December 13, 2010: National Jewish advocacy organizations likely to be merged

By Michael Regenstreif

Sometimes, deadlines and the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin publication schedule don’t co-operate with the news we’d like to bring you.

A case in point is the proposed new structure for the organization overseeing national advocacy for the Canadian Jewish community, which, if all goes according to the organizers’ plans, will be presented to the boards of the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA) on December 8 and UIA-Federations Canada on December 12.

This issue, dated December 13, actually went to press on December 3. So, we do not have coverage yet of whether or not the new structure has been approved or precisely what form it will take.

CIJA, the entity being reorganized, is a relatively new body. It was established seven years ago by UIA Federations Canada – the national organization of the Jewish federations in Canada, including the Jewish Federation of Ottawa – as an umbrella organization to co-ordinate the advocacy efforts of the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Canada-Israel Committee, the Quebec-Israel Committee, National Campus Jewish Life and the University Outreach Committee.

Although the plan was not to be made public before the December meetings I referred to, some information – or, at least, speculation – emerged a few weeks ago when the Canadian Jewish Congress posted a document on its website expressing concerns about its brand, structure and future, should CIJA reorganize all of the advocacy organizations into a single body with a single board of directors. (The document has since been removed from the Congress website.)

Apparently, in a brief submitted to the CIJA reorganization committee, Congress suggested that the name, “Canadian Jewish Congress,” be retained for the new advocacy entity in order to preserve the history and branding built by Congress over the 91 years since its 1919 founding.

The issue of the proposed reorganization gained some mainstream attention when Andrew Cohen wrote an op-ed column in the Ottawa Citizen, November 30, headlined “Saving the Canadian Jewish Congress.” Cohen argued that Congress was an effective organization with a rich history and that “only fools and amnesiacs would dissolve it.”

Cohen also admitted to a sentimental attachment to Congress in that his great-uncle, Lyon Cohen (songwriter Leonard Cohen’s grandfather), was the founding president of the Canadian Jewish Congress.

The next day, the National Post ran a front page story speculating that the future of Congress was in doubt.

While it’s true that Congress has nearly a century of history to be proud of, changing times do demand that our organizations evolve to meet the needs of contemporary times. There is much logic to the idea of consolidating national Jewish advocacy activity.

It’s also true that, of the various bodies falling under the reorganization plan, including CIJA itself, the Canadian Jewish Congress does have, by far, the longest history and the best-known brand name.

Maybe “Canadian Jewish Congress” wouldn’t be a bad name for the reorganized umbrella. We should know soon what’s to be.

November 29, 2010: Adbusters crossed the line – and it was hardly the first time

By Michael Regenstreif

Adbusters, a Vancouver-based anti-globalization, anti-capitalist and anti-consumerism bimonthly magazine caused somewhat of a media storm when a photo essay in the November-December 2010 issue – published just as Holocaust Education Week was about to be marked in many communities, including ours – directly compared contemporary Gaza with the Warsaw Ghetto of the early-1940s and the Gaza Palestinians with the Warsaw Ghetto Jews, and, by overt implication, Israel with Nazi Germany.

The comparison, to be sure, is not only wholly inaccurate, there is little doubt that it crosses way over the line, dividing legitimate criticism of Israel from blatant antisemitism.

The Warsaw Ghetto images that Adbusters used came from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Apparently, the magazine received permission from the museum to use the images on the pretence that they were being used for a 2009 article about war crimes in the Warsaw Ghetto.

When the museum was advised on how the images were actually being used, they took legal action, forcing Adbusters to remove the images from its website, and issued a statement that emphatically said, “Any comparison between the Warsaw Ghetto (or the Holocaust as a whole) and the situation in Gaza is wildly inaccurate, a gross misrepresentation of the facts and offensive to victims of the Holocaust.”

This recent photo essay was not the first time Adbusters had compared Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto. That supposed article about war crimes in the Warsaw Ghetto for which the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum granted permission to use its images was actually an article in the May-June 2009 issue directly comparing Gaza with the Warsaw Ghetto.

And that 2009 issue was not the only other Adbusters article that has crossed the line vis-à-vis Israel and or Jews. A perusal of its online archive reveals a pattern of typical fringe-left anti-Zionism, including the all-too-predictable references to “Israeli apartheid” and a fawning tribute to Hamas as a revolutionary movement.

Perhaps the most infamous example of antisemitism in Adbusters is “Why won’t anyone say they are Jewish?”, a March-April 2004 exposé by publisher Kalle Lasn about how Jewish neo-conservatives controlled the Middle East policies of the administration of then-U.S. president George W. Bush, manipulating Bush on everything from Israel to Iraq. Adbusters published what it called “a carefully researched list of who appear to be the 50 most influential neocons in the U.S.,” pointing out, with a black dot next to their names, that more than half on the list were Jews.

These examples from Adbusters are consistent with what has been termed the “new antisemitism,” which was addressed this month in Ottawa at the conference of the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating antisemitism. The unequivocal conference speech by Prime Minister Stephen Harper left absolutely no doubt as to the position of the Canadian government on this type of antisemitism.

The speech by Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, while not as strong a statement as Harper’s, indicated that there is little tolerance within mainstream Canadian politics for any variety of antisemitism.

