November 25, 2019: Feel the Bern on antisemitism and Israel

By Michael Regenstreif

Since returning to work a year-and-a-half ago after open-heart surgery, daily exercise has been a priority and since my office is located in the Soloway Jewish Community Centre (SJCC), I am very lucky to have a first-class fitness centre just downstairs from my desk. The SJCC locker room is often the scene for impromptu and opinionated discussions on the news and issues of the day.

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders – who is currently campaigning for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination – has been the centre of a couple of recent locker-room discussions. If nominated, Sanders would be the first Jewish candidate nominated by one of the two major parties for the U.S. presidency.

The first discussion was in early October after Sanders suffered a heart attack on the campaign trail and had a couple of stents inserted to open up his arteries. One of my locker-room buddies was angry that Sanders, whom he described as “pro-BDS, anti-Israel and antisemitic,” would have Israeli-made stents inserted.

I don’t know whether or not Sanders’ stents were made in Israel. I could find no mainstream media references to where the stents were made. Be that as it may, it is simply wrong to suggest that the leftist Sanders is “pro-BDS, anti-Israel and antisemitic.”

Sanders has spoken of his admiration for the Jewish state and for the ideals of Zionism, and has noted that he lived and worked on a kibbutz near Haifa as a young man in 1963.

While Sanders has consistently voiced his support for the State of Israel, including the right of Israel to defend itself from attacks, and for a two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, he has been vociferous in his opposition to certain Israeli government policies, particularly the occupation and settlement expansion in the West Bank, and to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On these matters, Sanders is in lockstep with about 75 per cent of the American Jewish community, as well as with millions of Israelis.

On BDS, Sanders has repeatedly rejected the call to boycott Israel. Earlier this year, he released a statement saying, “While I do not support the BDS movement, we must defend every American’s constitutional right to engage in political activity.”

The more recent locker room discussion about Sanders was on November 14 (I am writing this on the 15th), a few days after Sanders published an article in Jewish Currents on antisemitism – an article that has provoked much reaction in Jewish circles.

I was pleased to see Sanders write so eloquently about antisemitism, particularly about the lethal consequences of right-wing antisemitism as manifested by the white nationalist movement. As Sanders points out, “hate crimes against Jews rose by more than a third in 2017 and accounted for 58 per cent of all religion-based hate crimes in America.” That year, we saw what happened in Charlottesville, and more recently we have seen right-wing antisemitism lead to the tragic synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and Poway.

But it was disappointing to see Sanders merely pay lip service to left-wing antisemitism, noting, “It is true that some criticism of Israel can cross the line into antisemitism, especially when it denies the right of self-determination to Jews, or when it plays into conspiracy theories about outsized Jewish power.”

While right-wing antisemitism has repeatedly proven lethal, the effects of left-wing antisemitism are also consequential. Look at how pro-Israel students are marginalized on many campuses. Look to the United Kingdom, where the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, once overwhelmingly supported by British Jews, is now seen by many as an existential threat to the Jewish community. Or look to some of Sanders’ own supporters like Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who has apologized more than once for using antisemitic tropes, or Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour, who claims that a feminist cannot be a Zionist.

Sanders’ generalized thoughts on antisemitism and his specific thoughts on right-wing antisemitism are correct. But he seriously underplays the extent and the effects of left-wing antisemitism.

July 22, 2019: We know not to trivialize the Holocaust

By Michael Regenstreif

Last month, U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a left-wing progressive who was first elected in her New York district in 2018, came under attack when she referred to the detention centres used by the United States government to warehouse Central American migrants – including children needlessly separated from their parents – as “concentration camps.”

As horrible as the conditions are at those detention centres – and from all credible reports the conditions are truly horrible – Ocasio-Cortez quickly came under sharp attack from political opponents, scholars, and several American Jewish organizations for her use of a term that conjures comparisons to the camps used by Germany’s Nazi regime in its perpetration of the Holocaust, a genocide in which six million Jews were murdered in an attempt to eradicate European Jewry.

“Concentration camps assured a slave labour supply to help in the Nazi war effort, even as the brutality of life inside the camps helped assure the ultimate goal of ‘extermination through labour.’ Learn about concentration camps,” Yad Vashem – The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, in Jerusalem, tweeted to Ocasio-Cortez.

Even U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, a candidate for the Democratic Party’s 2020 U.S. presidential nomination usually seen as an ally of Ocasio-Cortez, distanced himself from the comparison. While saying, “locking up children and keeping them in deplorable conditions for weeks in places that are not meant for kids … is absolutely unacceptable,” Sanders stressed that he didn’t and wouldn’t “use that terminology.”

We have learned not to trivialize the Holocaust – the worst genocide and the ultimate manifestation of antisemitism in history – with comparisons that do not rise to that horrible standard. That is why objections were raised to Ocasio-Cortez’s use of the term “concentration camps” and why we bristle when Israel is fallaciously accused of behaving like Nazis toward the Palestinians.

And yet, perhaps the most trivial of comparisons to the Holocaust in recent memory came from no less a figure than Rafi Peretz, Israel’s minister of education.

