October 21, 2020: Is the Trump era about to end?

By Michael Regenstreif

I’ve just reread my “From the Editor” column written exactly four years ago today, and published in the October 31, 2016 edition of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin.

The subject of that column was the U.S. presidential election, in particular the candidacy of reality TV show star and real estate mogul Donald Trump.

“It’s been like watching a train wreck these last 16 months. Horrifying for too many reasons but impossible to look away from,” I wrote in a column that assumed Hillary Clinton would be elected president.

Even though my assumption that Trump would lose the election in 2016 turned out to be wrong (Clinton won the popular vote by millions of votes but Trump won the presidency in the Electoral College), there is much in that column that could have been written today.

“It is astounding that the least qualified candidate (at least in modern times) to ever win a major party’s nomination for the U.S. presidency, a man with no experience in public service (and, apparently, little experience in paying federal taxes), still maintains a base of support of about 40 per cent of the American electorate despite all that he has said and done – and all that has been revealed about him,” I continued.

“As it has become obvious to all that he is losing the election, Trump has ramped up his attacks … most appallingly, on democracy itself.

“Trump has been complaining that the American electoral system has been ‘rigged’ against him and that the only way he can lose the election is if it is rigged. And he absurdly claims the American media has entered into a conspiracy against him,” a claim that Trump continues to echo four years later.

“It is a tradition in Western democracies that when the votes are counted and the winner of an election is determined, the defeated candidate(s) concedes the loss and the government proceeds to an orderly transition of power. But Trump is refusing to say he will concede a loss; only that he will accept the result if he wins,” a refusal he has repeated again in 2020.

“And, as a candidate for the most important office in the world, he has shown almost no real understanding of the myriad important issues he would face on both domestic and international fronts,” I concluded four years ago.

And while I was appalled at Trump’s attacks on democracy during his first presidential campaign (and again in this one), his attacks on democratic norms and institutions have been unrelenting during his time in office. Just a few of many examples include his vicious and baseless attacks on the mainstream media, and on people ranging from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the highly respected director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to his Democratic opponents, former vice-president Joe Biden (who Trump says is the head of a “crime family”) and Senator Kamala Harris (who he calls a “monster”). On the world stage, Trump has repeatedly attacked the leaders of allied democracies while praising some of the world’s most brutal dictators, and he has withdrawn the United States from the Paris Climate Accords during the global climate-change crisis, and from the World Health Organization during COVID-19 pandemic, the worst worldwide health crisis in a century.

Speaking of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump’s policies have been a major factor in the United States having 20 per cent of the cases and 20 per cent of the deaths around the world despite having just four per cent of the world’s population; and even led to his own COVID case and many cases among his family, staff, inner circle and followers due to his lax masking and distancing behaviour, and his hosting of super-spreader events at the White House and on the campaign trail. Still, despite COVID striking literally in his own home as cases of the disease continue to spike higher and higher, he continues to claim the pandemic is all but over – thanks to him.

According to a new poll released earlier this week by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the vast majority of American Jews, 75 per cent, are set to vote (or have already voted) for Biden over Trump at 22 per cent – and that is not withstanding the fact that Trump has attempted to make Israel a wedge issue in the campaign stating that Jews who do not vote for him are disloyal to Israel.

“I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat – it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty,” Trump said in remarks to the press in the Oval Office last year. He has also told American Jews that Benjamin Netanyahu is “your prime minister.”

Despite actions including moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights and helping to broker diplomatic relations between Israel and two Arab Gulf states, Bahrain and United Arab Emirates, a majority of Jewish voters (54 per cent to 42 per cent) indicated in the AJC poll that Biden would be better than Trump at strengthening U.S.-Israel relations.

As well, according to the AJC poll, the same proportion of Jewish voters (75 per cent to 22 per cent) that would vote for Biden over Trump also said Biden would better handle antisemitism than Trump.

Antisemitic incidents in the United States have increased greatly with perpetrators of hatred emboldened by the atmosphere Trump has, knowingly or unknowingly, seemed to encourage. These have included the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre in 2018 in which 11 Jews were murdered and six more wounded, and the Poway synagogue mass shooting in which one Jew was murdered and three others, including the synagogue’s rabbi, were wounded. Memories of Trump’s initial description of white supremacists marching in Charlottesville in 2017 as “very fine people” after their chilling chants of “Jews will not replace us” remain strong for American Jews; as do his recent refusals to condemn the followers of QAnon, a discredited far-right conspiracy theory movement that incorporates old antisemitic tropes among its beliefs.

So, is the Trump era about to end? Two weeks before the American election in 2016, the polls indicated a Clinton victory over Trump and now, two weeks before the 2020 election, polls indicate a Biden victory. Looking deeper at the polling, particularly in the swing states that Trump won by tiny margins four years ago, I suspect the ultimate result this time will be different than it was last time.

September 2, 2019: The news is now stranger than fiction

By Michael Regenstreif

My column in our August 19 issue discussed the explicitly racist attacks of U.S. President Donald Trump on four rookie members of the U.S. House of Representatives, all of whom are women of colour. In the days and weeks after that issue went to press, there have been some downright bizarre developments to the story.

Two of the congresswomen, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who both support the anti-Israel BDS movement, were scheduled to visit East Jerusalem and the West Bank in August. In July, despite a law allowing Israel to bar BDS supporters from entering the country, Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the United States (who is known to be extremely close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), announced, “Out of respect for the U.S. Congress, and the great alliance between Israel and America, we would not deny entry to any member of Congress into Israel.”