November 8, 2010: Peace, justice and human rights are not on the BDS agenda

By Michael Regenstreif

Late last month, a coalition of anti-Israel groups held what they promoted as a global BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) conference on the campus of the Université du Québec à Montréal.

Although some of the groups involved in the BDS movement pretend to be about peace, justice and human rights, those admirable ideals are not really on their agenda.

Their agenda is all about promoting the delegitimization of the State of Israel with the long-term goal of what many of them call “Free Palestine,” a Palestine that isn’t just about the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem – it’s also about West Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa.

The BDS activists are the same people who talk about “Israeli apartheid.” Their game has nothing to do with promoting the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. They reject the peace process.

I happened to hear an interview with some of the BDS activists on a Montreal campus radio station a few weeks ago and they described the peace talks as being about nothing other than who collects the trash on the West Bank.

The BDS activists reject the peace process because they reject peace. It serves their anti-Israel propaganda interests to eternally maintain the Palestinians as an oppressed people, as victims.

So, the BDS movement would seek to isolate Israel through boycott, divestment and sanctions.

They would have consumers boycott Israeli products and stop collaborations between universities in North America and Europe with universities in Israel. They’ve even called for boycotts of businesses – like Chapters bookstores – whose owners are known to be supporters of Israel.

A cultural boycott of Israel is one of the hallmarks of the BDS movement. They’ve applied great amounts of public pressure on prominent musical artists booked to perform in Israel in the past couple of years to cancel their concerts.

Sometimes they’ve been successful, sometimes not.

Elvis Costello and Carlos Santana are the two most prominent artists who caved to the BDS pressure.

Among those who didn’t are Leonard Cohen, Paul McCartney, Elton John and Diana Krall (who is married to Costello).

This past summer, it was announced that Pete Seeger would participate in an Israeli-organized global peace rally over the Internet on November 14.

Immediately, the BDS movement went into high gear trying to persuade the 91-year-old folksinger to cancel his participation.

I’ve known Pete Seeger for many years and I know him to be one of the most sincere and most committed peace activists I’ve ever met.

I know he believes peace between Israelis and Palestinians to be a righteous goal. I was not at all surprised to see him recognize the BDS movement for what it is, to reject the cultural boycott and the demands that he withdraw from the online peace rally, and to carry on his support for the search for peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.

October 25, 2010: Good news, finally, for Hillel Lodge expansion

By Michael Regenstreif

As noted on page 1, Hillel Lodge has finally won approval from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to add 21 additional long-term care beds to the 100 currently in operation.

It’s about time.

The issue of the 21 beds was an important item on the community’s agenda well before I arrived in Ottawa to work at the Bulletin during the summer of 2007. The acute need for many hundreds of additional long-term care beds in the Ontario system, and particularly in the Ottawa area, was well known.

A few weeks after my arrival, I was covering the Jewish Federation of Ottawa’s Communications and Community Relations Committee roundtable meetings with local candidates running in the October 10 provincial election. Representatives of all of the parties – Liberals, Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats – were universally supportive of the Jewish community’s quest to add the 21 beds at Hillel Lodge. With the available space, and the community’s desire to use it, it seemed like a no-brainer to just approve the beds and get on with it.

The Liberal Party candidates, including cabinet ministers Jim Watson and Madeleine Meilleur, and Yasir Naqvi, running in Ottawa Centre, the riding that includes Hillel Lodge, were particularly supportive of the 21 new beds for the Lodge. Watson pledged to have the government act on the beds within the first six months of a new Liberal mandate.

Six months later, the authorization had not been received.

About 18 months after the election, Watson and Naqvi brought then-health minister David Caplan to Hillel Lodge and showed him the space earmarked for the 21-bed expansion.

Another year-and-a-half passed and Watson, now running to become mayor of Ottawa, was back for another roundtable meeting with the Communications and Community Relations Committee.

“I’m embarrassed by this file,” Watson said when the long-standing question of the 21 additional beds for Hillel Lodge was raised at the September 16 meeting.

Pledging to keep advocating on behalf of the Lodge should he win the election, Watson admitted to being deeply frustrated by his inability to gain approval for the beds, despite many assurances from two successive ministers of health and the premier’s office.

The approval for the Lodge’s 21 beds came on October 5, just one week after Watson’s comments appeared in the September 27 issue of the Bulletin.

Maybe it was pure coincidence, but the timing of the ratification, coming during the mayoralty race, days after a leading candidate talked about being frustrated at not being able to get it while he was a cabinet minister, was most curious.

The Lodge will now need our support as it embarks on a capital campaign to finance the expansion.

Police chief on home-grown terrorism

Earlier this month, I was one of several editors of Ottawa-area community newspapers invited to a roundtable luncheon with Chief Vern White and other top officials of the Ottawa Police Service where we were each encouraged to raise issues of interest.

Concern over terrorism in Ottawa was a topic I raised with the chief. Since the arrest of the alleged Ottawa-based terrorist cell with al-Qaeda links in August, not to mention the Royal Bank firebombing in the Glebe in May, apprehension over homegrown terrorism has heightened.

White told me such concerns have been “our reality” since the time of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Pointing to the August arrests, he said the Ottawa Police, in concert with other police forces and security agencies work hard – often with officials from other countries – to stop terrorist activity, hopefully before plots become actuality.

White lamented that too many Canadians are complacent about terrorism and said vigilance was everyone’s responsibility.