Canada: Cyclist barred from speaking at
International Women’s Day event
because of past IDF service
Jew-hatred of a virulence we have not seen since 1945 is breaking out all over.
Canadian cyclist disinvited as speaker at women’s event
because of IDF service 30 years ago
by Jennifer Lovy, Times of Israel, February 16, 2024:
JTA — Leah Goldstein seemed like a natural fit to be the keynote speaker at an International Women’s Day event in Ontario, Canada, next month. A Canadian cyclist, she made history as the first woman to win a grueling 3,000-mile bike race across the United States.
But in January, five months after accepting the invitation, Goldstein was told she was no longer invited to speak.
The cause, the event organizers said, was “a small but growing and extremely vocal group” that took issue with Goldstein’s service three decades ago in the Israeli army.
“Our focus at INSPIRE has been and will always be to create safe spaces to honor, share, and celebrate the remarkable stories of women and non-binary individuals,” the women’s empowerment group said in a statement. “In recognition of the current situation and the sensitivity of the conflict in the Middle East, the Board of INSPIRE will be changing our keynote speaker.”
The revoked invitation comes amid widespread turmoil over the Israel-Hamas war, including in local communities far from the Middle East. The war broke out following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which saw 1,200 people killed, mostly civilians, and 253 kidnapped….
Goldstein is a frequent motivational speaker who shares how mental strength helped her overcome injury, discrimination and bullying throughout her experiences in sports and in Israel, where she says she was both the first female elite commando instructor in the IDF and an Israeli undercover police officer.
Goldstein told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that she had planned to stick with her usual message for the March 8 event.
“I am zero political when I speak,” she said by phone from her home in Vernon, British Columbia. “Honestly, there is nothing political about my presentation. I just talk about the crap that I went through and the crap that most women go through, and they still do, and how I handled it.”
But pro-Palestinian activists took issue with her biography after her keynote slot was announced. Heather Doughty, INSPIRE’s founder, told JTA that Goldstein’s critics had targeted other speakers associated with the event, which is expected to draw about 100 participants, as a way to press for her exclusion.
“We are equally upset,” Doughty told JTA. “We’re just this tiny little not-for-profit that is trying to do a nice thing, and we were literally attacked. We had speakers [from INSPIRE] verbally attacked. They went to do their grocery shopping, and people came up and were attacking them.”
Doughty said Goldstein’s critics “were demanding to know what Leah’s position was” on the Israel-Hamas war and that INSPIRE sought to get answers for them. After the group did not receive an immediate response, it rescinded the invitation to speak….
Free speech is going the way of the Dodo bird in Trudeau's Canada. Trudeau is ever so worried about Islamophobia in Canada, but apparently, not the least concerned about the rapidly exploding antisemitism.
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