of America

The Looting Of America: The Federal Reserve Made $16 Trillion In Secret Loans To Their Bankster Friends And The Media Is Ignoring The Eye-Popping Corruption That Has Been Uncovered

A one-time limited GAO audit of the Federal Reserve that was mandated by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act has uncovered some eye-popping corruption at the Fed and the mainstream media is barely even covering it.  It turns out that the Federal Reserve made $16.1 trillion in secret loans to their bankster friends during the financial crisis.  You can read a copy of the GAO investigation for yourself right here.  These loans only went to the "too big to fail" banks and to foreign financial institutions.  Not a penny of these loans went to small banks or to ordinary Americans.  Not only did the banksters get trillions in nearly interest-free loans, but the Fed actually paid them over 600 million dollars to help run the emergency lending program.  The GAO investigation revealed some absolutely stunning conflicts of interest, and yet the mainstream media does not even seem interested.  Solid evidence of the looting of America has been put right in front of us, and yet hardly anyone wants to talk about it.

Many Americans have a hard time grasping just how large 16.1 trillion dollars is.  It is an amount of money that is almost inconceivable.  It is more than the GDP of the United States for an entire year.  It is more than the U.S. government has spent over the last four years combined.

The Federal Reserve was just creating gigantic piles of cash out of thin air and throwing them around with wild abandon.

One of the only members of Congress that has wanted to talk about the GAO audit has been U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.  The following is a statement about this audit that was taken from his official website....

"As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world"

So precisely who got this money?

Well, a recent article on Raw Story named some of the big Wall Street banks that got some of this money....

Out of all borrowers, Citigroup received the most financial assistance from the Fed, at $2.5 trillion. Morgan Stanley came in second with $2.04 trillion, followed by Merill Lynch at $1.9 trillion and Bank of America at $1.3 trillion.

But it just wasn't U.S. banksters that were showered with nearly interest-free loans.  It turns out that approximately $3.08 trillion went to foreign financial institutions all over Europe and Asia.

So who in the world gave the Federal Reserve permission to bail out financial institutions all over the world?

Nobody did.

But under our current system the Federal Reserve doesn't have to get permission.  They literally get to do whatever they want.

On his website, Senator Sanders expressed his outrage over these foreign loans....

"No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president"

So should we expect Congress to approve legislation that would reduce the power of the Fed?

Of course not.

We all know that is not going to happen.

The Federal Reserve is run like a dictatorship.  They get to do what they want and nobody can stop them.

Not only did the Fed dish out over $16 trillion in secret loans to their friends, but they also paid their bankster friends over 600 million dollars to help them do it.

According to the GAO, the Federal Reserve paid $659.4 million to the very financial institutions which caused the financial crisis to help the Fed manage all of these emergency loans.

Can anyone say "conflict of interest"?

Not only were the banksters raking in trillions in secret loans, they were also paid to help run the lending process.

Wow.

So why isn't the mainstream media talking about this?

That is a very good question.

But wait, there is more.

It turns out that many Fed officials had very large investments in the financial institutions that were receiving these secret loans.

So what was done about all of the conflict of interest issues that arose?

According to Senator Sanders, "the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans."

Oh, everyone was given waivers.

Apparently corruption is okay if we just get everyone to sign a bunch of forms.

The following is one example of a conflict of interest that occurred during this lending program that Senator Sanders noted on his website....

For example, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the New York Fed's board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed.  Moreover, JP Morgan Chase served as one of the clearing banks for the Fed's emergency lending programs.

This is a classic case of the foxes watching the hen house.

It was the banksters that caused the financial crisis.  They were the only ones that the Federal Reserve helped.  In fact, the Federal Reserve ended up having the banksters basically run the entire emergency lending program as Senator Sanders noted on his site....

The Fed outsourced virtually all of the operations of their emergency lending programs to private contractors like JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo.  The same firms also received trillions of dollars in Fed loans at near-zero interest rates.

If you were not outraged by that, then you need to read it again.

What the banksters have been getting away with is absolutely mind blowing.

So will changes be made to make sure that something like this never happens again in the future?

