May 16, 2016: In memory of my father, Al Regenstreif – 1926-2016

By Michael Regenstreif

My father, Albert Regenstreif – better known as Al, or, to some, as Boomie – passed away in Montreal on April 14, less than two months before he would have turned 90.

My father was a special guy – loving, supportive, funny, always there for me, my brothers, my mother, and for so many others.

I’m very grateful that my father lived such a long life, so full of vitality until the very end. I feel very lucky that he was in my life for such a long time. His own father, my grandfather, died in 1937 when my dad was just 11 years old. So, I got to spend more than 50 years longer with my father in my life than he had with his father.

I inherited some things from my father. My sense of humour, my love of reading, my appreciation of politics, and culture, especially Jewish culture, all came directly from my dad. What I didn’t really begin to understand, until these last few years, was that my love for music must have come through him, too.

In the last few years, he began to sing around the house, almost all the time, and I was astounded at how many different songs, and how many different kinds of songs, he knew and remembered from so long ago.

My father spent most of his working life in service to the Jewish community. He had a distinguished career working for such organizations as State of Israel Bonds, Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Canadian Friends of Bar Ilan University, and, most particularly, the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, where he spent the last 19 years of his career as executive director of the hospital’s foundation before retiring in 1997 at age 71.

During his time at the Jewish General, he managed a capital campaign in 1984 and ’85 that raised $27 million – then the largest single capital campaign in the history of Canada’s Jewish community.

Partly because he was proud of anything I’ve done over the years, and partly because of his own history in service to the Jewish community, my father felt a great deal of pride to see me working in Jewish community journalism.

And I’ve felt so honoured over the years I’ve been editing the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin that he always proudly sent my columns around to so many friends and relatives.

My parents got married in 1948, when my mother was just 20 years old and my father 22. They started out in Montreal and moved to Calgary, where my brothers and I were born in the 1950s.

In the 1960s, we also lived in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary again, and Vancouver again, before the family moved back to Montreal in 1968. Through it all, my parents were always there for each other, and for me and my brothers, always so supportive of whatever endeavours we’ve pursued over the years.

The last few years have presented some very difficult health challenges for my parents.

My father lost a kidney about 10 years ago. Then, about four years ago, his other kidney failed, forcing him onto dialysis at the hospital for four or five hours at a time, three times a week. And, in the past couple of years, it became harder and harder for him to walk very much. But, still determined to get around, he got himself an electric scooter.

Also, about a year ago, my mother had a stroke, from which, thank God, she’s recovered remarkably well and with remarkable determination. But, with me and Sylvie in Ottawa and my brother Ian in Toronto, the day-to-day responsibility for helping my parents was taken up by my brother Arthur, the only one of us still in Montreal.

I can’t begin to express our appreciation for how wonderful Arthur has been and for everything he’s done for my parents – and continues to do for my mother.

We’re going to miss my father always, but we take great comfort in the love we shared and in the memories that will remain with us forever.

April 18, 2016: A killing that sent shockwaves through Israel

By Michael Regenstreif

I ’ve lost count of how many breaking news stories about terrorist attacks in Israel and the West Bank that I’ve posted on the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin website in the past six or seven months. But there have been many – with more added almost every week. Most of the attacks have been relatively small with often single terrorists launching firebombs, vehicular attacks or stabbings.

Between mid-September and late-March, 34 Israelis were killed in the attacks and more than 400 injured. But for the readiness of Israel’s police officers and soldiers – and their often heroic actions – the lists of dead and injured would be much longer.

Many of the terrorists committing those recent acts – mostly Palestinians from the West Bank, but also some Israeli Arabs – have been killed during the commission of their crimes or while fleeing, and few would argue about the need for lethal force in most cases where it has been used in these recent circumstances.

In Ottawa, we vividly remember the terrorist attack at the National War Memorial and Parliament Hill by a single individual on October 22, 2014. We remember our horror at the senseless death of a single innocent person – Corporal Nathan Cirillo on ceremonial sentry duty at the War Memorial – and we fully understood why Kevin Vickers, then the sergeant-at-arms of the House of Commons, and other security personnel used lethal force to stop the lone wolf terrorist.

We recall how affected our city was by that single incident. For Israelis, though, terrorist attacks, sadly, have become routine. One of the breaking news articles I posted to the Bulletin website on April 8 – about an hour before I started writing this column – was a report that Israel and Israeli-controlled areas of the West Bank had recorded a 26 per cent drop in the number of terrorist attacks in the month of March in comparison to February.

There were only 123 terrorist incidents in March – the least number for any month since July 2015. Imagine, 123 incidents, an average of almost four terrorist attacks per day in the quietest month for terrorism in three-quarters of a year.

Lethal force, though, is not always necessary – even in the circumstances of a terrorist attack. Indeed, many terrorists have been captured by Israeli security forces and brought to justice. And that is how it should be.

And that is what should have happened in Hebron on March 24. Two Palestinian terrorists stabbed an Israeli soldier and were shot as they attempted to flee. One of the attackers was killed instantly, while the other was wounded. The wounded terrorist was lying prone on the ground and should have been taken into custody to face justice.

However, video captured an Israeli soldier shooting the terrorist as he lay wounded on the pavement. The incident sent shockwaves through Israel.

Lt. Gen Gadi Eisenkot, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), ordered an immediate investigation.

“This is not the IDF, these are not the values of the IDF and these are not the values of the Jewish people,” said Eisenkot.

“What happened today in Hebron does not represent the values of the IDF,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The IDF expects its soldiers to behave level-headedly and in accordance with the rules of engagement.”

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon described the incident as an “utter breach of IDF values and of our code of ethics in combat.”

The soldier – whose name has not been released – now faces a manslaughter charge. Reports have said he feared the terrorist was carrying explosives (although he had already been checked for explosives by an IDF officer on the scene before the shooting).

However, there are some Israeli leaders – including Education Minister Naftali Bennett – who feel the soldier should not have been charged.

Israeli leaders often proudly point to the IDF as operating under the highest moral standards – and it must. And that means holding soldiers to account when they act outside their code of ethics.

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.