October 10, 2016: The most inspiring leader I’ve ever encountered

By Michael Regenstreif

I’ve encountered a lot of political leaders over the years, including prime ministers, premiers, mayors and legislators at every level of government. Most of them have been Canadian, of course, but there have also been many from other countries – particularly from Israel, because I work in the arena of Jewish community journalism.

And, of all the leaders I have ever encountered, the most inspirational figure was Shimon Peres, Israel’s former president, prime minister, foreign minister, defence minister, finance minister and the longest-serving member of the Knesset in history.

Since Peres died on September 28, at age 93, he has been referred to as the last of Israel’s founding fathers. And, indeed, he was.

From the birth of the modern State of Israel in 1948 until his retirement from the presidency in 2014, just nine days before his 91st birthday, there was not a time that he was not serving the state at the highest levels. And, even over the past two years, until suffering a massive stroke last month, he remained remarkably vital and tirelessly active as Israel’s elder statesman. Peres never gave up working to make this a better world. Peres never gave up on his dream of Israel thriving in a peaceful Middle East.

As an aide and adviser to David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding prime minister, Peres played an important behind-the-scenes role during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence and would go on to even more important roles in the country’s defence. In the 1950s, he was director-general of the defence department and later served as minister of defence in both the 1970s and the ‘90s.

So, when foreign minister Peres and prime minister Yitzhak Rabin – one of Israel’s greatest generals – became Israel’s leading champions of peace with the Palestinians, they were acting from a deep understanding of defence and a deep understanding of the futility and waste of endless war. They envisioned a better world that, sadly, neither lived to see.

I’ll never forget watching Peres and Rabin on the White House lawn with U.S. president Bill Clinton and PLO leader Yasser Arafat in 1993 and the hopeful feelings so many us felt then.

Peres never gave up on the dreams of that day and he continued to work for peace the rest of his life.

My most vivid memories of Peres were of the two days in May of 2012 when I got watch to Peres in action as Israeli president on a state visit to Ottawa.

At age 88 then, Peres was the oldest head of state in the world. But he maintained an incredibly busy schedule and showed no signs of fatigue whenever I heard him speak.

I particularly remember his riveting speech at the National Gallery during a reception hosted by then-Israeli ambassador Miriam Ziv. Speaking to an audience of international diplomats, cabinet ministers and MPs, Supreme Court justices, at least one former prime minister of Canada, academics, journalists, military officials and Jewish community leaders, Peres gave a long compelling speech.

Holding the microphone in his hand, Peres spoke, without a script or notes, about the State of Israel in both historical and contemporary terms, about Israel’s enduring friendship with Canada and about his past visits here. He spoke about science and technology, noting that Israel had become such an important centre for scientific, medical and technological breakthroughs, and he made predictions about unimaginable breakthroughs to come in the years and decades ahead.

He discussed the rapidly changing Middle East and expressed optimism about a future that would finally include peace with the Palestinians.

Despite having been part of history for so many decades, this 88-year-old man was excited about the future. He even cracked a couple of jokes with the timing of a seasoned comedian. It was a remarkable performance that earned sustained ovations from the high-powered audience.

I was right near the front of the audience as Peres spoke and recognized the man beside me applauding enthusiastically for Peres was an opposition member of Parliament from Montreal.

“That was quite the speech,” I said to him.

“He was absolutely amazing,” future prime minister Justin Trudeau responded.

Shimon Peres, the last of Israel’s founding fathers, never stopped believing in his dream of Israel thriving in peace. And he never stopped working to make that dream come true. Now it is up to the sons, daughters and grandchildren to fulfil that dream.

Leonard Cohen’s new song

Leonard Cohen – poet, novelist, singer and songwriter – is another inspiring figure who has continued to do remarkable work late in life.

The Montreal-born artist has an album of new songs coming out on October 21. While I haven’t yet heard most of them, he did release the title track, “You Want It Darker,” on the Internet last month.

Much was made of the fact that Cohen released the song on September 21, his 82nd birthday. It is a song that only an older man could have written; a song from perspective of someone who has lived long and is prepared for death.

I think, though, what’s possibly more significant than his birthday is that Cohen released the song in the Jewish month of Elul, as we prepare for the High Holidays.

It is a song he sings directly to God. “Hineni, hineni, I’m ready my lord,” he sings in the chorus.

The melody seems like it comes directly from the synagogue music Cohen heard growing up at Congregation Shaar Hashomayim in Montreal. And, indeed, he turned to Cantor Gideon Zelermyer and the Shaar choir to sing with him on the song. The choir’s haunting harmonies are heard from the beginning of the song, Cohen himself sounds like he’s singing from the depths of his soul, and the final minute of the song is devoted to Cantor Zelermyer repeatedly, and seemingly distantly, singing the word “hineni.”

A stunning performance from Cohen, the choir and the cantor.

August 26, 2013: ‘Shalom’ and ‘salaam’ mean the same thing: peace

By Michael Regenstreif

It was 20 years ago, but I remember being glued to the television on September 13, 1993 watching the scene unfold on the White House lawn.

There was Bill Clinton, the American president, standing between Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister of Israel, and Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), as they shook hands with the whole world watching.

That day, two decades ago, heralded such hope. The end of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians seemed to be near – peace was at hand. Israel recognized the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, the PLO recognized Israel and renounced violence, and the Oslo Accord, signed by Rabin and Arafat that day in Washington, created the Palestinian Authority and established a framework for further negotiations and the move toward Palestinian statehood in the West Bank and Gaza.

