Stuart Laughton, Never Again Group speech at Caledonia Act news conference: Individuals are the ultimate minorities

“Stuart Laughton’s short speech is one of the best analyses of legal and social consequences of Ontario government’s policies in Caledonia.”
— Email to VoC by Miroslav Marinov, BlogWrath.com 

The feedback for the speech given by Stuart Laughton of the Hamilton-based Never Again Group at the CANACE/Caledonia Victims Project Feb 10/12 Queen’s Park news conference — ‘Ending Race-Based Policing: The Caledonia Act’ — was so positive that VoiceofCanada has decided to print Stuart’s entire speech… 

QUEEN’S PARK NEWS CONFERENCE:
‘Ending Race-Based Policing: The Caledonia Act’
Queen’s Park Media Studio, Feb 10/12

Stuart Laughton, Never Again Group  
[PDF] [AUDIO] [VIDEO – to come] 

Hello,

My name is Stuart Laughton and I am here on behalf of the Never Again Group, an organization that supports Gary McHale in his group’s fight against racially biased policing in Caledonia, just as he has supported us elsewhere.

The Never Again Group is based in Hamilton—which is very close to Caledonia—and our membership is about 1/2 Jewish. We defend the state of Israel from baseless accusations and we fight anti-Semitism in its various guises. The Never Again Group does not believe that the Ontario government’s directives to police in Caledonia began with ill intentions—and we don’t know anyone who believes that Premier McGuinty is specifically targeting Jews there—but these directives were nevertheless profoundly wrong and dangerous in ways Canadians are only now beginning to appreciate. I want to stress that my group has made no opposition to Natives who make land claims: we only protest the violent manner in which the claims to the Caledonia property are made and the racially skewed responses of the Ontario government.

Gerofsky re Caledonia Eight – Dear Prime Minister: ‘Just plain unfair and unconstitutional’ to favour violent groups

 Letter to the Prime Minister, Ontario’s Premier, the OPP and others by a member of the Never Again Group, several members of which attended the Dec 03/11 march where the Caledonia Eight were arrested…
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Subject: Caledonia on my mind                     

Sent: Sun 12/4/2011 2:15

 

Re: https://voiceofcanada.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/the-caledonia-8-arrested-today-in-non-native-no-go-zone-occupation-site/

 

111203 Caledonia 8 arrests - Bonnie Stephens PHOTO: BLOGWRATH.COM, CLICK FOR MORE PHOTOS/STORY.

Dear Prime Minister Harper and Premier McGuinty:

I am a law-abiding citizen and have never had any reason to give much thought to policing in Canada. I took it for granted that everyone was treated fairly, according to the same laws applied in the same way for everyone. Our police, I assumed, are well-paid and professional in carrying out their duties. I also assumed that there was a fire-wall between the politicians and the police.

 

Recent events in the past several years in Caledonia have shaken my complacency because in Caledonia the law has become a political matter rather than a policing matter. Some people have become the untouchables (the native community) regardless of their behaviour, lawlessness, displays of violence and objectives. Taxpayer money has gone into a huge appeasement package that will encourage more of this type of “occupation” of land that is really no longer in dispute because settlements and restitution has been made in the distant past and there is a statute of limitations on land claims that must be considered as part of any big picture. New targets are now being pursued by the native community (like in the Dundas Valley Conservation Area). These urban green spaces are being claimed as hunting grounds now precisely because the pursuit of racial policing has set a disruptive and dangerous precedent in Caledonia.

 

Jewish apathy decried at Fogel family massacre memorial in Hamilton

The massacre of five members of the Fogel family a week ago sent shock waves through Jewish communities around the world. Three small children aged 11; four and just three months old were savagely murdered in their beds. The parents, Udi and Ruth were also murdered. […]

Details of the grisly massacre have been revealed. The murderers stabbed the mother after she saw her husband and baby with their throats slit. The other two children clenched their little fists as they were brutally stabbed to death in their beds. They clenched their fists, what else could they do against these men armed with knives? The murderers missed one of the bedrooms so the two-year-old and the six-year-old were spared death; instead, they found their parents and siblings, lying bloodied and dead. The 12-year-old daughter who had been out with friends came home to find her two-year-old brother screaming over his parents bodies.

• Australia Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), March 21/11: The Silent Massacre
• See also: Israel Today Magazine, March 14/11: Pictures of the Fogel family massacre (warning: graphic images)

Fogel family memorial

Last night I attended a memorial service for the Fogel family which was slaughtered in their home like animals by Palestinian butchers on March 11/11. It was a simple, moving ceremony which looked to the future to a day without such hatred, but one speaker – Gary Gerofsky of the ‘Never Again Group’ – struck a resonant chord with his quiet, but firm condemnation of Jewish leaders who refuse to support those in the community who actively confront those who lie, hate, and incite against Jewish people and the state of Israel and who, by doing so, get in the way of the productive activism needed to counter what Gerofsky calls the “Islamist and radical leftist hate.”

As someone who works to counter appeasement of native extremism and hate supported by the very same radical leftists, anarchists and anti-Semitic groups I knew, halfway through Gerofsky’s speech, that I was compelled to ask if he would allow me to post his words here on VoiceofCanada.

(Note: the bolded text is in the original. I took the liberty of adding the title since Mr. Gerofsky provided me with his raw notes that did not include a title).

We need not  accept leaders who excuse demonization and get in the way of activism

by Gary Gerofsky, Never Again Group
Fogel family memorial, Adas Israel Congregation, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
April 11, 2011  [PDF]

As we gather here today to memorialize the Fogel family, I am reminded of the 1972 Munich massacre of eleven Israeli Olympians by Fatah. I am also reminded of the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking where wheelchair-bound American tourist, 69-year-old Leon Klinghoffer, was killed by Palestinian terrorists. I also recall the countless terrorist bombings, wars, and “intifada’s” that the Palestinians inflicted and continue to inflict on Israelis in Israel and on Jews internationally – a military and ideological war that has gathered strength over the years but began long before the so-called Israeli “occupation” existed. Now the issue of disputed land is used as the excuse to justify savage killing. The Arabs own more than 99% of the Middle East along with the valuable resources and so land is not and has never been the real issue.