March 20, 2017: Threats and attacks can also bring us together in solidarity

By Michael Regenstreif

I’m writing this column in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin office, which is located within the Soloway Jewish Community Centre (SJCC). I also attend programs at the SJCC and swim in the pool. In other words, I spend a lot of time in the building.

The SJCC is a welcoming place. It really is my second home, and I enjoy coming here almost every day – despite levels of security that are much tighter than when I started here almost a decade ago. The front doors are locked now, and SJCC members and staff swipe their membership cards in barcode readers to enter the building. Non-members are buzzed in after showing photo ID and telling the front desk staff the reason for their visit. Uniformed security guards are always on duty, and there are cameras in strategic locations throughout the Jewish Community Campus.

Even though the security is tighter than it used to be, the security measures are handled in a welcoming and friendly manner, so the experience of coming to the building is not really very different than it was 10 years ago.

The need for these security measures has been painfully obvious in recent months.

In November, there was a rash of antisemitic, racist and Islamophobic graffiti attacks in Ottawa that targeted four Jewish locations – including a building here on the Jewish Community Campus, two synagogues, and a private home used as a prayer and study centre – as well as a church, where the minister and many of the parishioners are African Canadian, and a mosque.

(One person was responsible for all of those graffiti attacks and he was apprehended in large part thanks to security measures in place here on the Jewish Community Campus.)

And, since January, there have been more than 120 bomb threats called and emailed to Jewish institutions in North America – mostly to JCCs, but also to Jewish day schools and offices of Jewish organizations. While the vast majority of the bomb threats have been at JCCs in the U.S., there have been several here in Canada. One that hit particularly close to home for me was the bomb threat at the JCC of Greater Vancouver, a JCC where I spent much time during the four years I lived in Vancouver as a kid, and have visited on numerous occasions since.

All of the bomb threats to date – this column is being written on March 10 – have been hoaxes. Although there have been no real bombs, and no one has been physically harmed and no property has been damaged, we can’t become complacent and treat a bomb threat as routine. Each must be taken seriously in co-operation with law enforcement officials. These bomb threat hoaxes are affecting the Jewish community. A JTA article on pages 1 and 2 of this issue discusses – among other things – the effect of bomb scare evacuations on very young children. Jewish institutions are reviewing security procedures, and the effects of publicly manifested antisemitism are many. And, to be sure, these bomb threat hoaxes are antisemitic in their intent.

Recent manifestations of antismitism have not been limited to bomb threat hoaxes. I’ve mentioned the graffiti attacks we experienced here in Ottawa, and there have been other communities where similar attacks have taken place. Great numbers of tombstones have been overturned at several Jewish cemeteries in the U.S. A bullet was fi red into a (thankfully unoccupied) Hebrew school classroom in a synagogue in Indiana, and many Jewish journalists have been subjected to vicious antisemitic social media campaigns after writing critically about the new president of the United States.

The intent of all of these antisemitic incidents – and you can say the say the same for other forms of racism and bigotry – is to instil fear and insecurity. Sadly, and understandably, many people do become fearful in response.

One of the consequences of these incidents is that they can embolden bigots to act on their prejudices. At this point, we don’t know who is responsible for the vast majority of the recent bomb threats. Is it one person? Is it a small group acting in concert? Or is it a bunch of copycats taking inspiration from previous threats? So far, only one man, linked to eight bomb threats in the U.S., has been arrested – and law enforcement has determined that he was a copycat who had nothing to do with the vast majority of the incidents.

But these antisemitic incidents can also have unintended consequences. One consequence that perpetrators don’t intend is that they bring people and communities together. Those graffiti attacks here in Ottawa resulted in people from different faith and cultural communities gathering together in solidarity.

Political leaders at all levels of government and from across the ideological spectrum have expressed their support for communities under attack and, as Barbara Crook notes in her My Israel column, desecrations at Jewish cemeteries in the U.S. spurred a successful fundraising campaign in the Muslim community to help repair the damages.

To be sure, attacks or threats aimed at intimidating or preventing the full participation in society of any religious, racial or cultural community, is an attack or threat aimed at all of us. But to see individuals and communities responding in solidarity is inspiring.

October 26, 2015: There is never any possible justification for terrorism

 By Michael Regenstreif

As I’ve mentioned before, this column is generally the last thing written before an issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin goes to press, so I often use this space to comment on issues of concern that are in the news while being as up-to-date as is possible when we have to go press 10 days before the official publication date and about a week before the issue begins to arrive in subscribers’ mailboxes.

The two news stories that have dominated my attention as we worked on this issue have been the federal election campaign here in Canada and the terrible wave of terrorism in Israel.

As I write, we are three days away from the October 19 election day. While the votes will have been counted by the time you read this, we can only look at the opinion polls – which may or may not reflect what actually happens at the only polls that ultimately count – and speculate on what will happen and who will form the next government. I expect to have more to say in our next issue on what did happen when we voted.

The latest wave of terrorism has been brutal – at least seven innocent Israelis have been murdered in terrorist attacks in recent days – and so utterly senseless in that the terrorists, many of whom seem to be lone wolves attacking independently, have been inspired, as Barbara Crook notes in her My Israel column, by absolutely false lies and rumours that Israel will seize control or even destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Dome of the Rock, a Muslim holy place built on the site of the ancient Jewish Temples in Jerusalem.

