By Michael Regenstreif
Much has been made in recent years about efforts to stop the spread of hatred on the Internet. We’ve had articles in the Bulletin, for example, about Richard Warman, an Ottawa-based lawyer and activist who has been successful in having a number of antisemitic hate-sites on the World Wide Web shut down.
One of the vilest hate-filled sites I’ve come across recently is actually a Jewish site located at masada2000.org. The site, which refers to all Arabs as “a cancer” who should be removed from Israel and from the territories – which it considers to be part of Israel – is run by followers of the late Meir Kahane, the Brooklyn rabbi who founded the extremist Jewish Defense League in New York in 1968 before moving to Israel where he formed the Kach political party.
Kahane ran for election to the Knesset as leader of Kach in 1976 and 1980, but failed to win enough votes for even one seat. In the 1984 election, Kach finally garnered enough votes for that single seat and Kahane became an MK. Over the next four years, Kahane’s racist rhetoric so offended most Israelis that he was banned from running in the 1988 election and Kach was outlawed. Kahane, who was jailed several times in both the United States and Israel for his activities, met his end in 1990 when he was murdered in New York City following a speech.
Although Kahane was killed, his movement has survived on the fringes of Israeli and Diaspora societies. Baruch Goldstein, the American-born doctor who massacred Muslims praying at a mosque in Hebron in 1994, was a follower of Kahane. So, too, was Yigal Amir, the Israeli assassin of Yitzhak Rabin. Both Goldstein and Amir are regarded as heroes by Kahane’s followers. Since the mid-1990s, both Kach and its offshoot, Kahane Chai, have been designated by both Israel and the United States as terrorist organizations.
One of the most despicable sections of masada2000 is something called the Self-Hating and/or Israel-Threatening List. You can figure out the acronym the site likes to use for itself from the capitalized letters in its name.
The list, more than 7,000 names in length, is McCarthyesque in the way it designates “self-hating” Jews. Virtually every leftist you’ve ever heard of is on the list. Names you’d expect like Norman G. Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky. But one need not be anti-Zionist like Finkelstein or Chomsky to be on the list. It overflows with the names of prominent Zionist Jews, including many North American rabbis and Israeli politicians, who are listed because they have advocated peacemaking with the Arabs. Shimon Peres, the president of Israel and a former prime minister is on the list. So is Ehud Olmert, the current prime minister. Dalia Rabin-Pelosoff, a former deputy minister of defence and the daughter of Yitzhak Rabin, is there. So is Yuval Rabin, her brother.
Thomas Friedman, the astute New York Times op-ed columnist is on the list along with several Canadians including Rabbi Dow Marmur, rabbi emeritus of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, and Victor Goldbloom, the first Jewish cabinet minister in Quebec, a former federal commissioner of official languages and the current Quebec regional president of Canadian Jewish Congress.
And if it weren’t enough to be slandered as a self-hating Jew just by having one’s name on the list, many of the entries are annotated with disgustingly racist and/or homophobic commentaries.
The whole masada2000 site is shameful. What it truly exposes is the Kahanists themselves. They are Jews with a philosophy as ugly as the Ku Klux Klan’s.
* * * * * *
I’m very excited about Mira Sucharov’s new column – Values, Ethics, Community – making its debut in this issue of the Bulletin. Mira, an associate professor of political science at Carleton University, has lately been one of our book reviewers and was assigned to review a collection of essays for this issue called Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice. Her review – which is on page 28 – gives us much to think about as a community, as segments of the community, and as individuals. I invited Mira to use the review as a starting point for a new Bulletin column. She accepted and her initial column appears opposite the review.
There is no one way to respond to most, if not all, of the issues, questions and concerns that Mira raises, and will raise, in this and future editions of the Bulletin. While we’re always open to letters about anything that appears in our pages, we’re particularly interested in your response to the issues Mira will be raising. E-mail is the best way to send your letters. My address is mregenstreif@ ottawajewishbulletin.com.
Another new feature we’re beginning in this issue of the Bulletin is a series of community volunteer profiles being written by Benita Siemiatycki of the Jewish Ottawa InfoCentre.
Finally, this edition of the Bulletin marks the final appearance of Saul Silverman’s Global Shtetl column. For the past eight years Saul’s column has explored the often-fascinating Jewish Internet. On behalf of everyone at the Bulletin, I’d like to express our deep appreciation to Saul for his columns and insights as we continue to learn our way around the global shtetl the Internet has turned our world into.