Well, the GAO has recommended that significant changes should be made.

But as mentioned above, the only one that gets to tell the Federal Reserve what to do is the Federal Reserve.

According to the Washington Post, the Federal Reserve is promising to "strongly consider" the recommendations of the GAO....

The Fed’s general counsel, Scott Alvarez, said in a letter responding to the GAO’s audit that officials will “strongly consider” the recommendations.

Most Americans do not realize that the Federal Reserve is not actually part of the federal government.  It is a privately-owned central bank that is not accountable to anyone.

But most Americans still believe that the Fed is a government agency.

The truth is that the Federal Reserve is about as "federal" as Federal Express is.

In another article about the Federal Reserve, I noted that the Federal Reserve has even admitted that it is not an agency of the federal government in court....

In defending itself against a Bloomberg request for information under the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Reserve objected by declaring that it was "not an agency" of the U.S. government and therefore it was not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

Basically, an unaccountable private monopoly creates our money, sets our interest rates, regulates our banking system and makes secret loans to whoever they want.

The Federal Reserve has more power over our economy than any other institution and nobody can overrule any decisions that they make.

Does that sound very "American" to you?

Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, it has been systematically destroying the wealth of America through constant and never ending inflation.

The U.S. dollar loses more value every single year.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, what you could buy for $1.00 in 1965 will cost you $7.17 today.

Sadly, the devaluation of our money is actually accelerating.  That is one reason why we are seeing precious metals soar right now.

Not only that, but the Federal Reserve was also designed to be a perpetual government debt creation machine.

Do you know how money is created in this country?

Normally, more money is only created when more debt is created.

What this sets up is a never end spiral where the amount of money and the amount of debt are continually increasing.

Most Americans believe that we could solve the government debt problem if we could just control spending.

But that is not the case.

The Federal Reserve system was designed to get the U.S. government into constantly increasing amounts of debt and this is exactly what has happened....

The U.S. government will never fix the national debt problem as long as it participates in the Federal Reserve system.

Founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson tried to warn us about the danger of central banking.

Jefferson strongly believed that when the federal government borrows money in one generation that must be paid back by future generations it is equivalent to theft....

And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

Not only that, Thomas Jefferson actually said that if he could add just one more amendment to the U.S. Constitution it would be a complete ban on all government debt....

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.

Of course we did not listen to Thomas Jefferson, did we?

Now we have gotten ourselves into one fine mess.

If the federal government shut down the Federal Reserve system, started issuing debt-free money and established a new system based on sound financial principles we might have a chance of turning this thing around.

But if we continue on the path that we are currently on, we are going to experience a financial disaster of unprecedented magnitude.  We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and a day of reckoning is approaching.

Our founding fathers tried to warn us about this, but we thought that we were so much smarter than them.

Now we get to suffer the consequences of our foolishness.

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-looting-of-america-the-federal-reserve-made-16-trillion-in-secret-loans-to-their-bankster-friends-and-the-media-is-ignoring-the-eye-popping-corruption-that-has-been-uncovered

Canada clamps down on criticism of Israel

Canada clamps down on criticism of Israel

In an affront to free speech, government committee declares that criticism of Israel should be considered anti-Semitic. Jillian Kestler-DAmours Last Modified: 22 Jul 2011 10:28

