January 21, 2019: Irwin Cotler nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

By Michael Regenstreif

Irwin Cotler has been nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.

A legendary professor of law at McGill University in Montreal, Cotler is a familiar figure in Ottawa from his 16-year stint from 1999 until 2015 as a Liberal MP and for his cabinet tenure as minister of justice and attorney general.

Cotler, who served as president of the Canadian Jewish Congress from 1980 to 1983, founded the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights after leaving Parliament and has been nominated for the Nobel for his life’s work as one of the world’s leading human rights activists – particularly as an international human rights lawyer acting on behalf of political prisoners.

Among the most notable “prisoners of conscience” that Cotler has fought for is Nelson Mandela, one of the world’s most inspirational figures, who went on to serve as South Africa’s first post-apartheid president. Another is Natan Sharansky, a Jewish leader in the Soviet Union who went on to serve as a member of Israel’s Knesset and cabinet minister – and who just recently retired after a long tenure as chair of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

Sharansky is a vocal supporter of Cotler’s nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. In a letter of support to the Nobel committee, Sharansky refers to Cotler’s “tireless efforts on my behalf when I was a political prisoner in the former Soviet Union (1977-1986). By bringing my case, like that of many other such victims of injustice whose cases he championed, to the attention of the international community, Professor Cotler played a direct and central role in my release.”

Another supporter of Cotler’s nomination is Saad Eddin Ibrahim, the Egyptian founder of the Arab Human Rights Organization, who was arrested for treason and jailed in 2000 by the Mubarak regime, and who credits Cotler’s intervention in his case for helping to secure his acquittal in 2003.

Cotler has also been at forefront of the fight for justice for Jews who were expelled or forced to flee from Arab and Muslim countries in the years following the establishment of the State of Israel. In a 2007 interview, Cotler told me that Jewish refugees were expunged from the human rights agenda over the decades as well as from the agendas of any peace talks that have taken place.

He has also been a major figure in helping us understand what he refers to as a “new kind of antisemitism”: antisemitism that masquerades as anti-Zionism and targets “the collective Jew among the nations.”

Paul Martin, prime minister of Canada while Cotler was justice minister and attorney general, is another supporter of the Nobel nomination.

“I can personally attest to the fact that Professor Irwin Cotler is relentless in his campaign for human rights for all individuals. His efforts deserve to be encouraged and granting him the Nobel Peace Prize will have enormous benefit in the continuing fight for freedom and universal human rights,” wrote Martin in his letter to the Nobel Committee.

This was not the first time Cotler has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Searching the web, I found references to previous nominations in 2008, 2010 and 2016 and surely the Nobel jury has a difficult time in making its choice each year – last year there were 331 candidates – but Irwin Cotler would be a most worthy recipient.

December 7, 2015: Canada still stands resolutely in support of Israel at the UN

By Michael Regenstreif

I wasn’t in attendance, November 21, when Gil Hoffman, the Jerusalem Post’s chief political correspondent and analyst, spoke at Young Israel of Ottawa.

Hoffman’s advertised topic was “Peace, Politics and Palestinian Violence: An Insider’s Look at the Mayhem in the Middle East,” so I was surprised when I received reporter Diane Koven’s report on Hoffman’s lecture that he also used the opportunity for some Canadian political analysis.

According to Hoffman, “Canada mattered” while former prime minister Stephen Harper was in power, but we have totally lost our relevance in the world under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

I’ve no idea how much research went into Hoffman’s analysis, but it seems to me that two weeks into a four-year term is a little too quick to come to that kind of conclusion.

I suppose Hoffman’s comments had to do with Harper’s unquestionably strong support for the State of Israel. But I think it needs to be pointed out to the likes of Hoffman that none of the official Canadian government policies in regard to Israel, the Palestinian territories, West Bank settlements, the status of Jerusalem, or support for a negotiated two-state solution to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians changed under Harper. Nor will it under Trudeau.

After the election, there was some speculation that Canada’s strong support for Israel at the United Nations during Harper’s tenure (which was actually a continuation of the support for Israel at the UN begun by the previous government under Liberal prime minister Paul Martin) would change once Trudeau took office. And perhaps that speculation is what Hoffman’s analysis was based on.

