April 19, 2017: Syria and the world’s ‘Responsibility to Protect’

By Michael Regenstreif

I’m writing this column on April 7 just as this issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin is about to go to press.

April 7 is a significant date. In 2008, a unanimous vote in the House of Commons approved a motion put forward by then-MP Irwin Cotler, a former minister of justice and legendary human rights activist, making April 7 Canada’s National Day of Reflection on the Prevention of Genocide.

The date was not random. Cotler specifically chose it because it was the anniversary of April 7, 1994, the start of 100 days of genocide in Rwanda that saw more than 800,000 Tutsi people murdered by the Hutu-dominated government – a genocide that the world community was aware of, but did not act to prevent or stop. As Cotler wrote in an op-ed published in the National Post last year on April 7, “Indeed, what makes the Rwandan Genocide so unspeakable was not only the horror of the genocide itself, but the fact that it was preventable. No one can say that we did not know – we knew, but we did not act.”

In an op-ed for the Huffington Post that was also published last year on April 7, Cotler wrote about the principles of the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine (R2P) adopted by the United Nations in 2005.

The R2P doctrine, Cotler wrote, “mandates international action to ‘protect a state’s population from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.’ In a word, if such mass atrocity crimes are being committed, and the state where these crimes are occurring is unwilling or unable to act – or worse, is the author of such international crimes – the Responsibility to Protect arises.”

Cotler goes on to discuss the devastating humanitarian crisis arising from the civil war in Syria and the crimes against humanity committed by the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. “Indeed, if mass atrocities in Syria – with 500,000 killed, 12.5 million displaced, five million refugees – are not a case for R2P, then there is no R2P.”

This week, on April 4, a year after Cotler wrote that article, the Assad regime launched a chemical weapons attack against civilians in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Syria’s Idlib province. At least 100 people, including infants and small children were massacred as the world looked on in horror.

It seemed like a repeat of a 2013 chemical weapons attack perpetrated by the Assad regime. A year before, then-U.S. president Barack Obama had warned Assad that using chemical weapons was the “red line” he must not cross, or the U.S. would act. Many commentators pointed to Obama’s failure to take military action in response to that crime against humanity as his greatest foreign policy failure. Others pointed to his diplomatic efforts to have Assad give up his chemical weapons stockpile as a great success in preventing both further chemical weapons attacks and American involvement in another Middle Eastern war.

Among those who vehemently opposed a U.S. response to the 2013 chemical weapons massacre was future U.S. president Donald Trump.

And, in the 2016 U.S. election campaign, Trump routinely ridiculed his opponent, Hillary Clinton, when she called for action in Syria.

It seems, however, that Assad held on to at least some of his chemical arsenal and may well have been emboldened by the Trump administration’s recent statements that regime change in Syria was no longer an American goal.

Then, last night [April 6], on Trump’s orders, 59 cruise missiles were launched at the Shayrat air base from which Assad’s forces launched this latest chemical weapons attack against civilians.

As I write, it is much too early to know if this missile response will make a difference in the Syrian civil war. Will it make a difference in helping to protect the Syrian people from Assad?

Trump said he was affected by the sight of the “beautiful babies” killed in the massacre. But it’s hard to forget that Trump’s policy has been to refuse to help any Syrian refugees. And, with all the controversy about Russia in recent months, Trump has had (at least, so far) nothing to say about Russian complicity with Assad in the Syrian civil war.

July 18, 2011: The history of the Canadian Jewish Congress should be honoured and celebrated

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.