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a staunch supporter of Israeli policy, has described criticism of Israeli as a form of "new anti-Semitism". [EPA] Nearly two years after the first hearings were held in Ottawa, the Canadian Parliamentary Committee to Combat Anti-Semitism (CPCCA) released a detailed report on July 7 that found that anti-Semitism is on the rise in Canada, especially on university campuses. While the CPCCA's final report does contain some cases of real anti-Semitism, the committee has provided little evidence that anti-Semitism has actually increased in Canada in recent years. Instead, it has focused a disproportionate amount of effort and resources on what it calls a so-called "new anti-Semitism": criticism of Israel. Indeed, the real purpose of the CPCCA committee seems to be to stifle critiques of Israeli policy and disrupt pro-Palestinian solidarity organizing in Canada, including, most notably, Israeli Apartheid Week events. Many of the CPCCA's findings, therefore, must be rejected as both an attack on freedom of speech and freedom of protest, and as recklessly undermining the fight against real instances of anti-Semitism. The CPCCA and its findings The Canadian Parliamentary Committee to Combat Anti-Semitism (CPCCA) was born out of a conference held in London in February 2009 by the Inter-Parliamentary Committee for Combating Anti-Semitism. Formed in March 2009 and not directly linked to the Canadian government, or to any NGO or advocacy group, the CPCCA included 22 Canadian Parliament members from across party lines. Former Liberal MP Mario Silva chaired the Inquiry Panel and Conservative MP Scott Reid led the Steering Committee. Between November 2009 and January 2010, the CPCCA held ten separate hearings during which time representatives of various non-governmental organizations, religious institutions, police departments and Canadian and Israeli universities presented papers meant to assess the level of anti-Semitism in Canada. While groups critical of Israel were denied the chance to address the committee, major Zionist organizations like B'nai Brith Canada, Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, and the Canadian Jewish Congress were welcomed. "Much of today's anti-Semitism manifests in anti-Israel agitation around boycotts, divestment and sanctions," said Avi Benlolo, President and CEO of the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, during a hearing in November 2009. "It deploys an unfair double standard against the Jewish state, singling out of Israel alone for one-sided, harsh criticism and calls for punitive actions." Throughout the consultation process, the CPCCA regularly focused on Canadian university campuses, which were routinely described as hotbeds of anti-Semitism, where Jewish students or students with pro-Israel leanings are often intimidated and threatened. This accusation was made repeatedly, and included in the CPCCA's final report, despite the fact that Dr. Fred Lowy, President Emeritus of Concordia University in Montreal, stated in his address to the CPCCA that, "by and large, Canadian campuses are safe and are not hotbeds of anti-Semitism of any kind". In its final report, the CPCCA made about two dozen recommendations on how best to fight anti-Semitism in Canada. While the report states that "criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is wrong", it also found that "singling Israel out for selective condemnation and opprobrium … is discriminatory and hateful" and many of its recommendations deal with combating this "new anti-Semitism". A major recommendation issued by the CPCCA was that the Canadian government should promote the working definition of anti-Semitism used by The European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC). This definition categorizes "applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation" as anti-Semitic. In other words, the CPCCA is supporting a definition whereby individuals who focus their attention on Israeli human rights violations, yet don't level an equal amount of condemnation on other states for their human rights violations, can be labeled as anti-Semitic. This is obviously problematic since Palestine solidarity activists - like any other people - have commitments that make it impossible to engage with every issue they are otherwise interested in. They shouldn't be labeled as anti-Semitic due to their inability to participate in every single human rights struggle happening around the world. Another dangerous recommendation made by the CPCCA was that Canadian university administrators should condemn "discourse, events and speakers which are untrue, harmful, or not in the interest of academic discourse, including Israeli Apartheid Week". Even the use of the word "apartheid" in relation to Israel is anti-Semitic, the CPCCA found, since it amounts to the "denial of the Jewish people their right to self- determination ... by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor". This clearly violates freedom of speech and an open exchange of ideas at Canadian universities, and also unfairly and inaccurate labels Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) as anti-Semitic. In reality, IAW has since 2005 brought together respected activists, academics, journalists and cultural figures from around the world, including Judith Butler, Ronnie Kasrils, Noam Chomsky and Ali Abunimah, among others, to openly discuss ideas related to Israel/Palestine. IAW provides an educational space for understanding Israel's apartheid policies - as evidenced, for example, through the separate legal systems used by Israelis and Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank or the discriminatory land ownership laws operating inside Israel - and supports the growing campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), which aims to non-violently pressure Israel to respect international law. It