September 24, 2012: Why did Canada suddenly break diplomatic relations with Iran?

By Michael Regenstreif

As I write this column on the morning of September 14, it is exactly one week after Canada suddenly broke off diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The federal government had already quietly evacuated what was a skeletal diplomatic staff in Tehran when it ordered Iran’s diplomats in Ottawa to leave the country within five days. We hadn’t had ambassadorial level relations with Iran since 2007, and relations have been particularly strained since 2003, when Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian photographer, was arrested, tortured and killed by the Iranian regime.

In Ottawa, it was big news in January 2011, when officials at Library and Archives Canada cancelled the Free Thinking Film Society’s screening of Iranium, a documentary critical of Iran’s efforts to acquire a nuclear bomb, bowing to pressure from the Iranian embassy. The federal government was quick to recognize how wrong it was to allow the Iranians to exert any such influence and the screening was rescheduled when Heritage Minister James Moore stepped in.

There was no shortage of reasons to break off relations with Iran. As Foreign Minister John Baird said in his statement, Iran is “the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today.”

As Baird went on to explain, “The Iranian regime is providing increasing military assistance to the Assad regime; it refuses to comply with UN resolutions pertaining to its nuclear program; it routinely threatens the existence of Israel and engages in racist antisemitic rhetoric and incitement to genocide; it is among the world’s worst violators of human rights; and it shelters and materially supports terrorist groups, requiring the Government of Canada to formally list Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism under the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act.

“Moreover, the Iranian regime has shown blatant disregard for the Vienna Convention and its guarantee of protection for diplomatic personnel. Under the circumstances, Canada can no longer maintain a diplomatic presence in Iran.”

While the list of Baird’s reasons for cutting our last remaining diplomatic ties to Iran’s Islamist government were spot on, the question turned on the suddenness of the announcement, which came while both Baird and Prime Minister Stephen Harper were in Russia attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ conference.

All the reasons Baird cited would have been just as valid months ago and almost all of them years ago. Why the suddenness on September 7? With the situation vis-à-vis Iran such as it has been for such a long period of time, why didn’t we make this move before or why couldn’t it have waited another 10 days when the announcement could have been made in the House of Commons?

I would have to assume the government decided to act when it did because it was aware of an imminent threat – or the real possibility of a threat – to our diplomats.

There was some media speculation, denied by Baird, that we had advance knowledge of an impending attack on Iran by Israel. Baird said the safety of our diplomats was a primary concern.

Indeed, concern for the safety of Western diplomats in Iran has been a major consideration since the Islamist regime came to power in 1979 and Iranian students took control of the American embassy and held American diplomats hostage for more than a year. The United States has not had diplomatic relations with Iran since.

And, just 10 months ago, Great Britain closed its embassy in Tehran and expelled Iranian diplomats from London after mobs stormed and vandalized the British embassy in Tehran. Canada acted just four days before the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Might we have been aware of a particular threat tied to the anniversary?

As it happened, much of the Islamic world exploded on September 11 – when the American ambassador to Libya and three members of his staff were brutally murdered – and in the few days since in riots sparked by a crude, pathetic depiction of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, posted to YouTube. The insulting video – which was actually online for more than two months before the riots broke out – was obviously meant to inflame Muslim fundamentalists.

Early media reports accepted the filmmaker’s claim that his name was Sam Bacile, an Israeli-American. It turned out that Bacile was one of many aliases of a Coptic Christian Egyptian-American with previous convictions for financial crimes. Despite that revelation, as I write, PressTV, the Iranian regime’s English-language propaganda agency, is reporting the film to be the work of “more than 100 Zionists.”

Given what has transpired in the Middle East in recent days, Canada’s decision to act on Iran when it did, seems timely.

September 10, 2012: United Church takes anti-Israel stance despite members’ opposition

By Michael Regenstreif

The General Council of the United Church of Canada (UCC) – the largest Protestant denomination in the country – met here in Ottawa three weeks ago. As noted in a brief article on page 24, the UCC decided at the conclave to boycott products from Israeli settlements on the West Bank and in eastern Jerusalem after deciding that Israeli settlements are the principal obstacle to peace in the Middle East.

The UCC also apologized to the Palestinians for having once passed a resolution asking them to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

The UCC passed its anti-Israel resolutions – based on a UCC working group’s report on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which placed almost all responsibility for the stalemated peace process at Israel’s feet – despite understanding the ramifications the action would have on relations with Canada’s Jewish community and, perhaps more significantly, the one-sided stance does not represent the views of the greater UCC membership.

An independent survey of United Church members – commissioned by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and Faithful Witness, a grassroots group of UCC clergy and congregants – was conducted by the Gandalf Group, a leading polling and research firm, in July. Among the survey results were that 78 per cent of UCC members felt the Church should remain neutral on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As well, only five per cent agreed with the UCC working group report’s conclusion that Israeli settlements are the principal obstacle to peace. Only seven per cent believed a boycott would advance the cause of peace and only nine per cent believed favouring one side over the other would strengthen the Church’s credibility as a voice for peace.

Clearly, the vast majority of UCC members rejected the working group’s report and recommendations. The survey results would suggest most UCC members would lend their support to those on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide who advocate and work for peace.

