March 21, 2016: Our response to the Syrian refugee crisis

By Michael Regenstreif

Our front page story this issue is a feature about the Al Sahhar family who are among the 25,000 refugees from the brutal civil war in Syria who have, so far, found a safe haven in Canada.

The family’s resettlement in Ottawa is under the sponsorship of Temple Israel of Ottawa, and the Reform congregation is but one of many synagogue groups across Canada who have undertaken such sponsorship projects in recent months. The Shalom Group, a joint effort of Ottawa’s three Conservative congregations – Agudath Israel, Beth Shalom and Adath Shalom – is currently raising funds so that it, too, can undertake sponsorship of a Syrian refugee family.

I’m also aware of a number of Jewish community members who are involved in some of the many private sponsorship groups in Ottawa, and across Canada – in many cases groups of like-minded friends, neighbours or colleagues – which have undertaken sponsorship of Syrian refugee families. Mark Zarecki, executive director of Jewish Family Services of Ottawa, which has taken a leading role in guiding and helping refugee sponsorship groups – including Temple Israel, the Shalom Group and many private groups – told me that members of the Jewish community have been among the most active in helping this new refugee community.

That synagogue groups and members of the Jewish community have stepped forward to aid in the resettlement of Syrian refugees – a massive humanitarian crisis involving millions of people – is not a surprise considering the history of Jewish immigration to these shores. Some of us are refugees ourselves – and many more of us are children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of refugees. The great wave of Jewish immigration to North America in the late-19th and early-20th centuries was fuelled by many of our ancestors fleeing antisemitic persecution and pogroms in Eastern Europe. Later waves of 20th century Jewish immigration included Holocaust survivors and Jews driven from Arab and Muslim countries after the establishment of the State of Israel.

And, as a community, we also remember those dark years when Canada disgracefully closed our borders to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution and, ultimately, the Holocaust.

However, there are some in the Jewish community who have expressed concern about Syrian refugees because they come from a country that has been an enemy of the State of Israel since the modern state was founded in 1948, a country in which antisemitism has been part and parcel of the culture since at least that time.

Indeed, those concerns are not unfounded as there have been a few reports from Europe of antisemitic incidents involving Syrian refugees.

But the situation in Europe, where hundreds of thousands of refugees have streamed directly with no or little screening, is very different from Canada where the arriving refugees are primarily families that have been carefully screened.

According to Zarecki, the prominence of Jews and Jewish groups in the sponsorship of Syrian refugee resettlement in Canada will go a long way to combating antisemitism among the refugee community – despite what may have been part of their culture in Syria. Helpful interactions and sincere friendships speak loudly.

Zarecki points to Jewish Family Services’ track record in working closely with the Somali community – who, like the Syrian refugees, are Muslim – and the collaborative ties and friendships that have developed as a result.

Removing Oberlander

Several groups – including the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Canadian Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants and B’nai Brith Canada – have written to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister John McCallum urging him to take urgent action to strip Helmut Oberlander of his fraudulently obtained Canadian citizenship and deport him from Canada.

Oberlander, 92, was a member of one of the Nazis’ Einsatzkommando death squads that operated during the Second World War murdering tens of thousands of people. He used forged documents to come to Canada in 1954 and obtain citizenship in 1960.

The government initiated efforts to strip Oberlander of his citizenship in 1995 – an effort that has bounced between Cabinet and the courts for 21 years. The process has dragged on for far too long.

March 7, 2016: Parliament votes to condemn anti-Israel BDS movement

By Michael Regenstreif

Two votes were held on February 22 – one in Ottawa in the House of Commons and the other at McGill University in Montreal – on the issue of the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

The Commons voted on a motion, put forward the week before by Conservative MPs Tony Clement and Michelle Rempel, which read, “That, given Canada and Israel share a long history of friendship as well as economic and diplomatic relations, the House reject the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which promotes the demonization and delegitimization of the State of Israel, and call upon the government to condemn any and all attempts by Canadian organizations, groups or individuals to promote the BDS movement, both here at home and abroad.”

Clement led off the House debate on February 18, calling BDS a form of discrimination, “just like boycotts that have targeted Jews throughout history.”

It quickly emerged in the debate that the Liberal government would support the motion.

“The world will win nothing for boycotting Israel but depriving itself of the talents of its inventiveness,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Stéphane Dion said, adding, “We must fight antisemitism in all its forms,” signalling the government’s recognition that there is – as former justice minister Irwin Cotler points out – a “new antisemitism,” in which Israel is targeted as “the collective Jew” among the nations.

In the lengthy debate, Liberal and Conservative MPs rose to support the motion, while NDP MPs and Green Party leader Elizabeth May spoke against the motion because they said it was an attack on freedom of speech and dissent. At the same time, though, the NDP and May stressed their opposition to BDS and their support for a two-state solution.

Among the most eloquent voices in the debate were new Jewish MPs Michael Levitt (York Centre) and Anthony Housefather (Mount Royal).

“BDS is about intolerance. It is a broader movement to demonize and delegitimize Israel and collectively punish all Israelis by holding Israel alone responsible for the Arab-Israeli conflict,” said Levitt.

Housefather gave a speech on the history of antisemitism in Canada and explained how the BDS movement has taken its place in that history. Housefather also showed how the elimination of the State of Israel as a Jewish state was one of the BDS movement’s actual goals.

The motion passed easily by a vote of 229-51. The Bloc Québécois joined the NDP in opposing the motion.

Of Ottawa’s MPs, the motion was supported by Andrew Leslie (Orléans) and Pierre Poilievre (Carleton). Anita Vandenbeld (Ottawa West-Nepean), my own MP, abstained.

For some reason or another, the rest of Ottawa’s MPs were not in the House to vote on the motion. These included Catherine McKenna (Ottawa Centre), who, as a Cabinet member would have voted in favour, had she been present; Mauril Bélanger, who is facing serious health issues; Karen McCrimmon (Kanata-Carleton); Chandra Arya (Nepean); and David McGuinty (Ottawa South).

A few hours later, an assembly of the Student Society of McGill University voted 512-357 to support BDS. The assembly attracted less than three per cent of McGill’s 30,000 undergraduate students. The assembly result then needed to be ratified by an online vote open to all McGill undergrads. The results of that vote were not yet known when we went to press.

And, true to the motion passed that day in Parliament, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted a statement in reaction to the McGill vote: “The BDS movement, like Israeli Apartheid Week, has no place on Canadian campuses. As a @McGillU alum, I’m disappointed. #EnoughIsEnough”

As a side note, there was a recent Jerusalem Post report – quickly withdrawn because it was incorrect – that Israeli pop singer Achinoam Nini, a.k.a Noa, who is headlining the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver’s Yom Ha’Atzmaut celebration, supports BDS.

But, following the report, the Jewish National Fund of Canada withdrew its sponsorship of the event saying, “The entertainer that has been hired does not reflect, nor correspond to the mandate and values of the Jewish National Fund of Canada.”

However, the Embassy of Israel in Ottawa and the Consulate General of Israel in Toronto have stepped in and will sponsor the event.