Former Montreal-area federal parliamentarian Irwin Cotler, who served as Canada’s inaugural special envoy for combating antisemitism, says he was inspired to devote his career to civil liberties after attending a Montreal Royals game as a boy.
Cotler’s father drew his attention to visiting Brooklyn Dodgers player Jackie Robinson, the first black player in Major League Baseball. “It wasn’t that he was just a ball player,” Cotler’s father told him. “He was the inspiration for the civil-rights movement in the United States.”
The retired Canadian politician, who will turn 85 on May 8, told JNS that Robinson served as a model for his public service, which has included protecting Jewish Canadians. He worries about the latter, particularly since he thinks the police aren’t doing enough to curb it.
“I’m talking about pro-Hamas demonstrations,” he told JNS. “I can name half a dozen violations of the criminal code that are being committed all the time.”
During an hour-long conversation in the living room of his Montreal home—decorated with wall-to-wall photos of his children and grandchildren—Cotler reflected on Israeli and Canadian politics, his lifelong advocacy work and his political career.
He remains the international chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, which he founded 10 years ago. He was very moved to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in January, he told JNS.
“I take this to be in recognition of the cases and causes that I had the privilege to be involved with over the years, and the brave and courageous dissidents, human-rights defenders and political prisoners on whose behalf I had the honor and privilege to be involved,” he said.
The former parliamentarian has taught law at McGill University and Harvard University; served as Canadian justice minister and attorney general; and been a fellow at Yale University. He holds 11 honorary doctorates, was named an officer of the Order of Canada (1992) and earned Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012). He also holds an Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor (2023).
He has been nominated before for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 and 2019.
‘I’ve been honored to learn from him’
This year, NGO Monitor head Gerald Steinberg, and former Israeli official and activist Natan Sharansky were among those who nominated Cotler for the prize.
Steinberg met Cotler in Montreal in 1998, when they spoke at an academic event on Iran’s role in destabilizing the region and implications for Israel. The two corresponded often about nonprofits and the United Nations “undermining moral principles.”
Cotler is “the world’s leading academic and practitioner in the realms of real human rights and international law, and I’ve been honored to learn from him,” Steinberg told JNS.
Hillel Neuer, executive director of United Nations Watch, was a student of Cotler’s at McGill. He told JNS that Cotler, his mentor, is “a moral giant and champion for political prisoners” who has “dedicated his life to fighting injustice, defending the oppressed and advancing human rights.”
“When it comes to human-rights lawyers who defend dissidents and political prisoners, there is no one more deserving of being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize,” he said.
Neuer has fond recollections, at age 9, of seeing Cotler for the first time standing among hundreds in downtown Montreal on Avenue de Musée, facing the Soviet consulate, whose diplomats peered out from behind curtains.
“Placards in our hands, we cried out for the freedom of Anatoly Sharansky and other refuseniks. Standing on a makeshift stage and addressing the crowd with a bullhorn in his hands was our inspiring leader,” he said. “This is one of my formative childhood memories, and my first experience as an activist for the Jewish people and human rights.”
At McGill, Neuer took every course of Cotler’s, became one of his research assistants and cites him as the inspiration for his career working for human-rights organizations.
“As one of the great human-rights lawyers and scholars of our time, professor Cotler is not only a master of the law, but more importantly, he is a master of its application in the service of humanity,” Neuer said.
‘Securing justice for victims’
In addition to a lifetime of experience fighting for human rights, Cotler has made efforts to build bridges between countries at war. He played a role in the 1979 peace plan between Egypt and Israel, when he said that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat asked him to give a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to start peace talks.
And he continues to be involved in the trenches of human-rights battles.
Cotler is “part of a high-level working group for an independent international tribunal,” which is calling attention to the “crime of aggression in Ukraine” to bring Russian President Vladimir Putin to justice, he told JNS. He continues to call attention to unjustly imprisoned dissidents and journalists abroad.
“When I see and witness what the political prisoners are enduring, I say, ‘I live in a free and democratic country. I’m not living imprisoned by an axis of evil,’” he said. “We have to use whatever resources we can to protect the oppressed and to hold the oppressors accountable.”
“That’s what the pursuit of justice is all about—securing justice for victims,” Cotler told JNS. “You have to have accountability for the major human-rights violators.”