September 5, 2011: The Bulletin gets some attention

By Michael Regenstreif

As a small community newspaper, we’re always pleased to see the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin get some attention. We got some recently in two lengthy posts on the Ottawashtetl blog – ottawashtetl.wordpress.com – written by “Ottawayenta.”

There were also some interesting responses in the ‘Comments’ section of each of the posts.

I thank Ottawayenta for taking time to think and write about the Bulletin. Like so many people in this community, the blogger obviously cares about our community newspaper.

I would like to comment on a couple of things raised in the blog.

There was a stated assumption that the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin is financially supported by the Jewish Federation of Ottawa. A natural assumption, I suppose, because many Jewish newspapers in North America are subsidized by federations.

The Bulletin, though, is not. We are a self-sufficient enterprise supported entirely by advertising and subscription revenue. Our modest profits, in fact, support the work of the Federation.

By the way, the cost of a Bulletin subscription has not risen in many years. At $30 per year, an annual subscription costs about half what I pay every month for my home Internet account.

Ottawayenta suggests the Bulletin should be available online for free as many people, particularly young adults, don’t read print newspapers and rely on the Internet for news and information. I wish we could just do that.

The problem is that few, if any, newspapers have been able to break even in their online operations. Many, including the New York Times, are scaling back or beginning to charge for access to their online content.

We hope soon to give the Bulletin a greater online presence in a way that is financially viable and that makes sense for our subscribers and advertisers.

The Bulletin always welcomes feedback, suggestions and questions from anyone in the community. I’m easily accessible at the Bulletin office, on the phone, and via email. My door is open.

And we always welcome articles, letters-to-the-editor and guest columns on issues of concern from our readers. We are, after all, your community newspaper.

CIJA

As we’ve reported in past issues, the various Jewish advocacy agencies formerly under the umbrella of the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA) – the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Canada-Israel Committee, the Quebec-Israel Committee, the University Outreach Committee and National Jewish Campus Life – were merged, as of July 1, into a single agency that was temporarily called “CIJA 2.0” until a permanent name was chosen.

There were many people across Canada who hoped the new agency would be called “Canadian Jewish Congress” and maintain the continuity of an organization that was the major voice of Canada’s national Jewish community for almost a century.

Alas, CIJA 2.0 will not be called Canadian Jewish Congress. After several months of behind-closed-doors discussion, the merged agency will be called the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, or CIJA.

Jack Layton

Seldom have Canadians – of all political stripes – been as united in grief and mourning as we were with the untimely passing, August 22, of Opposition Leader Jack Layton.

In the election campaign last spring, Jack – it seems so natural to call him Jack – appeared to be getting stronger every day, to be recovering from cancer, as he led the NDP to unprecedented success in the May 2 vote.

Although fiercely partisan, Jack earned, and kept, the respect and affection of political friend and foe alike.

Almost immediately after his death, CIJA announced it would establish in his memory the Jack Layton Scholarship for Social Justice, “to be awarded annually to a Canadian student who demonstrates a meaningful commitment to enhancing Canada’s quality of life.”

CIJA chair David Koschitzky said Jack fought for “many causes dear to Canada’s Jewish community … We join with all Canadians in honouring the passing of a passionate advocate and pillar of our Parliament.”

In a last letter to Canadians, written just before his death, Jack continued to inspire.

“My friends,” he wrote, “love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”

August 15, 2011: CPCCA report does not call for criticism of Israel to be criminalized

By Michael Regenstreif

For two-and-a-half years, since the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism (CPCCA) was established, a number of anti-Israel groups have screamed, hollered and rolled out petitions claiming the goal of the CPCCA (and of the Harper government) is to “criminalize criticism of the State of Israel.” Among the loudest of these groups has been Independent Jewish Voices (IJV).

The CPCCA Inquiry Panel released its report last month. The report endorses the definition of antisemitism developed by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, which includes discussion of how some manifestations of anti-Zionism and some criticisms of the State of Israel do cross the line into antisemitism. Nowhere does the CPCCA report suggest that criticism of the State of Israel be criminalized.

In fact, the report rejects the very idea that legitimate criticism of the State of Israel is at all antisemitic.

“Criticism of Israel is not, by definition, antisemitic. Israel is accountable, just like any other state, for its acts in accordance with its obligations under international regimes dealing with human rights and international humanitarian law,” says the report without any ambiguity.

But, despite the report being unequivocal about criticism of Israel, anti-Israel groups like IJV keep repeating the same old mantra about criminalizing criticism of Israel.

A group called Faculty for Palestine published an op-ed in the National Post (July 21) and on the IJV website that said the report called “on the federal government to adopt a definition of antisemitism that would criminalize criticism of the State of Israel.” (Some of the Faculty for Palestine op-ed co-authors are also active in IJV.)

Even when criticism of the State of Israel can be seen to rise to the level of, or be motivated by, antisemitism, the report does not call for criminalization of antisemitism, per se. It says that criminal acts themselves – attacks on Jewish persons or buildings, etc. – can be seen as antisemitic when that is the motivation.

In other words, there is no suggestion in the CPCCA report that criticism of the State of Israel be criminalized.

July 18, 2011: The history of the Canadian Jewish Congress should be honoured and celebrated

By Michael Regenstreif

The Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) website – which was still accessible as of July 7 – includes a brief history of the organization that first came together to represent the Jewish community on a national basis in March 1919.

I presume the page was written about two years ago because the last line is, “From coast to coast, Canadian Jewish Congress is still going strong at 90 years old.” At 92, though, the CJC, ceased its operations. On July 1, as you may already have read in the JTA reports on page 4, the CJC, the Canada-Israel Committee, the Quebec-Israel Committee, National Jewish Campus Life and the University Outreach Committee, were all merged into a new organization temporarily being called CIJA 2.0.

