There may be less enviable public speaking assignments than following Benjamin Netanyahu to the podium, but it is hard to think of them. Irwin Cotler, a member of the Canadian Parliament and former Minister of Justice, got that assignment — giving the concluding speech to Monday’s plenary session of the UJC General Assembly in Los Angeles, speaking to the 3,000 member audience immediately after Netanyahu (who remained in the hall to listen to him) left the stage.
Cotler proceeded to give a 35-minute speech that elicited sustained applause and cheers at the end. Unlike Netanyahu’s speech, it has received no media coverage at all, not even on the General Assembly’s own site. An excerpt cannot do justice to the entire speech, and the written word cannot convey the passion with which Cotler spoke, but here is how the speech ended:
And may I close with a metaphor with regard to “one people.” It came home to me while I was Minister of Justice. I think it is a metaphor that speaks profoundly to who we are.
And it occurred in an encounter that I had with aboriginal, or native people, native law students, native Canadians. They came to me and with respect to our encounter they said “You know, Minister Cotler, we’re not just law students, we’re aboriginal law students. We come with a past, with a history, with a heritage; we come with a language, a culture, with an identity, we come with our own indigenous legal system. We’ve been dispossessed from all that. We’ve been dispossessed from our past, from our history, from our heritage; we’ve been dispossessed from our language, our culture, our identity. It’s not that we go to court because we want to nurture a grievance. We go to court because we want to rediscover who we are. We go to court because we want to reconnect to our roots. We go to court because we want to give expression to our own aboriginal legal system; and regrettably, whenever we do, we are confronted by a great deal of pain, because the Government of Canada doesn’t understand us — the people of
Canada don’t understand who we are."
And I said “You know, let me share with you a parable that comes out of our tradition. Some Jews come to their rabbi and they say “Rabbi, you know we love you.” And the rabbi says, “Do you know what hurts me?” And they say, “Rabbi, why do you say ‘do we know what hurts you?’ — we tell you we love you.” And the rabbi says “Because if you don’t know what hurts me, you can’t tell me you love me.” And I told them that is not only a profound principle of human relationships; it is a principle that we will try to express to you in our relationships with the aboriginal people of
Canada.
And then I said: “I’d like to say something else, at the risk of maybe being somewhat presumptuous or pretentious.” I said: “I also come from an aboriginal people — a people that still inhabits the same land, that embraces the same religion, studies the same aboriginal Torah, that harkens to the same aboriginal Jewish prophets, speaks the same aboriginal language — Hebrew — and bears the same aboriginal name — Hebrews — as we did 3500 years ago.”
Whereupon the aboriginal students approached me and said, “You know, we thought this was going to be another white man with the usual ‘blah-blah.’ Welcome — one aboriginal people to another.”
There is something about that — that we are not just atomized people, atomized individuals. We are one people, with a common heritage and with a common destiny, and with values that underpin that common heritage and destiny, wherever we are. When we are concerned about Ahmadinejad’s genocidal speech it is because we have learned so well [Cotler first spoke the phrase in Hebrew], “life and death is on the tip of our tongue.” That is why we are cautioned against the whole question of "lashon hara" — slanderous speech — amongst us, in our community, which led to the destruction of the
Temple. When we speak about [speaks the phrase in Hebrew], “do not stand by when your brother and sisters’ blood is being shed” — that’s why we speak about the intervention in Darfur, the responsibility to protect doctrine, you know, at the UN and the Security Council [speaks in the phrase in Hebrew] — we have to give expression to those cries.
And this people, with one heart, with one head, with one destiny — we should always remember that this people, this people has [speaks the phrase in Hebrew], “the rule of law” as our heritage, that has [speaks the phrase in Hebrew], the notion of Jewish humanitarian law, as our doctrine, that has “tzedek, tzedkek, haaort” — “justice, justice, shall you pursue” — as a moral imperative, that has “Shalom! Shalom!” — “Peace, Peace” — to those who are far, to those who are near, as our abiding hope, as our abiding dream, as our abiding will.
And so I say, that this is why I say to this one people . . . [speaks the phrase in Hebrew], that a Jewish and just cause will prevail!
Cotler holds a Bachelor of Arts, a Bachelor of Civil Law, a Doctor of Laws, and a Ph.D, among other degrees and titles. He was a professor of law at
Netanyahu’s speech was a compelling warning of an existential threat. Cotler’s speech was an eloquent and impassioned statement of the reasons why survival is important, of what is at stake.
Left to right: Irwin Cotler, PC , MP , OC , BA , BCL , LL.D , Ph.D, and a blogger.