March 23, 2009: Isn’t it ironic – Boycott Israel event at Azrieli Theatre

By Michael Regenstreif

In her letter to the editor about the recent Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) events in Ottawa, Evelyn Greenberg notes how ironic it is that the IAW lecture on boycotting Israel was held in Carleton University’s Azrieli Theatre, a facility endowed by and named for David J. Azrieli, an Israeli-Canadian businessman, architect and philanthropist, and a past-president of the Canadian Zionist Federation.

Azrieli was born in Poland in 1922 and was 17 when the Second World War broke out. He managed to escape from Poland and made his way through Russia and Central Asia before arriving in Palestine in 1942. He served in the Israel Defense Forces, fought during the 1948 War of Independence and studied architecture at Technion in Haifa before coming to Canada in 1954.

In addition to his business activities in Canada, Azrieli has been one of Israel’s most prominent developers. He built Israel’s first enclosed shopping mall and the massive Azrieli Center in Tel Aviv bears his name. You’d think that IAW organizers would have wanted to avoid the symbolism of holding an event specifically aimed at furthering the movement to boycott Israel in that specific venue.

For 14 years before coming to Ottawa, I hosted a weekly folk music program on CKUT, the community radio station based at McGill University in Montreal. The station’s format is similar to Ottawa stations CKCU at Carleton and CHUO at uOttawa.

The CKUT schedule included programs produced by and for members of certain cultural communities, including a weekly Jewish magazine show. There was also a Palestinian program I listened to a number of times. The show was typically devoted to anti-Israel propaganda. Occasionally, for a Jewish perspective, they’d interview someone like Norman G. Finkelstein. The show often called for a boycott of Israel and companies that do business in Israel.

One day, I happened to see one of the producers of the Palestinian community radio show in a coffee shop. I couldn’t help but notice that, when he turned on his laptop, it was running Microsoft’s Windows XP, an operating system developed in Israel. Israel is the location for one of Microsoft’s three international research centres. Microsoft’s Bill Gates has referred to Israel as “a high-tech superpower.”

He connected to the Internet and headed straight for Google. The technology that runs Google ads – which is what finances the search engine most of us use – was developed in Israel, a centre for Google R&D. I don’t know whether or not his computer was running on one of the Pentium class chops that Intel developed in Israel.

Then he took a cell phone call. I can’t be sure that his particular phone was using any technology developed in Israel, but chances are it was.

I’m willing to bet that the IAW organizers who held their Boycott Israel event at the Azrieli Theatre all probably use lots of technology developed in Israel.

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This week marks the 30th anniversary of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. It was on March 26, 1978 that Menachem Begin, then Israel’s prime minister, and Anwar Sadat, then president of Egypt, signed the historic treaty in Washington climaxing a process that began with Sadat’s unprecedented trip to Jerusalem and his address to the Knesset on November 20, 1977.

Beginning with the War of Independence in 1948 – and continuing with the Suez War in 1956, the Six Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973 – Israel and Egypt fought four major wars in the first 25 years of Israeli statehood. Some time after the Yom Kippur War, Sadat came to the conclusion that enough was enough, that Israeli statehood was a reality that wasn’t going away, that enough blood had been spilt, and he made the bold choice to pursue peace.

Peace between Israel and Egypt has not been a peace borne of friendship and warmth between their peoples. Rather, it’s been a pragmatic peace, often described as a cold peace, between two countries that have wisely concluded that the alternative is not – and should not ever again be – acceptable.

Sadly, Sadat was assassinated in 1981 by Egyptian peace rejectionists, just as Yitzhak Rabin would be assassinated by an Israeli peace rejectionist 14 years later.

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Like so many in the community, the thoughts of all of us at the Bulletin have been with Terry Schwarzfeld and her family since we first heard the news of the assault and terrible injuries she suffered while on vacation in Barbados.

