FACTS WRONG,
SPITE REAL

For weeks, Canada’s KAIROS, an ecumenical church group dedicated to defending human rights, the environment and impoverished people worldwide, knew only that Stephen Harper had cut the government funds they’d been receiving for 35 years. Now Canada’s Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has cast new light on the reasons for it. According to Kenny, KAIROS is anti-Semitic, as proven by their “leadership role” in an initiative to boycott Israeli goods. Had the Conservatives researched the matter, though, they’d have found KAIROS actually firmly rejected boycott initiatives.

Perfecting the trinity of the Harper government—idiocy, error and indifference to facts—Kenney told an audience in Israel that Canada’s war against Israel’s critics prompted the recent decision to cut KAIROS’s funding. KAIROS thinks the Harper stooges have confused them with an unaffiliated Palestinian group, Kairos Palestine, which recently did call for a boycott.

Although KAIROS has repeatedly condemned the Israeli government’s actions, a spokesman from the United Church rightly points out that labelling such sentiments as anti-Semitic “cheapens the reality of anti-Semitism in the world.”

by SCOTT SAXON