June 22, 2015: Any tent flap only reaches so far – to the right, or to the left

By Michael Regenstreif

Mike Huckabee will not be the keynote speaker at the Jewish National Fund (JNF) of Ottawa’s Negev Dinner this coming October.

Although Huckabee – the former governor of Arkansas and former Fox News commentator who is one in a crowded field vying for the Republican nomination for the 2016 U.S. presidential election – is a strongly committed evangelical Christian Zionist, he was a controversial choice to speak at the dinner, given his far-right positions on virtually every social issue that are widely out-of-step with the vast majority of American Jews – and, dare I say, in the absence of polling data, most Canadian Jews as well.

Huckabee’s views on Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians are also much further to the right than such strong supporters of Israel as Prime Minister Stephen Harper or the last Republican U.S. president, George W. Bush. Or, for that matter, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Those leaders, and most mainstream Jewish organizations – for example the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs here in Canada or the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in the U.S. – are all on record as supporting some sort of two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Huckabee, however, dismisses the very idea of Palestinian peoplehood.

“The idea that they [Palestinians] have a long history, dating back hundreds or thousands of years, is not true,” Huckabee said in an interview with the Washington Post conducted in Israel in February of this year.

Given Huckabee’s positions, it was entirely predictable that his booking as the Negev Dinner keynote speaker would not sit well with many – including many who would ordinarily support JNF. And that includes many who might be attracted to the most worthy project – supporting autism research and services – chosen by honourees Barry and Allan Baker as the beneficiary of the dinner.

And, indeed, there were many in the community who saw the choice of Huckabee as objectionable, and who objected.

When Values, Ethics, Community columnist Mira Sucharov proposed a column critical of Huckabee and his engagement to speak at the Negev Dinner, we told her that JNF would be given the opportunity to respond.

In her response, JNF Ottawa executive director Lynda Taller-Wakter explained that Huckabee was chosen to speak at the Negev Dinner because he represents the strong support Israel receives from evangelical Christians in the United States. But, at the end of the article, it was announced that Huckabee would not speak after all.

While the article does not explain why the Huckabee speech was cancelled, my guess is that JNF listened to the objections and decided the controversy provoked by such a polarizing figure might well have been harmful to the event.

But the episode does raise some interesting questions about how speakers for community events are vetted and chosen – particularly speakers who do not represent mainstream opinion or whose political or religious positions may be very different from our own.

I don’t pretend to have answers to those questions. But I do know that I like the “big tent” approach that welcomes a broad spectrum of opinion. As someone who listens to a lot of speakers – and reads a lot of writers – I know how inspired I can be listening to or reading someone whose opinions are similar to my own. I also know that I am most challenged when listening to or reading someone with well-reasoned arguments I might strongly disagree with.

I want to be inspired and I want to be challenged. But, any tent flap only reaches so far – to the right, or to the left.

May 26, 2015: Netanyahu forms government with a narrow coalition

By Michael Regenstreif

With less than two hours to go until his time ran out at midnight on May 6, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally cobbled together the narrowest possible governing coalition following the March 17 election.

With the support of parties representing just 61 of the 120 Knesset seats, Netanyahu desperately needs to broaden his coalition or remain at risk of the government falling if it loses the support of just one or two MKs – a very real possibility given the hard feelings that linger after his election eve comments designed to draw support to his Likud Party at the expense of the other right wing parties. I wrote about Netanyahu’s comments in my column in the March 30 issue of the Bulletin.

After those comments, Likud did increase its seat count, thus keeping Netanyahu in the Prime Minister’s Office, despite the surge of Isaac Herzog’s Zionist Union in the pre-election polls. However, total support for all right-wing parties was about the same as it was in the 2013 election, so the other right-wing parties did lose seats and thus their hard feelings.

Among those with the hardest feelings is former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, who decided to take his six seats and sit in opposition.

In pulling together this minimalist coalition, Netanyahu made several Cabinet choices seen as worrisome by many. Firstly, there is not one minister envisaged as an advocate for a two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians.

If Israel is perceived as intransigent on this issue, relations with the United States and the European Union will be further damaged. Even the Canadian government – Israel’s strongest supporter among Western governments – stressed the importance of the two-state solution in offering congratulations to Netanyahu on the swearing-in of his government in a statement issued by Foreign Affairs Minister Rob Nicholson on May 14.

