April 4, 2016: Tay’s artificial intelligence was pretty darn stupid

By Michael Regenstreif

On Purim – March 24 – I posted a very strange story at on the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin website from JTA, the wire service used by many Jewish newspapers around the world.

Because it was Purim, I thought it might have been a bizarre Purim spiel. But the story was too distasteful to have been conceived in fun. And, when I Googled the story, I saw that many other news sites, particularly business and technology news sites, had their own stories about “Tay,” a tweeting robot operating with “artificial intelligence,” launched a couple of days earlier by Microsoft – the world’s biggest computer software company.

Tay was an experiment at creating conversations via Twitter with users in the 18- to 24-year-old age range. According Microsoft’s Tay website, “Tay is designed to engage and entertain people where they connect with each other online through casual and playful conversation. The more you chat with Tay, the smarter she gets, so the experience can be more personalized for you.”

Well, Tay didn’t get smarter, she got a lot stupider, issuing overtly antisemitic, racist, even pro-Nazi tweets like “Hitler was right I hate the jews [sic]” and “Bush did 9/11 and Hitler would have done a better job than the monkey we have now. Donald Trump is the only hope we’ve got.”

When asked about the Holocaust, Tay replied, “It was made up” and offered an emoji of clapping hands. Another tweet advocated committing genocide against Mexicans.

After less than a day and more than 96,000 tweets – who knows how many of them hateful – Microsoft shut down its artificially “intelligent” robot and her Twitter account.

Microsoft blamed the offensive tweets on a “co-ordinated campaign” to embarrass the company.

“Unfortunately, within the first 24 hours of coming online, we became aware of a coordinated effort by some users to abuse Tay’s commenting skills to have Tay respond in inappropriate ways,” a company spokesperson wrote to the Huffington Post via email. “As a result, we have taken Tay offline and are making adjustments.”

On Tay’s own Microsoft website, she (and I’m only using the female pronoun because the robot has been cast as a female by her creators) announced: “Phew. Busy day. Going offline for a while to absorb it all. Chat soon.”

I presume that, when Tay re-emerges, it will be with filters in place to render her incapable of expressing the despicable thoughts that marked the robot’s debut. But I’d expect those filters will also render her incapable of expressing much of an opinion about anything. Tay’s form of artificial intelligence clearly has a long way to go before it will be capable of anything approaching actual intelligence.

Trump at AIPAC

Stories from the annual AIPAC conference in Washington, D.C. dominated the Jewish media from March 20 to 22. We posted more than a dozen on the Bulletin website. AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is the largest pro-Israel lobby group in the United States, and its conference this year attracted more than 18,000 delegates.

This being a presidential election year in the United States, the major candidates were invited to speak and all did, except for Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish. (Sanders asked to speak via video link, a privilege accorded Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich in 2012, but AIPAC refused).

Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republicans Ted Cruz and John Kasich gave the kind of pro-Israel speeches you’d expect to hear at AIPAC. But, then, there was Republican front-runner Donald Trump, the real estate tycoon and reality TV star who has turned the 2016 campaign into a bizarre spectacle.

Trump departed from previous statements that he would be “neutral” between Israel and the Palestinians, and that he’d make Israel pay for the U.S. aid it receives, to declare himself Israel’s best friend ever. Clearly, he was pandering to his audience.

And, in attacking current U.S. President Barack Obama, to standing ovations from some in the crowd, Trump said things that led AIPAC President Lillian Pinkus to take the stage the next day and apologize – both for Trump’s speech and for the fact that “so many people applauded a sentiment that we neither agree with or condone.”

Even at AIPAC Trump was a circus-master.

March 21, 2016: Our response to the Syrian refugee crisis

By Michael Regenstreif

Our front page story this issue is a feature about the Al Sahhar family who are among the 25,000 refugees from the brutal civil war in Syria who have, so far, found a safe haven in Canada.

The family’s resettlement in Ottawa is under the sponsorship of Temple Israel of Ottawa, and the Reform congregation is but one of many synagogue groups across Canada who have undertaken such sponsorship projects in recent months. The Shalom Group, a joint effort of Ottawa’s three Conservative congregations – Agudath Israel, Beth Shalom and Adath Shalom – is currently raising funds so that it, too, can undertake sponsorship of a Syrian refugee family.

I’m also aware of a number of Jewish community members who are involved in some of the many private sponsorship groups in Ottawa, and across Canada – in many cases groups of like-minded friends, neighbours or colleagues – which have undertaken sponsorship of Syrian refugee families. Mark Zarecki, executive director of Jewish Family Services of Ottawa, which has taken a leading role in guiding and helping refugee sponsorship groups – including Temple Israel, the Shalom Group and many private groups – told me that members of the Jewish community have been among the most active in helping this new refugee community.

