August 17, 2009: The Diab affair at Carleton should never have happened

By Michael Regenstreif

It was a shocking act of terrorism, almost three decades ago in Paris, when a powerful bomb, hidden in motorcycle saddlebags, was detonated, allegedly by the Special Operations cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in front of the Rue Copernic Synagogue.

Four people – three French men and one Israeli woman – were killed and about 40 others were injured. It was Erev Simchat Torah and the toll would almost surely have been much worse had the explosion come a few minutes later as congregants exited the shul after services.

Ottawans were shocked last November, when Hassan Diab, a part-time sociology professor at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University, and a dual Lebanese and Canadian citizen, was arrested by the RCMP, accused by French authorities of perpetrating the heinous act.

Diab – who proclaims his innocence – was jailed until bail was granted under strict conditions in late-March. In January, he will face an extradition hearing to determine if he’ll have to return to France to face trial.

No one expected to hear much about Diab until the extradition hearing. But, then, late last month, news broke that Carleton’s department of sociology and anthropology had hired Diab to teach introductory sociology to summer students beginning July 28.

The university should have anticipated the controversy that would result from hiring an alleged terrorist. As the Ottawa Citizen said in an editorial published July 31, “If he stood accused of sexual harassment you can bet no sociology department would ever have anything to do with him, but trying to kill Jews? Hey, it was a long time ago.”

Diab spent one day in the classroom before Carleton cancelled his contract and replaced him with another professor.

Just as predictable as the controversy of hiring Diab was the reaction of some of his colleagues to his firing. Thirty members of Carleton’s department of sociology and anthropology signed an op-ed piece in the Citizen demanding his reinstatement, painting his dismissal as post-9/11 injustice and discrimination.

The French case is strong enough that Canadian authorities arrested Diab, jailed him for several months pending a bail hearing, then released him under the very strict bail conditions until the extradition hearing, which was determined to be justified.

Diab has not been convicted of the crimes to which he stands accused and must be regarded as innocent until proven guilty. And, if he’s cleared of the charges, they should not be held against him. But that doesn’t mean he should be teaching first year undergrads – or PhD students for that matter – while standing accused of terrorism and multiple murders.

Intro to sociology is a course that can be taught by any sociology faculty member, and probably by most grad students in the department. Carleton did not owe this course to Diab. This entire episode, so predictable from start to finish, should not have happened.

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Twice since I’ve been at the Bulletin, I’ve done interviews with highly placed Israelis who spoke about the openness of Israeli society to its gay and lesbian community, of how Israel was unique among all Middle Eastern countries in this regard.

When I interviewed then-ambassador Alan Baker in April last year for our special Israel @ 60 supplement, he talked about that Israeli openness and pointed out that there were even Palestinian gays and lesbians who have sought asylum in Israel from the discrimination they faced in their own society.

Earlier this summer, retired-Admiral Abraham Ben-Shoshan, who now heads the Tel Aviv Foundation, visited the Bulletin office to talk about the city of Tel Aviv and the foundation. Ben-Shoshan mentioned the city’s live-and-let-live attitude, its openness to gay culture and such events as its very popular gay pride parade.

Sadly, that live-and-let-live attitude was put to the test early this month when a disguised gunman in Tel Aviv entered a community centre support group meeting for gay teenagers and sprayed the room with machine gun fire murdering two people and wounding five others.

Israelis were shocked by what is widely believed to be a hate-crime. To his credit, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was unequivocal in his statement that it was a “terrorist act,” that he rejected such “gratuitous hatred” and that the gay community in Israel had special needs that should be met with openness and sensitivity.

July 20, 2009: Minister of health should act now on 21 new beds for Hillel Lodge

By Michael Regenstreif

There was a report, June 10, in the Ottawa Citizen that said “elderly residents in Eastern Ontario wait the longest of anyone in the province to be admitted to nursing homes.” Province wide, the report said, waiting times have doubled in the past two years.

A month before that, in the Federation Report of the May 11 Bulletin, Jeffrey Miller, president of the Bess and Moe Greenberg Family Hillel Lodge, wrote about the long waiting list and waiting time for admission to Hillel Lodge. He also noted that Hillel Lodge continues to pursue and wait for Ministry approval to open up 21 additional long-term care beds.

Two years ago, when Ontario waiting times for nursing home admissions were half as long as they are today, long waiting lists were already a problem. In the October 1, 2007 issue of the Bulletin, Barry Fishman wrote an article about the Lodge waiting for approval for those beds and about the space – the Joseph and Inez Zelikovitz Pavilion – that was reserved for them.

That issue came out just before the provincial election held on October 10, 2007 and I reported on the meeting the Federation’s Communications and Community Relations Committee held with Liberal candidates Jim Watson, then minister of health promotion and now minister of municipal affairs and housing; Madeleine Meilleur, then and now minister of community and social services; and Yasir A. Naqvi, who became the MPP for Ottawa Centre, the riding in which Hillel Lodge is located.

The 21 additional beds being proposed for Hillel Lodge was discussed at the meeting and all three candidates voiced their strong support for the proposal. Watson enthusiastically said he’d undertake to have the government act on the 21 new beds for Hillel Lodge within the first six months of a new Liberal mandate. We are now 21 months into that new mandate and Hillel Lodge is still waiting for the go-ahead to proceed with finishing the pavilion and setting up the beds. Watson and Naqvi, I would note, remain in the Lodge’s corner. They brought Health and Long-Term Care Minister David Caplan to the Lodge on January 16 to tour the facility and meet with Lodge officials.

For the past six months, the minister whose signature will allow Hillel Lodge to proceed, has had first-hand knowledge of the Lodge, what it does and what it could do to help alleviate the critical shortage of long-term nursing home beds in this community.