is far from the "uniformly well-organized, aggressive [campaign] designed to make the Jewish state and its supporters pariahs" the CPCCA report makes it out to be. The CPCCA also recommended that the Canadian Committee of Foreign Affairs undertake a study on the United Nations Human Rights Council, "particularly regarding its over-emphasis of alleged human rights abuses by Israel, while ignoring flagrant human rights abuses of other member states". This clearly demonstrates how the committee has confounded anti-Semitism with criticism of Israel, and is prepared to levy dubious suspicions against UN bodies and tarnish Canada's international standing in the process. In a statement released on July 8, Thomas Woodley, President of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), said that the CPCCA's recommendations, "if implemented, will inhibit public discussion of Israel's conduct". "CJPME believes that conclusions and recommendations generated by a process in which the same body - the CPCCA - is prosecutor, jury, and judge, are not credible. Although a few of the witnesses recounted incidents that were indeed indicative of genuine anti-Semitism, many were complaining about merely being exposed to criticism of the Israel's conduct," the CJPME press release stated. Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) Canada also criticized the committee, stating that  "the CPCCA's goal is to criminalize criticism of Israel and Zionism, not to hold impartial hearings. Therefore, we oppose the CPCCA as an ideologically biased organization with an agenda that will harm free speech and human rights activity in Canada. We oppose the CPCCA's Orwellian distortion of anti-Semitism. It is a danger to both Canadian liberties and to the genuine and necessary fight against anti-Semitism." Reflection of official Canadian policy While labeling critics of Israeli policy as anti-Semitic is nothing new, the level at which this accusation is now being used in Canadian discourse must be seen as a reflection of the Canadian government's official and current policy on the Middle East. "When Israel, the only country in the world whose very existence is under attack, is consistently and conspicuously singled out for condemnation, I believe we are morally obligated to take a stand.  Demonization, double standards, de-legitimization, the three D's, it is the responsibility of us all to stand up to them," Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in 2010 at the Ottawa Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism, which was supported by the CPCCA.  Harper added: "Harnessing disparate anti-American, anti-Semitic and anti-Western ideologies, it targets the Jewish people by targeting the Jewish homeland, Israel, as the source of injustice and conflict in the world and uses, perversely, the language of human rights to do so. We must be relentless in exposing this new anti-Semitism for what it is." Under Harper, Canada has routinely defended Israeli intransigence and disregard for international law and the human rights of the Palestinian people under its control. In return, trade cooperation and military and security technologies ties have been strengthened between the two states. In May of this year, it was reported that Harper was adamantly opposed to making any reference to the 1967 borders in a G8 summit statement calling for renewed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Far-right Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman thanked Harper for his position, and stated, "Canada is a true friend of Israel". In 2010, Canada announced it would discontinue its financial contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the organization that provides support and resources to approximately 4.7m registered Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the occupied Palestinian territories, and funnel the money into greater policing and security institutions run by the un-elected and corrupt Palestinian Authority leadership instead. In January 2009, as the Israeli army continued its disproportionate attack on the besieged civilian population in Gaza that left 1,400 Palestinians dead in the span of three weeks, Canada was the only country out of 47 that voted against a motion at the United Nations Human Rights Council condemning the Israeli violence. In addition to providing diplomatic cover for Israel, the Canadian government has attacked and cut funding to various non-governmental organizations working on issues related to Israel/Palestine, including Kairos Churches and Alternatives International. Canadian Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Jason Kenney, who led the formation of the Canadian Parliamentary Committee to Combat Anti-Semitism (CPCCA) and is an ex-officio member, has also repeatedly alleged that the Canadian Arab Federation promotes anti-Semitism and hatred. While Kenney never backed up these claims, the Canadian Arab Federation's contracts with the government - which helped finance language programs for Toronto-area immigrants (the majority of whom are of Chinese origin) - were not renewed in 2009. Undermining the fight against real anti-Semitism Anti-Semitism, like all other forms of racism, is appalling and must be strongly and unequivocally condemned. But by defining legitimate criticism of Israeli policy and pro-Palestinian activism in Canada as anti-Semitic, the CPCCA is not only threatening free speech and freedom of protest, but it is undermining the fight against real cases of anti-Semitism and weakening the seriousness with which such cases should be dealt. This is something that Canadians, and people everywhere, should be adamantly against. Jillian Kestler-D'Amours is a Canadian freelance journalist based in Jerusalem. She regularly contributes to The Electronic Intifada, Inter-Press Service and Free Speech Radio News. More of her work can be found at http://jkdamours.com/