Irwin Cotler

Like, do you wanna name and shame some of the guests? But I also wanna mention, like, the whole premise too of this conference wasn't just to talk about this, quote unquote, "rise in antisemitism" that they completely attribute to, uh, Palestinian solidarity.

In her opening remarks, she, you know, she mentions October 7th in the most charged language possible, right? And then it's a who's who of, um, like, Irwin Cotler, right? Deborah Lyons.

I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be missing people.

But it's all under the guise that this, this rise in antisemitism, you know- For whatever [clears throat] it's worth, that's a diff- I feel like that's a separate discussion perhaps, but that it's a detriment to our democracy, right? What is the line they use as they're trying to sell the tickets out? What the resurgence of antisemitism means for the health of our democracy.

She's like, "Oh, that, like, takes away from antisemitism," because to her, antisemitism is an important thing, whereas Islamophobia is performative.

And she even says that, like, Islamophobia is some minor disease and, um, antisemitism is COVID.

So it's so much bigger in magnitude, so why would you even mention them together or at all even, uh, in ref- in reference to Islamophobia? Then there's, like, all the Nakba deniers, like Casey Babb, Adam Lewis Klein, uh, Irwin Cotler.

All these guys who are like the Nakba never happened, like they left of their own accord.

And I did that with this.

And, uh, I had no difficulty, uh, when my friends and loved ones were attacked, um, my relationship with Irwin Cotler.

Did you know Irwin Cotler was the justice minister who swore me in when I went to the Court of Appeal? And I've told this story over and over again, but I've asked-- I said to him, "Irwin Cotler, uh, Minister Cotler, why me?" And he said, "Harry, that decision is easy.

Who better to understand what justice is than someone who has lived their life with injustice?" And that was from Irwin Cotler, and I never forgot that.

And that was very special to me.

So if you, if you're looking for logical reasons why I support it, uh, those-- that's them.

You get a long-term MP.

They've been a Liberal for forever, but is it a voter for Carolyn Bennett, or is it a voter for the Liberal Party? And I would imagine that you actually got either Liberals door-knocking a lot of Poilievre supporters, reminding them to vote by accident, or Liberals door-knocking, uh, a lot of people that were Carolyn Bennett voters or previous, you know, Irwin Cotler-type Liberal voters, uh, that maybe weren't necessarily on board to vote for the Trudeau government at that point in time.

'Cause there's not really another explanation I can find for why turnout was that high in what should've been a low-turnout by-election, where frankly the Conservatives were, were almost kind of hoping they wouldn't quite win 'cause they didn't want to let the cat out of the-

And I think the last wave of by-elections in, um, late, late last month were pretty high too, like in the 40 range.

It's definitely worrisome.

The last word at the conference goes to Professor Irwin Cotler.

He was Canada's first anti-Semitism envoy.

He handpicked Deborah Lyons to replace him.