Canadian postal workers were found hiding stamps issued by their own government last month that celebrated 60 years of friendship with the State of Israel.
Columnist Sheila Trestan related her experience to readers of The Montreal Gazette when she tried to purchase the stamp at a local postal branch on the fourth floor of Ogilvy's department store.
“The woman behind the counter scowled and said she had no idea what I was talking about,” Trestan wrote. The clerk then went and found a co-worker, who admitted that the stamp did indeed exist. She also added that there had been very little publicity about the stamp, and that very few people knew about their existence. “We didn't want to display it in our cabinet; after all, we were concerned how people would feel about that,” the woman told the writer.
One week later, an article written by Arabic translator Adib Kawar appeared in the Arabic Al Jazeera news service, reporting that “Canadian postal workers are protesting against the 'common values stamp' that celebrates the relationship of Canada with the Zionist entity.'
Kawar alleged that a letter was sent on April 9 by postal workers union chairman Dennis Imlin to Canada's Postal Chairman of the Board, Moya Green, stating, “We are worried because the board will issue this stamp with 'Israel' on the basis of our common values while there are in 'Israel' more than 20 racist laws against the Palestinian minority citizens regarding matters of education, work, confiscation of land and accessing public resources.”
The letter allegedly went on to complain that Canada's postal system is celebrating the strong common values and interests with a state whose government has “continuously failed to do works that are characterized with civility and human feelings towards Palestinians.”
Kawar's source for the article was an April 27 Internet post on the website of the Lebanon-based As-Safir newspaper.
Anti-Semitism in Canada: Up Sharply
Anti-Semitic incidents in Canada reached record highs in 2009, according to an annual report released by the B'nai Brith Canada organization earlier this year. The survey showed an 11.4 percent rise in the number of incidents over 2008, a figure that constituted the highest level ever reported in the 28-year history of the audit.
B'nai Brith Canada noted there has been a five-fold increase in anti-Semitic incidents in Canada over the past decade. The most recent census figures indicate that more than 750,000 Muslims now live in Canada, with some 22 percent of those residing in Quebec province, where Montreal is located. At least 61 percent live in Ontario, where the majority of the anti-Semitic incidents occurred in 2009.