November 24, 2014: New film explains connections between Judaism, the Jewish people, and the Land of Israel

By Michael Regenstreif

One of the ugliest aspects of the movement to delegitimize the State of Israel is the denial of the deep historical and religious connections of Judaism and the Jewish people to the Holy Land – a denial that also seems to be at the root of the Palestinian Authority’s refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, the nation-state of the Jewish people. The late Palestinian Authority (PA) president Yasser Arafat, for example, rejected the historical existence of the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, a deceit that seems to remain as PA policy.

American filmmaker Gloria Greenfield has responded brilliantly to this effort at delegitimization with Body and Soul: The State of the Jewish Nation, a documentary in which 36 talking heads – including academic, religious and legal experts – explain the ongoing centrality of the Land of Israel, and of Jerusalem, to Judaism and the Jewish people, the constant presence of Jewish people there from ancient biblical times to the present, and the legal case for the modern state.

Earlier this month, I attended the Canadian premiere of Body and Soul, presented by the Free Thinking Film Society at the Library and Archives Canada auditorium – an evening that also included a question-and-answer period with Greenfield and Rabbi Reuven Bulka.

Although there is little in Body and Soul that will surprise anyone who has studied Jewish history seriously, the commentaries are fascinating. Among those interviewed in the film are such religious experts as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, and Rabbi Jeffrey Woolf, an authority on the relationships between Judaism, Christianity and Islam; renowned academics, including historian Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis University and Robert S. Wistrich of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, probably the world’s leading expert on antisemitism; and legal experts, including MP Irwin Cotler, a former minister of justice of Canada, renowned Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, and Alan Baker, a former Israeli ambassador to Canada.

The evidence these and the other experts in the film cite – including religious texts, archeology and historical records – is compelling, and Greenfield has woven all of the various strands and commentaries together beautifully in the 65-minute presentation. This is a film I strongly encourage all in the community to see at the earliest opportunity. It seems to me this is a film that should be shown at schools, synagogues and community centres. It is also available on DVD. Visit www.bodyandsoulthemovie.com for more information about the film and to view the trailer.

Mazel Tov, Harvey Glatt!

As some know, I have long been active in the Canadian folk music scene. So, it is with a great deal of pleasure that I extend a hearty mazel tov to community member Harvey Glatt, who will receive the Unsung Hero Award at the 2014 Canadian Folk Music Awards ceremony on Saturday night, November 29. The annual event moves from city to city and region to region around the country and takes place this year at the Bronson Centre in Ottawa.

The Unsung Hero Award is presented in recognition of “the exceptional contribution of an individual, group or organization to any aspect of the Canadian folk music scene.”

That Ottawa, today, boasts one of the most active folk music scenes in Canada is, in many ways, due to Harvey’s pioneering efforts as a concert producer, artist manager, record store owner and radio station owner. For many decades, he, along with his wife Louise, has been one of Ottawa’s most important and influential patrons of the arts. Their patronage, I would add, is equally significant in the folk, classical and jazz worlds, and in the theatre scene, too.

There are three major awards of this type on the Canadian folk scene, and, with the Unsung Hero Award, Harvey will have received all three. Just last month, he received Folk Music Ontario’s Estelle Klein Award, which is presented annually for “significant contributions to Ontario’s folk music community,” and he was the 2010 recipient of the Ottawa Folk Festival’s Helen Verger Award, which is presented annually to “an individual who has made significant, sustained contributions to folk/roots music in Canada.”

March 5, 2012: Norman Finkelstein rips the BDS movement to shreds

By Michael Regenstreif

It’s that time of year again. Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) is scheduled to take place from March 5 to 9 at several Canadian campuses, including the University of Ottawa and Carleton University. The annual IAW events were first organized eight years ago in support of the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement against Israel. The claim that Israel is an apartheid society is a cornerstone of the BDS movement – and one that has been refuted often. See, for example, a Huffington Post column by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz for a cogent analysis. tinyurl.com/dershowitz-IAW

This year, the BDS movement is in a late-breaking uproar because American political science professor Norman G. Finkelstein sat down, February 9, with a pro-BDS interviewer at Imperial College in London and ripped the BDS movement to shreds.

Make no mistake: Finkelstein is no friend of the State of Israel. For the better part of three decades, Finkelstein has been the most prominent Jewish anti-Israel activist – with the possible exception of his mentor Noam Chomsky.

Denied tenure at DePaul University in 2007, Finkelstein has made a career of lecturing on behalf of anti-Israel groups around the world and by writing a string of anti-Israel books. A son of Holocaust survivors, Finkelstein’s best-known book is The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, in which he claims that Israel has exploited the Holocaust in achieving its aims.

In this surprising video – which you can see in its 31-minute entirety at vimeo.com/36854424 – Finkelstein exposes the BDS movement, which he repeatedly refers to as a “cult,” for its “silliness, childishness, and a lot of leftist posturing” that seeks to obfuscate its true goal: the elimination of the State of Israel.