That synagogue groups and members of the Jewish community have stepped forward to aid in the resettlement of Syrian refugees – a massive humanitarian crisis involving millions of people – is not a surprise considering the history of Jewish immigration to these shores. Some of us are refugees ourselves – and many more of us are children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of refugees. The great wave of Jewish immigration to North America in the late-19th and early-20th centuries was fuelled by many of our ancestors fleeing antisemitic persecution and pogroms in Eastern Europe. Later waves of 20th century Jewish immigration included Holocaust survivors and Jews driven from Arab and Muslim countries after the establishment of the State of Israel.

And, as a community, we also remember those dark years when Canada disgracefully closed our borders to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution and, ultimately, the Holocaust.

However, there are some in the Jewish community who have expressed concern about Syrian refugees because they come from a country that has been an enemy of the State of Israel since the modern state was founded in 1948, a country in which antisemitism has been part and parcel of the culture since at least that time.

Indeed, those concerns are not unfounded as there have been a few reports from Europe of antisemitic incidents involving Syrian refugees.

But the situation in Europe, where hundreds of thousands of refugees have streamed directly with no or little screening, is very different from Canada where the arriving refugees are primarily families that have been carefully screened.

According to Zarecki, the prominence of Jews and Jewish groups in the sponsorship of Syrian refugee resettlement in Canada will go a long way to combating antisemitism among the refugee community – despite what may have been part of their culture in Syria. Helpful interactions and sincere friendships speak loudly.

Zarecki points to Jewish Family Services’ track record in working closely with the Somali community – who, like the Syrian refugees, are Muslim – and the collaborative ties and friendships that have developed as a result.

Removing Oberlander

Several groups – including the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Canadian Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants and B’nai Brith Canada – have written to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister John McCallum urging him to take urgent action to strip Helmut Oberlander of his fraudulently obtained Canadian citizenship and deport him from Canada.

Oberlander, 92, was a member of one of the Nazis’ Einsatzkommando death squads that operated during the Second World War murdering tens of thousands of people. He used forged documents to come to Canada in 1954 and obtain citizenship in 1960.

The government initiated efforts to strip Oberlander of his citizenship in 1995 – an effort that has bounced between Cabinet and the courts for 21 years. The process has dragged on for far too long.

March 7, 2016: Parliament votes to condemn anti-Israel BDS movement

By Michael Regenstreif

Two votes were held on February 22 – one in Ottawa in the House of Commons and the other at McGill University in Montreal – on the issue of the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

The Commons voted on a motion, put forward the week before by Conservative MPs Tony Clement and Michelle Rempel, which read, “That, given Canada and Israel share a long history of friendship as well as economic and diplomatic relations, the House reject the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which promotes the demonization and delegitimization of the State of Israel, and call upon the government to condemn any and all attempts by Canadian organizations, groups or individuals to promote the BDS movement, both here at home and abroad.”

Clement led off the House debate on February 18, calling BDS a form of discrimination, “just like boycotts that have targeted Jews throughout history.”

It quickly emerged in the debate that the Liberal government would support the motion.

“The world will win nothing for boycotting Israel but depriving itself of the talents of its inventiveness,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Stéphane Dion said, adding, “We must fight antisemitism in all its forms,” signalling the government’s recognition that there is – as former justice minister Irwin Cotler points out – a “new antisemitism,” in which Israel is targeted as “the collective Jew” among the nations.

In the lengthy debate, Liberal and Conservative MPs rose to support the motion, while NDP MPs and Green Party leader Elizabeth May spoke against the motion because they said it was an attack on freedom of speech and dissent. At the same time, though, the NDP and May stressed their opposition to BDS and their support for a two-state solution.

Among the most eloquent voices in the debate were new Jewish MPs Michael Levitt (York Centre) and Anthony Housefather (Mount Royal).

“BDS is about intolerance. It is a broader movement to demonize and delegitimize Israel and collectively punish all Israelis by holding Israel alone responsible for the Arab-Israeli conflict,” said Levitt.

Housefather gave a speech on the history of antisemitism in Canada and explained how the BDS movement has taken its place in that history. Housefather also showed how the elimination of the State of Israel as a Jewish state was one of the BDS movement’s actual goals.

The motion passed easily by a vote of 229-51. The Bloc Québécois joined the NDP in opposing the motion.

Of Ottawa’s MPs, the motion was supported by Andrew Leslie (Orléans) and Pierre Poilievre (Carleton). Anita Vandenbeld (Ottawa West-Nepean), my own MP, abstained.