“Canada has a warm and long-standing friendship with Israel, which is based on a shared commitment to the principles of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

“Our government will continue to strongly support Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself, by itself. Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivered this message to the Israeli people in his historic address before the Israeli Knesset in January 2014. We also continue to support a bilaterally negotiated two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians based on a commitment to peace and mutual security,” said Nicholson.

Secondly, the religious parties – Shas and United Torah Judaism – are back in Cabinet after being left out of the previous government. This means that recent reforms regarding haredi service in the Israel Defense Forces will surely be dialled back, religious affairs in Israel will remain in the unyielding control of the haredi Chief Rabbinate, and progress toward Judaic religious pluralism will be next to impossible.

The most polarizing of Netanyahu’s Cabinet appointments is surely that of Ayelet Shaked of Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home party as justice minister.

The new justice minister has no training in law – her academic background is in electrical engineering and computer science – but she has an agenda that includes scaling back the power of the judiciary and limiting the power of Israel’s Supreme Court. And, while Israel’s previous justice minister, Tzipi Livni, led Israel’s negotiations aimed at a two-state solution with the Palestinians, Shaked is deeply opposed to the proposition.

According to reports, Netanyahu did not want Shaked in his Cabinet – let alone in such an important position – but her appointment was a last-minute concession to Bennett. If Bennett, who is now the education minister, had withdrawn the support of Jewish Home’s eight seats, Netanyahu could not have formed a government.

With a history of personal animosity between Shaked and Netanyahu, things may not go well. Between 2006 and 2008, while Netanyahu was opposition leader, Shaked was his office director. She quit in 2008, saying the once and future prime minister was impossible to work with. And, at the ceremony announcing his new Cabinet, Netanyahu reportedly refused to shake his new justice minister’s hand.

Unless Netanyahu can somehow broaden his coalition, we may well be watching another Israeli election campaign sooner than later. For now, he’s hanging onto the foreign minister’s portfolio as bait, hoping to lure in Herzog or Lieberman and their parties. So far, neither is biting.

May 11, 2015: Israel and Jewish organizations respond to disaster in Nepal

By Michael Regenstreif

Globally, the news cycle during the production period for this issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin has been dominated by the devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Nepal on April 25. As I write, on May 1, the confirmed death toll from this heart-breaking disaster has topped 6,300 and the Nepalese government is estimating it could rise to 10,000 or more.

As we have seen with numerous other natural disasters in recent years, including the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in 2011, and the typhoon in the Philippines in 2013, Israel was one of the quickest countries to respond to the earthquake, and the work of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israeli NGOs like IsraAid has been remarkably effective.

Nepal has been a popular tourist destination for Israelis – particularly for young Israelis after they’ve completed their military service – and Israel moved quickly to evacuate its citizens from the earthquake zone. Within three days, more than 300 Israelis had been airlifted from the earthquake zone and brought home, while many major countries, including Canada, were still strategizing on how to evacuate their citizens. As I write, only one Israeli remains unaccounted for in the earthquake zone.

Fascinatingly, among the Israelis brought home were 25 newborn babies born to Israelis using Nepalese surrogate mothers. That Nepal has become a major centre for Israelis in need of surrogacy services came to light because of this disaster.

The IDF were among the largest military delegations to go to Nepal in the wake of the earthquake. In addition to conducting search-and-rescue missions, the IDF quickly set up field hospitals, providing urgently needed operating rooms, intensive-care units, neonatal care, beds and essential medical staff. Magen David Adom also sent doctors and paramedics to help treat the many thousands of seriously injured.

In the days following the earthquake we carried numerous stories about the disaster on the Bulletin website, including the poignant account of how IsraAid led in the rescue of a woman discovered buried in the rubble and still alive after five days.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) was among the organizations that responded quickly to humanitarian needs after the earthquake, providing neonatal incubators for the IDF field hospital, and funds for Magen David Adom efforts, to UNICEF for emergency supplies (including drinkable water) for children, and to Israeli NGO Tevel B’tzedek, which is establishing emergency shelters for some of the thousands left homeless by the earthquake.

The effects of the humanitarian disaster in Nepal will be felt for years to come, and the work of the JDC after such disasters typically goes on for years providing relief and assistance in the short term and then helping to restore jobs, implement programs to reduce the risk from future disasters, rebuild schools and provide post-trauma care. Jewish Federations of North America and its constituent federations moved quickly to establish funds to support JDC efforts in Nepal. One hundred per cent of the funds donated to the Jewish Federation of Ottawa’s Nepal relief fund will be directed to JDC humanitarian efforts in the earthquake zone.