These rumours are not new. When the Second Intifada was launched in 2000, it was said to be in response to a visit to the Temple Mount by Ariel Sharon and his plan to seize control of the Muslim holy place. It turned out, of course, that PLO leader Yasser Arafat had long planned the Intifada.

Then, as now, Israel has been unequivocal that the Al-Aqsa Mosque will remain under the control of the Jordanian Muslim Waqf, as it has since Israel captured eastern Jerusalem from Jordan in the Six-Day War of 1967 and reunited the city.

While much of this latest wave of terrorism has been propagated by so-called lone wolves – some of them very young teenagers – they have been egged on by the highest levels of the Palestinian leadership. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas repeated the claim that Israel would take control of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and has even followed in Arafat’s footsteps by denying the historical existence of the Jewish Temples.

In what was perhaps his most obscene moment of incitement, Abbas took to Palestinian TV on October 14 to claim that Ahmed Mansara, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy, was executed “in cold blood” by Israel.

In fact, Mansara, who was filmed stabbing a Jewish man in Jerusalem, was injured when hit by a car as he attempted to flee the scene of his crime and was recovering well in an Israeli hospital.

Two days later, an unnamed official in Abbas’ office tried to walk back the claim saying Abbas had been misled before making the execution claim. So far, though, Abbas himself has remained silent.

In a speech at Harvard University on October 14, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry blamed the existence of Israeli settlements in the West Bank for the terrorism.

Of course, history tells us that Palestinian terrorism against Israel began years before there was ever an Israeli settlement, and that terrorism from Gaza only increased in the years after Israel shut down its settlements there. The next day, the U.S. State Department walked back Kerry’s statements, suggesting what he meant was the settlements pose an impediment to achieving a two-state solution.

There is never any possible justification for terrorism. In fact, terrorism is always counter-productive as no government (of any country) can allow its citizens to live under such threats for long. The quest for a just peace, for a viable two-state solution to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, is always set back by such violence.

Let us hope there will soon be a return to calm and that the quest for real peace will resume.

March 30, 2015: Netanyahu made Israeli election campaign deliberately divisive

By Michael Regenstreif

Like many, I was terribly unhappy, as the Israeli election campaign wound down, to see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemingly reverse his support for a two-state solution to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians; a stand he has taken – at least publicly – since a 2009 speech at Bar-Ilan University.

But, in an interview published March 16, the day before the election, Netanyahu told NRG, a Hebrew-language Israeli news website, “I think anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state and to evacuate territory is giving radical Islam a staging ground against the State of Israel. This is the reality that has been created here in recent years. Anyone who ignores it has his head in the sand.”

Perhaps taken aback, the interviewer sought clarification from Netanyahu. “If you are a prime minister, there will be no Palestinian state?” he asked. “Indeed,” Netanyahu responded.

It was a purposeful message aimed at getting hardline supporters of other right-wing parties to coalesce around Likud. With polls consistently showing right-wing support stagnant and Likud trailing the Zionist Union led by Isaac Herzog, the prime minister understood his path to victory could well depend on drawing voters away from other right-wing parties.

And it worked. The number of right-wing seats in the new Knesset will be the same as in the last one – but significantly more of them will be held by Likud MKs.

I believe the two-state solution is the only resolution to the conflict that will protect Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state and offer Palestinians the ability to build their own state and future. And it is a position that has been consistently supported by the majority of Israelis in countless opinion polls.

The two-state solution is also supported by the governments of virtually every Western democracy – from the countries of the European Union to the United States to here in Canada. Yes, even Canada, where our prime minister, Stephen Harper, seems to be almost alone among world leaders in having a genuine personal friendship with Netanyahu, our government has never wavered from its official support for a negotiated two-state solution to the conflict.

While Netanyahu understood that changing his public stance on a two-state solution would help keep him in the Prime Minister’s Office, he also surely understood that such a policy would further isolate him – and Israel – on the world stage and would provide ammunition to those seeking to delegitimize the Jewish state.

Truth be told, reaching the two-state solution is highly unlikely under the current Palestinian leadership – and the current Israeli leadership. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas walked away from a 2008 settlement offer that should have ended the conflict. And, since then, he has used any and every excuse to avoid negotiations.

And Netanyahu’s government has frequently taken actions – particularly in regard to settlement expansion – that it knew would give the Palestinians the reasons they need to justify avoiding negotiations.

And then, on Election Day itself, Netanyahu took to Facebook to rally his supporters because Arab-Israelis were voting “in droves.” As Barbara Crook suggests in her analysis on page 49, the comment was racist and divisive.

So, would racism and opposition to a peace settlement be the face of the next Netanyahu government?

The day after the election, I saw an interview with Israeli Ambassador Rafael Barak on CBC News Network’s Power and Politics. The ambassador, when asked about those statements, suggested they were made in the heat of a campaign and would be dialled back.

And, sure enough, Netanyahu himself took to American TV the next day, to do just that.

“I don’t want a one-state solution, I want a sustainable peaceful two-state solution, but, for that, circumstances have to change,” he told NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell, pointing to Islamist turmoil in the Middle East and the Palestinian Authority’s recent arrangements with Hamas.

And about his comments on Arab voters, Netanyahu said he wasn’t trying to suppress Arab voters, he was trying to stand up to “foreign-funded” efforts to topple his government by getting out the Arab vote. “I was calling on our voters to come out.”

It will likely be some weeks before we know the composition of Israel’s next government. While it appears probable that a right-wing coalition will emerge, I can’t help but think, after such a deliberately divisive campaign, that a national unity government is what’s truly needed.