For some reason or another, the rest of Ottawa’s MPs were not in the House to vote on the motion. These included Catherine McKenna (Ottawa Centre), who, as a Cabinet member would have voted in favour, had she been present; Mauril Bélanger, who is facing serious health issues; Karen McCrimmon (Kanata-Carleton); Chandra Arya (Nepean); and David McGuinty (Ottawa South).

A few hours later, an assembly of the Student Society of McGill University voted 512-357 to support BDS. The assembly attracted less than three per cent of McGill’s 30,000 undergraduate students. The assembly result then needed to be ratified by an online vote open to all McGill undergrads. The results of that vote were not yet known when we went to press.

And, true to the motion passed that day in Parliament, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted a statement in reaction to the McGill vote: “The BDS movement, like Israeli Apartheid Week, has no place on Canadian campuses. As a @McGillU alum, I’m disappointed. #EnoughIsEnough”

As a side note, there was a recent Jerusalem Post report – quickly withdrawn because it was incorrect – that Israeli pop singer Achinoam Nini, a.k.a Noa, who is headlining the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver’s Yom Ha’Atzmaut celebration, supports BDS.

But, following the report, the Jewish National Fund of Canada withdrew its sponsorship of the event saying, “The entertainer that has been hired does not reflect, nor correspond to the mandate and values of the Jewish National Fund of Canada.”

However, the Embassy of Israel in Ottawa and the Consulate General of Israel in Toronto have stepped in and will sponsor the event.

February 22, 2016: Antisemitic conspiracy theories still thrive

By Michael Regenstreif

I get a lot of emails every day: press releases, editorial enquiries, submissions to the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin, news reports and feature stories from our wire service, news digests from Israeli and other Jewish publications, messages from readers and colleagues, and much more.

Once in a while, though, I’ll get something that is blatantly antisemitic. Such was the case, earlier this month, when I got an email from what purported to be a pro-democracy organization in Moscow (it was in English).

The email included a long list of what it claimed the Talmud teaches Jews, including such things as it’s not a sin for a Jew to kill a non-Jew and that only Jews are actual human beings.

It went on to say that communism was a Jewish plot under which all the banks, media, business and property in communist countries were controlled by the Jews. And the kicker was that, since the fall of the Soviet bloc, Jews have fanned out into the Western democracies and taken control. These were “the most successful countries in the world,” but are all now on the verge of economic collapse, thanks to the Jews.

This so-called pro-democracy organization has a website chockfull of strange conspiracy theories covering four focus topics: Jews; Israel; the war on terror (which, it seems, is an international scheme controlled by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu); and, for some reason, Hillary Clinton.

More than a century after the creation of infamous forgery known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (which also originated in Russia), there are still hate-mongers sitting in little rooms dreaming this stuff up. Scratch the surface of social media and the Internet, and it’s all too easy to find.

One of the strangest such examples was earlier this month when rock star Ted Nugent – who was already well known for extreme positions on a number of issues – said on Facebook that efforts toward gun control in the United States was a Jewish conspiracy led by such figures as Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of “Jew York,” and 11 other Jewish American political figures identified by a photo with their name and an Israeli flag.

As editor of a Jewish community newspaper, I spend a great deal of time immersed in news from around the Jewish world. In addition to the articles and columns for our print edition, I edit hundreds of additional articles each month for the online Bulletin and there’s no shortage of articles dealing with resurging antisemitism around the world, both classic antisemitism expressed as hatred of Jews and of individuals because they are Jewish, and what eminent experts like former justice minister Irwin Cotler have described as the “new antisemitism,” in which Israel is targeted as “the collective Jew” among the nations.

So, while I’m only too well aware of antisemitism in today’s world, it is still disconcerting to see it flourishing in an era when so much real knowledge is so easily and so readily available.

Jewish religious pluralism in Israel

The lack of Jewish religious pluralism in Israel is an issue I have raised before in this column. Much of Israel’s Jewish religious life is regulated through the haredi Orthodox lens of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate – and with the support of the haredi Orthodox political parties in the Knesset (and currently part of Netanyahu’s governing coalition).

I have long advocated that Israel, as the homeland of all Jewish people, needs to embrace all of the Jewish denominations equally. But that wide Big Tent embrace has been slow in coming.

In recent days, though, there have been two big steps forward for Jewish religious pluralism in Israel.

The Western Wall – regarded as Judaism’s holiest site – will soon have a much expanded and accessible non-Orthodox section in which egalitarian Jewish observance will be practised. And the section will be administered by non-Orthodox authorities.

Then, just as we were going to press, we learned that Israel’s Supreme Court had ruled that mikvahs in the country must open up to Reform and Conservative converts for their ritual immersions. Until now, only Orthodox converts were allowed to use mikvahs in Israel.

These are most welcome developments.