CIJA (the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy) itself is a relatively new body. It was established in 2004 by UIA Federations Canada – the national organization of the Jewish federations in Canada, including the Jewish Federation of Ottawa – as an umbrella organization to coordinate the advocacy efforts of the organizations it has now absorbed. In the original CIJA model, each of the advocacy organizations remained independent with its own structure, board of directors and staff.

In the months since the news of the CIJA restructuring began to emerge late last year, there have been many expressions of concern, particularly from CJC activists, present and past, that CJC’s rich history will be forgotten and that its advocacy work on a broad range of issues of concern to Canadian Jewry will be overshadowed by the new organization’s concentration on Israel-related issues (hitherto, the domain of the Canada-Israel Committee).

One suggestion on the table throughout the merger discussions is that the new organization be called ‘Canadian Jewish Congress.’ This would provide a measure of historical continuity to Canada’s national Jewish advocacy organization and also recognize the CJC’s long and venerable history. The other organizations merged into CIJA 2.0 are all much newer creations, none of them nearly as well known as the CJC.

According to the JTA report, CIJA 2.0 CEO Shimon Fogel has said in the past that it’s possible the new agency will be called ‘Canadian Jewish Congress.’

I suppose the choice of a permanent name for CIJA 2.0 will depend on whether the decision-makers want the new organization to reflect a long history of Jewish activism in Canada or whether they want to start from scratch in building a new brand for Jewish and Israel advocacy.

If it were up to me, I would choose to honour the many thousands of people whose actions have been a part of the CJC over a period that almost reached a century and retain the name ‘Canadian Jewish Congress.’ It’s a history that should be celebrated and not forgotten.

The Gaza Flotilla

As I write on July 7, there have been several reports that organizers of the so-called Gaza Freedom Flotilla have finally decided to abandon their ships after none of them made it out of the Athens port in their attempt to sail the Mediterranean past the Israeli navy bringing “peace, freedom and humanitarian aid” to the Palestinian people.

The flotilla, in reality, was a sham that had nothing to do with peace or freedom and little to do with humanitarian aid. It was simply about delegitimizing the State of Israel.

The amounts of food and other aid that flows daily into Gaza from Israel and from Gaza’s now-open border with Egypt dwarfs anything the flotilla might have brought.

The flotilla’s real goal was to lend support to Hamas, the terrorist organization that governs Gaza while continuing to practise terrorism, while continuing to hold Gilad Schalit – who was kidnapped from Israel – captive for more than five years.

You can’t support Hamas, in word or deed, and be a peace activist. Hamas rejects peace. Hamas is in league with Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator whose regime has murdered thousands of his own people in recent months.

“Peace activists” who want to fight for human rights in the Middle East should try sailing their flotilla into Syria.

June 13, 2011: CJC leader runs for the Liberals in the Ontario election

By Michael Regenstreif

I saw Shimon Fogel recently and he told me the details of the long-anticipated merger of Canada’s major Jewish advocacy organizations – including the Canada-Israel Committee, of which he’s been the long-time CEO, and the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) – would be announced sometime this month. (It’s even possible the announcement was made sometime in between my writing this column and your reading it.)

Fogel is to be CEO of the new organization – temporarily being called Newco – created by the merger.

One person who won’t be on Fogel’s senior staff, at least for the first four or five months, is Ottawa native Bernie Farber, who has worked at the CJC for 27 years and has been the CEO since 2005.

Late in May, Farber announced he’s taking a leave-of-absence to run on Premier Dalton McGuinty’s team as the Liberal candidate in the suburban Toronto riding of Thornhill, the Ontario riding with the highest proportion of Jewish residents. He’ll be looking to unseat Progressive Conservative MPP Peter Shurman – who is also Jewish – in the October 6 provincial election.

Shurman was elected to the Ontario Legislature in the 2007 election, when a cornerstone of the Progressive Conservative platform was extending public funding to faith-based day schools. Until then, and now, the only faith-based schools that receive public funding in Ontario are Roman Catholic. Most other provinces, including Quebec, have long had formulas for funding all faith-based day schools that meet provincial curriculum standards. The funding proposal was not popular with voters in 2007, and John Tory’s Tories were soundly defeated by McGuinty’s Liberals. Thornhill was probably one of the few Ontario ridings in which the issue actually helped elect a Tory.

Funding for day schools has been a major concern of the Jewish community in Ontario for decades.

At the Federation AGM, in her final address as Jewish Federation of Ottawa chair, Donna Dolansky noted that one of the major challenges for the Federation is establishing a firm financial footing for the Ottawa Jewish Community School. That the school – and virtually all Jewish day schools in Ontario – faces financial difficulties is largely attributable to the lack of public funding provided in most other provinces.

The Canadian Jewish Congress has always been a leader in the struggle for Jewish day school funding. In fact, Farber’s first CJC job in 1984 was lobbying the Ontario government on the school funding issue – and it’s been an issue of concern to him ever since.

And, Farber says, it’s not an issue he’ll give up on should he win the Thornhill seat. Whether as a government or opposition MPP, he plans to continue working on the issue, despite McGuinty’s unequivocal stance against non-Catholic faith-based day school funding.

“While the premier and I may disagree on this subject, I’ll have the opportunity to speak inside the tent and try to effect change,” he told the Canadian Jewish News.

Farber – who says he’ll return to a senior position in the reorganized Jewish advocacy organization, should he not win in Thornhill – might also have his work cut out for him on the school funding issue even if the Tories win the election.

Although funding for faith-based day schools was a major plank in the Progressive Conservative platform in 2007, there’s not a word about it in the 2011 election platform recently released by party leader Tim Hudak.