Among the most exciting moments in this process of Redemption is watching the pieces come together. Anyone can do this. (You don't have to be a prophet!) Just by being an observer of the human scene,...current events, talk radio, internet news and daily experiences,--all this can be eye-opening about how the Rebbe's prophecy is being fulfilled.
Only a few weeks after violent
assaults from Muslims claimed the lives of two Canadian citizens, the Canadian
Parliament voted to crack down on cruel and unusual Muslim practices against
women. Not one to be cowed by anybody or anything, Prime Minister Stephen
Harper and his government showed their determination to uphold the standards of
civilized society despite the tragic murder of their citizens by Islamic terrorists.The law they enacted is boldly titled, “Zero Tolerance for
Barbaric Cultural Practices Act.” Canada,
under the leadership of Mr. Harper, refuses to be intimidated.
“The Canadian
government, under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, continues to take a hard
stance against Islamist extremism - including its laws against women's rights
and freedoms.”
Suggested by B. Epstein
ISRAEL NATIONAL NEWS
Canada: Crackdown on "Barbaric" Islamist Practices Against Women
'Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act' to crack down on forced marriage, 'honor killings,' underage marriage.
By Dalit Halevy and Tova Dvorin
First Publish: 11/9/2014, 8:22 AM
Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper (R) with Foreign Secretary
John Baird, Sat. Nov. 8, 2014 (Adrian Wyld/THE CANADIAN PRESS)
The
Canadian government, under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, continues to take a
hard stance against Islamist extremism -
including its laws against women's rights and freedoms.
Dubbed
the "Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act," the Canadian
Parliament released new laws last week targeting "violence against women
or girls, including spousal abuse, violence in the name of so-called “honour”,
or other, mostly gender-based violence," according to its officialwebsite.
Ottawa
also stressed in the explanatory note that the practices are
"intolerable" and that lawbreakers would be dealt with harshly, to
send a message to the current and future immigrant populations in Canada.
As part
of this, new immigrants married to more than one wife or who were convicted of
crimes against women in their home countries
will not be allowed to emigrate to Canadian soil, and immigrants currently in
the country may be extradited to their home countries even without a previous
conviction if found guilty of bigamy, the law stated.
Civil
marriage shall be determined by law, it added,
and second marriages shall be considered valid only with the free consent of
both spouses in the event of remarriage after a civil divorce.
The laws
also stipulate, clearly, that 16 is the minimum age for marriage and that the
marriage of any two citizens between the ages of 16-18 can only be finalized
with parental consent from both sides.
Forced
marriages are now a criminal act, and all parties - including parents, any
religious officials, and any other authority involved in the union - could now
be tried, convicted, and sentenced to up to 5 years' prison
time.
That ban
will now also include taking children under 16 to foreign nations for the
express purpose of forced marriage - an all-too-common trend in immigrant
Muslim communities across the globe which may be increasing, according to a
recent documentary on the subject in Vice News.
Changes
have also been made to the current Criminal Code regarding "honor killings," as well.
"The
proposed amendment would limit the defense of provocation so that lawful
conduct by the victim that might be perceived by the accused as an insult, or
offend that person or their sense of family “honor” or reputation, cannot be
used to reduce murder to manslaughter," the bill stipulates.
The new
bill surfaces after multiple Islamist terrorist attacks in Canada over the past
several weeks, including a shootout in the Canadian Parliament and the
hit-and-run in Quebec against Canadian soldiers by a terrorist affiliated with
Islamic State.
It also
surfaces amid statistics that "honor killings" have been on the rise
worldwide, but specifically in Canada where scant legal data on the issue
indicated in 2012 that the rate of the murders had tripled in a 12-year
period.
In a speech interrupted with
applause and standing ovations delivered to the French National Assembly, Prime
Minister Manuel Valls denounced anti-Semitism.He chastised the French people for not reacting sufficiently to the
obscene and terrorist acts committed against French Jews. He said that acts
against Jews were “unacceptable.” Moreover they are “an attack on the
conscience of humanity.” He scorned the anti-Semites who partied in the
aftermath of the massacre at a kosher grocery before the Sabbath. And how did the
world react to these stunning accusations? The major media all but ignored this
speech that brought the French legislature to its feet. One phrase rings loud and clear. Prime Minister Valls declared: "Without its Jews, France will not be France."
Manuel Valls, Prime Minister, France
“How can we accept that in France…cries
of ‘death to the Jews’ can be heard on the streets?”