Peretz, who served as chief military rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces from 2010 to 2016, was elected leader of the Jewish Home Party in advance of the last Israeli election after former leader and former education minister Naftali Bennett, and former justice minister Ayelet Shaked, left Jewish Home. In a deal brokered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jewish Home and Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), a Kahanist successor to the banned Kach Party, stood together in the April election as the United Right, winning five seats in the short-lived 21st Knesset. A new election is scheduled for September 17 after Netanyahu failed to build a governing coalition.

On July 1, during an Israeli cabinet meeting, Peretz compared intermarriage – when a Jew marries a non-Jew – to “a second Holocaust” and rhetorically said that six million Jews have been lost to intermarriage over the past 70 years.

The comment came after a cabinet briefing on trends in Jewish communities around the world from Dennis Ross, chair of the Jewish People policy Institute.

As Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League tweeted in response to Peretz, “It’s inconceivable to use the term ‘Holocaust’ to describe Jews choosing to marry non-Jews. It trivializes the Shoah. It alienates so many members of our community. This kind of baseless comparison does little other than inflame and offend.”

Surely, the minister of education of the State of Israel should have known better.

August 22, 2016: Green Party vote puts Elizabeth May in difficult position

By Michael Regenstreif

Elizabeth May may or may not (pun intended) be the leader of the Green Party of Canada by the time you read this issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin.

May – the party’s long-time leader and the only federal MP ever elected under its banner – was put in an awkward, difficult and, in my opinion, unsustainable position at the party’s convention this month in Ottawa when it voted to support the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel despite May’s fierce and often-stated opposition to the movement.

In June, when it emerged that the proposal to support BDS had been put forth for the convention, May told many media outlets – including the Bulletin – that she would oppose the proposal at the convention.

And May, who was supported by 93.6 per cent of the Green Party membership in a leadership review earlier this year, did stand firmly against BDS at the convention, noting she believes the BDS movement is “polarizing, ineffective, and unhelpful in the quest for peace and security for the peoples of the Middle East,” adding, “I will continue to express personal opposition to BDS.”

May’s position is untenable because the Green Party membership – or at least the majority of voting delegates at its national convention – knowing her strong feelings on the BDS issue, put her in the position of having to represent a party platform containing a policy with which she fundamentally disagrees.

And, indeed, May now says the Green Party’s BDS vote calls into question whether she can stay on as party leader. In a revealing CBC radio interview that was scheduled to air August 13 on “The House,” but posted online in advance, May said she was “heartbroken” and would spend an upcoming vacation thinking about whether she can continue as leader and consulting with her family about her future.

May added that representing her constituents – she is MP for the West Coast riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands – was a much higher priority for her than being leader of the Green Party and that a decision to step down might come very soon.

“I would say, as of this minute, I think I’d have real difficulties going not just to an election but through the next month,” May said. “There are a lot of issues I want to be talking about with Canadians, and this,” referring to BDS, “isn’t one of them.”

This past February, the House of Commons passed a resolution condemning the BDS movement against Israel. The resolution was supported by the governing Liberals and the Conservatives, now the official Opposition, while the NDP voted against. May, herself, did not show up for the vote in the House.

In the debate preceding the vote, NDP members and May spoke against the motion, saying the motion itself was an attack on freedom of speech and dissent while stressing their opposition to BDS and their support for a two-state solution to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians.

May is absolutely correct in recognizing BDS as “polarizing, ineffective, and unhelpful” in the quest for a solution to the conflict. For one thing, it puts 100 per cent of the onus for the lack of progress in the peace process on Israel and completely absolves the Palestinians of any responsibility.

While the case can certainly be made that certain policies of the current Israeli government stand in the way of progress toward a solution, there are also policies and actions – including incitement to violence and glorification of terrorists – of the Palestinian Authority which, perhaps, do even more damage to the pursuit of peace.

At least Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keeps calling for direct negotiations with no preconditions between Israel and the Palestinians, while Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas keeps refusing to even come to the negotiating table.

And let us not forget the Palestinians have walked away, refusing further negotiations, when offered peace agreements by previous Israeli governments.

And let us also not forget that Gaza is governed by Hamas, a terrorist group that rejects peace and compromise with Israel.

Groups that advocate for peace between Israel and the Palestinians – for example Peace Now, J Street, the New Israel Fund, etc. – reject BDS as a tactic for the same reasons cited by May: the tactic is “polarizing, ineffective, and unhelpful.”

While some BDS advocates sincerely believe that BDS is simply a tactic to push Israel toward a peace settlement with the Palestinians (May said she thought that was what motivated its support in the Green Party), the reality is that support for BDS comes primarily from anti-Zionist individuals and groups seeking to delegitimize the State of Israel as the Jewish homeland.

And that brings us to the issue of antisemitism. As renowned human rights activist Irwin Cotler, a former justice minister of Canada, has pointed out, there is a “new antisemitism,” in which Israel is targeted as “the collective Jew” among the nations.

BDS, which singles out Israel, is an aspect of the new antisemitism. It is a tactic not meant to bring the sides together; it is meant, as May points out, to polarize them, to drive them further apart.

Even U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, a harsh critic of the current Israeli government, rejects BDS and points to its inherent antisemitism.

So, what will happen with Elizabeth May? Will she stay on as leader or resign? Will she stay in the party or cross the floor? Could a post in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet be in her future?

And, if she does resign as party leader, will there be a future for the Green Part of Canada.