History
Since its founding in 1967, the CAF has represented the Arab community with regard to a range of foreign and domestic issues.
The CAF opposed the Camp David Accord signed by Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin on September 17, 1978, and protested Begin's visit to Canada shortly thereafter.
In 1982, the CAF commissioned a study on the depiction of Arabs in political cartoons published between 1972 and 1982 in Canadian dailies. Published in 1986, the study determined that Arabs were repeatedly portrayed in a stereotypical fashion as bloodthirsty terrorists, untrustworthy, ignorant, cruel, and backwards. The researcher pointed to the danger of such pervasive negative imagery, recalling the role played by German caricaturists in their similar depictions of Jews as laying the basis for the Holocaust.
In The Holocaust, Israel, and Canadian Protestant Churches (2002), Haim Genizi writes of the CAF's participation in a 1982–83 initiative of the Canadian Council of Churches (CCC) to launch a tripartite Southwest Asian discussion group for the CCC, the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC), and the CAF. When the CJC declined to dialogue with Arabs, meetings between the CAF and the CCC alone continued on for eight months, ending with agreement on the need to educate Canadians to dispel anti-Arab stereotyping. For the churches, there was also recognition of the need to formulate a clear policy on Southwest Asia situation.
During the Gulf War, CAF documented over 100 violent anti-Arab incidents, calling the security roundup of more than 1,000 Arab-Canadians the most encompassing security sweep in Canada's history.
On June 14, 2004, the CAF, in cooperation with the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN), presented before the Arar Commission, a Canadian special commission set up to investigate the extraordinary rendition and torture of Maher Arar. A Canadian citizen of Syrian origin, Arar was detained by American immigration officials at a New York airport on a stopover there between Geneva and Toronto. He was sent to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured for a year before being released. The CAF and CAIR-CAN reminded the special commission that there need, "be no contradiction between security and the fundamental values we share as Canadians". The joint submission continued:
"Democratic and legal rights and liberties, pluralism, respect for human dignity and the rule of law are the principles that define us as Canadians. These are the 'basic tenets' of our legal system that find their explicit affirmation in the Charter. They are what safeguard democracy. If, in the name of fighting terrorism, we sacrifice these values for the sake of security, we lose our character, our identity, the very essence of a free and democratic society. We lose the war on terrorism if we become that kind of state that represses democratic rights and freedoms.
Read more about this topic: Canadian Arab Federation
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