March 9, 2009: Crossing the line from criticizing Israel to antisemitism

By Michael Regenstreif

This issue of the Bulletin went to press just before Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) was held on the campuses of many North American universities, including Carleton University and the University of Ottawa. Events like IAW give rise to the question of when and how criticisms of actions taken by the Israeli state cross the line into antisemitism.

Policies and actions of the Israeli government – like those of any government – are fair game for criticism. Criticizing an Israeli government policy or action is not inherently antisemitic.

However, it has become painfully obvious that some of the anti-Israel activity we see is antisemitic. MP Irwin Cotler, a former justice minister and long-time human rights activist, points to a new kind of antisemitism masquerading as anti-Zionism. Whereas traditional antisemitism was directed at the rights of Jews to live as equal members in whatever society Jews were present, the new antisemitism is directed against Israel as “the collective Jew among the nations.”

In his keynote address to the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism conference in London last month, Cotler described three types of this new antisemitism.

The first is genocidal and is manifested by governments like Iran’s threatening to wipe Israel off the map, terrorist movements like Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Al-Qaeda whose covenants “call for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews wherever they may be,” and even religious fatwas “where Jews and Judaism are characterized as the perfidious enemy of Islam.”

The second is ideological and is manifested by demonizing Israel as a racist, apartheid or Nazi state. This ideological antisemitism masquerading as anti-Zionism seeks to delegitimize Israel as a state. Here at home, this kind of antisemitism seeks to tarnish pro-Israel activists with guilt-by-association. This is the kind of thinly veiled antisemitism Jewish students are often faced with on campus.

Legalized antisemitism is the third type. “Here,” said Cotler, “antisemitism simultaneously seeks to mask itself under the banner of human rights, to invoke the authority of international law and to operate under the protective cover of the UN.” The 2001 UN antiracism conference in Durban, South Africa that turned into an antisemitic hate-fest was a manifestation of that antisemitism.

The follow-up to the Durban conference is scheduled to be held next month in Geneva. Canada was the first democracy to conclude that the so-called Durban II conference would likely be another antisemitic hate-fest and pulled out. Israel soon followed. The Obama administration has reached the same conclusion and cancelled U.S. participation. Don’t be surprised if some of the major European democracies also pull out in the coming weeks.

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On Page 13, we have a news report about the Israel boycott resolution passed by the Ontario University Workers’ Coordinating Committee of CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees) Ontario. The resolution, spearheaded by CUPE Ontario president Sid Ryan, a long-time anti-Israel activist, will be presented to the CUPE Ontario convention in May.

This resolution, aimed at cutting ties between universities in Ontario and Israel, is watered down from what Ryan was pushing in January when he said, “Israeli academics should not be on our campuses unless they explicitly condemn the university bombing and the assault on Gaza in general.” That demand, so similar to the McCarthyism that destroyed the careers and lives of so many on the left in the 1950s, was too extreme even for the CUPE Ontario committee, which passed the diluted version.

The resolution does not – at least not yet – speak for CUPE Ontario. It remains to be seen whether Ryan will be able to convince the broader membership to support the boycott. It certainly does not speak for CUPE National.

A couple of days after the committee passed its resolution, a statement was released by Paul Moist, CUPE’s national president. “CUPE National would like to state that it does not support the resolution passed by the Ontario University Workers Coordinating Committee of CUPE Ontario on February 22, 2009. The views expressed in the resolution are those of a small number of CUPE Ontario members. The resolution does not represent CUPE National policy.”

Should the resolution pass at CUPE Ontario’s May convention – and there’s no guarantee that it will – it will not be binding on any university. Despite the loud and sometimes intimidating voices of a few professors and students, our universities do understand that peace, progress and a better world will come through openness and collaboration, not boycotts and closed doors.

Israeli universities do cutting-edge research in many areas, including medicine, technology and the environment, and we are likely to see more collaboration between Canadian and Israeli universities in the years to come. To paraphrase from Hillel Ottawa’s week of campus activities last month, expect more references to ‘Israel, a partner’ in the future.

