By Michael Regenstreif
The Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) website – which was still accessible as of July 7 – includes a brief history of the organization that first came together to represent the Jewish community on a national basis in March 1919.
I presume the page was written about two years ago because the last line is, “From coast to coast, Canadian Jewish Congress is still going strong at 90 years old.” At 92, though, the CJC, ceased its operations. On July 1, as you may already have read in the JTA reports on page 4, the CJC, the Canada-Israel Committee, the Quebec-Israel Committee, National Jewish Campus Life and the University Outreach Committee, were all merged into a new organization temporarily being called CIJA 2.0.
CIJA (the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy) itself is a relatively new body. It was established in 2004 by UIA Federations Canada – the national organization of the Jewish federations in Canada, including the Jewish Federation of Ottawa – as an umbrella organization to coordinate the advocacy efforts of the organizations it has now absorbed. In the original CIJA model, each of the advocacy organizations remained independent with its own structure, board of directors and staff.
In the months since the news of the CIJA restructuring began to emerge late last year, there have been many expressions of concern, particularly from CJC activists, present and past, that CJC’s rich history will be forgotten and that its advocacy work on a broad range of issues of concern to Canadian Jewry will be overshadowed by the new organization’s concentration on Israel-related issues (hitherto, the domain of the Canada-Israel Committee).
One suggestion on the table throughout the merger discussions is that the new organization be called ‘Canadian Jewish Congress.’ This would provide a measure of historical continuity to Canada’s national Jewish advocacy organization and also recognize the CJC’s long and venerable history. The other organizations merged into CIJA 2.0 are all much newer creations, none of them nearly as well known as the CJC.
According to the JTA report, CIJA 2.0 CEO Shimon Fogel has said in the past that it’s possible the new agency will be called ‘Canadian Jewish Congress.’
I suppose the choice of a permanent name for CIJA 2.0 will depend on whether the decision-makers want the new organization to reflect a long history of Jewish activism in Canada or whether they want to start from scratch in building a new brand for Jewish and Israel advocacy.
If it were up to me, I would choose to honour the many thousands of people whose actions have been a part of the CJC over a period that almost reached a century and retain the name ‘Canadian Jewish Congress.’ It’s a history that should be celebrated and not forgotten.
The Gaza Flotilla
As I write on July 7, there have been several reports that organizers of the so-called Gaza Freedom Flotilla have finally decided to abandon their ships after none of them made it out of the Athens port in their attempt to sail the Mediterranean past the Israeli navy bringing “peace, freedom and humanitarian aid” to the Palestinian people.
The flotilla, in reality, was a sham that had nothing to do with peace or freedom and little to do with humanitarian aid. It was simply about delegitimizing the State of Israel.
The amounts of food and other aid that flows daily into Gaza from Israel and from Gaza’s now-open border with Egypt dwarfs anything the flotilla might have brought.
The flotilla’s real goal was to lend support to Hamas, the terrorist organization that governs Gaza while continuing to practise terrorism, while continuing to hold Gilad Schalit – who was kidnapped from Israel – captive for more than five years.
You can’t support Hamas, in word or deed, and be a peace activist. Hamas rejects peace. Hamas is in league with Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator whose regime has murdered thousands of his own people in recent months.
“Peace activists” who want to fight for human rights in the Middle East should try sailing their flotilla into Syria.