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.

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.