February 23, 2009: So, who did the Israelis choose to lead?

By Michael Regenstreif

Back in November, just after the Canadian election and just before the American, I wrote that those elections, plus the upcoming one in Israel, make this a fascinating time for those of us interested in politics.

Looking ahead to the Israeli election, I asked a couple of questions: “Will Israelis choose Kadima’s Livni or Likud’s Netanyahu?” and “Given Israel’s proportional representation system, to whom will the next Israeli prime minister be beholden when it comes to putting together a governing coalition?”

Opinion polls leading up to the February 10 vote suggested Benjamin Netanyahu was headed to a substantial victory. But things changed as the campaign drew to a close. Ehud Barak’s collapsing Labor Party bled support to Kadima and the extreme right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu, headed by Avigdor Liberman, drew substantial support away from Netanyahu.

In the end, Livni squeaked ahead with 28 seats to Netanyahu’s 27. But both claimed victory: Livni because she had the most seats of the 30-something parties who ran in the election and the dozen that garnered enough votes for representation in the Knesset, and Netanyahu because the right-wing and religious parties could come together in a majority coalition.

There are a number of possible scenarios for coalition building that will play out in the days and weeks – and possibly months – to come. Some of the likeliest possibilities are detailed in Leslie Susser’s JTA report on Pages 1 and 2.

Of all the scenarios, Israel’s best hope for stability would be a national unity coalition that would bring Kadima, Likud and Labor together – perhaps with the rotating-prime-ministership model that followed the 1984 election. I wouldn’t expect either a Livni or Netanyahu coalition that’s beholden to Liberman’s support to last more than a year or two, if that.

After our fall election, there were calls for proportional representation to be introduced here and, in that same November column, I expressed some reluctance to the idea based on what I’ve observed of Israeli politics over the years where the leading party has always had to look for support from single-issue or narrowly focused parties in the Knesset.

I think these latest Israeli election results will only reinforce that reluctance. The day after the election, I got an email from an Israeli friend, Menachem Vinegrad, who lives in the Upper Galilee, commenting on the results. “No clear winner has emerged,” he wrote, “and the stronger parties must now bargain, barter and bribe in order to put together a ruling coalition. It’s altogether a rotten system.”

In the days after the election I read many editorials and columns in Israeli newspapers – from Ha’aretz to the Jerusalem Post – that pretty much agreed with my friend Menachem’s assessment and spoke of the need for a massive overhaul of a system that just doesn’t work very well.

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The Batsheva Dance Company from Israel performed at the National Arts Centre (NAC) earlier this month.

A few days before the performance, someone forwarded a letter to me that was being circulated by Diana Ralph of Independent Jewish Voices encouraging a letter-writing campaign aimed at NAC management demanding cancellation of the event because Batsheva is “funded by Israel’s government, its performers include none of Arab extraction, and it is ‘proud to be considered Israel’s leading ambassador.’”

Independent Jewish Voices also demands that the NAC commit to boycotting all “Israeli-funded artists and cultural exchanges.”

I think back just a few decades to when the lives and livelihoods of many on the left were destroyed by McCarthy-era blacklists and boycotts. Now, it’s some groups on the left and a labour leader, CUPE Ontario’s Sid Ryan, who are engaged in McCarthyism.

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In the Federation Report on Page 6, Linda Kerzner and Alana Kayfetz mention the daily challenges faced by students on campus who are engaged in Israel advocacy.

Disturbingly, there have been growing numbers of reports of anti-Israel incidents on Canadian campuses that have crossed the line into antisemitism, including several disconcerting reports of antisemitic violence at York University in Toronto and UBC in Vancouver.

While it is important that our universities remain venues for freedom of expression of all points-of-view, it is unacceptable that anyone be subjected to any form of hatred or violence.