December 7, 2015: Canada still stands resolutely in support of Israel at the UN

By Michael Regenstreif

I wasn’t in attendance, November 21, when Gil Hoffman, the Jerusalem Post’s chief political correspondent and analyst, spoke at Young Israel of Ottawa.

Hoffman’s advertised topic was “Peace, Politics and Palestinian Violence: An Insider’s Look at the Mayhem in the Middle East,” so I was surprised when I received reporter Diane Koven’s report on Hoffman’s lecture that he also used the opportunity for some Canadian political analysis.

According to Hoffman, “Canada mattered” while former prime minister Stephen Harper was in power, but we have totally lost our relevance in the world under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

I’ve no idea how much research went into Hoffman’s analysis, but it seems to me that two weeks into a four-year term is a little too quick to come to that kind of conclusion.

I suppose Hoffman’s comments had to do with Harper’s unquestionably strong support for the State of Israel. But I think it needs to be pointed out to the likes of Hoffman that none of the official Canadian government policies in regard to Israel, the Palestinian territories, West Bank settlements, the status of Jerusalem, or support for a negotiated two-state solution to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians changed under Harper. Nor will it under Trudeau.

After the election, there was some speculation that Canada’s strong support for Israel at the United Nations during Harper’s tenure (which was actually a continuation of the support for Israel at the UN begun by the previous government under Liberal prime minister Paul Martin) would change once Trudeau took office. And perhaps that speculation is what Hoffman’s analysis was based on.

But, in the spate of annual anti-Israel resolutions that come before the UN like clockwork every year, our new government stood as resolutely in support of Israel as did our previous government.

“So far, with final plenary or initial committee votes on 19 of the 20 annual anti-Israel resolutions, Canada’s voting record is entirely unchanged from last year,” reported UN Watch, on November 25.

According to UN Watch, the new Canadian government is “on track to continue without change Canada’s prior policy of firmly opposing repetitive, disproportionate and one-sided resolutions … designed to delegitimize Israel, the Middle East’s only democracy.”

November 23, 2015: Israel takes small steps toward Jewish religious pluralism

By Michael Regenstreif

In my column in our July 27 issue, I argued against the hegemony of the haredi Orthodox Chief Rabbinate in Jewish religious affairs – including such matters as marriage, divorce and conversion – and the control of Israel’s religious services ministry by the haredi Orthodox parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition.

I pointed out that we live in a religiously pluralistic Jewish world, that some of us are very religious, while others are not at all. I said we must respect all Jewish denominations – haredi Orthodox, modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist and Reform – as equally legitimate and that Israel, as the homeland of all Jewish people, needs to respect the legitimacy of each of our denominations.

I wrote that column in reaction to a shocking statement, “a Reform Jew, from the moment he stops following Jewish law, I cannot allow myself to say that he is a Jew,” that Religious Services Minister David Azoulay said in an interview on Israeli Army Radio.

The next day, Azoulay rose in the Knesset to clarify his opinion. Reform Jews, he admitted, while sinners, are still Jewish.

There have since been some steps – albeit very small steps – to begin the process of addressing Jewish religious pluralism in Israel. In a speech to the Jewish Federations of North America annual General Assembly, November 10, in Washington, D.C., Netanyahu said he would strengthen the rights of non-Orthodox Jews in Israel.

“As prime minister of Israel, I will always ensure that all Jews can feel at home in Israel – Reform Jews, Conservative Jews, Orthodox Jews – all Jews,” he said.

Netanyahu said the government had formed a roundtable group of representatives of the different religious movements and government ministries in order to address the movements’ concerns. (JTA, the Bulletin’s wire service, reports the roundtable, though first announced months ago, has yet to meet formally.) A couple of days after Netanyahu’s speech at the General Assembly, it was announced that the Jewish Agency for Israel’s annual funding to the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel – $1.09 million each – would be matched by funds from the Prime Minister’s Office.

It’s a beginning, but there is still a long way to go before the non-Orthodox movements attain equal legitimacy in Israel’s religious affairs. Despite being doubled, the funding for the non-Orthodox movements is still very modest and it is coming from the Jewish Agency and the Prime Minister’s Office, not from the religious affairs ministry. But at least Netanyahu recognizes there is a problem that must be addressed.