That changed on August 15 when Trump tweeted, “It would show great weakness if Israel allowed Rep. Omar and Rep. Tlaib to visit. They hate Israel & all Jewish people, & there is nothing that can be said or done to change their minds.”

Immediately following Trump’s tweet, Israel announced that Omar and Tlaib would not be allowed to visit after all. Although Netanyahu and his ministers claimed the change had nothing to do with Trump’s tweet, few analysts believed that.

The decision was immediately condemned by mainstream American Jewish organizations including AIPAC, Jewish Federations of North America, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Israel Policy Forum, and J Street as contradicting democratic values.

Barring Omar and Tlaib may well have provided more PR value to the BDS movement than the visit itself would have.

Then the story got even weirder. On August 20, Trump proclaimed, “I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat; I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.” (According to the Pew Research Center, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton received 71 per cent of the Jewish vote in 2016, compared to 24 per cent for Republican candidate Trump. In the 2018 midterm elections, after two years of the Trump administration, 79 per cent of the Jewish vote went to Democratic candidates, compared to just 17 per cent for Republicans.)

Trump invoked the antisemitic trope about the loyalty of Jews – one of the most common expressions of antisemitism throughout history. In the following days, Trump doubled-down and tripled-down on the trope elaborating that Jewish Democratic voters (in other words, Jews who don’t support Trump) are disloyal to the Jewish people and to Israel.

“In my opinion, if you vote for a Democrat you’re being very disloyal to Jewish people, and you’re being very disloyal to Israel. And only weak people would say anything other than that,” he declared on the White House lawn.

And in a tweet, Trump quoted and thanked talk radio conspiracy theorist Wayne Allyn Root for his “very nice words”: “President Trump is the greatest President for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world, not just America, he is the best President for Israel in the history of the world and the Jewish people in Israel love him like he’s the King of Israel. They love him like he is the second coming of God.”

The nightly news – in these Trumpian times – is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

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.

January 23, 2017: Should the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Rabbi Marvin Hier offer a prayer at the Trump inauguration?

By Michael Regenstreif

As I write, at noon on January 13, we are exactly seven days – to the minute – to when Donald Trump will be sworn in as president of the United States of America.

Late in the U.S. election campaign, I wrote a column in which I noted that Trump’s candidacy had endured “despite a seemingly endless string of ongoing insults variously hurled at women, Hispanics, Muslims, the handicapped, prisoners of war, leaders of his own party, and so many others.” Like most observers, I had read the polls and predicted Trump would lose to Hillary Clinton. (From the Editor: Trump’s campaign is an attack on democracy itself, October 31, 2016)

And, like most observers, I was proven wrong on election night when Trump managed to reach and pass the magic number of 270 Electoral College votes (even though Clinton won the popular vote with about three million more votes from the U.S. population at large).

Among the clergy scheduled to offer prayers at the Trump inauguration is Rabbi Marvin Hier, apparently the first rabbi to take part in an U.S. presidential inauguration in 32 years. The conventional wisdom is that Trump wanted a rabbi to participate in the inauguration because his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and his son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, and their three children, are Jewish.

Rabbi Hier is well known as the founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Named in honour of the famed hunter of Nazi war criminals, the Wiesenthal Center is a major institution dedicated to Holocaust remembrance and education, and to combating antisemitism, racism and other forms of bigotry and hatred.

Personally, I also remember Rabbi Hier from when I was a student at the Vancouver Talmud Torah in the mid-1960s and he was the spiritual leader of Congregation Schara Tzedek, a modern Orthodox shul just a few blocks away.

Many in the American Jewish community – particularly among the 71 per cent of U.S. Jewish voters who supported Clinton – object to Rabbi Hier’s participation in the Trump inauguration. They cite the divisiveness stirred by Trump during the campaign as well as his hiring of Steve Bannon – the former CEO of Breitbart News, a website that has blurred or crossed the line with antisemitic articles and is embraced by the so-called alt-right. A petition asking Rabbi Hier to withdraw from the inauguration garnered thousands of supporters.

Many of those in the Jewish community who object to Rabbi Hier’s participation in the inauguration would likely have objected to the participation of any rabbi in the event. Last summer, Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, the prominent New York Orthodox rabbi who sponsored Ivanka Trump’s conversion to Judaism, was scheduled to offer a prayer at the Republican Party convention that formally nominated Trump as the party’s candidate. However, Rabbi Lookstein cancelled his appearance at the convention due to the ensuing controversy.

But Trump was elected president, and I don’t object to there being some measure of diversity among the religious figures offering prayers at the inauguration; that there will be a rabbi among the clergy from various Christian denominations. But it would be an even better message of inclusivity if a Muslim imam and clergy of other faiths were also scheduled to participate.

However, I question whether Rabbi Hier, as founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, is the right rabbi for this role. So much of Trump’s rhetoric during the campaign, and over the years prior, would seem to be in direct conflict with what the Wiesenthal Center – and its Museum of Tolerance – is about. Will his participation be interpreted as the Wiesenthal Center’s tacit acceptance, if not approval, of Trump’s ugly rhetoric?

For his part, Rabbi Hier said he accepted the invitation to participate in the inauguration because “it was the menschlichkeit (honourable) thing to do and I am proud to do it,” adding that petitions and other calls for him to withdraw “are not going to change my mind.”

According to Rabbi Hier, his participation in the inauguration will not affect how the Wiesenthal Center does business – that politics and personal relationships will not be a factor. (The Wiesenthal Center did criticize Trump for his anti-Muslim rhetoric early in the campaign.)

I hope he’s right.