But, in the spate of annual anti-Israel resolutions that come before the UN like clockwork every year, our new government stood as resolutely in support of Israel as did our previous government.

“So far, with final plenary or initial committee votes on 19 of the 20 annual anti-Israel resolutions, Canada’s voting record is entirely unchanged from last year,” reported UN Watch, on November 25.

According to UN Watch, the new Canadian government is “on track to continue without change Canada’s prior policy of firmly opposing repetitive, disproportionate and one-sided resolutions … designed to delegitimize Israel, the Middle East’s only democracy.”

April 21, 2008: Rabin and Peres – Bitter rivals who shared a dream

By Michael Regenstreif

On April 10, I was at the Soloway Jewish Community Centre’s screening of Rabin-Peres: Everything is Personal, a fascinating documentary film that examines the lifelong, often bitter, rivalry between two great Israeli leaders: Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated while prime minister in 1995, and Shimon Peres, also a former prime minister, who is now Israel’s president.

Rabin, born in 1922, was a sabra. He grew up in Tel Aviv, attended the Kadoori Agricultural High School and joined the Palmach in 1941. By 1947, Rabin was chief operations officer. He was in charge of army operations in Jerusalem in the 1948 War of Independence.

By 1964, Rabin was chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). It was under his command that Israel achieved what was probably its greatest military victory by swiftly winning the Six Day War in 1967.

In 1968, Rabin began his post-IDF career as Israel’s ambassador to the United States. He was first elected to the Knesset in 1973 and became minister of labour. In 1974, he became leader of the Alignment Party and succeeded Golda Meir as prime minister.

Peres was born in Poland in 1923 as Szymon Perski. His family immigrated to Palestine when he was nine. A kibbutz leader, Peres joined the Haganah in 1947 and was given the responsibility, by David Ben-Gurion, for arms purchases and personnel. By 1953, he was director-general of the Ministry of Defense.

Peres was first elected to the Knesset in 1959 and held a number of cabinet positions. Eventually, Peres became leader of Alignment after Rabin stepped down in the wake of a currency scandal in 1977. Peres lost the 1977 election to Menachem Begin and Likud.

Rabin, the military hero, was Israel’s native-born, fair-haired boy. In comparison, Peres, the bureaucrat, was an outsider, a newcomer with a Polish accent. And even though Peres performed vital functions in Israel’s defence, he was never seen as the war hero Rabin was.

Rabin and Peres were rivals in the Alignment and Labor parties. Both served when the other was prime minister and they were in the cabinet, and they faced off against each other in several leadership campaigns marked by personal bitterness toward the other.

Only in a robust democracy would you see such a personal rivalry within the same political party among competing personalities with similar goals for their country. Watching the film, I was reminded of some other bitter intraparty rivalries, some of which also lasted for years. Perhaps the most obvious example from recent Canadian politics was the long rivalry between former Liberal prime ministers Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin.

South of the border, we’re currently witnessing what has turned into a very bitter battle for the Democratic Party presidential nomination between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, two politicians whose platforms and points of view on almost all issues – including their support for Israel – are remarkably similar.

Like the long rivalries between Rabin and Peres, and Chrétien and Martin, the Clinton-Obama fight is mostly about differing personalities and personal egos rather than differing visions for their society.

Despite their personal enmity, Rabin and Peres were on the same side and shared the vision of Israel at peace with the Palestinians. When Rabin was assassinated – not by an Arab terrorist, but by Yigal Amir, a right-wing, religious Jew out to destroy the peace process they had worked so hard to further – you could see in the film that Peres, too, was figuratively shattered by Amir’s bullet.

Rabin, one of Israel’s greatest warriors, did not lose his life on the battlefield fighting an enemy. He was murdered by one of his own people, one of our own people, who did not share the dream of peace that we all should be reminded of every time we say, or hear, the word shalom.

Hopefully, that dream, shared by Rabin and Peres, by the residents of Sderot who visited us in Ottawa recently, and by so many others, will sooner than later become a reality.