“How can we accept that French
people can be murdered for being Jews?”
“How can we accept that a Tunisian
citizen whose father sent him to France so that he would be safe, is killed
when he goes out to buy his bread for Shabbat?”
“When the Jews of France are attacked…the
conscience of humanity is attacked.”
The Algemeiner, 1/14/2015
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls
denounced anti-Semitism in a
searing speech to the National Assembly.
Photo: Screenshot.
French PM Issues Blistering
Denunciation of Antisemitism (VIDEO)
It was an electrifying moment: in a
voice crackling with anger and pain, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls
denounced the rise of antisemitism in France before the country’s National
Assembly yesterday, pointedly observing, “We haven’t shown enough outrage.”
Valls was speaking following the
funerals of seven of the victims of last week’s Islamist terrorist attacks in
France, in which a total of 17 people, including four Jews trapped in Friday’s
siege at the HyperCacher market in eastern Paris, were murdered in cold blood.
Though his speech covered a wide
range of issues, and included an emotional plea to recognize that France is “at
war with jihadism and terrorism…not against Islam and Muslims,” Valls was
determined to highlight the threat posed by antisemitism, declaring: “I say to
the people in general who perhaps have not reacted sufficiently up to now, and
to our Jewish compatriots, that this time [antisemitism] cannot be accepted.”
The address brought to mind the
impassioned “J’Accuse” letter, penned by the great French writer Emile Zola in
1898, in response to the antisemitism displayed by the French government during
the infamous trial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish military officer who
was convicted and publicly humiliated on fabricated charges of treason. In that
letter, Zola spoke with disgust “of the hunting for the ‘dirty Jews,’ which
dishonors our time.”
When Valls asked with anger, “How
can we accept that cries of ‘death to the Jews’ can be heard on the
streets?” the echoes of Zola’s words were unmistakable.
In his speech, Valls was explicit
that the “first question that has to be dealt with clearly is the struggle
against antisemitism.”
“History has taught us that the
awakening of antisemitism is the symptom of a crisis for democracy and of a
crisis for the Republic. That is why we must respond with force,” Valls said.
Recalling a series of antisemitic outrages in France in recent years, such as
the abduction, torture and murder of the young Parisian Jew Ilan Halimi in
2006, the murder of three small children and a rabbi by an Islamist gunman at a
Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012, and the rape of a young Jewish woman during
an antisemitic assault on a Jewish home in the Paris suburb of Creteil in
December 2014, Valls asserted that these and other incidents “did not not produce
the national outrage that our Jewish compatriots expected.”
“How can we accept that in France,
where the Jews were emancipated two centuries ago, but which was also where
they were martyred [during the Nazi Holocaust] 70 years ago, that cries
of ‘death to the Jews’ can be heard on the streets?” Valls asked, the
indignation in his voice steadily rising. “How can we accept that French people
can be murdered for being Jews? How can we accept that compatriots, or a
Tunisian citizen whose father sent him to France so that he would be safe, is
killed when he goes out to buy his bread for Shabbat?”
Valls observed that there “is a
historical antisemitism that goes back centuries.” But, he added, “there is
also a new antisemitism that is born in our neighborhoods, coming through the
internet, satellite dishes, against the backdrop of loathing of the State of
Israel, which advocates hatred of the Jews and all the Jews.”
Implored the French Prime Minister:
“It has to be spelled out – the right words must be used to fight this
unacceptable antisemitism.”
Valls emphasized an additional
point that he has made repeatedly over the last few days: that a France shorn
of its Jewish community would no longer be France. “This is the message we have
to communicate loud and clear,” he said. “How can we accept that in certain
schools and colleges the Holocaust can’t be taught? How can we accept that when
a child is asked, ‘who is your enemy,’ the response is ‘the Jew?’ When
the Jews of France are attacked, France is attacked, the conscience of humanity
is attacked. Let us never forget that.”
Refusing to mention the self-styled
comedian by name, Valls spoke of “the indignity of a serial hater having a full
house on Saturday night, when the country was mourning for what happened [at
the HyperCacher market] in Porte de Vincennes.” As the National Assembly rose in
a standing ovation for the Prime Minister, Valls thundered, “Let us never pass
over these matters in silence, and let justice be implacable with those who
preach hate. And I say that emphatically here at the National Assembly.”