According to Finkelstein, the BDS movement does not come out and state its true goal because it knows the public will not buy into a movement seeking the dismantling of Israel.

“No Israel. That’s what it’s really about. And you think you’re fooling anybody? You think you’re so clever that people can’t figure that out for themselves?

“No, they understand the arithmetic perfectly well. Are you going to reach a broad public which is going to hear the Israeli side [say] ‘They want to destroy us?’ No, you’re not. And, frankly, you know what, you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t reach a broad public because you’re dishonest. And I wouldn’t trust those people if I had to live in this state. I wouldn’t. It’s dishonesty.”

Finkelstein also rips the BDS movement for taking its marching orders and following the lead of “Palestinian civil society.”

Recalling earlier movements he’s been part of, Finkelstein said the anti-Vietnam War movement did not take its marching orders from Hanoi, and Latin American solidarity movements (in the Reagan era) did not take their orders from Nicaragua. They acted, he said, on their own initiative.

He went on to describe “Palestinian civil society” as a collection of mostly one-person NGOs in Ramallah completely incapable of mobilizing more than a few hundred Palestinians.

Toward the end of the interview, Finkelstein suggests that a solution to the conflict is possible. A solution, he said, that would not be perfect, but which would satisfy most Israelis and most Palestinians. Although he does not explicitly say so, the obvious conclusion is the two-state solution. And that flies in the face of what IAW and the BDS movement are all about.

March 7, 2011: It’s that time of year again on campuses

By Michael Regenstreif

I wrote in this space last issue about the protests in Egypt that ended the 30-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. International news in 2011 has been dominated by the human rights and pro-democracy protests and revolutions that have been sweeping through the tyrannical, repressive regimes that dominate most of the Middle East.

As I write – on February 25 – the whole world is watching for the imminent fall of Moammar Gadhafi, the dictator of Libya and self-declared “King of Kings,” who seized power 42 years ago.

Unlike Mubarak, who finally realized the jig was up, Gadhafi, in a bizarre speech, February 22, which German Chancellor Angela Merkel characterized as a declaration of war on his own people, vowed to fight to the death. It may well come to that (if it hasn’t already by the time you read this).

Libya is currently in a state of chaos, if not civil war. Gadhafi’s forces – and, reportedly, foreign mercenaries – have killed thousands of protesters. Meanwhile, protesters have gained control of parts of the country and Libyan officials, including much of its diplomatic corps, are deserting Gadhafi like rats from a sinking ship.

With the world’s attention lately focused on the grassroots demands for democracy and freedom sweeping through Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Iran and other Middle Eastern and North African countries this year, campus true-believers in numerous cities around the world – including Ottawa – have been gearing up for their annual assault on what they regard as the real root of all evil in the Middle East.

Yes, it’s time again for Israel Apartheid Week (IAW).

Carleton University may have had a preview of IAW, February 17, when the CUSA (Carleton University Students Association) Council dealt with a motion in support of the international BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement attempting to delegitimize Israel. Specifically, the motion was a demand that the university divest from four companies involved in the Israeli economy.

According to various reports, Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) at Carleton mobilized a group of about 100 supporters to demonstrate outside the meeting room, while the Israel Awareness Committee (IAC) sent a smaller group of about 40 students.

To make a long story short, the CUSA Council rejected the specifically anti-Israel motion in favour of another calling for the university to invest its funds ethically. When SAIA proposed an amendment calling for the divestment from firms doing business with Israel, it was ruled out of order.

That turn of events did not sit well with the SAIA demonstrators.

In a detailed account of the evening’s events posted on Facebook, IAC member Emile Scheffel wrote: “SAIA’s supporters began knocking with their fists on the doors and the walls, chanting ‘Shame’ and other indistinct slogans.

“The activists inside the room began berating CUSA executive and councillors, while those of us opposed to the SAIA motion remained relatively calm and collected … SAIA’s supporters in the hallway raised their volume and further escalated the situation.

“For a tense period of time, those who were there to oppose the SAIA motion did not feel safe leaving the room to face a screaming mob of anti-Israel activists.”

IAW is an obnoxious, wrong-headed event and is counter-productive to the efforts all people – on both sides of the Israeli/Palestinian divide – who strive and work for a peaceful, two-state solution. It’s important to counter IAW propaganda with rational arguments and truth.

We should also bear in mind that, although SAIA and other IAW groups are loud, their supporters form a tiny minority on campus.

The SAIA website, for example, proclaimed last year’s IAW in Ottawa “a huge success with more than 80 people in attendance at each of our events.” Given the number of IAW events last year, those attendance figures account for just a fraction of one per cent of the students at uOttawa and Carleton. Well over 99 per cent of this city’s university students completely ignored IAW.

In a Huffington Post blog – tinyurl.com/dershowitz-IAW – last year at IAW time, Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz debunks the myths of Israeli apartheid and suggests a Middle East Apartheid Week on university campuses that would focus on the truly apartheid-like regimes that exist in places like Saudi Arabia, Gaza, and virtually every other Arab and Muslim country in the region.

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.

* * * * * * * *

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.