April 27, 2009: Ettinger’s attack on Obama was off base

By Michael Regenstreif

I was taken by surprise when I read Diane Koven’s page 1 report on the speech made by retired Israeli diplomat Yoram Ettinger at the Passover luncheon hosted by Canadian Friends of Hebrew University on April 14. According to Ettinger, Barack Obama is the first-ever American president who “does not emanate from the common Judeo-Christian background ... the first president who does not come from that school of thought.”

When I told Diane how shocked I was at Ettinger’s comment, she told me that my shock was shared by many in the room that day at Agudath Israel. It’s common knowledge that Obama grew up a Christian, that he’s never practised any other religion. The ‘Obama is a Muslim’ canard that was used as a scare tactic during the campaign has been thoroughly discredited. As for the “Judeo” part of his values, Obama has talked about how influenced he has been by Jewish concepts of social justice. And, just this month, Obama became the first sitting president in American history to host a Passover seder in the White House.

Diane’s report goes on to discuss Ettinger’s concern that several key officials in the Obama administration do not understand Israel or are openly hostile. Ettinger mentions Susan Rice, Obama’s UN ambassador and James Jones, his national security adviser.

I was surprised to see Rice’s name mentioned in that context. After the election, JTA had a story about Obama’s national security team being dominated by pro-Israel figures. Susan Rice was the first name mentioned. In her confirmation hearings, Rice discussed how unfairly Israel has been treated at the UN.

As for Jones, there have been references to him in a couple of JTA pieces published while Benjamin Netanyahu was putting together his new coalition government.

“Insiders argue Netanyahu’s bottom-up approach to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking parallels that of General James Jones, Obama’s national security adviser. Both have said in recent interviews that they favour building infrastructure before advancing to final-status talks,” said one article.

“Netanyahu heralded his relationships and meetings with U.S. figures from President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to national security adviser James Jones and special Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell,” said the other.

In her report, Diane quotes Ettinger as saying Obama regards the Arab-Israeli conflict as the root cause of Middle Eastern turbulence. When I searched to find any record of Obama saying something along those lines, all I could find was Ettinger’s own pronouncements to that effect. In fact, in looking through countless reports of what Obama has had to say about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, I could find nothing inconsistent with moderate Zionism.

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I attended the Free Thinking Film Society’s screening of the film, The Case for Israel featuring Alan Dershowitz, on April 13 at Library and Archives Canada. Always a compelling speaker, Dershowitz eloquently shows how support for Israel – and the two-state solution – is the only logical choice when looking at the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from a human rights perspective.

This film should be seen by everyone involved in Israel advocacy at any level. The film society’s Fred Litwin has a license to show the film in Ottawa through the end of 2009 and organizations or schools who’d like to arrange a screening can contact him at fred.litwin@gmail.com.

April 6, 2009: Was the George Galloway case about free speech?

By Michael Regenstreif

British MP George Galloway was scheduled to speak April 2 in Ottawa at the Bronson Centre as part of a four-stop Canadian speaking tour that was also to have brought him to Toronto, Mississauga and Montreal.

By the time you read this column, you’ll know whether or not Galloway made it to his Canadian dates. Prior to his scheduled visit, the Canadian Border Security Agency had declared him unwelcome in Canada because of his support for Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls Gaza. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, citing Galloway’s “financial, material support for an illegal terrorist organization,” said the government would not overturn the agency’s decision to keep Galloway out of the country.

As I write – on March 27 – I can’t say for sure that Galloway didn’t make it to the Bronson Centre. His Canadian tour organizers had a federal court hearing scheduled for March 29 in Toronto and were hoping the court would overturn the ruling barring Galloway from entering Canada. If unsuccessful in court, they vowed to hold the events anyway with Galloway speaking via a closed-circuit Internet connection.

After the war with Hamas in Gaza, Galloway led a 5,000-mile overland convoy that delivered well over $1.4 million U.S. worth of material goods to Hamas. Not to a UN relief agency, but directly to Hamas. That, apparently, is what got him barred from Canada.

In Gaza, Galloway gave an interview to IslamOnline in which he heaped praise on Hamas and its “prime minister,” Ismail Haniya. He came to Gaza, he said, to “stand beside” Haniya. “I have offered him corporeal and financial support.”

Galloway went on to say that Hamas does “nothing illegal here in Gaza,” adding “Haniya is the PM of all the free people, not only in Gaza, but also all over the world. We accept him as a PM for the free people.”

That was hardly the first time Galloway had shown his support for terrorists. Google him and you’ll find lots of examples. On July 22, 2006, during Israel’s war with Hezbollah, Galloway told a crowd at a pro-Hezbollah demonstration that “Hezbollah has never been a terrorist organisation” and declared “I am here to glorify the Lebanese resistance, Hezbollah. I am here to glorify the leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.”

In a 1994 speech in Baghdad, Galloway famously told Saddam Hussein, “Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability,” although he later claimed to be saluting the Iraqi people rather than the dictator.

Galloway has been a member of the British House of Commons since 1987. He was originally a member of the Labour Party, but was expelled from the party in 2003. He is now the only MP for Respect, a far-left fringe party.

After the last election, Galloway told Al-Jazeera, “I was re-elected despite all the efforts made by the British government, the Zionist movement and the newspapers and news media which are controlled by Zionism.”

The Ottawa Peace Alliance was one of the main sponsors of Galloway’s Canadian speaking tour. It’s hard to see how peace fits into George Galloway’s agenda.

The Ottawa Peace Alliance and the other Galloway sponsors have framed the issue of his being barred from Canada as a free speech issue and have set up a website called defendfreespeech.ca. In reading through the website – at least as of March 27 – there is nothing there about free speech as a principle that applies to all people and all points of view. Only as something that George Galloway deserves.

I find it interesting that they’re painting the Galloway case as a free speech issue because one of the other main sponsors of Galloway’s Canadian tour is Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), a group that first gained national attention in 2002 by promising to shut down the speech that Benjamin Netanyahu – then a former prime minister of Israel – was scheduled to give on September 9 that year at Concordia University in Montreal.

True to their promise, SPHR led a violent riot that day at Concordia that forced the cancellation of Netanyahu’s speech and, for years afterwards, SPHR trumpeted gleefully about how they prevented Netanyahu from speaking. It’s hard to see how free speech fits into the SPHR agenda.

And, in a bit of irony, SPHR was to have presented Galloway’s Montreal speech in Room 110 of Concordia University’s Hall Building, the very room their violent riot prevented Netanyahu from speaking in on September 9, 2002.

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The late Terry Schwarzfeld was a good friend of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin. She contributed articles on occasion and I had the great pleasure of sitting down for an interview with her just before she left for Calgary in November to be installed as national president of Canadian Hadassah-WIZO. Our deepest condolences go to the Cotsman and Schwarzfeld families.