Valls ended his speech by examining
the difference between blasphemy and hate speech, a particularly pregnant theme
in France in the wake of the massacre carried out at the satirical magazine
Charlie Hebdo. “When a young man or woman, a citizen, has doubts and approaches
me or the Minister of Education with the question: ‘But I don’t understand, how
come you want to silence this comedian, and you put the Charlie Hebdo
journalists up on a pedestal,’ there is a fundamental difference,” he remarked.
“There is a fundamental difference between the freedom to be insolent –
blasphemy is not a crime and never will be – and antisemitism, racism, excusing
terrorism and Holocaust denial, which are crimes that the courts must punish
with ever greater severity.”
Just as striking as the raw emotion
which characterized the Prime Minister’s address was the lack of media
attention, certainly in the English language, given to his comments about
antisemitism and the future of French Jews. Leading outlets, among them the BBC, the Financial Times,
the Daily Mailand English-language broadcaster France 24,
either made no mention of the sections of Valls’ speech that dealt with
antisemitism, or buried them deep in their reports.
An indication, perhaps, that the
lack of outrage which so incensed the French Prime Minister will continue for
as long as journalists and reporters fail to acknowledge that hatred of Jews
lies at the core of Islamist ideology, just as it did among the nationalists
and xenophobes whom Emile Zola confronted more than a century ago.
Be sure to watch these excerpts
from the address of French Prime Minister Manuel Valls to the National
Assembly. The Algemeiner is also pleased
to provide a translation of his remarks on antisemitism as a service to our
readers.
Following is a translation of the
remarks on antisemitism delivered by French Prime Minister Manuel Valls to the
National Assembly on January 13, 2015:
…The first question that has to be
clearly dealt with is the struggle against antisemitism. History has taught us
that the awakening of antisemitism is the symptom of a crisis for democracy and
of a crisis for the Republic. That is why we must respond with force. Since
Ilan Halimi in 2006, after the crimes of Toulouse, antisemitic acts in France
have grown to an intolerable degree. The words, the insults, the gestures, the
shameful attacks, as we saw in Creteil a few weeks ago, which I mentioned here
in the Chamber, and which did not not produce the national outrage that our
Jewish compatriots expected.
There is a huge level of concern,
that fear which we felt at the HyperCacher at Porte de Vincennes and in the
synagogue de la Victoire on Sunday night. How can we accept that in France,
where the Jews were emancipated two centuries ago, but which was also where
they were martyred 70 years ago, how can we accept that cries of “death
to the Jews” can be heard on the streets? How can we accept these acts
that I have just mentioned? How can we accept that French people can be
murdered for being Jews? How can we accept that compatriots, or a Tunisian
citizen whose father sent him to France so that he would be safe, is killed
when he goes out to buy his bread for Shabbat because he is Jewish? This
is not acceptable and I say to the people in general who perhaps have not
reacted sufficiently up to now, and to our Jewish compatriots, that this time
it cannot be accepted, that we must stand up and say what’s really going on.
There is a historical antisemitism
that goes back centuries, but there is also a new antsemitism that is born in
our neighborhoods, coming through the internet, satellite dishes, against the
backdrop of the loathing of the State of Israel, and which advocates hatred of
the Jews and all the Jews. It has to be spelled out, the right words must be
used to fight this unacceptable antisemitism.
( …) Without its Jews France would
not be France, this is the message we have to communicate loud and clear. We
haven’t done so. We haven’t shown enough outrage. How can we accept that in
certain schools and colleges the Holocaust can’t be taught? How can we accept
that when a child is asked “Who is your enemy” the response is “the Jew?”
When the Jews of France are attacked France is attacked, the conscience of
humanity is attacked. Let us never forget it.
And to how to accept the indignity
of a serial hater having a full house on Saturday night, when the country was
mourning for what happened in Porte de Vincennes? Let us never pass over these
matters in silence, and let justice be implacable with those who preach hate.
And I say that emphatically here at the National Assembly.
And to finish my remarks, Ladies
and Gentleman, when someone, a young man or woman, a citizen, has doubts and
approaches me or the Minister of Education with the question: “But I don’t
understand, how come you want to silence this comedian, and you put the Charlie
Hebdo journalists up on a pedestal?” There is a fundamental difference – and
this is the battle that we have to win, educating our young people – there is a
fundamental difference between the freedom to be insolent – blasphemy is not a
crime and never will be – there is a fundamental difference between that
liberty and anti-Semitism, racism, excusing terrorism and Holocaust denial,
which are crimes that the courts must punish with ever greater severity.
