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The battle against antisemitism is an ongoing struggle. It takes time, it takes constant vigilance, and it takes the courage to speak truth to power. Irwin Cotler, a Montreal born Canadian of Jewish descent, grappled with this reality for his entire career and never once backed down.

Cotler credits his parents for forging his strong moral core, for instilling the values about the importance of justice and the sacredness of all human life that would guide him in life from an early are. His father, Nathan Cotler, was an attorney and practicing Jew, he stressed the importance of law and responsibility from both a legal perspective, and as a religious duty. His mother, Fay Dubrovky-Cotler taught him about the holocaust and mentored to him about empathy, the need to personally feel injustices hurled at others and the necessity of good men to stand in the way of evil.

Irwin took these lessons to heart and based his entire career around them. After graduating from law school at McGill University, Irwin worked tirelessly to voraciously oppose antisemitism and other forms of prejudice, hatred, and injustice around the world.

One of his first high profile blows for justice was his successful advocacy on behalf of Natan Sharnasky, a Jewish political prisoner held in a Russian Gulag. Sharansky, leader of a political group opposed to Soviet domination, was arrested in 1977 on trumped up charges of treason and espionage, sentenced to 13 years of hard labor in a Siberian gulag – a death sentence carried out by inches. 

Irwin was on the case immediately. He publicly and constantly hammered the Soviet government to release Sharnasky and for assurances of his health and treatment. Cotler worked to keep him in the public spotlight so he wouldn't end up as just another gulag casualty lost in the bureaucratic haze of the Soviet prison system.

Justice isn't fast, and it isn't easy, but after nine years Sharnasky was finally released and immediately immigrated to Israel. Cotler's efforts had been the key to securing that release. In a 1984 visit to Canada, Gorbachev was greeted with protests and accusations about Sharnasky's imprisonment organized by Cotler. He confided that truthfully, he had never even heard of Sharnasky and when he took office the next year released him as a matter of practicality. "He was a troublemaker, but not a criminal, and it was costing us to keep him in prison – all the demands and protests.” Sharnasky was the first political prisoner released by Gorbachev. 

Of course, that was only one fight in a career defined by sticking up for the vulnerable. Cotler would take on more cases of unjust imprisonment as an international human rights lawyer, advocating on behalf for prisoners held in the Soviet Union, in South Africa under Apartheid, and more recently for political prisoners in the Arab and Muslim world. Prisoners such as Shoaib Choudhury, a Bangladesh journalist charged with treason and sedition for advocating for peace and cultural understanding with Israel in 2004.

Cotler also served as President of the Canadian Jewish Congress, lobbying the government to support Israel in its many struggles and protecting the rights of Jewish citizens to live their lives without fear. He was chief consul in the  Deschênes Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals hiding in Canada, proving that real that justice has no statue of limitations. Recently, Cotler has worked to redefine and categorize modern antisemitic under the umbrella of "the new antisemitism.”

In 2003, Cotler was appointed to Cabinet as Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, a position he would steward with dignity and vigilance. He would remain in public service for more than a decade in a variety of posts including Critic for Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and Special Counsel on Human Rights and International Justice. In 2008, Cotler was one of the first to ring the alarm bells of an increasingly hostile and aggressive Iran (particularly as it threatened Israel) releasing an official petition entitled The Danger of a Genocidal and Nuclear Iran: A Responsibility to Prevent Petition. 

Retiring from government in 2015, Cotler is still actively working for justice in numerous cases around the globe. Irwin Cotler is living proof that one person can make a difference. That injustice can be fought and defeated. That we don't have to tolerate hatred and oppression as long as we are willing to stand by our core beliefs.