February 24, 2020: IHRA definition of antisemitism needed

By Michael Regenstreif

Last June, the federal government adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism as a component of its anti-racism strategy. At the time, Canada was the 17th country to adopt the definition.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) – the advocacy agent for Jewish federations in Canada, including the Jewish Federation of Ottawa – has been encouraging provincial and municipal governments across the country to endorse and adopt the IHRA definition as well.

In an era when, sadly, antisemitism and antisemitic hate crimes are on the rise, it is important to have a common definition of antisemitism that can guide law enforcement officials, the courts, the educational system, and all of us. The IHRA definition does that by defining both classic antisemitism and pointing out examples of how criticism of the State of Israel can and does cross the line into antisemitism. However, the IHRA definition of antisemitism explicitly states that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”

The line is crossed, though, by “applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation,” or “using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis,” or “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,” or “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.”

In other words, criticism of specific Israeli government policies or Israeli politicians are as legitimate as criticism of specific Canadian or American policies. For example, as I write, environmental protest actions by several Indigenous nations in Canada have stopped Via Rail service across the country and it is not anti-Canadian to criticize the government on how it has handled the protests or even how it has handled the totality of relations – and reconciliation – with Canada’s Indigenous peoples. But it would be anti-Canadian to say that Canada has no right or legitimacy to exist as a country because of how it has acted on the protests specifically, or even on Indigenous relations generally.

Bill 168, a private member’s bill introduced by Ontario Conservative MPP Will Bouma, would make Ontario the first province to adopt the IHRA definition. The bill passed first reading at Queen’s Park two months ago and is now at committee.

At the municipal level, few cities have yet taken any action on adopting the IHRA definition. On January 28, the day after International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the city of Vaughan, a Toronto-area suburb became the first city in Canada to adopt the definition.

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a motion was presented at Montreal’s city council calling for the city to adopt the IHRA definition. The motion was presented by Councillor Lionel Perez, an observant Jew, who told the Canadian Jewish News that he “believes the city should take this position because of the increase in hate crimes against Jews.”

However, when the matter came before the city council, Perez withdrew the motion when Mayor Valèrie Plante said defining antisemitism was “far from a black and white issue” and suggested sending the issue of antisemitism to a council committee which could devise a “Montreal model” to define antisemitism.

The following week there was no such hesitation when the city council of Westmount – the suburb next to downtown Montreal where I lived for 27 years before moving to Ottawa in 2007 – unanimously adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

I hope Ottawa City Council will also soon act to adopt the IHRA definition.

February 10, 2020: Israel’s election and Trump’s peace plan

By Michael Regenstreif

It’s been three months since I last wrote about the political situation in Israel. In my November 11 column, I noted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud leader, had failed to form a governing coalition in the weeks after the September 17 election – Israel’s second inconclusive election of 2019. The mandate to attempt to form a government had passed to Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz.

“It is unlikely that Gantz will be any more successful than Netanyahu in putting together a coalition that commands at least 61 of the Knesset’s 120 seats,” I predicted, noting two possibilities: a unity government alternating the premiership or a third Israeli election in less than a year.

Attempts to form a unity government failed. Blue and White insisted that it would not form a unity government with Likud under Netanyahu as long as Netanyahu faced the possibility of criminal charges in several corruption cases. They would have been open to an agreement with Likud if the prime minister stepped aside, at least until he was cleared of criminal wrongdoing. Netanyahu, for his part, refused to accommodate the demand.

So Israelis will go to the polls on March 2 for the third time in less than a year – and the country remains under a Netanyahu caretaker government with a limited mandate to act in many areas.

Polls taken in late January once again suggest a stalemate similar to the previous two elections (assuming that Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Liberman once again refuses to support anything but a unity government).

The situation with Netanyahu’s indictments came to a head last month. The prime minister had been trying to engineer a vote in the Knesset that would have given him immunity from prosecution while still in office. On January 28, with it obvious that a majority of the Knesset would not support him, Netanyahu withdrew the immunity request and Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit immediately filed charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery against Netanyahu.

The charges were filed as Netanyahu was in Washington for U.S. President Donald Trump’s unveiling of what he’d promoted for three years as the “Deal of the Century” for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Although embraced enthusiastically by Netanyahu, the Palestinians, who did not participate in its drafting, have rejected the plan.

Here in Canada, Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne released a statement that Canada “will carefully examine the details of the U.S. initiative for the Middle East peace process,” but reiterated, “Canada has long maintained that peace can only be achieved through direct negotiations between the parties. We urge the parties to create the conditions for such negotiations to take place.”

However, it is very interesting to note that ambassadors from three small Arab countries – Bahrain, United Arab Emirates and Oman – attended the White House event unveiling that plan. I would agree with analysts who suggest their attendance signals that the Palestinian issue has become less important to them than threats from Iran. Opposition to Iranian hegemony in the Middle East has opened the door to improved relations between Israel and parts of the Arab world.

The timing of the plan’s release was telling. It came on a day when Trump was on trial in the U.S. Senate for impeachment from office for abuse of power, and Netanyahu, due to face voters five weeks later, was charged with criminal offences that, if he is convicted, could lead to a prison term. It’s hard not to see the timing as an attempt to change the conversations in both the United States and Israel – and, to some extent, it did, at least briefly.

I don’t expect anything to change very soon based on the Trump plan. First, there needs to be an Israeli government with a real mandate to govern. And while it’s a foregone conclusion that Trump won’t be removed from office after his Senate trial, he may or may not be in office a year from now following the U.S. election in November.