Sadly, the hope and promises were shattered by a Jewish extremist so opposed to peace that he went to a huge peace rally in Tel Aviv and assassinated Rabin moments after the prime minister joined in the singing of “Shir LaShalom (Song of Peace).”

And they were shattered by a corrupt Arafat, who did not begin to live up to his promise of renouncing violence in favour of negotiations.

And they were shattered by so many other factors over the years.

In the two decades since, there were other efforts to move the peace process forward. From Camp David to Annapolis; from the Quartet (the U.S., the European Union, the UN and Russia) to former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s unilateral evacuation of Israeli settlements from Gaza.

All of them, and others, failed.

Now, the first peace talks in three years between Israel and the Palestinian Authority have begun. These latest talks, brokered by the U.S. administration, are expected to take nine months.

Of course, that is assuming the talks don’t break down over any of the seemingly myriad issues that separate the two sides – and, given the history of the peace process over the past 20 years, it would be a major miracle if they don’t break down.

And, even if they do reach a peace deal and it is ratified in referendums both sides have said they would hold, there is still the impossible situation in Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, which rejects both peace and the existence of Israel.

Despite the history of failed peace attempts, the Palestinians are not the worst enemy the Jewish people have faced over the past century. That, surely, was Nazi Germany, an antisemitic regime that murdered six million of our people in the Holocaust in their genocidal attempt to rid the world of Jews.

Yet, today, Germany is a friend of Israel. Five years ago, 63 years after the Holocaust came to end, and 60 years after the founding of the modern State of Israel, Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, addressed Israel’s Knesset.

Many commentators have pointed out that the chances of these latest talks leading to peace and to a two-state solution are remote. And they’re probably right. There are so many impediments to a resolution of the conflict. But, still, I am reminded that, as Jews, we hold the concept of tikkun olam – repairing the world – as a cherished ideal and, until there is peace, ours is far from a world in repair.

The most commonly spoken words in Hebrew and Arabic are shalom and salaam, and they mean the same thing: peace.

Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians pales in comparison to the Holocaust.

And, in a world where the nation that perpetrated the Holocaust is a friend of Israel, it’s not so hard to imagine Israelis and Palestinians living beside each other in peace and prosperity.

April 22, 2013: The former heads of Shin Bet speak in important Israeli film

By Michael Regenstreif

MP Irwin Cotler made the point during his March 28 speech at the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University Passover lunch that, had the Palestinians and surrounding Arab countries accepted the United Nations partition resolution of 1947, all of the problems of refugees – both Arab refugees from Israel and an almost identical number of Jewish refugees from Arab countries – would have been avoided. There would have been two states for two people, avoiding subsequent wars, and all of the disputes over territory and settlements that grew out of the Six Day War of 1967, and persist to this day.

The importance of Cotler’s point hit home earlier this month while I watched The Gatekeepers, one of the two Israeli films nominated for an Oscar this past year in the feature documentary category, during its week-long Ottawa run at the Bytowne Cinema. The film is a series of interviews – interspersed with archival footage – with the six living former heads of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service. These are the directors who ran Shin Bet for all but two of the years between 1981 and 2011, charged with keeping Israel safe from Palestinian terrorists and from internal terror threats, such as the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir, a right-wing Jewish extremist intent on stopping the peace process.

Each of these Shin Bet directors – Avraham Shalom (1981-1986), Yaakov Peri (1988-1994), Carmi Gillon (1995- 1996), Ami Ayalon (1996-2000), Avi Dichter (2000-2005) and Yuval Diskin (2005-2011) – answered directly to the Israeli prime minister of the day. Almost by definition, these are hardened, unsentimental men who needed to be unafraid of making extremely difficult life-and-death decisions, which often had far-reaching consequences.

Watching the film, it becomes increasingly obvious the Shin Bet directors share a consensus that the policies of occupation and Jewish settlements followed by Israel since 1967 have been a failure and a threat to Israel’s long-term survival as a Jewish and democratic state. These policies have forced all of Israel’s governments, whether led by left- or right-leaning prime ministers, to govern in a virtually permanent state of crisis management – a situation that has not served the country well.

The Shin Bet directors are surprisingly candid and open, even when talking about some of their most catastrophic failures, such as failing to prevent the assassination of Rabin or the summary execution in 1984 of two captured Palestinian terrorists, an event for which Shalom eventually lost his job and for which he was held in disdain by at least one of his successors, or when discussing the “collateral damage” of innocent people being killed when terrorist leaders have been targeted for assassination.

Near the end of the film, The Gatekeepers director Dror Moreh, who conducted the interviews off-screen, asks about the prediction made by Israeli philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz, not long after the Six Day War, that attempting to govern the Palestinians would turn Israel into a “Shin Bet state”; a prediction for which Leibowitz, who died at age 91 in 1994, was reviled by many in Israel.

Diskin, the most recent of the Shin Bet directors, agreed sadly but absolutely, with Leibowitz’s prediction. Shalom, the earliest to serve as head of Shin Bet, said, perhaps even more sadly, that the occupation had made Israel “cruel.” The commitment to Israel of these former Shin Bet directors – three of whom later served in the Knesset and cabinet (Peri, elected this year under the Yesh Atid banner is now minister of science and technology) – is beyond question.

Whether they challenge your own views, or reinforce them, or some combination of both, their voices, forged with a level of experience we will never have, are important to listen to and understand. And although they seem disillusioned with the prospect of actually achieving peace, their stories and observations make its pursuit seem all the more vital.

The Gatekeepers is a very important film. Hopefully, there will be more opportunities to see it.