(CONTACT INFO BELOW) Canada will boycott Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at the United Nations on Wednesday, saying his outbursts about the Holocaust and Israel are “shameful.”
Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon will be at the world body to attend the opening of the UN General Assembly’s annual debate, but officials signal he and other members of the Canadian delegation will vacate the Canadian seats when the Islamic republic’s president approaches the podium.
Walking out of the chamber is seen as a strong diplomatic show of disgust at the UN — and since the chamber is generally packed on the first day of the annual summit, Canada’s empty seats will not go unnoticed.
One of the first speakers of the day will be U.S. President Barack Obama, who is making his debut address before the assembly.
“President Ahmadinejad’s repeated denial of the Holocaust and his anti-Israel comments run counter to the values of the UN General Assembly, and they’re shameful,” said one Canadian official.
“He uses his public appearances to provoke the international community, and that is why Canada’s seats will be empty.”
The gesture is a step stronger than one announced Tuesday by the German Foreign Ministry, which asked other European Union member states to walk out of the General Assembly chamber if Ahmadinejad again denies the Holocaust, or makes anti-Semitic statements.
The Canadian initiative will be welcomed by Israel, which Tuesday urged all delegates in the 192-member chamber to stay away when Ahmadinejad speaks.
“A few days ago, he gave a new speech of hate,” Gabriela Shalev, Israeli ambassador to the UN, told Israeli army radio.
“The simple fact of leaving the room during his speech, or not to be present during it, is a symbolic act.”
Shalev insisted Israel had not been asking countries to “promise” they would boycott Ahmadinejad’s address.
contact info of the Canadian Foreign Minister who will be boycotting Ahmadinejad:
To thank Canada, please use the contact info below:
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON
K1A 0A6
Tel: (613) 992-5516
Fax: (613) 992-6802
Email: [email protected]
(Source: Ottawa Citizen)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
17 Responses
If I were a gambler, I’d bet that most of the countries will walk out either at the beginning or during his speech. The exceptions being the other Arab countries and the US.
Good for Canada!
I’d like to see the USA join the boycott. Good luck.
#1, sadly, you are probably right about that.
As a Canadian, I am extremely proud of my country. It would have been really nice if the U.S. had taken the lead om this issue.
too bad our spineless president who hates everything good about this country would never do that after all he said this morning we were all equal.
G-d help us all!!!!
Atta Boy Levin (#6) – You show ’em the Torah way to talk! Nudnik
7, I am sorry I offended you and the rest of the obamamania ‘yes we can’ ‘change change change’ zombies out there but someone has to say it AND I DID.
YonasonW, YOU are the Nudnik. mark levin as been a steady and consistent fighter for conservative values and principles and illustrating how there is nothing in the Torah that contradicts them. You know nothing about the Constitution and I wonder how much of a lamdan you are.
Feel better….
You don’t offend me Levin (#8)- I would think you would be embarrassed by your own anger.
And I chuckle Flatbush Bubby (#10); I am an attorney who works in State law enforcement . . . I work with Constitutional Law every day. But who knows, Bubby – maybe you really are the Conlaw bucky . . so teach me.
YonasonW,
Try not to take every criticism of the party in power so deeply and personally to heart.
As public figures, the president and administration can take it. It’s part of the package.
11, thank you for pointing out that you are a lawyer because I would have guessed that anyway based on your lefty leanings. the bottom line is we NEVER had a president with so much hatred to his own country. it wasn’t too long ago the US delegation would have walked out on any leader saying the venom he said today. his speech was a complete embarrassment to this country & if you are not embarrassed by it, you are probably jerry wright or someone like that.
In my world, M. Levin you are allowed an opinion whether I agree with it or not.
Remember Americans are not fascists, totalitarians or dictators.
14, our country was not founded on those ideals. we all wish YOU KNOW WHO didn’t have those ideals too.
it makes you really think about the haftora normally read on shabbos chol hamoed succos (which there isn’t one this year) and how it relates to our supreme leader’s meeting with iran’s achmadingbat on october 1.
Mark Levin – attornies are not more leftist, my Boy – we just are trained to analyze a specific situation in terms of its larger principles.
For example, be wary of any law that might inhibit or prevent free expresion by anybody, or that would have the secular society endorse a particular religious view, even if we agree with it, out of concern that a precedent might be set that could haunt us one day.
I am a neither pro gay nor pro abortion – but I believe it dangerous to try and silence people who advocate for those positions. One day it could be advocates of scheita that are silenced by a majority who believes scheita to be “immoral.”
Finally, your comments that Obama hates America is silly, unless you believe Americans have to be “good Germans” in order to love their country.
Between 1943 and 2007 men in my family, as well as my mother (an Army nurse in WWII), have served this country loyally – are you going to call us anti-American, for example, because we are among those who do not subscribe to using interrogation techniques against our enemies that we as a country have labeled criminal when used against our own people?
#16, I beg to differ with all due respect to you.
Attorneys are trained to analyze a specific situation and then create a cleverly crafted story built around the alleged facts, often having nothing to do with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but in the truth. In addition, the outcomes are never what lawyers predict as judges do what they want to do anyway. I would imagine integrity is tough to maintain when being obliged to represent a client or any other legal matter where needing to prevail is the dominant factor of success or failure.
Further, maybe Obama does not hate America, but that is irrelevant to his viewpoints and his competency or lack of, to lead this nation. He should be impeached for compromising things traditionally American.
Your views on free expression must realize that at some point the line has to be drawn or we run into moral relativism, which is very dangerous. An “anything” goes philosophy, which you sort of are hinting at, leads to a survival of the fittest; a bad thing making life a lawless place.
veryinteresting – Though I am not a litigator, and work primarily in regulatory and legislative areas, I cringe at the silliness of your comment in #17.
You remind me of non-frum Jews who, speaking of halacha, and thinking they know it all say “…yeah, yeah you can’t fool me – it’s all up to interpretation…” – and then go about their merry way as they “interpret” things.
Your view of advocacy is just as much an uneducated stereotype…you need a better understanding of the role of the attorney in Anglo/American “Advocacy System,” how it differs from the European “Inquisitorial System, burdens of proof, etc.
And, my friend – it is the prior administration who “compromised things traditionally American.”
The history of the First Amendment is a glorious one, and one that free loving people have admired for generations – Standards such as canons of personal moral authority in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, standards for the treatment of prisoners, due process rights in criminal trials and the long slow road to de jure equality of peoples are THE things that have made this country a model and a haven for the persecuted and the immigrant.
Obama is defending a great tradition of freedom that the prior administration trashed . . . and that many of you find repugnant because the people at the center of the debates are so repugnant.
It’s no chidush to defend freedom in the name of one’s friends – no great deal for a Yid to defend a Rabbi’s right to speak . . or right to confront his accuser . . . or right to habeas corpus. The rubber meets the road when the person involved is a an accused terrorist, a proponent of immorality – or is this generation’s immigrant (not an immigrant, legal or not, of a hundred years ago, who could have been an ancestor of ours). The principles of freedom remain the same – though many of you either forget that, or never knew it.