However, Netanyahu heads Israel’s government by virtue of a numerically weak coalition and, as long as the Knesset seats (currently 13 of 120) controlled by the religious parties – Shas and United Torah Judaism – are enough to put a coalition into power, the government will not take the big steps necessary to effect real change.

November 9, 2015: Canada’s strong friendship with Israel will endure

By Michael Regenstreif

By the time you read this column, Justin Trudeau will have taken office as Canada’s new prime minister after leading the Liberal Party of Canada to majority government status in the October 19 federal election.

No one saw the magnitude of Trudeau’s victory coming. The opinion polls – from day one to day 78 of the longest federal election campaign in modern history – always suggested a minority government. At the beginning of the campaign, the New Democratic Party under Tom Mulcair was in the lead and Trudeau’s Liberals were in third place.

Then Stephen Harper’s Conservatives inched into the lead with the Liberals and NDP so close behind that it looked like any of the three parties might capture a plurality of seats for a minority government. This gave rise to speculation about a possible agreement or coalition between the Liberals and NDP to topple a Conservative minority. That was the state of affairs a month ago, when I wrote my column for the October 12 issue.

By the end of the campaign, support for the NDP had fallen significantly and increased enough for the Liberals that polls suggested a Liberal minority with about 140 of the 338 seats.

But, as the results came in on election night, the Liberal wave took enough formerly safe seats from both the Conservatives and the NDP that the Liberals went from 34 seats and third place in the last election to 184 seats – a solid majority – this time.

Harper’s Conservatives scored a breakthrough in the 2011 election when exit polls indicated they received the support of 52 per cent of Jewish voters, apparently on the basis of Harper’s strong support for Israel (even though the Conservatives never changed Canada’s policies in regard to West Bank settlements, the peace process, the two-state solution, or the status of Jerusalem).

But, in the election campaign, the other party leaders also pledged their support and Canada’s friendship for the Jewish state. There was virtually no substantive policy difference between the parties on Israel – a point Trudeau made forcefully when Harper brought up Israel in the leaders’ foreign policy debate.

While I doubt Trudeau will have the same kind of personal relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as did Harper – I don’t think Netanyahu had a closer personal friend than Harper among the leaders on the world stage – I am sure Canada’s nation-to-nation friendship with, and support for, Israel will continue at the same high level as recent years.

In the 2011 election, all but one of the five seats in Canada with statistically large Jewish populations went to the Conservatives. The only one that didn’t was Mount Royal, where Irwin Cotler’s support among Jewish voters fell sharply. While I’m yet to see any exit polling data on how Jews actually voted in this election, four of those five seats – Mount Royal in Montreal, Eglinton-Lawrence and York Centre in Toronto, and Winnipeg South Centre – were won by Liberals. Only Thornhill, just north of Toronto, remained in the Conservative tent.

Here in Ottawa, all of the ridings with measurable Jewish populations went to the Liberals. The same was true in ridings in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and perhaps elsewhere across the country.

There were three Jewish members of previous Parliament: Liberal Irwin Cotler (Mount Royal), who did not run in this election, and Conservatives Joe Oliver (Eglinton-Lawrence) and Mark Adler (York Centre), who both went down to defeat.

There are six Jewish members – all of them Liberals – in the new Parliament: Jim Carr (Winnipeg South Centre), Julie Dabrusin (Toronto-Danforth), Karina Gould (Burlington), David Graham (Laurentides-Labelle), Anthony Housefather (Mount Royal) and Michael Levitt (York Centre).

Given the results from across the country, and anecdotally from conversations I’ve had with several Jewish voters, I assume that, if or when we see exit polling data on Jewish voters, it will show that at least some – if not a significant amount – of the vote captured by the Conservatives in 2011 went to the Liberals this time around.

With increasingly dismal results after each of the preceding four elections, many were ready to write off the Liberal Party. If Trudeau governs with the same skills with which he rebuilt the party, it will be an exciting time in Canadian politics.