January 27, 2020: We’ve seen far too much antisemitism in recent years

By Michael Regenstreif

My wife, Sylvie, and I were on vacation in Clearwater Beach, Florida in December. On December 23, the second night of Chanukah, we joined several hundred other people – locals and tourists alike – at the Chanukah party and giant menorah lighting organized by Chabad of Clearwater.

Held outdoors on the main drag on Clearwater Beach, less than a five-minute walk from where we were staying, it was a typical Chabad Chanukah event with speeches, songs, a magic show, latkes and sufganiyot. One of the big hits of the event was Rabbi Levi Hodakov singing his updated version of Adam Sandler’s “Chanukah Song.” Local politicians, including Mayor George Cretekos and several other members of Clearwater’s city council, joined in the celebration.

There were a couple of police officers who stood on the edge of the crowd observing the event and the comings and goings but, thankfully, there were no incidents that required their attention.

However, less than two weeks before Chanukah, there was a mass shooting at the JC Kosher Supermarket in Jersey City, New Jersey carried out by a pair of antisemitic extremists. They murdered Mindy Ferencz, 33, an owner of the market; Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, 49, an employee; and rabbinical student Moshe Deutsch, 24, a customer. Three others, including two police officers, were also wounded in the incident. The assailants arrived at the market shortly after they killed a police detective in a separate incident.

Then, on December 28, the seventh night of Chanukah, a masked man invaded the home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg in Monsey, New York – a small community north of New York City with a largely Chasidic population – and randomly stabbed five Chasidic Jews attending a Chanukah party. Other guests fought back and the suspect escaped in a car. He was arrested by police later that night in Harlem. In the investigation, police found his handwritten journals filled with antisemitic views.

Thinking of those incidents just before and during Chanukah – as well as the antisemitic murders earlier last year at Chabad of Poway in California and at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 – made me stop and think about whether we were safe attending a Jewish event in an accessible public space in Florida, a state where it is easy to acquire weapons and a state with a history of mass shootings – including the high school massacre in Parkland in 2018 that killed 17, and the nightclub massacre in Orlando in 2016 that killed 49.

Although, as already mentioned, there were a couple of police officers present at the Chanukah event on Clearwater Beach, there was no security screening. Anyone and everyone had unfettered access to the event. What would have happened if someone like the attackers from Jersey City or Monsey or Poway or Pittsburgh had been there that night? (By contrast, when we attended a couple of concerts in December at theatres in Clearwater, we could only enter after emptying our pockets and being searched with metal-detecting wands by security guards.)

The sad fact is that we live in a world rife with resurging antisemitism – and antisemitism is coming from so many different directions: from the extreme right, from the extreme left, from Islamist extremists; from some parts of the anti-Israel movement; and from elsewhere. But as Professor Deborah Lipstadt, a world-renowned expert on antisemitism, explained during her visit to Ottawa in November, ultimately “they all sound the same.”

While the internet and its various social media platforms are a great tool to bring people of common interests together and to create and build communities, the internet and social media are also a tool for spreading misinformation and disinformation – often through conspiracy theories – and hatred.

Sadly, statistics show that there are more hate crimes committed against Jewish targets in Canada than any other minority group. Thankfully, few of those crimes have been violent, but every hate crime is traumatic nonetheless. Who in this community can forget the string of antisemitic graffiti attacks on Jewish buildings in 2016?

In many ways, we’ve made great strides over the years in the fight against antisemitism. On many levels, antisemitism, racism and other forms of bigotry, are no longer acceptable. While just before and during the Holocaust, Canada had a government whose policy toward Jewish refugees was “none is too many,” we now have a government that has apologized for that. Not that many decades ago, the Montreal suburb of Hampstead would not allow Jews to own property in the town, while now the majority of its residents are Jewish.

At the political level, antisemitism has almost ceased to be a factor in Canada in the years since the late Herb Gray became Canada’s first Jewish cabinet minister in 1969. Gray, himself, eventually served as deputy prime minister for four-and-a-half years between 1997 and 2002, and here in Ottawa, where we once had an antisemitic mayor, we have since had two Jewish mayors. There are countless other examples I could cite.

But that doesn’t mean we can stop being vigilant about antisemitism (and all other forms of racism and bigotry) in Canadian political life. The province of Quebec recently passed Bill 21, a law banning civil servants in positions of authority from displaying symbols of their religious belief – including the wearing of a kippah.

Meanwhile we can look to the United Kingdom for lessons on what might happen when variations of antisemitism become mainstreamed. The Labour Party – long the political home to the majority of British Jews – spent the last several years under the leadership of the once-obscure far-left anti-Zionist Jeremy Corbyn, who allowed antisemitism to flourish in the party. Much of British Jewry regarded a potential Corbyn government as an existential threat to the community and breathed a collective sigh of relief in December when Corbyn led Labour to its worst election defeat since 1935 – with most British analysts agreeing that perceived antisemitism was a significant factor in turning many traditional Labour voters against the party.

As much as we need to remain vigilant against antisemitism and stand up to it and fight it whenever it rears its ugly head, we cannot, as Lipstadt warned, allow antisemitism to become central to our identity as Jews. “Then we turn Jews into an object – what’s done to Jews, instead of what Jews do,” she said.

We live in a free and democratic society and while being mindful of the security of our persons and our institutional buildings, we must remain free to live Jewishly – however we each may want to do that.

Next December, it’s likely that Sylvie and I will be back on vacation in Clearwater Beach. And, as usual, we’ll be at the Chabad of Clearwater Chanukah party.