Unfortunately, the UCC General Council did not seem to care about how the overwhelming majority of Church members felt about the issue when it passed its resolutions. And the Council certainly did not seem to care about a rift – perhaps irreparable – it knew would be created between the United Church and the mainstream Jewish community, should it approve the working group report. Jewish organizations, including CIJA and B’nai Brith, warned of such a consequence. So, too, did a group of nine members of the Canadian Senate, all UCC members. So, too, did Faithful Witness, a group of UCC clergy and members organized by Reverend Andrew Love of Grace St. Andrew’s United Church in Arnprior.

In the wake of the anti-Israel resolutions passed by the UCC General Council, CIJA, in a memorandum to Canadian Jewish community leaders on August 23, called for a complete “moratorium on all dialogue and partnership activities between the institutions of the Canadian Jewish community and the United Church of Canada, its regional conferences, local presbyteries, and individual congregations. This moratorium specifically includes bilateral discussions involving the UCC and Jewish communal institutions, broad interfaith groups in which the United Church is one [of] several partners, and educational activities. We ask the rabbinic and lay leadership of the Canadian Jewish community to respect the highest degree of solidarity with this moratorium.”

While calling for the moratorium, CIJA also recognized and thanked those “within the UCC who worked to defeat the General Council resolutions on Israel-Palestine and who spoke out against a boycott of Israeli goods. The Centre Board will consider how and where to maintain contact with those whose principled opposition to the decision to boycott Israeli goods led them to oppose the resolutions.”

A rational analysis of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians shows it is an extremely complicated situation and the Palestinians – whose authority is divided between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas – bear much of the responsibility for the lack of progress in the peace process. While Israel constantly expresses its readiness to resume negotiations without pre-conditions, it is the Palestinians, sadly, who will not come to the table.

But Palestinian rejectionism, Hamas rockets and Iran’s nuclear threats were not part of the UCC discourse. The UCC General Council also seemed silent on the massacres that come to light almost daily in the brutal civil war in Syria or the repression of Christians in post-revolutionary Egypt. No, it was all about Israel.

August 20, 2012: A moment of Olympic-sized Jewish pride

By Michael Regenstreif

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) proved itself less than Olympian in the lead-up to the opening ceremonies of 2012 Olympic Games in London by refusing to hold a moment of silence in memory of the 11 Israeli athletes murdered by Black September – a Palestinian terrorist faction linked to the PLO – at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany.

But Jews around the world positively kvelled with pride on August 7 watching Jewish American gymnast Aly Raisman win a gold medal performing her floor routine to the joyous sounds of “Hava Nagila.”

From Facebook and Twitter, to the hallways and locker rooms here at the Soloway Jewish Community Centre, we were talking about Raisman, her gold medal and “Hava Nagila.”

Gymnastics, and the women’s floor exercise in particular, are perhaps the most artistic events of the summer Olympics, and Raisman performed her routine almost flawlessly, from the seemingly impossible and lightning-fast leaps, bounds and flips, to slower movements that seemed to be inspired by both ballet and Israeli folk dancing.

That individual gold medal was just part of the Raisman and “Hava Nagila” story at the London Olympics.

Earlier in the Games, Raisman, who was captain of the U.S. women’s gymnastics team, performed her “Hava Nagila” routine as she led the Americans to the gold medal in women’s team gymnastics. And just 90 minutes before winning the gold medal, she also won the bronze in the balance beam competition.

The choices gymnasts make, from their costumes, to the choreography and the music are quite deliberate. Could the 18-year-old have been making a statement by performing her floor exercise to that most famous of all Hebrew folk songs?

Her rabbi, who has known Raisman since she was three years old, thought so.

In an interview with the Boston Globe, Rabbi Keith Stern of Temple Beth Avodah, the Reform synagogue in suburban Boston attended by the Raisman family – and where she graduated from Hebrew school – speculated she may well have been paying tribute to the Israeli Olympians murdered at the Munich Games 40 years ago.

However, Raisman told reporters that, while she supported the campaign to hold a moment of silence at the opening ceremonies for the murdered Israeli athletes, her choice of “Hava Nagila” was not made with the intent of marking the 40th anniversary of the Munich massacre. But, she said, performing to “Hava Nagila” 40 years later was “special” for her.

It takes many, many months, if not years, of training and practice to perfect an Olympian gymnastics floor exercise, so Raisman probably chose “Hava Nagila” as the music for her routine long before the campaign to honour the murdered Israelis at the London opening ceremonies came to the fore.

But, coming from a Jewishly-involved family, having attended her synagogue’s Hebrew school, being just a few years past her bat mitzvah, and having three younger siblings who have celebrated more recently, or will celebrate soon, their own bar and bat mitzvahs, how could her choice of “Hava Nagila,” perhaps the most celebratory of Jewish celebration songs, be anything but a statement of how thoroughly Raisman’s Jewish identity is interwoven with her identities as an American and as a world-class athlete? There’s just too much other music she could have chosen.

So, at an Olympics where the IOC refused to devote just one minute of silence at the opening ceremonies to remember and honour the 11 Jewish Olympians murdered at the 1972 Games, young Aly Raisman stood much taller than her five feet, two inches and was someone Jews around the world could kvell about at the 2012 Olympic Games.