Irwin Cotler. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Irwin Cotler

Canadian parliamentarian

A former Canadian Minister of Justice, and a long-standing member of the Canadian Parliament for the Liberal Party, Irwin Cotler is one of the most indefatigable figures in Jewish advocacy today. His unceasing efforts on behalf of human rights and against the scourge of antisemitism have been acclaimed across the world, and Cotler is a familiar figure in the political corridors of other countries, including the US and Israel. Last October, Cotler gave a lengthy interview to The Algemeiner a few days after an Islamist terrorist opened fire on the Canadian parliament. He recounted how, while sheltering in his office awaiting the all-clear, he spoke to his wife, who told him of a terrorist attack in Jerusalem that same day, in which a three month-old baby was murdered. Afterwards, Cotler said, he alerted his colleagues, mercifully unused to terrorist atrocities, “to those two things: One that there had been this terrorist attack in Israel, and two, as my wife expressed it, the existential situation that Israel lives with all the time.”