Waiting times for long-term care beds were problematic when the Bulletin reported on this issue almost two years ago and, as noted, have doubled since then. Will they double again over the next two years? Further delays make no sense. Minister Caplan should act now.

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This issue, we introduce a new monthly column, World Affairs, by Oliver Javanpour. Well known in the community, Oliver is an Ottawa-based public policy and international relations consultant. Oliver was born in Iran and his first column deals with the internal challenges to the Iranian regime since the election there last month.

As Oliver notes, such entities as Hamas and Hezbollah, and many other organizations and schools around the world, are beholden to the Iranian regime for their funding. One such organization, funded by the Iranian government, is its English-language satellite news channel and website, Press TV.

It turns out that one of Press TV’s weekly program hosts and commentators is none other than George Galloway, the fringe British MP who was denied entry into Canada earlier this year because of the very public financial aid he delivered to Hamas, an organization banned by Canada because of its terrorist activities.

While you’d be hard pressed to find any commentator in the western media who thinks the Iranian election was an exercise in democracy, Galloway assures us, in his Press TV program available via a series of videos on YouTube, that the Ahmadinejad victory was completely legitimate and that Iran is the very model of pure democracy.

According to Galloway, it’s the western media that has fuelled the massive Iranian protests that erupted after the election. Western media commentators, Galloway tells us, “hate the Islamic Republic” and they “hate President Ahmadinejad – not for any bad things he’s done, or any mistakes he’s made … It’s because Iran will not bow the knee to western power … [and] to the Zionist settler State of Israel, which is an apartheid state.”

Galloway’s Press TV commentaries reveal him to be nothing but a paid propagandist for the brutal Iranian regime. It’s so very sad that many Canadian leftists – including some Jewish leftists – see Galloway as some sort of revered truth-teller.

June 15, 2009: Women are increasingly assuming top communal leadership roles

By Michael Regenstreif

The position of chair of the Jewish Federation of Ottawa – or president of the Vaad Ha’Ir as it was known from 1934 until 2005 – is the pinnacle of lay leadership in the Jewish community of Ottawa. This month, Donna Dolansky became the 34th person in the Federation’s 75-year history to rise to that esteemed position.

A long record of accomplishment as a seemingly tireless volunteer and community leader is something that Donna has in common with her 33 consummate predecessors. Same gender, though, is something she shares with only two: Maureen Molot, who was Vaad president from 1991 to 1993; and Barbara Farber, who served from 1997 to 1999. The position has been a male bastion for 71 of the past 75 years.

The fact that almost all past presidents and chairs have been men is not unusual. Look at most Jewish communities and you’ll see that almost all, if not all, of their leadership positions have been male bastions for most of their histories too. With the exception of organizations that are specifically for women, it is only in recent decades that we’ve seen women realizing the top leadership roles in Federations and major organizations.

It’s also worth noting that, for the first time in this Federation’s history, both the chair, Donna Dolansky, and the vice-chair, Debbie Halton-Weiss, are women.

Like many other Jewish communities, ours has been evolving. Where it was once unheard of for women to attain such top leadership positions, they now do. And, while it is still a rare enough occurrence that we take note when a woman attains a position like Federation chair, it is becoming more commonplace. In another generation or so, we won’t.

Something else worth noting is that, this year, again for the first time, all three recipients of the community’s annual awards are women. At the Federation’s annual general meeting this month, Ingrid Levitz received the Gilbert Greenberg Distinguished Service Award, Estelle Gunner received the Shem Tov Community Volunteer Award, and Jennifer Kardash received the Freiman Family Young Leadership Award.

Although women in the top leadership positions may still be somewhat novel, women – as exemplified by Ingrid, Estelle and Jennifer – have long been at the forefront of community volunteerism. When the Federation celebrated its 75th anniversary last month by honouring 75 of our most accomplished volunteers, 45 of them – a significant majority of 60 per cent – were women.

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The non-Orthodox rabbinate is another area that has been opening up to women in the almost-four decades since the Reform movement ordained its first female rabbi in 1972. Women rabbis are now well accepted in the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements.

There was an interesting item on the JTA wire recently about Sara Hurwitz, an Orthodox woman who had completed the studies needed to become an Orthodox rabbi. She studied under the guidance of Rabbi Avi Weiss, the director of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in New York, an Orthodox yeshiva for men.

Instead of ‘rabbi,’ though, she was given a new title, maharat – an acronym for Manhigah Hilkhatit Ruhanit Toranit (spiritual, halachic and Torah leader). In other words, she is a rabbi in everything but name.

The JTA article went on to say that Rabbi Weiss and Maharat Hurwitz were founding a new school, Yeshivat Maharat, to train Orthodox women as maharats.

Will the very concept of women as clergy, even if they’re not called ‘rabbis,’ be accepted in Orthodox circles?

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In the April 27 Bulletin, we reported on the 2008 audit of antisemitic incidents in Canada from B’nai Brith Canada (BBC). There were, BBC reported, 1,135 reported incidents of antisemitism in Canada last year, a rise of 8.9 per cent from 2007. The number of antisemitic incidents in Canada, according to BBC, has risen every year but one over the past decade.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in the United States has just released its own audit of antisemitic incidents in the U.S., a country whose population is about 10 times that of ours. The ADL reports there were 1,352 antisemitic incidents in the entire United States in 2008, a decline of seven per cent from 2007. It was the fourth consecutive year in which the ADL has reported a decline in antisemitic incidents in the United States.

Can it really be possible that, proportionately, Canadians are about 10 times more likely to commit antisemitic incidents than Americans?

Or, is it possible that B’nai Brith Canada and the Anti-Defamation League have very different approaches about how or when to define an incident as antisemitic?